Too Many Cooks/Champagne for One Read Online Free PDF Page A

property, or I was rapidly developing an intention to acquire it. The first was nonsense; it was
not
my property. The second was dangerous, since, considering the situation as a whole, there was only one practical and ethical method of acquiring it.
    She was still talking. I gulped down the rest of the milk, which was not my habit, waited for an opening, and then turned to her without taking the risk of another dive into the dark purple eyes.
    “Absolutely,” I said. “It takes a long time to know people. How are you going to tell about anyone until you know them? Take love at first sight, for instance, it’s ridiculous. That’s not love, it’s just an acute desire to get acquainted. I remember the first time I met my wife, out on Long Island, I hit her with my roadster. She wasn’t hurt much, but I lifted her in and drove her home. It wasn’t until after she sued me for $20,000 damages that I fell in what you might call love with her. Then the inevitable happened, and the children began to come, Clarence and Merton and Isabel and Melinda and Patricia and—”
    “I thought Mr. Vukcic said you weren’t married.”
    I waved a hand. “I’m not intimate with Vukcic. He and I have never discussed family matters. Did you know that in Japan it is bad form to mention your wife to another man or to ask him how his is? It would be the same as if you told him he was getting bald or asked him if he could still reach down to pull his socks on.”
    “Then you
are
married.”
    “I sure am.
Very
happily.”
    “What are the names of the rest of the children?”
    “Well … I guess I told you the most important ones. The others are just tots.”
    I chattered on, and she chattered back, in the changed atmosphere, with me feeling like a man just dragged back from the edge of a perilous cliff, but with sadness in it too. Pretty soon something happened. I wouldn’t argue about it, I am perfectly willing to admit the possibility that it was an accident, but all I can do is describe it as I saw it. As she sat talking to me, her right arm was extended along the arm of her chair on the side next to the blue-eyed athlete, and inthat hand was her half-full glass of ginger ale. I didn’t see the glass begin to tip, but it must have been gradual and unobtrusive, and I’ll swear she was looking at me. When I did see it, it was too late; the liquid had already begun to trickle onto the athlete’s quiet gray trousers. I interrupted her and reached across to grab the glass; she turned and saw it and let out a gasp; the athlete turned red and went for his handkerchief. As I say, I wouldn’t argue about it, only it was quite a coincidence that four minutes after she found out that one man was married she began spilling ginger ale on another one.
    “Oh, I hope—does it stain? Si gauche! I am
so
sorry! I wasn’t thinking … I wasn’t looking …”
    The athlete: “Quite all right—really—really—rite all kight—it doodn’t stain—”
    More of the same. I enjoyed it. But he was quick on the recovery, for in a minute he quit talking Chinese, collected himself, and spoke to me in his native tongue: “No damage at all, sir, you see there isn’t. Really. Permit me; my name is Tolman. Barry Tolman, prosecuting attorney of Marlin County, West Virginia.”
    So he was a trouble-vulture and a politician. But in spite of the fact that most of my contacts with prosecuting attorneys had not been such as to induce me to keep their photographs on my dresser, I saw no point in being churlish. I described my handle to him and presented him to Constanza, and offered to buy a drink as compensation for us spilling one on him.
    For myself, another milk, which would finish my bedtime quota. When it came I sat and sipped it and restrained myself from butting in on the progress of the new friendship that was developing on my right, except for occasional grunts to show that I wasn’t sulking. By the time my glass was half empty Mr. Barry Tolman