Schmidt Steps Back Read Online Free PDF

lady in Paris. Even more important for Schmidt, however, was that Alice and Gil were talking and laughing with great animation. Schmidt thought that he too had been treated well in the placement. He was between Elaine and Caroline, whom he had come to consider, like Mike, his true friend, at a safe distance from all three of the deeply tanned women with big white teeth and lacquered blond hairdos. He didn’t know them any more than the two massive men or the third one, pale as paper and emaciated. On the contrary, those three couples—clearly they were couples even if he didn’t know which woman came with which man—seemed very well acquainted. Something about them, however—the long pastel dresses? the gaily colored bow tiesand cummerbunds? the Florida tans?—was eerily familiar, like the refrain of a song one remembers after the rest of the words have been forgotten. Eureka! The common denominator was the Meadow Club. Did that bastion of what the Hamptons had once been now open its gates to the occasional superrich Jew? Tsk tsk! If that was the case, Mike was giving his new toy a whirl by inviting a clutch of his fellow members. Come to think of it, while drinks were being served Schmidt had observed more Aryans than representatives of the Chosen. He could be sure only of the master of the house, Gil and Elaine, Joe Canning, if indeed Joe was present, Bruce Holbein and his chatterbox wife, and fifty percent of Alice as counterweights to the club goyim! Schmidt was convinced that Caroline was a shiksa. That and nothing else explained why she put up with Joe. She was expiating the sins of her Jew-baiting mother and father, brothers and sisters. But where was Joe? Schmidt hadn’t spotted him in the living room while he was drinking his two martinis and making sure Alice was not stranded, but then he hadn’t exactly been looking for him. For all he knew, Joe, true to his furtive ways, had been lurking behind a ficus plant. By now, however, he should have come out of hiding. Was anyone else missing? The chair on the other side of Caroline was vacant. He turned toward her with a questioning look.
    That’s Joe place, she told him, as though to forestall a question. He gets more and more uneasy dealing with groups he doesn’t know, so I asked Mike to let him have his vodka in solitude in a spare room. Mike is such a good sport! He installed Joe in the study off the front hall and brought him a carafe of vodka and a bowl of caviar with his own hands!
    Mike has every reason to bring Joe caviar, said Schmidt’s inner voice.
    I could tell Joe was pleased, Caroline continued. He’ll be along in a moment. Yes, seating him next to me at dinner is another of Mike’s kind indulgences. In Joe’s family, and among his parents’ friends, husbands and wives always sat together. He finds that to do the same makes him more comfortable.
    I see, said Schmidt.
    Come on, Schmidtie, don’t you think it’s sweet? In society, things are done this way or that way. Before you know it you have a rule no one dares to question; you just go along. Joe doesn’t think he needs to conform. Anyway, we all accumulate peculiarities as we grow older. Perhaps even you, Schmidtie!
    Surely, he answered.
    But I bet you don’t always know what they are. The thing about Joe is that he knows. He really knows! Probably it’s what makes him such a good novelist. By the way, the one he’s working on is terrific.
    What good news! We haven’t had a new Canning for at least two years.
    Three, she corrected him. He says that he now enjoys writing more slowly. Also eating ice cream slowly. Before, he always tried to eat it while it was cold, before it melted. It turns out that he likes it liquid. Actually he’s very busy just now. Gil and he are working on a film treatment of his first novel, the one that mirrors his grandmother’s life. It cuts pretty close to the bone, so he is very touchy about it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
    Schmidt had heard