Feed The Baby Of Love Page 3

  She heard the mechanic say, "Why didn't you just puke in the glasses to start with and avoid the middleman?"

  "Drink, my beloved newts and emus, drink!" cried Tom.

  They passed out the glasses and prepared to drink.

  "A toast!" cried Douglas, and he rose to his feet. Everybody in the cafe was watching, of course -- how often does somebody propose a toast at noon in a smalltown cafe? -- but Rainie kept right on working, laying down plates in front of people.

  "To the human species!" said Douglas. "And to all the people in it, a toast!"

  "Hear hear!"

  "And to all the people who only wish they were in it, I promise that when I am supreme god, you will all be human at last!"

  "In a pig's eye!" shouted the mechanic joyously.

  "I'll drink to that!" cried Tom, and with that they all drank.

  The mechanic did a spit take, putting a thin brown Kool-Aid and Seven-Up fog into the air. Tom must have had some inner need to top that; as he finished noisily chug-a-lugging his drink, Rainie could see that he intended to throw the glass to the floor.

  Apparently Minnie saw the same glint in his eye. Before he could hardly move his arm she screeched at him, "Not on your life, Tom Reuther!"

  "I paid for it last time," said Tom.

  "You didn't pay for all the lunch customers who never came back. Now you boys sit down and be quiet and let folks have their lunch in peace!"

  "Wait a minute!" cried Douglas. "We haven't had the song yet."

  "All right, do the song and then shut up," said Minnie. She turned back to the chili and resumed dipping it out into the bowls, muttering all the while, "... drive away my customers, spitting all over, breaking glasses on the floor ..."

  "Whose turn to start?" somebody asked.

  The mechanic rose to his feet. "I choose the tune."

  "Not opera again!"

  "Better than opera," said the mechanic. "I choose that pinnacle of indigenous American musical accomplishment, the love theme from Oscar Meyer."

  The boys all whooped and laughed. The man next to him rose to his feet and sang what must have been the first words that came into his mind, to the tune of the Oscar Meyer weiner jingle from -- what, twenty years ago? Rainie had to laugh ironically inside herself. After all my songs, and all the songs of all the musicians who've suffered and sweated and taken serious drugs for their art, what sticks in the memory of my generation is a song about a kid who wishes he could be a hot dog so he'd have friends.

  "I wish I had a friend in my nostril."

  The next man got up and without hesitation sang the next line. "In fact I know that's where he'd want to be."

  And the next guy: "Cause if I had a friend in my nostril."

  "Cheat, cheat, too close to the first line!" cried Tom.

  "Bad rhyme -- same word!" said the mechanic.

  "Well what else am I supposed to do?" said the guy who sang the line. "There's no rhyme for nostril in the English language."

  "Or any other," said Douglas.

  "Like you're an expert on Tadzhiki dialects or something," said Tom.

  "Wastrel!" shouted the mechanic.

  "That doesn't rhyme," said Douglas.

  "Leave it with nostril," said Tom. "We'll simply heap scorn upon poor Raymond until he rues the day."

  "You are so gracious," said Raymond.

  "Dougie's turn," said the mechanic.

  "I forgot where we were," said Douglas, rising to his feet.

  The mechanic immediately jumped up and sang the three lines they had so far:

  I wish I had a friend in my nostril, I know that's where he'd really want to be, Cause if I had a friend in my nostril ...

  Rainie happened to be passing near the Boys' Table at that moment, and she blurted out the song lyric that popped into her mind before Douglas could even open his mouth:

  He could eat the boogers I don't see!

  Immediately the men at the table leaped to their feet and gave her a standing ovation, all except Tom, who fell off his chair and rolled on the floor. The only people who didn't seem to enjoy her lyric were Minnie, who was glaring at her, and Douglas, who stared straight ahead for a moment and then sat down -- laughing along with the others, but only as much as conviviality required.

  I'm sorry I stole your thunder, Rainie said silently. Whenever I think of the perfect clincher at the end of a verse, I always blurt it out like that, I'm sorry.

  She went back to the counter and got the chili, which Minnie had already laid out on a tray. "Are you trying to make my customers get indigestion right here in the diner?" Minnie hissed. "Boogers! Eating them. My land!"

  "I'm sorry," said Rainie. "It just came out."

  "You got a barnyard mouth, Ida, and it's nothing to be proud of," said Minnie. She turned away, looking huffy.

  When Rainie got back to the table with the chili, the men were talking about her. "She got the last line, and it was a beaut, and so she's first," said Tom. "That's the law."

  "It may be the law," said Douglas, "but Ida Johnson isn't going to want to feed the baby."

  "Maybe I do and maybe I don't," said Rainie.

  Douglas closed his eyes.

  "Dougie's just sore because he could never think of a line to top Ida's," said Raymond.

  "Retarded parrots could think of better lines than yours, Raymond," said the mechanic.

  "Retarded parrot embryos," said another man.

  "What baby do you feed, and what do you feed it?" asked Rainie.

  "It's a game," said Tom. "We kind of made it up. Dougie and I."

  "All of us," said Douglas.

  "Dougie and me first, and then everybody together. It's called `Feed the Baby of Love Many Beans or Perish in the Flames of Hell.'"

  "Greg had the idea in the first place," said Douglas.

  "Yeah, well, Greg moved to California and so we spit upon his memory," said Tom.

  At once everybody made a show of spitting -- all to their left, all at once. But instead of actually spitting, they all said, in perfect unison, "Ptui."

  "Come on, Ida," said Tom. "It's at Douglas's house. The game's all about karma and reincarnation and trying to progress from primordial slime to newt to emu to human until finally you get to be supreme god."

  "Or not," said the mechanic.

  "In which case your karma decides your eternal fate."

  "In Heaven with the Baby of Love!"

  "Or in Hell with the Baby of Sorrows!"

  "I don't think so," said Rainie. She was noticing how Douglas didn't seem too eager to have her come. "I mean, if Douglas's wife leaves town whenever you play, then it must be one of those male- bonding things and I've never been good at male bonding."

  "Oh, great," said Tom, "now she thinks we're gay."

  "Not at all," said Rainie. "If I thought you were gay I'd be there with bells on. The refreshments are always great at gay parties. It's you pick-up basketball-game types who think beer and limp pretzels are a righteous spread."

  Raymond rose to his feet. "Behold our nuncheon feast, your majesty," he said. "Do we look like the beer and pretzels type?"

  "No, you actually look like the boys who always made disgusting messes out of the table scraps on their school-lunch trays."

  "That's it!" cried Tom. "She understands us! And she put a brilliant last line on the song. Tonight at seven, Idie Baby, I'll pick you up."

  From the look on Douglas's face, Rainie knew that she should say no. But she could feel the loneliness of these past few weeks in this town -- and, truth to tell, of the months, the years, before -- like a sharp pain within her. Being on the fringes of this group of glad friends made her feel like ... what? Like her best days living on the street. That's what it was. She had found the street after all. Grown up a little, most of them wearing suits, but here in this godforsaken town she had found some people who had the street in their souls, and she couldn't bear to say no. Not unless Douglas made her say it.

  And he didn't make her say it. On the
contrary. She looked him in the eye and he half smiled and gave her a little shrug. Suit yourself, that's what he was saying. So she did.

  "OK, so I'll be there," she said.

  "But you should be aware," said Tom, "we probably aren't as fun as your gay friends' parties."

  "Naw," she said, "they stopped being fun in the eighties, when they started spending all their time talking about who had AIDS and who didn't."

  "What a downer," said Raymond.

  "Bad karma!" said the mechanic.

  "No problem," said Tom. "That just means she'll end up in Hell a lot."

  "Do I need to bring anything?" asked Rainie.

  "Junk food," said Tom. "Nothing healthy."

  "That's Tom's rule," said Douglas. "You can bring anything you want. I'll be putting out a vegetable dip."

  "Yeah, right," said Raymond. "Mr. Health."

  "Mr. Quiche," said another man.

  "Tell her what we dip in your vegetable dip, Dougie."

  "Frankfurters show up a lot," said Douglas. "And Tootsie Rolls. Once Tommy stuck his nose into the dip, and then the Health Department came and closed us down."

  "Ida!" Minnie's voice was sharp.

  "I'm about to get fired," said Rainie.

  "Minnie can't fire you," said Tom. "Nothing bad can ever happen to Those Who Feed the Baby!"

  But the expression on Minnie's face spoke eloquently about the bad things that could happen to her waitress Ida Johnson. As soon as Rainie got behind the counter with her, she whispered in Minnie's ear, "I can't help it that it's at Douglas's house. Count the chaperones and give me credit for a little judgment."

  Minnie sniffed, but she stopped looking like she was about to put a skewer through Rainie's heart.

  The Boys' Table lasted a whole hour, and then Douglas looked at his watch and said, "Ding."

  "The one-o'clock bell," cried Tom.

  Raymond whistled between his teeth.

  "The one-o'clock whistle!"

  And in only a few moments they had their coats on and hustled on out the door. They might act like boys for an hour at noon, but they were still grown-ups. They still had to get back to work, and right on time, too. Rainie couldn't decide if that was sad or wonderful. Maybe both.

  By the time Rainie's shift was over, Minnie was her cheerful self again. Whether that meant that Minnie trusted her or she had simply forgotten that Rainie was going to feed the baby with the boys tonight, Rainie was glad not to have to argue with her. She didn't want anything to take away the strange jittery happiness that had been growing inside her all afternoon. She had no idea what the game was about, but she knew she liked these men, and she was beginning to suspect that maybe this game, maybe these boys were the reason she had stopped her wandering at this cafe in Harmony, Illinois. If there'd been a place in town that sold any clothes worth buying, Rainie would have bought a new outfit. As it was, she spent a ridiculous amount of time fretting over what to wear. It had to be that the sheer foolish immaturity of these boys had infected her. She was like a virgin girl getting ready for her first date. She laughed at herself -- and then took off all her clothes and started over again.

  She spent so much time choosing what to wear that she put off buying any refreshments until it was almost too late. As it was, all she had time to do was rush to the corner grocery and buy the first thing that she saw that looked suitable -- a giant bag of peanut M&Ms.

  "I hear you're going to feed the baby," said the zit-faced fat thirty- year-old checkout girl, who'd never given her the time of day before.

  "How do these stories get started?" said Rainie. "I don't even have a baby."

  She got back to her apartment just as Tom pulled up in a brand- new but thoroughly mud-spattered pickup truck. "Hop in before you let all the heat out!" he shouted. He was rolling before she had the door shut.

  Douglas Spaulding's house was just what she expected, right down to the white picket fence and the veranda wrapped around the white clapboard walls. Simple, clean lines, the walls and trim freshly painted, with dark blue shutters at the windows and lights shining between the pulled-back curtains. A house that said Good plain folks live here, and the doors aren't locked, and if you're hungry we've got a bite to eat, and if you're lonely we've got a few minutes to chat, anytime you feel like dropping by. It was an island of light in the dark night. When she opened the door of Tom's pickup truck, she could hear laughter from the parlor, and as she picked her way through the paths in the snow to get to the front porch, she could look up and see people moving around inside the house, eating and drinking and talking, all so at ease with each other that it woke the sweetest flavors in her memory and made her hungry to get inside.

  They were laying the game out on the dining room table -- a large homemade board, meadow green with tiny flowers and a path of white squares drawn around the outside of it. Most squares had either a red heart or a black teardrop, with a number. In the middle of the board was a dark area shaped like a giant kidney bean with black dotted lines radiating out from it toward the squares. And in the middle of the "bean" were a half-dozen little pigs that Rainie recognized as being from the old Pig-Out game, plus a larger pig from some child's set of plastic barnyard animals.

  "That's the pigpen," said the mechanic, who was counting beans into piles of ten. Only he wasn't dressed like a mechanic anymore -- he was wearing a white shirt and white pants with fire-engine-red suspenders. He was also wearing a visor, like the brim of a baseball cap. Rainie remembered seeing people wear visors like that on TV. In old westerns or something. Who wore them? Bank tellers? Bookies? She couldn't remember.

  "What's your name?" asked Rainie. "I've been thinking of you as the guy in overalls cause I never caught your name."

  "If I'd'a knowed you was a-thinkin' of me, Miss Ida, I'd'a wore my overalls again tonight, just to please you." He grinned at her.

  "Three Idas in the same sentence," said Rainie. "Not bad."

  "It's a good thing she didn't think of you as `that butt-ugly guy,'" said Tom. "You're a lot better looking when you keep that particular feature covered up."

  "Look what Miss Ida brung us," said the mechanic. "M's."

  Immediately all the men in the vicinity of the table hummed in unison. "Mmmmm. Mmmmm."

  "Not just M's, but peanut M's."

  Again, only twice as loud: "MMMMMM! MMMMMM!"

  Either M&Ms were part of the ritual, or they were making fun of her. Suddenly Rainie felt unsure of herself. She held up the bag. "Isn't this OK?"

  "Sure," said Douglas. "And I get the brown ones." He had a large bowl in his hand; he took the back of M&Ms from her, pulled it open, and poured it into the bowl.

  "Dougie has a thing for brown M&Ms," said the mechanic.

  "I eat them as a public service," said Douglas. "They're the ugly ones, so when I eat them all the bowl is full of nothing but bright colors for everyone else."

  "He eats the brown ones because they make up forty percent of the package," said Tom.

  "Tom spends most of his weekends opening bags of M&Ms and counting them, just to get the percentages," said an old man that hadn't been at the cafe.

  "Hi, Dad," said Douglas. He turned and offered the old man the bowl of M&Ms.

  The old man took a green one and popped it in his mouth. Then he stuck out his right hand to Rainie. "Hi," he said. "I'm Douglas Spaulding. Since he and his son are also Douglas Spaulding, everybody calls me Grandpa. I'm old but I still have all my own teeth."

  "Yeah, in an old baby-food jar on his dresser," said Tom.

  "In fact, he has several of my teeth, too," said the mechanic.

  Rainie shook Grandpa's hand. "Pleased to meet you. I'm ..." Rainie paused. For one crazy moment she had been about to say, I'm Rainie Pinyon. "I'm Ida Johnson."

  "You sure about that?" asked Grandpa. He didn't let go of her hand.

  "Yes, I am," she said. Rather sharply.

  Grandpa raised his eyebrows and released her hand. "Welcome to the madhouse."

  S
uddenly there was a thunderouspounding on the stairs and Rose and Dougie burst into the room. "Release the pigs!" they both shouted. "Pig attack! Pig attack!"

  Douglas just stood there laughing as his kids ran around the table, grunting and snorting like hogs as they reached into every bowl for chips and M&Ms and anything else that looked vaguely edible, stuffing it all into their mouths. The men all laughed as the kids ran back out of the room. Except Grandpa, who never cracked a smile. "What is the younger generation coming to?" he murmured. Then he winked at Rainie.

  "Where should I sit?" she asked.

  "Anyplace," said Tom.

  She took the chair at the corner. It seemed the best place -- the spot where she'd have to sit back away from the table because the table leg was in the way. It felt just a little safer to her, to be able to sit a little bit outside of the circle of the players.

  The mechanic leaned over to her and said, "Cecil."

  "What?" Rainie asked.

  "My name," he said. "Don't tell anybody else."

  Tom, who was sitting next to her, said in a loud whisper. "We all pretend that we think his name is `Buck.' It makes him feel more manly."

  "What do I call you?" asked Rainie. "If I'm supposed to keep Cecil a secret."

  "Now you've gone and told," said Cecil.

  "Call him Buck," said Tom.

  "Does anybody else really call him that?" asked Rainie.

  "I will if you will," said Tom.

  "Time for a review of the rules!" said Douglas, as he took the last place at the table, which happened to be in the middle of the table on the side across from Rainie, so she'd be looking at him throughout the game.

  "I hate to make you have to spend time going over everything for me," said Rainie.

  "They repeat the rules every time anyway," said Grandpa.

  "Cause Grandpa's getting senile and forgets them every time," said Tom.

  "They repeat them because they're so proud of having thought them up themselves," said Grandpa.