Besides the two beers Moose had before she arrived, he had two more during her first, then two more for her second. She lost count of the cigarettes he chain-smoked, coughing in between inhales.
Despite his grubbiness, she decided that Moose Mondrowski was probably a shrewd businessman. She suspected he had a strategy to try to take advantage of her. Because of his penchant for agreeing to some small business trades for what some women might not hold as dear as Barbara did, she was on her guard.
Halfway through dinner, however, she decided against inviting him to become even a junior partner in the airport. She didn't think she had to go that far.
"I've been thinking, it really can't be a partnership. More like an investment, on both our sides."
He looked like he expected to hear that. "Only I put up the stuff."
"I need to fix up the airport and the planes. Maybe more later, as I get it all going. I'll pay you back out of profits."
"There'll be profits?"
She didn't have to mislead him. "I'm betting my future on it."
Moose drank his beer down and ordered another, as well as another steak for himself, but she declined his invitation to a repeat of the meal. She already felt as if she'd eaten half a Guernsey cow.
"You're a classy girl, Barbara. I don't expect you to go for a lunk like me. And I didn't expect to be a partner anyway. Hell, it's only some cans of paint and nails and two-by-fours and stuff. You're okay. I'll take a chance on you. But I want you to know, I've never grub-staked anyone before."
She had heard about that before, from seeing Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush when she was a little girl.
She liked Moose Mondrowski. Sitting across from her with the towel under his chin like a baby's bib, he looked like a little boy. A big little boy.
Why was it Moose's hulking body and rough talk did not turn her off? He looked macho, but inside she didn't think he really was.
"On one condition," he said seriously.
Here it comes.
"I wrestle Saturday nights. This week at the Armory in Bakersfield. I want you to come see me tomorrow night. Just watch me wrestle, nothing more. I'll give you two tickets I got right here."
"Make it three?"
After a long, hard day's work partially cleaning up the airport office and then getting started on the hangar with the Jenny in it, Barbara called it a day on Saturday afternoon. She took a long bubble bath at Ma Phelps's because the shower hadn't worked since Pa Phelps had died ten years before. After dressing casual and cool for what was forecast to be a hot night in the desert, she drove over to the Genda Ranch.