Among the Living Read Online Free PDF Page B

step and at once saw Pearl making her way toward him.
    “At last!” she said maneuvering through and raising her hands. “Here he is everyone! Here he is.” She drew up next to him and placed her arm around his waist. “Everyone! Everyone! Arthur Goldberg, if I have to raise my voice one more decibel just because you can’t hush up … Thank you. Now.” She gathered herself. “Here he is. This is Abe’s cousin, Mr. Ike Goldah. Our Ike Goldah. He goes by Ike. That’s what he likes, and he’s had a very long day, but he’s been kind enough to let us fete him for the night — his first night with us here in Savannah — so we’ll have something to eat, you all will get a chance to make your introductions, and then you will have to go because I can’t imagine how tired the poor boy must be. Did you get all that Arthur Goldberg? Good.”
    Goldah passed through the first brave nods and handshakes and realized that Pearl would be keeping her arm around his waist for the remainder of the evening. They were conjoined, hers to parade, his to be protected.
    Jesler appeared with a glass — “Lemonade, Ike. Liquor won’t do you too well tonight, I don’t think” — and then he was gone.
    Goldah drank and followed and listened. There was a pair of women, seemingly indistinguishable, who told him that he reminded them of their late husbands — much younger, of course — both in the clothing business, still in the clothing business, and they’d make sure he had some nice new sports jackets, suits, things like that. Another introduced her daughter on three separate occasions, the girl slim and sleeveless in white gloves, a teal blue variation on the greens and blacks that hugged or swayed just below the knees with shoes that seemed almost too painful to wear. “This is the King Cole Trio,” a woman with crimson lips told him. Nat King Cole, a Negro, and, yes, she preferred him, “better than Sinatra and Como, and there I’ve said it!” The lemonade became water then lemonade again, everyone else high on bourbon, rye, and gin, while Goldah, returning from the bathroom, settled into a conversation with a man named Champ who said Goldah needed a car — a man had to have a car — and Champ, generous to a fault, said he’d give him one, not a new one, of course, but something down on the lot because that’s just what we do in Savannah. And on his last go-round with the girl in teal, Goldah asked if she had a cigarette and discovered she was sixteen.
    Through it all, Mary Royal moved in and out of the kitchen. She was joined by three other servers, two young women and a boy no more than thirteen. The boy looked surprisingly atease in his white waiter’s coat, and Goldah smelled a cigarette on him when he returned from the carport with another few bottles of something. A cigarette would have been nice, he thought.
    “I’ve got them right here,” said the mother of the teal dress, searching her purse. “I know I do.”
    “No, it’s fine,” said Goldah. “I don’t really want one.”
    “Right in here, unless you don’t smoke Dunhills?”
    “I’m all right. Thank you.”
    Pearl said, “He said he’s all right, Ethel.”
    “They say it’s a lady’s cigarette,” the woman went on, “but I don’t see what the difference is, except maybe the shape.”
    “ Ethel ,” said Pearl, “this boy needs some more meatballs,” and without waiting for an answer, she started him toward the dining room and the hors d’oeuvres. Out of earshot she said, “I’m not sure I’d let my sixteen-year-old daughter dress quite so enchantingly as that.” Hands raised, smiles, “Yes, hi there, Jeannie … No he’s starving and we’ve got to get some food inside him … Yes, Champ was wonderful … Yes … We’ll bring him by this week,” and through the door.
    An ancient man was moving off from the chopped liver while another stood in the corner examining a spice box he had taken from a glassed-in display