Reinhart's Women Read Online Free PDF

with respect to Nature might be considered as certain, but then so too was flying when you weren’t born with wings, and eating cooked food and reading by electric light, and in fact, simply reading: no other animals did any of these things. If Homo sapiens in general was a pervert under the aspect of eternity, then why jib at a subspecies?
    As to Winona in particular (and what did he really care about anyone else?), now at least no man would befoul her! No other man, that is, for one had used her when she was sixteen, in her most extreme moment of obesity, in fact, when she could not have got a proper date—for some men are beasts, and no female person, baby, cripple, or crone, is exempt from their detestable advances! Winona had been illegally invaded only in the statutory sense: the honey-voiced fiend had appealed to her generosity, had not used force. Yet had that experience polluted heterosex for her till the end of time? It was not a question that could be or should be asked of the principal.
    The fact remained that Grace Greenwood was in love with his daughter, who, whether or not she reciprocated the emotion, at least was not offended by being the target of the other’s passion. So Reinhart would put it with scientific and perhaps legalistic precision. Grace was the elder, a forceful and successful businesswoman in what must be a game for high stakes, the competitive, even dog-eat-dog strife of American trade. Whereas Winona was a beautiful object whom others dressed and put in place and commanded to turn and took pictures of. But then, whether exquisite or obese, Winona had been, since birth, the gentle, passive spirit on whom the dominant imposed their will. Bullied by her brother and habitually disregarded by her mother, Winona only came into her own when under her father’s protection.
    Reinhart was brooding on these matters as he cleaned up the dining room after the brunch that had never been consummated. Winona had offered to help, but her father advised her to go make peace with Grace.
    She winced and hung her head.
    A certain faint hope made itself known to him. “You are going to make your peace?”
    “The problem is how,” said his daughter, looking up with a different expression from any he had seen. He might have called it slyness had he not known her so well.
    “Well, far be it from me... but can’t you just give her a call?”
    “No,” Winona said through a firm set of mouth, “no, I can’t.”
    “I mean when she gets home.”
    “Take my word for it, Daddy.” She wore a strained smirk. “I think I’ll go out for a while. I really would insist on helping you with the cleanup if I didn’t know you were serious about wanting to do it alone.”
    This was true enough. Reinhart always felt a need to defend his dining room and kitchen against Winona’s fecklessness. Though never meaning less than well, she tended to break plates and glasses, and it was her habit to scrape into the garbage can the contents, however abundant, of any serving bowl or platter: no doubt this suggested an attitude towards the leftovers of a meal of which she had tasted all too little of the original! But she had paid for all of this, china, glassware, and provender, while making little use of any. It seemed only right for Reinhart to continue to the end that which had been exclusively his effort from the outset.
    Before she left, Winona of course again changed clothes, now to some apparently routine corduroy jeans (which were however a “designer” pair from which, in the ultimate chic, she had removed the label), a fancy blouse, and high-heeled half-boots. Reinhart was aware that this to him incongruous ensemble was actually a high style of the moment. It was not his business to ask her where she was going, but he now thought of Winona’s social life in a new way. Would she sit on some bar stool until picked up by a bull dyke in crew cut and vested suit, chewing on a cigar?
    It was a luxury to conjure up such