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Kitty was Jewish and fetching, with hazel eyes and coffee-colored hair combed over to the left like a surge of ocean, and she wore a form-describing silk dress that hinted it could slither off. She was beyond the likes of Harry Folsom but she was ten years married and flattered by his attentions. She gave Ruth a Shall I? glance. Ruth snapped her Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum and shrugged.
“Hey, you gotta eat,” Harry said.
“I guess,” Kitty said. She sought affirmation, but Ruth couldn’t have cared less. She’d inserted a hand inside some fine silk hose that seemed dark as Coca-Cola. She held it up to the full glare of sunli
ght.
“Ruth, you keep those McCallums,” Harry said. “Seriously. My gift. Look lovely on you. And join Mrs. Kaufman and me for lunch.”
“You’re very kind,” Ruth said, as if he wasn’t.
Kitty focused on Ruth in that Say yes way, seeming not so much attracted to him as to the fact that she still seemed attractive.
“Where?” Ruth asked.
Harry folded his gift of McCallum hosiery in a paper bag and became doggish in his eagerness. “How about Henry’s Swedish restaurant? Cooler there because of the ice. Thirty-sixth Street, east of Sixth Avenue. My treat.”
“Smorgasbord,” Kitty said. “You get to have whatever you want.”
“Rarely true,” said Ruth.
Exiting the shop, Harry slanted on his Borsalino hat and inserted himself between the friends so his hands could ride both their backs in their stroll.
The façade of Henry’s Restaurant was a cool, seawater green, and green were the lampshades inside, the cold tessellated floor, the fake ferns and nasturtiums and trellis. Ruth’s late father was from a fishing village in Norway, and Josephine was from a fishing village in Sweden, so she’d grown up with the foods now laid out on cracked ice in Henry’s Restaurant: cold dishes of salmon, herring, lox, whitefish, ham and mustard, jellied pigs’ feet, and hard-boiled eggs. And elsewhere the hot dishes of Swedish meatballs, roasted pork ribs, matchstick potatoes covered with cream, stewed green cabbage, onion and sprats, and beetroot salad in mayonnaise. But Harry Folsom first wanted to slake his thirst, so he ushered them to a booth he called “his” and ordered three Clicquot Club ginger ales from a fat waiter named Olaf, who returned with highball glasses that were just two-thirds filled so there would be room for the first-rate London gin that Harry stirred in from his flask. After hearing Harry’s old pun on his name as he offered them a “fulsome toast,” Kitty joined him in swiftly finishing the highball and then ordering another, and Ruth just watched them, fascinated by Harry’s heavy exertions at courtship and Kitty’s schoolgirlish agreement to be wooed. Harry’s left arm wedged its way around Kitty and he angled toward her, even whispered a few endearments, but he seemed increasingly nervous in his awareness that he was entertaining two women and if he lost one’s interest he’d perhaps lose both.
And that’s when his right hand flew up in a roundhouse wave and he called, “Why, it’s Henry in Henry’s! Hey Judd, join us!”
Ruth turned to see a solemn, handsome man in his early thirties hanging his straw hat on a peg. He was short but trim, athletic, and dapper, with owlish, round, tortoiseshell glasses; flannel-blue eyes; and walnut brown hair so wavy it seemed corrugated. His highly polished brown shoes were probably Italian, his tan Brooks Brothers suit seemed so unwrinkled it could have been bought just that hour, and his chin was square and manly with the deep almond of a dimple. She turned to face Kitty and smiled for the first time that day as the gentleman walked over. She smelled his spice cologne as he shook Mr. Folsom’s hand and was invited into the booth.
“I’m fit only for a solo,” he said. “I was just going to gobble a bite and get back to the office.” He spoke with the lulling, tranquilizing baritone of radio broadcasters.
Imitating a pout, Kitty said, “But Ruth’s feeling left out.”
Judd Gray looked down and found a gorgeous Scandinavian woman of thirty frankly staring at him with thrilling blue eyes that flashed with so much light she seemed candled. Even on such a hot day, a wintery, gray fox fur was flung over her shoulders and she wore a dark cloche hat over her very blonde hair. She was dressed in a navy blue, filmy fabric that betrayed the full, round breasts that were unfashionable in those first days of the boy look. Judd was good with scents and noted she’d chosen Shalimar lilac perfume for the day.
“If I’m not intruding,” Judd said.
Ruth smiled and said, “Please do.”
His thigh slightly touched Ruth’s as he sat and she let hers stay as it was. His closeness to her made his handshake awkward as he affably said, “Hello there. I’m Judd Gray.”
“I thought your name was Henry.”
“It is in the birth register,” the hosiery salesman said.
Judd explained, “I’m formally Henry Judd Gray but I just use the initial H. Harry likes to flaunt his detective work.”
“So it’s Judd,” Kitty said.
“My friends call me Bud.”
Ruth smiled again. “So many choices!”
“I haven’t one for you yet.”
“Mrs. Snyder,” she said. “Ruth.”
Imitating her, Kitty said, “Mrs. Kaufman. Karin. But they call me Kitty.” She shook his hand. “She’s also called Tommy.”
