Reinhart's Women

by Thomas Berger

  And just like that, Reinhart was off and Shep, back at the desk, was on, and reading a list of local announcements: fund-raising charity dinners, Shriner circus, and the like. Debbie put down her plate and disappeared behind the set. For a moment Reinhart was desolated: not only was his performance over, but functionaries kept hauling equipment past him as if he did not exist and he stood in what seemed evening, for the glare of the lights was gone.

  But then the estimable Jane was at his elbow, steering him out. When they reached the outer corridor she said: “You were dynamite, Carl. Thanks a lot.”

  “Thank you, Jane. Do I go back to Make-up to get cleaned up?”

  The light had gone from her eye with her thank-you. Already she looked at him as if he were a stranger. “You can take it off with soap and water.” She pointed to the men’s room and went away.

  So much for show business. Reinhart shrugged and laughed for his own benefit. He went through the door into the lavatory, which was deserted. He had always assumed the performers had a private washroom of some kind, but perhaps that was true only at the big network studios in New York and Chicago. This place was clean enough, with dispenser of liquid soap and a wall-hung paper-towel device. He began to run a bowlful of warm water, but turned the faucet off abruptly.

  He had heard a muffled sound: it had been barely audible, but there was sufficient of it to raise the hair on the back of the neck, though he could not have said precisely why: something instinctively dreadful.

  He went back to the toilet booths. In one of them a human being was obviously sagging in a terrible way: trousered knees could be seen on the tiles below the door. Nothing else was visible. Again the gasping sound.

  The stall was locked from within, and furthermore it would open the wrong way, given the interior obstruction. Reinhart climbed on the seat of the toilet next door and leaned over the partition.

  Jack Buxton was kneeling on the floor, clawing the bleak metal wall. He had gone bald in back, just down from the crown of his head: a large hairpiece had become dislodged in his writhings. Trousers and underpants were halfway down his thighs. He had apparently been sitting on the can when the attack came.

  His large torso filled the short space between the bowl and the door. There would be no sense in Reinhart’s trying to climb down to join him.

  Reinhart ran out into the corridor and stopped a young man wearing outsized eyeglasses.

  “Jack Buxton is dying in there!”

  “Who?”

  “There’s a man in the toilet, having a heart attack, by the looks of it,” said Reinhart. “Show me where to call an ambulance.”

  For an instant the young man resisted the thought, suggesting by his set of nose that he might respond sardonically, but then he took a chance and said: “There’s a house doctor. I’ll get him.” He went rapidly down the corridor.

  Reinhart was trying to decide whether to go back inside. Would his presence, though practically useless, be of some remote human comfort to Buxton? He decided to guard the door until the doctor arrived. Those who might come to use the facilities should be warned.

  Of course the waiting seemed endless. Considerable traffic passed him, but none brought the physician. He kept reminding himself that in such a state a second’s duration was tenfold, and avoided watching the clock. But when he could no longer forbear, he looked at the dial and saw that he had indeed waited a good ten minutes.

  At that point Jane came walking rapidly by, studying her clipboard. She would not have seen him had he not called out.

  She stared without expression, perhaps without recognition.

  “Goddammit,” he cried, “Jack Buxton is having a heart attack in there! Get a doctor!”

  His alarm caused some visible consternation among the backstage studio folk. Persons passing in the vicinity looked at him in fear and repugnance, and a young man came running to scowl at Jane and say: “Get him out of here. You can hear that on the set.” He resembled the guy who had gone, presumably, to fetch the doctor, but Reinhart couldn’t be sure—else he’d have hit him in the mouth.

  Jane was staring at Reinhart. “Buxton’s supposed to go on at eight nineteen.”

  Reinhart put his face into hers. This time he spoke almost softly: “You fucking idiot: I said he’s dying in the toilet. Go get help!”

  Her immediate reaction was odd: a wide, even warm smile, and for a moment he considered putting his hands towards her throat, but then she whirled and moved smartly away, and now it was no time before a bushy-haired youth in jeans and denim jacket, but carrying the familiar black bag, arrived and identified himself as Dr. Tytell.

  Buxton was still living when, with the help of a skinny, nimble member of the staff, the door was unlatched and the actor was examined, there on the tile floor. And he was yet alive, if barely, when the ambulance took him away.

  Jane came along as Reinhart stood watching the attendants wheel the stretcher down the hall, and seeing her, he said: “Sorry I had to be nasty before. It was nothing personal.”

  She made no acknowledgment of the apology, but stared intently at him and said: “Carl, can you fill another ten minutes? All we’ve got is still only eggs and butter, but there must be lots of tricks you can show with those.”

  It was Reinhart’s turn to smile nonsensically, but even as he did it he understood that, as with Jane on learning of Buxton’s heart attack, it was momentary fear. And yet not half an hour ago he had wanted only to continue performing forever!

  “Let me think,” he said, doing anything but. The effect of the cognac had been dissipated by now.

  Jane looked at him for an instant and then left quickly. He sat down on the chair in the corridor. The threat of another performance was warring with the reverberations of the experience with poor Buxton: perhaps it would be resolved by his own heart attack.

  But suddenly before him, in all the radiance of her bright hair, dress, and make-up, was Debbie Howland.

  She took the chair previously occupied briefly by Buxton, leaned over to touch Reinhart’s forearm, and said: “Carl, poor Jack’s accident has left us with a great big hole from eight thirty-three till the quarter-of-nine headlines. We’ve got a couple of commercial breaks and a public-service announcement during that period, so call it eight and a half minutes for you to fill. Can you do it? I know you can. Got a cookbook you want to plug? It doesn’t have to be new. Or restaurant or whatever?”

  Jane had been wise to fetch Debbie. This appeal was as from one professional performer to another, and Reinhart took heart from it.

  “Sure,” said he, with confidence, “sure, Debbie. Glad to help out.”

  She flung her head back, but not one strand of hair seemed to stir. “Oh, godamighty, what a superloverly sweetheart you are!” She leaped up and strode presumably towards the set.

  Another repetition of the uneventful news came at eight thirty, and then, after a commercial or two and an exhortation from the Coast Guard, Shep returned to say: “Debbie’s hungry again. She can eat all day long, and her waistline just keeps getting smaller. Me, I chew a leaf of lettuce and gain ten pounds. It ain’t fair. Let’s see what’s happening in the kitchen this time.”

  And Reinhart was on again!

  “We’re back again with Chef Carl Reinhart,” Debbie said into the camera, “for more with eggs. I guess they’re one of the most versatile foods around, wouldn’t you say, Chef?”

  This was actually true enough. “Yes, Debbie,” Reinhart smilingly replied in his on-camera voice and manner, which though not studied was markedly different from his style in real life. “You will never run out of ways to cook eggs, and then if you think of all the dishes of which eggs form a part you have a whole menu, because eggs can be the star, as in a big beautiful golden puffy soufflé, or a co-star, as with ham or bacon, a supporting player, as in crepes, and finally, a modest bit performer or even an extra, when, say, a raw egg is mixed with ground beef to make a delicious hamburger.”

  “Well,” said Debbie
, “is the trick with eggs always speed, as it was with that scrumptious omelet you made earlier?”

  “Not always. With a soufflé of course you might say it’s patience!”

  Debbie chuckled. “I know we don’t have time to make a soufflé this morning, but the next time you come back I wish you’d show us that trick. I guess that’s one of the toughest dishes for the home cook to learn, isn’t it?”

  Reinhart smiled with mixed authority and sympathy. “You know, Debbie, a lot of people believe that, but it isn’t at all true. It’s just one of the many things in life that are mostly bluff.”

  “Like early-morning television,” cried Debbie. Giggling and addressing the again-empty desk, she added: “Right, Shep?”

  “I can’t believe that,” graciously said the cook, “but with a soufflé all you have to understand is the basic principle: air. Somebody way back in history discovered that if you take the white of an egg from the yolk you can whip it so full of air that it becomes a kind of solid matter, while remaining feather-light. What a wonderful discovery! And a whipped white is pretty strong, too. It will hold in suspension any number of fillings and flavorings: shrimp, asparagus tips, and even eggs themselves, whole poached eggs. That makes a fabulous soufflé, incidentally. You dig down through the fluffy stuff and suddenly come upon a gem of a poached egg. It’s like a treasure hunt.”

  Debbie laughed happily. “I can see you love your work—and by the way, that’s essential in cooking, isn’t it? Love, I mean.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” said Reinhart. “But I wouldn’t want to discourage the people who don’t have a natural inclination. You don’t have to be passionately interested in cuisine to do a commendable job at the stove. I say that because I think there are a lot of people, women especially, who have found it necessary to cook for others and think they have no talent. Even if you can’t cook well, even if you hate the idea, you may be in a position where you have to do it—and I assure you that there are scores and scores of wonderful dishes you can make easily.”

  “Easy for you, anyway,” said Debbie. She was looking into the camera. “We’ll be back, but now this.”

  Reinhart waited until the red light went off the camera pointed at them and then saw by the monitor of the wall that a commercial had come onto the screen.

  Debbie asked: “What should I say you’re going to cook now, or are you?”

  “Poached eggs.” He took a pot from the shelf below the counter and went to the sink behind him. “Does this work?” He turned the cold-water faucet, and, by George, it did, but he got a better idea and ran the hot water. The commercials were still on the screen when he came back with the water. He sprinkled a bit of salt into the pot before closing it with the lid and placing it on a lighted burner of the electric stove.

  Debbie said vivaciously: “Do you know, something I enjoy eating but never have been able to cook right is a poached egg. Can you help me out with that problem, Carl?”

  They were of course on the air again. He had to fill some moments before the water came to a boil.

  “There are various kinds of gadgets that will do the job,” he said. “Have you seen the little pots that have a metal insert with depressions, little wells that take one egg each? You boil water underneath them, and the steam comes up to cook the eggs. But in this case the eggs are steamed and not poached. There is a difference. The classic poached egg is cooked directly in the water and is lovely and tender and always better than anything prepared with a gadget.” He reached into the jug which held the variety of tools for cooking, and removed a soup ladle.

  “But how,” Debbie asked in a tone of mock despair, “how can we keep the egg from just busting all over the place when you take its shell off and drop it in boiling water?” She mugged at the camera.

  Speaking of boiling, his potful of water had begun already to show wisps of steam around its lid.

  “Well, first, you don’t want a violent boil: just kind of firm and medium, a little higher than a simmer, but not a storm. Next you take your soup ladle and rub or melt a bit of butter in its bowl.” He demonstrated this piece of business. “Now, when the bottom of the ladle-bowl is covered with a thin layer of butter, you break an egg into it... This is easy to do if you can break a shell with one hand. If you can’t do that, simply prop the ladle up inside an empty pot.”

  “Gee, you think of everything,” said Debbie. “That’s how you can tell a Cordon Bloo cook.”

  “The egg’s in the buttered ladle,” said Reinhart, speaking of the self-evident, but then perhaps there were TV sets with murky pictures and elsewhere busy housewives were listening as they worked, backs to their sets. “You lower the ladle into the boiling water...”

  Debbie gasped in enlightenment.

  “A white film of coagulation forms around the egg, where it touches the ladle. Now, you gently and smoothly tip up the ladle so that the egg slides free into the water.”

  “Ooo, but look—”

  “That’s O.K.,” said Reinhart. “Don’t worry about the ragged streamers of white that blow around in the water. Also, a bit of the coagulated film remains in the dipper.” He grinned. “You rise above such things. Seriously, you see that within a second or two the egg is shaping firmly up. Later we’ll trim off the ragged edges—which you always get, no matter the method, unless of course you use a gadget. Meanwhile you quickly add another egg in the same fashion, and so on. If you have more than three or four, you might keep an eye on the order of insertion: the earlier will be done sooner than the later. But for the first few the difference in time will be so little as to be meaningless.”

  “Well, you could knock me over with a basting brush,” said Debby, leering into the pot, then at Reinhart, and finally at the unseen audience. “This man is a marvel. By gosh, if those eggs aren’t forming beautifully. I always end up with strings of scrambled boiled eggs. That ain’t to be recommended, friends—We’re going away for a few moments. When we come back, Chef Reinhart will tell us what to do with the eggs now we know how to poach them to perfection.”

  When they were off Debbie leaned into Reinhart and whispered: “Just terrific, Carl. You’re saving our asses.”

  He wondered briefly what had happened to poor old Buxton—who himself would understand, in the tradition of show business, why any more concern must wait until the performance was over.

  He asked his partner: “How much more time do we have to fill?”

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  Could that be true? He confirmed it by the wall clock. Where had the time gone? He could continue for hours!

  When they, or the audience, had “returned” (from wherever whoever had been, and whatever was real) Debbie said: “O.K., Chef Reinhart. You were going to tell us how to use our poached eggs.”

  “I should say first, Debbie, that I cook them by instinct, but I’d really advise the use of a timer: about four minutes should do the trick. Ours here haven’t been on quite that long yet. But to answer your question: a poached egg goes with almost anything: on top of asparagus or puréed spinach. Or cold, in aspic, as an hors d’oeuvre. Covered with caviar—lumpfish, not the expensive kind. And above all in the ever-popular eggs Benedict: a toasted round of bread or muffin, a slice of ham, a poached egg, and over it all a thick, creamy, lemony hollandaise sauce—which by the way is childishly easy to make—”

  “You’re killing me!” wailed Debbie. “You know that. Because we’re out of time, and I’m dying of hungerrrr! But can you come back sometime soon?” She gestured at him. “Chef Carl Reinhart, courtesy of the Epicon Company, distributors of gourmet foods and their new line of copper-clad cookware. Thanks, Chef. Now back to Shep.”

  When they were “off,” Debbie squeezed his forearm. “Thanks, pal.” She walked briskly away, behind the set.

  On camera Shep was reading the news headlines. Jane came to conduct Reinhart off.

  When they had reached the corridor she said: “You were fabulous, Carl. We’re grateful a whole bunch.”<
br />
  Reinhart asked: “Have you checked with the hospital?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “I’m thinking of Jack Buxton,” he said. “It was pretty shocking to find him like that, in the men’s room. I wonder whether he pulled through.”

  Jane looked at him with solemn eyes. “Carl, I’ll call right now.”

  “That’d be nice of you.”

  “We owe you one.”

  When she was gone it occurred to him that he could himself have placed the call to the hospital: in other words, his self-righteousness should be restrained.

  For the first time since he had put them on, he remembered that he was wearing the apron and chefs bonnet—had indeed been wearing them when finding Buxton in the toilet—and now took them off at last. Once he was out of costume he was more resigned to being off the set. But, God, he enjoyed performing!

  When Jane returned she was carrying the jacket to his suit and his raincoat. She helped him into these and then said: “He bought the farm.”

  “Huh?”

  “Buxton. He didn’t make it. He died in the ambulance.”

  “Aw,” said Reinhart. “Aw, the poor bastard.”

  Jane nodded in a noncommittal fashion.

  “See,” Reinhart said defiantly, “I remember him when he was Hollywood’s most notorious ladies’ man. The fact is—it just comes back to me—he was in court from time to time for sexual things: paternity suits and charges of statutory rape. He had a taste for sixteen-year-olds. My God, that was before World War Two. It’s a good forty years ago. He must have been about seventy now.”

  “Well,” said Jane, “I’ve got to get back to work. Bye, Carl. Hope you’re on again soon.”

  “Uh,” said he, “you know what I forgot? To turn off those poached eggs.”

  “They’re in the garbage long since,” said Jane. “Don’t worry.”

  Reinhart left the studio reflecting on mortality, but when he reached the parking lot where he had left Winona’s borrowed car, the attendant, a young black man with a marked limp, said: “You’re that cook I just saw on TV.”