677: Curt Burger, . . .
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 13 begins
CURT BURGER, the owner of the Babbington hardware store, came in one night with his wife, Arlene. Renée showed them to one of Ariane’s tables. By the time they sat down, they were in an agitated state. Curt was surprised, pleased, and befuddled by the greeting he’d gotten from the good-looking woman who had led them to their table. He wondered if he knew her somehow. Or maybe—he had lost weight, after all—he was beginning to turn the heads of women he didn’t even know. He glanced around to see where she’d gone, and their eyes met. What a smile she gave him! Maybe it was the gray that was starting to appear in his hair. Maybe women really did like it. If Curt was puzzled and pleased, Arlene Burger was puzzled and worried. That hussy in the slinky dress obviously knew Curt, and she didn’t even try to hide it.
Ariane arrived at their table and poured their water. “Hi, there,” she said in a way that struck Arlene as terribly and suspiciously familiar. Ariane smiled at Curt, who smiled back at her. Look at that smile on his face! thought Arlene. That’s the smile of a man who’s a whole lot more pleased with himself than he ought to be. The annual inventory down at the hardware store had seemed to be taking an awfully long time this year, requiring more late nights than Arlene remembered, and now she had a good idea where those late nights had been spent: here, where Curt had been playing beachcomber.
Curt ordered their drinks and tried to be subtle about watching Ariane as she walked away, but Arlene saw it all. Curt looked around the room, seeing it all for the first time, and commenting on the things that impressed him, and Arlene thought, He’s doing this for me—pretending that he’s seeing it for the first time. When Ariane returned, Curt said to Arlene, “What do you say we have a couple of shrimp cocktails?”
Ariane pursed her lips. From them issued a muted clucking sound. When Curt and Arlene looked at her, she shook her head just enough for them to notice.
“That’s our favorite,” said Curt. “Shrimp cocktail.”
“Mr. Burger’s favorite appetizer,” said Arlene.
“Uh-uh,” said Ariane. “Clams casino.” She winked to show them that she was on their side. She touched Curt’s arm to show him that he must let her be his guide in this.
“Oh?” said Curt, who didn’t have the faintest idea what to make of all this.
“Clams casino,” said Ariane. A knowing smile.
That must be what he usually orders when he comes here, thought Arlene.
“I see,” said Curt, who suddenly recognized Ariane and decided that he now understood what was going on. It’s that Lodkochnikov girl, the one they call Tootsie, a Bottomer, a local girl, a spy in the Sunrise Cove Resort Motel. She’s tipping me off. She’s got the inside dope. She knows what’s up. “I get you,” he said. “Clams casino.” He winked at Ariane.
Mr. and Mrs. Burger ate their clams casino and enjoyed them. They enjoyed their whole dinner, though they ate it in silence. Curt tipped Ariane well, and Arlene noticed.
“See you soon, I hope,” said Ariane, with what both Curt and Arlene took to be a provocative and promising tone.
On the way out, Curt, aglow with his newfound sex appeal, suggested that he and Arlene “take a spin around the dance floor” in the Bayview Saltaire Lounge. Arlene, who had never in her life heard Curt utter the words “take a spin around the dance floor,” discovered that she had a headache.
Within a week, several rumors about Sunrise Cove rippled through Babbington. Curt was at the center of the one about the tainted shrimp and the one about the gorgeous waitresses, who were, you could take it from him, “willing.” Arlene was at the center of the one about the secret deal that “those strange people who live in that house on stilts along Bolotomy Road” had apparently made to supply the resort with clams and the one about the shameless sluts who were working there in a place that was, after all, a motel, no matter what they called it. Eventually, these rumors had several results. Fewer and fewer Babbington couples came to the Tropicale Grill for dinner; more and more Babbington men dropped in at the Barefoot Beachcomber Bar or the Bayview Saltaire Lounge for a drink; Mr. Lodkochnikov’s cronies ostracized him for shutting them out of his lucrative clam contract with the “motel”; and the reputation of Tootsie Koochikov added another layer to its hardening shell. (For the record: the Norton chain bought no local ingredients; the clams came from a supplier in Baltimore and traveled to Babbington in cans.)
[to be continued]
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