The Houseguest by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online Page B

toaster-oven. You just take the cheese from the fridge and bread from the breadbox. You put the cheese on the bread and the bread in the tray of the toaster, then you press down the lever on the side. You watch through the window, and when it’s done you take it out.”
    â€œI know how to do it,” said he. “I just thought it might be nice and generous and kind of you to fix it for me.”
    â€œYou mean,” she asked with an expression that favored one eye, “it’s some kind of test of my regard for you?”
    She could be derisive in the kitchen, but when they were in bed, he would be the one who would be expected to perform, whatever the state of his own ardor at the time, and it never quite matched hers.
    â€œI’ll have something else, then,” he said, expecting her to capitulate, but she did not, so he had to go to the refrigerator and root around. As it happened, he never did come across the cheese. Instead he found one of the many packages of frankfurters for the lunch Mrs. Finch prepared every third day: hotdogs, canned baked beans, and the cole slaw sold in plastic containers at her family’s grocery. Unable to breach the tough plastic without a tool, Bobby whined to Lydia, and she gave him the knife she had been eating with.
    â€œFor God’s sake, this is dirty,” said he. “Also, it’s blunt.” He gave it back, sighing. “I don’t have any fingernails.” This was true: he trimmed them so short he could not pick up a fallen coin.
    Lydia groaned and pointed to the conspicuous hardwood block with slots for many knives, all of them filled. It took him a while to find the littlest one. By the time the hotdogs were available to him, he lacked the energy and patience to cook them, and ate a couple cold, from his fingers, then reached over Lydia’s shoulders and stole her grapefruit juice.
    She was finished by now, anyway. She took her plate to the dishwasher, and while there looked out the window that gave onto the parking area.
    â€œHuh, Chuck’s brought the car back. He seems to have had no trouble with it.”
    Bobby came to join her. “How about that,” said he. “He was right.”
    â€œRight?”
    â€œHe said he knew a few tricks about cars.”
    â€œAnd not just about cars,” Lydia said sourly. “He’s a pretty tricky guy in general.”
    Bobby frowned with his forehead, letting his long jaw hang loose. “He knows how to do everything. Maybe I should take a few lessons from him.”
    Lydia seized him around the waist. “No, you shouldn’t,” she said fiercely.
    â€œI really ought to learn something about cars,” said Bobby. He found the hug slightly painful: he had a sensitive rib. “I’ve been driving since I was twelve or thirteen.”
    â€œSpeaking of cars,” Lydia said, releasing him, “where’s Chuck’s? How’d he get here?”
    But Bobby was distracted, watching Chuck lock the door of the car he had just returned to its place. There was no need for that up here: robbery of any kind was virtually unknown during the season. When the summer people were away, however, their houses were fair game—unless they hired the Finches, at quite a healthy fee, to keep an eye on the property. It was his father’s theory that this constituted a “protection” racket of the kind operated in the cities by mobsters: namely, that the people who could be hired as guards were, unless given such employment, the selfsame who ransacked the houses—though naturally this would have been hard to prove. Even old General Lewis Mickelberg, former supreme commander of the armed services, had a healthy respect for them, as did other summer residents who were people of power in the real world, e.g., Nelson T. Boonforth, chairman of the board of the third largest bank in the country; and celebrated defense attorney Hartman Anthony Johncock,