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Don’t dine with strangers
A short story
by Fannie Tsourakova
The man noticed them, because when they passed by his table, one of the women twirled slightly her umbrella and a raindrop fell on his hand. The umbrella was long, brightly colored and with a shoulder strap to carry. They advanced further down the isle between the tables and stopped so as to take in the entire dinning-room. Probably wanted places far from the orchestra. The drums and the electronic piano were still huddling under their white covers, but the danger lurked down under. The woman with the umbrella lifted it and pointed towards his table. He dropped his eyes.
Mushrooms in the sauce today were small and intact, the way he liked them best. The beer has misted the glass and tiny bubbles swirled up in the amber liquid. Ina used to tease him for his penchant of buying things advertised on the TV. But he liked this beer brand even before the advertising mantra “The men know why!” was launched on the evening block. However, when he tired to explain this to her, she only squinted in disbelief.
“Just go ahead and ask him,” said the other woman, not the one with the umbrella. Her voice rang unexpectedly high, as of a five or six-year old girl.
He concentrated on a mushroom.
“Do you have any vacant places at your table?” the woman with the umbrella was standing so close to him that he smelt her perfume and even her body, or so he thought. Her hair was peculiarly dirty russet-blond.
He was already munching on a mushroom and a piece of the steak, so it took him some time to answer. The woman had blue-greenish eyes, big, prominent and reddened. He was about to tell her a lie, but the waiter approached the table, patting lightly his thigh with the tray. The waiter knew well enough that he always ate alone, so there was no way of telling that he expected company. He nodded. And made to cancel his order of a second beer, but annoyed by the commotion caused by the women and the crowded isle, the waiter failed to notice his gesture.
“Two vodkas,” piped out suddenly the woman with the umbrella. “And make it fast,” added she, raising a premonitory finger.
The waiter managed in stride to overcome his surprise, smiled and confirmed the number of vodkas by raising two fingers. The man again attempted to cancel his order and again failed to squeeze in, mouthing only a lingering “a-a-a”. He concealed his embarrassment by pouring more beer into his glass.
He hated this table: close to the door, with an L-shaped settee instead of chairs, which bounced you on its springs the moment another sitter made a sharp movement. But he was late today and all other tables were occupied. So now he had to wait, glass in hand, until the two women settled down, or he would have spilled the beer all over himself.
“We must order salads,” stirred the Russet Blond and the mushroom slipped from his fork.
The waiter returned with the vodkas and the second beer. The man took a newspaper from his pocket, skimmed through the captions, folded it carefully at a chosen page and propped it up on the breadbasket. The article was telling how one’s color preferences were linked to one’s life expectancy.
“Just some smart lawyers’ stuff… We should have ordered wine, if you feel tense,” the childish voice of the smaller woman reached his ear.
The two have kept whispering until now, with heads put close together and these were the first words that carried out. The Russet Blond stirred again and with a sharp tug pulled out from the hand of the other woman a sheaf of somewhat crumpled papers, which have apparently provoked the comment about the lawyers’ stuff. She leafed angrily through, poked her finger into a paragraph and launched into a breathless explanation. The man tried not to listen, but could not help hearing some of the conversation.
“It doesn’t matter whether he owned the flat before marriage! If he has a second flat, you get this!”
The answer of the Russet Blond was lost in the restaurant noise, but the funny voice of the Chubby One carried through.
“It doesn’t matter that his mother is a co-owner! If they have sufficient floorage for two, you get the second flat!”
The Russet Blond took a deep swig of the clear liquid and put the glass back staring distractedly at its bottom.
“He’d lodge an appeal,” said the Russet Blond.
“Where to?”
The voice of the Chubby One seemed somehow familiar to him.
“This is the highest in-stance,” she emphasized the word.
“Keep on telling me things I want to hear! Do!” the Russet Blond slumped back into the settee and his sauce spoon rattled against the plate. “Excuse me,” she turned to him and smiled toothily. She had taken off her jacket and revealed a pair of tightly fitting slacks outlining a slight belly.
It is unbecoming for women to wear slacks with a zipper at the front, his mother claimed. She said this straight into Ina’s face, when he brought Ina to meet her. And brushed aside his complaints how this had embarrassed him by declaring, “I am an open person and tell straight out whatever is on my mind.”
“So I had to divorce because of that slut,” hissed the Russet Blond, who had her back to him, but her words were still audible.
The Chubby One shrugged indifferently and swirled the last swig of vodka in her glass.
The two occupied themselves with drawing the waiter’s attention.
His mother said that his father used to drink vodka. Ina also liked vodka. When he was a little boy, a woman-friend of his mother’s took him for a walk that ended up by bringing him to his father’s lodgings. He remembered his sweating palms during the fearful climb up some creaking wooden stairs to the attic floor. The floorboards kept sagging under their feet, when they entered the small, narrow room with a beveled ceiling. He also remembered the shoes under the bed. “Men wear pants with buttons at the front, not at the side,” and a hairy hand pawing the place, where the buttons were expected to be.
“Yea, but it’s better to be married,” the voice of the Russet Blond came again.
The Chubby One did not answer: she was preoccupied with the order. They started selecting salads. The man judged they were strapped for cash because they chose the cheapest items on the list. The article in the newspaper still propped on the breadbasket professed that men and women, even if they liked the same color, suffered from different ailments. Men who liked red in adulthood were prone to heart stroke, while women were more likely to have a brain hemorrhage. After some hesitation he decided that blue was his favorite. It turned out that he should expect problems with the prostate gland.
“Had I only wished, he would have remarried me,” the voice of the Russet Blond once again overpowered the restaurant noise, “And not only to get back his flat!”
The reply of the Chubby One was lost on him.
“He loves me,” stressed the Russet Blond and added after some hesitation, “I am the first woman in his life.”
He felt like leaving here and now, but grudged the almost full bottle of beer. And the cream-and-pistachio dessert ordered by him. This was the only place where they served it with such an excellent cream. He glanced at his watch: if he left now, he’d have to knock about the streets. He was always aiming to get home just fifteen minutes before the evening news. His mother never missed the subsequent political telecast and by nine thirty he could excuse himself and go to bed. The new chewing gum obliterated the smell of alcohol on the breath and even protected the teeth from caries, or so the advertisement claimed.
“No, no, I am too busy,” it was the woman with the funny childish voice.
The Russet Blond kept arguing close into her ear, stirring restlessly, and he spilled some beer into his cream-and-pistachio dessert.
“We have too many orders, it would take time…” he heard the Chubby One say, “I’ve never doubted that you’d pay.”
The two failed to notice his spilled beer and the man looked away. The restaurant was accommodated in a narrow, long hall, without windows, but with a sliding roof. Now it displayed the peeling front of a building with many balconies heaped up with ladders, buckets and washing. The window of his office room also looked onto such a yard. Today the Boss handed him an envelope with extra money. The tax officers had no inkling of it. Nor did his mother have: she thought the secret was buried with his paychecks. He never showed her the paychecks, just hid them behind some books in the bookcase, where she rummaged every month to examine them. Thus she was confident that he evaded tax only on several thousands. “You are as unorganized as your father,” she kept telling him. But there was no way of telling her that he was the only person who managed to keep his job at the office for more than two years running. The only one too, except for the Boss, who had a room of his own. They said the Boss fired his staff often so as to prevent them from gaining too much information about the company. It might have been true, or then it might not. He did not care much about lunch-break gossip. When he did not drop here for a bite (his mother was devoted to food combining), he ate his sandwich alone in his room. The Boss has forbidden the others to go there and even himself always telephoned before dropping in.
“Dou you have a light?” the Russet Blond touched his hand lightly. She has finished her second vodka.
“No,” said he.
“Sorry for troubling you,” she fingered nervously her cigarette. He thought he recognized her perfume: the one Ina used.
“No trouble at all,” said he.
Ina was going to return after three days. She made a condition to have his firm answer about the wedding. Even if she managed to find a job, her teacher’s salary would hardly suffice to pay for lodging. She also had to leave the student hostel within one month.
“It’s not my fault that with such meagre funds I cannot pay for my lodging, is it?” the Russet Blond has resumed the conversation, “Or I would have never wished to set an eye on his flat!” The waiter lit her cigarette and she drew greedily on it after ordering two more vodkas.
The moment his mother learned that Ina had only one exam left before graduation, she hid his identity card. He never showed he had noticed. Moreover, he knew well where her hiding place for such things was: in the cardboard box, under the knitted tablecloths left by his grandmother. As long as she had his identity card and he did not ask about it, she would feel confident that he would not marry secretly. He simply applied for a new card. Told at the police office that he had been robbed. And kept the new identity card at the office. His mother also believed that the Boss “would milk you dry and kick you out”. He would not. And not only because he was a hard worker and never grumbled about money. He also never talked about his job. No, not of loyalty: the Boss knew that he simply never talked about himself.
“So now I‘ll have Mother move in with me, into the flat…” it was the Russet Blond again.
The other woman sat with lowered eyelashes: either napping or thinking things over.
He looked at the bill. The Boss has put more extra than usual into the envelope today: he could keep dining here twice a week for a whole month. His colleagues at the office called this extra money “the small change from the gambling machines”. And he well deserved it. The law claimed a 40 per cent share of the clients’ input into the gambling machines. The taxmen might be convinced to turn a blind eye and that was what the other bosses in the business were trying to achieve. But it was too expensive and insecure. So his Boss has invented him: to program the gambling machines to return no more than 10 per cent of the input. Only a better programmer could catch them. The taxmen however were not likely to spend money on such fancy things yet.
“Yea, he is silent, but very romantic,” the Russet Blond fished out a lipstick and a small mirror from her handbag.
Ina also liked bright lipstick. He didn’t tell anybody how they have met. He had seen her in one of the windows across his office room. One day, at the end of the office hours she waved to him. He pretended not to notice, but when she waved for a second time, he also waved back.
She then wrote her phone number on a large piece of paper and pressed it to the glass. He rang her up, although the Boss was recording the phone calls. Not that he would ever reprimand him for this. So far only his mother has called a couple of times on his office number.
“I want her out of my life! I want her to disappear and then I shall remarry him,” the Russet Blond nearly whispered into the ear of the Chubby One, but her words nevertheless reached him.
The Chubby One darted him a somewhat frightened look and pulled away from the Russet Blond. The Russet Blond misunderstood this for a rejection, shook the settee and articulated quite clearly, “When Mother comes to live with me, we shall sell her house and the money is yours! Fifteen thousand dollars!”
The dark woman shot another glance in his direction and he took out his valet pretending to be absorbed by its contents. He heard her say, “Good.”
The Russet Blond sighed with relief.
“Do you know a professional?”
The man almost distinctly heard the word “killer”. Apparently the Chubby One nodded.
“Let her hurt, I don’t care, “ went on the Russet Blond.
He felt sick. Probably the corner he sat in was to blame for all this acoustics. The two women were whispering, quite confident of being unheard. He had a large banknote, but the waiter was nowhere in sight.
“And do you know how we met? My lodgings were across his office room. I wrote my phone number on a large piece of paper and he phoned me! And the bitch hid his identity card so that he can’t marry!”
The man got up and left the banknote under the bill. He hoped to overcome his nausea when he got outside.
“And if you decide later on to do him in too…” the Chubby One pronounced the words startlingly clear in her childish voice. “We make discounts for a second order.”
The man made for the door without saying goodbye.
The two women followed him with their eyes until the back of the tall, thin, a little over thirty man disappeared behind the door.
“You got drunk,” the Russet Blond leaned back angrily. “You had no business to bleat out as one of the Seven Kids.”
The Chubby One pursed her lips in an insulted mien.
“You’ve started on as the Sleeping Beauty and ended up as one of the Seven Kids,” the Russet Blond kept rummaging in her spacious handbag until she took out a dictaphone. She pushed down the rewind button.
“He doesn’t look the type who’d watch The Wolf and the Seven Kids show, does he?” said the Chubby One.
“Type or no type, you must stick to the arrangements!”
The Chubby One remained silent dropped her eyes and concentrated on picking on a cuticle on one of her forefingers. Two tears staggered down the rugged relief of her cheeks.
“Now, don’t you start bawling, or we’ll be noticed even by those who have failed to notice us so far!”
“And you, what business you had to take the umbrella of Crocodile Gena!”
‘Because it’s suggestive,” startled by the unexpected boldness of the other woman, the Russet Blond burned herself on her own cigarette.
Another pair of tears rolled down the cheeks of the Chubby One, the corners of her mouth weighed down by hurt.
“Don’t cry, I’ll give you some money,” the Russet Blond once more dived into her handbag, produced some banknotes held by a paper clip and handed them to the Chubby One. “The advance payment,” explained she. “Tomorrow, after the old bitch gets the recording, she must pay the remaining sum.”