Pretty Leslie by R. V. Cassill Read Free Book Online

potgutted paterfamilias who helped her teach the flutter kick to her charges, was blackmailed into membership in a vice ring by a fat blonde who waddled inadvertently into her booth in the pool dressing room, was converted to Judaism by a doddering family group seated in the shade beyond the steel mesh, was given the opportunity to ghostwrite an autobiography by a hairy-chested, beetle-browed gentleman of Romanian extraction who had been through “plenty” with the packing-house workers before organization. At the afternoon’s end she was manumitted like Flannery’s grandmother by Mrs. Snavely, in whose past there lurked a story Leslie still meant to “get.”
    The humor of inadvertence, of misfires, of pomp showing its backside, was almost unbearably rewarding to her. “There was this radio announcer,” she told Ben. “Disk jockey. I had the radio on in the wagon because Ricky Snavely wanted to hear about a contest and which boxtop you send … anyway”—now she imitated a treacly, solemn tenor—“‘Love,’ he said and then he paused. ‘Love … is the only thing that can make midnight seem like ten o’clock.’ Ben, what kind of a mind …? ‘Love is the only thing that can make midnight seem like …’ I can’t stand that .”
    She picked out japeries and tactlessness so she could avoid them herself. Lack of suppleness, inability to adapt or make herself over in her situation, seemed to weigh on her like the threat of old age and doom. One of her chief pleasures in her job (and more important to her than salary or the occupation of time she could always spend with interest elsewhere) was in making herself part of the gang—not just by friendliness but by projecting a character with problems they would recognize as being like their own.
    Ozzie Carter thought she was working to help pay off a debt her husband had incurred in medical school. (Ben’s aunt had left him enough to see him meagerly through.) Dolly Sellers thought her husband was a spendthrift with a passion for expensive cars. (The wagon was paid for. The Alfa was being paid off on a three-year plan, eighty a month.) Dolores Calfert probably thought Ben was her second husband. She thought the first had been a student at Penn State who died young of a melanoma behind his eye. For weeks La Verne Grace thought she was a divorcée… They possessed these erroneous impressions because (1) Mrs. Carter had an unpaid medical bill of nearly four thousand dollars; (2) Dolly’s father had bought a secondhand Merc and expected Dolly to help pay for it; (3) Dolores’ husband was dead; and (4) LaVerne’s husband had knocked up a coed, whom he therefore was obliged to marry. Leslie had not wanted them to think her more fortunate than they.
    â€œWell,” she told the boys at the service station where they traded, “a lot of nights I go over to Bernie’s Stirrup and Spur. I mean sure there’re a bunch of places downtown where I stop for a drink now and then, supposing I’m on the town. Bernie’s you find the kind of people you can drink with. I mean I’ve been gardening or something, who wants to dress up?” She always wore slacks and a sweatshirt when she took the cars in for service. There surely must be a Leslie who went eternally in slacks from working-class bar to working-class bar, watching the fights, memorizing ball scores, putting small bets on the horses, loving the pinball machines and maybe not what you’d call really averse to driving out by the lake with a guy without having to know him too well.
    â€œYou hear what Ed Sullivan pulled the other night?” the attendants asked her.
    â€œYeah. Whaddee pull? I mean I watched the program, but I don’t recall what you’re re ferr ing to exactly.”
    â€œYou think you might be in Bernie’s tonight? I mean around ten? ”
    â€œWell, probably