Reservations Recommended
Chapter 3: Dolce Far Niente
Part 9: Matthew Stubs His Toe
by Eric Kraft, as Peter Leroy
Reservations Recommended

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  AS SOON AS they’re outside, Belinda says, “That’s a straaaange pair.”  She puts her hands in the pockets of her coat.  In the right-hand pocket, she feels a small card.  She pulls it out, glances at it, puts it back.
    “They are, aren’t they?” says Matthew.
    “They’re nuts, you know.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”
    “I would.  I can’t stand him.”
    “Sorry.  I should have said no when he asked us to join them.”
    “He made me so uncomfortable.  In fact, I can’t think of anyone who has ever made me more uncomfortable.  He finds fault with everything.  Even if he doesn’t say anything about it, you can see it.  There’s a look on his face as if he smells something rotten.”
    “You’re right.  He’s a lot like BW, isn’t he?”
    “Yes, he is!  Was he the model?”
    “No, at least not consciously.”
    “The difference is that BW can actually be funny.  Harold has the weirdest sense of humor I’ve ever encountered.”
    “You liked that business about the kid under the table.”
    “Yes, I did.  That I liked.  It was quite insane, but completely appropriate.  I definitely liked that, and for a minute there it almost made me forget the rest.  Well, not for a minute.  More like a second.  And it may only have been because it got us out of there.  But when he called the little woman a Luddite I decided right then that I despised him and nothing could make me change my mind.  The wife thinks he’s a scream, though.  There’s another weird one.”
     “She’s not getting something from him that she wants,” he says.
    She may not even know what it is, he thinks.  Liz didn’t.  Or claimed not to.  All she said was, “It’s not this.”
    “The next thing you know,” he says, “she’ll be going to some kind of counselor.  And it won’t be long after that before she starts telling Harold that she’s discovered she never loved him.  It’s a short step from that to complete lunacy.”  Matthew is awfully close to telling more of the truth about himself than perhaps he ought to.  “I’ve seen it happen before.  People start cleaning up their lives and before you know it they’re left holding nothing but the pieces.  It was only ignorance that held the whole thing together.  A brick of compacted sand.  It comes crumbling apart.”
    The brick that is me wouldn’t last two weeks if I admitted all my anxieties, my disappointments, my wishes—I’m sure of it.
    “God!” says Belinda, still on the subject of Gwen.  “Those clothes!  And she was out to celebrate, for God’s sake.  I think I’m going to go home and burn every sensible piece of clothing I own.  I’m going to start going to work in leather dresses and big boots.  I am not going to become like that woman, ever.”  She runs her hands up the lapels of the coat, pushes the collar up.  “I don’t know,” she says, apparently subdued.  “I may not keep the coat.”  A long pause, and then suddenly she flings it open.  She takes a deep breath and says, “But I am sure as hell keeping this dress.”

“I HAVEN’T SEEN a single cab,” says Matthew.  “Maybe if we walk a bit.”
    “We could take the T.”
    “In that coat?  Besides, I’m just not a subway person.”
    “Oh, come on.  There’s a stop up here.”
    They walk to the subway in silence and start down the steps.  At the foot of the steps, a janitor is stolidly and ineffectively mopping something.  Matthew is immediately certain that it’s blood.  Belinda and Matthew stop, and the janitor looks up at them.  He stops mopping and steps back to let them pass, but to continue downward they will have to walk through the blood or ask the janitor to move.  They exchange looks.  Belinda shudders and pulls the coat tighter around her.  They turn and walk back up the stairs.
    “God!” Belinda says when they’re outside again.  “Was that blood?”
    “I think so.  Let’s start walking and hope we find a cab.”
    “I look like a pretty obvious target in this coat, don’t I?”
    “For muggers, you mean?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe not.  Maybe they’ll figure that any guy walking with a woman in a white mink is probably armed.”
    “There’s a cab,” Belinda shouts.  She runs into the street, waving her arm.  The coat falls open, and the wind presses her dress against her body, taut with effort and fear.  The taxi stops, and they get in.  Matthew gives his address, and Belinda huddles against him, chilled and disturbed.
    “I’m going to take the coat back,” she says.
    “Don’t do that,” Matthew says.  “You like it, don’t you?”
    “I like it, but it’s too much for me.  It’s just too much.”  She puts her head on Matthew’s shoulder and doesn’t say anything more for the rest of the ride.  In her pocket, she flicks her thumb across the edge of the card.
    When they reach Matthew’s apartment, the fare stands at one of those awkward amounts that doesn’t allow easy keep-the-change tipping.  Matthew hates asking cabdrivers for change.  The cost of a cab ride, he reasons, is cheap compared with the cost of a meal in a restaurant, and the tip a cabdriver gets is tiny compared with the tips Matthew gives waiters.  He doesn’t like to seem to be the kind of guy who counts nickels when he reaches his destination, and he doesn’t want to hold the driver up, delay him from going on to reach his next fare, so he usually calculates the tip as he approaches his destination, continually recalculating as the fare changes, and then always rounds the tip up to the nearest dollar.  He hasn’t been paying attention on this ride, and when they reach his building he reminds himself that he is the companion of a woman in a white mink.  He hands the driver a ten and says, “That’s fine, thank you,” calculating, as he climbs out of the cab, that he has tipped more than fifty-two percent.
    The concierge barely looks up when Belinda and Matthew enter the lobby.  This one, a student at a nearby music school, is wearing a headset and tapping drumsticks on an electronic drum pad.  The tapping makes only the softest sound in the lobby, like the scuttling of small rodents in corners, but in the headphones it makes the sound of a full drum set, at a level likely to induce premature hearing loss and certain to mask the sound of any request or demand a resident might make.  The elevator door opens.  Belinda steps in, and then she squeals when the car hops upward suddenly.  Matthew, in the act of stepping into the car, strikes his toe against the rising lip of the floor.  He lurches against the back wall, catches himself on the grab rail, and exclaims, “God damn!”  The doors close.  Through the narrowing space Matthew can see the concierge, still drumming.
    “Are you all right?” asks Belinda.
    “Yeah.  Sort of.  I hurt my toe.”  Belinda presses the button for Matthew’s floor.  “I stubbed my toe,” Matthew says with something like astonishment.  “I don’t think I’ve stubbed my toe since I was a kid.”

  Detail from the Cover of the Original Crown Hardcover Edition
RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED | CHAPTER 3, PART 10 | CONTENTS PAGE


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Copyright © 1990 by Eric Kraft

Reservations Recommended is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Now available in paperback from Picador USA, a division of St. Martin’s Press.

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, e-mail Alec “Nick” Rafter, the author’s earnest agent.

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.


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LITTLE FOLLIES
HERB ’N’ LORNA
RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED
WHERE DO YOU STOP?
WHAT A PIECE OF WORK I AM
AT HOME WITH THE GLYNNS
LEAVING SMALL’S HOTEL
INFLATING A DOG
PASSIONATE SPECTATOR
MAKING MY SELF
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