Read Online Reinhart's Women by Thomas Berger - Free Book Online Page A

but perhaps if I had had—well, no matter.”
    “I’ll go on for you,” said Reinhart. “If you had had a father who was like you yourself are now? Well, you did get shortchanged in that way. But consider this: maybe in that event you wouldn’t have had the burning desire to make something of yourself; maybe my bad example was as effective as a good one might have been. Think of this: if I were you, then perhaps you’d be me. Repulsive thought, eh?” Reinhart was joking bitterly, but speaking for himself, he thought he had got off lucky: there had been a brief period in his life when his goal was to be very like what Blaine was now.
    “Look here,” Blaine suddenly said in a mercantile sort of voice, “I’ve come up with a proposition that should put us all in a situation we can live with. Queers are notoriously unreliable. She may assure you that she’ll continue to look out for you financially—and sticking up for her as you have, you do have some claim on her good will—but next she’ll fall in love with some other female, maybe even a little child. My God, think of that, my sister trailing a Camp Fire Girl into the park!” He made a loathing face. “It’s just unthinkable, that dirty, detestable—”
    “Hell,” said Reinhart, “I wish you wouldn’t put me in the position where I have to repeat all that tedious rhetoric of the homosexual apologists: ‘alternate life-styles,’ et cetera. But I really don’t think it’s inevitable that a ‘gay’ person is necessarily an uncontrollable sex fiend merely because he or she prefers his or her own kind.”
    Blaine showed an odd expression. “I take it you have had a sheltered life in that respect.”
    Ah, thought Reinhart, you have not, is that it? But he had no wish to explore the subject of Blaine’s experience with his fellow man. Reinhart himself had felt the hand of Time upon his shoulder when, some twenty years before, he had sensed that he was at last beyond the range of homosexual solicitation.
    “To get back to my proposition,” Blaine said. “We’ve had our differences, you and I, but I have not forgotten that I have an obligation—limited, true enough, but it’s there. Also, I’m sure you believe, whether justifiably or not, that you have gotten a dirty deal in life, and maybe you even blame it on me, for all I know.”
    To this incredible statement Reinhart could only respond: “You?”
    “Well, I’m as convenient a scapegoat as any, am I not?” Blaine asked, going into a kind of bass whisper.
    There was no reason to take this kind of thing seriously. “I suppose you are, at that,” said Reinhart.
    The technique proved an effective one for dealing with the most offensive of Blaine’s poses. Reinhart must remember that: it frightened Blaine to hear a confirmation of his own exaggerated expression of self-pity.
    Blaine hastily said: “I’m willing to let bygones be.” He slipped into the righthand lane of the expressway, and Reinhart could see the turn signal blink on the dashboard. Good, they were about to turn around and head back, having accomplished what they usually did with each other: pure and simple nought.
    But when Blaine took the next exit and at ramp’s end made a choice, he went not south in the direction of urbanity, but rather towards the pastoral north.
    “Say,” said Reinhart, “aren’t we getting pretty far from home for no great purpose?”
    “If you’d ever let me explain,” Blaine peevishly replied. “I’ve been trying for the last half-hour to get a word in edgewise. There’s a thing our church sponsors—and before you begin to shout me down with atheist opinions, hear me out, please: there are no religious requirements made of anyone.”
    “When did you ever hear me say a word about atheism?” Reinhart asked in wonderment. His mother used to make such irrelevant charges as a rhetorical device to throw him vis-à-vis off balance.
    “So be it,” said Blaine. “But knowing how you