The Girls of Cincinnati Read online

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise received for The Girls of Cincinnati

  A Note from the Author

  Other books by Jack Engelhard

  Praise received for Jack Engelhard’s other books

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Back cover

  The Girls

  of Cincinnati

  “A literary gem...

  sizzling thriller!”

  by

  JACK ENGELHARD

  DayRay Literary Press

  British Columbia, Canada

  The Girls of Cincinnati

  Copyright ©2009, 2014 by Jack Engelhard

  ISBN-13 978-1-77143-140-8

  Second Edition

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Engelhard, Jack, 1940-, author

  The girls of Cincinnati / by Jack Engelhard. – Second edition.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77143-139-2 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77143-140-8 (pdf)

  Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  Jack Engelhard may be contacted through: www.jackengelhard.com

  Cover artwork: Slender female legs in a long skirt © Oksvik | CanStockPhoto.com

  Previously published in 2009 by CreateSpace.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, organizations, businesses and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief and accurately credited quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  DayRay Literary Press is a literary imprint

  of CCB Publishing: www.ccbpublishing.com

  DayRay Literary Press

  British Columbia, Canada

  www.dayraypress.com

  International Bestselling Novelist Jack Engelhard

  Author of Indecent Proposal

  Translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture of the same name starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.

  The Girls

  of Cincinnati

  Pure Engelhard gem. In this one, The Girls of Cincinnati, he’s given us something never thought possible, a coming-of-age saga that’s also a sizzling thriller. The plot here is riveting. The dialogue sparkles. What’s it about? It’s about life. Anyone who’s been in love - especially love that appears to be out of reach - will understand what’s going on between Engelhard’s two heroes, Eli Brilliant and Stephanie Eaton. Anyone who feels the approach of menace will understand what these two must endure when a crazed woman appears on the scene, threatening them both with “a fate worse than death.”

  Anyone who works at a dead-end job will be right there with Eli, who ends up working for Harry’s Carpet City in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eli is back home in the Midwest after he failed to make it in New York as an actor. So that’s one dream down the drain. But now that he’s back in Cincinnati, he’s got Stephanie Eaton - or does he? Something always goes wrong between them, and this time, terribly wrong.

  Engelhard, the last of the Hemingways, gives us the heartland of America as it’s rarely been given to us before in literature. He gives us an unvarnished view inside the world of Sales and he gives us a broken-down old salesman that’s the equal of anything produced by Arthur Miller and David Mamet. Engelhard is most precious in his asides, his quick-cut commentaries.

  In Eli Brilliant, Engelhard gives us a character, though young and handsome, who we can all identify with - especially when we find Eli always reaching for the unattainable. Yes, he’s a lover, a chick magnet - hence the title - but don’t be fooled. This character, and this novel, goes much deeper.

  From start to finish, The Girls of Cincinnati is a triumph.

  Praise received for

  The Girls of Cincinnati

  “A literary gem! I could not put it down.”

  - John W. Cassell, author of Crossroads: 1969

  “Engelhard tells the story of The Girls of Cincinnati with precision through his masterful narration. Every word has a place and every page has a quote you will want to remember.”

  - Lois Sack, author of Her Brightness in the Darkness

  A Note from the Author

  This – The Girls of Cincinnati – is the first novel I ever wrote and I kept it in reserve all these years because first love comes around only once. I finally decided to let it go when it became obvious that I wasn’t getting any younger. Once your work gets published it’s no longer your secret. Over the years (decades actually) I kept polishing it, nursing it and nourishing it, always mindful that I mustn’t tamper too much, otherwise I’d lose the innocence, the youthfulness and even the heartbreak in which it was first written. We never want to get too sophisticated. I began writing it in New Jersey after departing Cincinnati for good, and leaving behind so many people that I knew, and one or two that I even loved.

  JE

  Also by Jack Engelhard

  Indecent Proposal: Fiction.

  Translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture of the same name starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.

  Compulsive: A Novel: Fiction.

  Escape From Mount Moriah: Memoir.

  Award-winner for writing and film.

  The Days of the Bitter End: Fiction.

  Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist: Fiction.

  The Prince of Dice: Fiction.

  The Bathsheba Deadline: Fiction.

  The Horsemen: Non-fiction.

  Excerpted in The New York Times

  * * * * *

  A new Spanish language edition of Indecent Proposal was released in 2013 in both print and e-book editions and made available for purchase worldwide.

  The author wishes to express his gratitude and thanks to translator Frederick Martin-Del-Campo for his fine work in this and other projects.

  Praise received for Jack Engelhard’s other books:

  “Precise, almost clinical language…Is this book fun to read? You betcha.”

  - The New York Times, for Indecent Proposal

  “Well-wrought characters, exhilarating pace…funny and gruff…a fast and well-crafted book.”

  - Philadelphia Inquirer, for Indecent Proposal

  “Compulsive is enormously enjoyable, and so easy to get into.”

  - Kenneth Slawenski, (Random Hou
se) bestselling author of

  J.D. Salinger: A Life - www.deadcaulfields.com

  “A towering literary achievement.”

  - Letha Hadady, author, for The Bathsheba Deadline

  “Savor it…it may be the best, sharpest, most vivid portrait of life around the racetrack ever written.”

  - Ray Kerrison, New York Post columnist

  writing for the National Star, for The Horsemen

  “The refugee stories Engelhard preserves are boyhood memories of an almost Tom Sawyer character… adventurous, humorous, sometimes wonderfully strange.”

  - Chris Leppek, Jewish News (Denver),

  for Escape from Mount Moriah

  “What a great story. If you missed the 60s – if you missed the excitement, the passion, the radicalism, the thrills, the hopes and dreams – this book brings it all alive. I could not put it down.”

  - Kmgroup review, for The Days of the Bitter End

  Dedicated to

  Leslie, David, Rachel, Sarah, Toni…and Siena!

  ...and to the loving memory of my parents

  Noah and Ida

  Immeasurable gratitude to

  Jeffrey Farkas

  Chapter 1

  Anyway, I hired her. I knew she was trouble, but I didn’t know how much, for the simple reason that, unlike wall-to-wall carpet, people don’t come with lifetime guarantees.

  In this business, for that matter in any business, you never knew what you were getting. You hired them when they appeared reasonably lucid, communicative and reliable, though this was some task, finding anyone reliable. Some responded to the ad and never showed up and some showed up and never returned. I hired anyone still breathing. Looks didn’t hurt. Sobriety helped. Most of them maybe finished high school and some had native smarts, street wisdom. You got what you paid for. We didn’t pay much.

  Anyhow, they all came from broken homes, these girls. These days, who didn’t?

  “So am I hired?” she asked.

  This one was different. She was exotic, as exotic as you can get from the Price Hill section of Cincinnati, where (disgraced) Pete Rose hailed from and which was this town’s bedrock of hard-working, hard-drinking, hardhat lower middle class. Price Hill was to Cincinnati what Peoria was to America. She seemed a cut above as far as intelligence, which wasn’t always a plus for them or a favor to me. The smart ones never stayed very long, that was one problem, the other being that smart girls never knew when something was finished. This girl had eyes that wouldn’t quit and everything about her was just plain provocative, like I’m the one getting the screen test.

  Obviously, though, she was a loser, a failure, a castoff, an exile, just like the rest of us, though I’m still not sure what separates success from failure, or if there really is a difference. I have my doubts. Most times success is a cover, a performance. We’re all acting except that those of us who don’t know how to put it over end up here at Harry’s Carpet City, upstairs in the phone soliciting department, sanctuary for the doomed. We’ve tried everything else.

  In Cincinnati, or New York, or anywhere really, there’s got to be a place for everyone, or so you’d think. I’m beginning to wonder. Some of us in this world without pity are meant to drift, which doesn’t make us homeless but rootless just the same. We can’t seem to catch on. We seem destined to follow the wrong path or take the fork in the road that leads to nowhere. I blame it on luck and this means there’s no one to blame.

  So despite my qualms about this applicant, I had a soft spot for her – for all of them in fact.

  Spooky, the way she sat there without the usual interview jitters. Maybe that was why I didn’t terminate (did I say “terminate?”) her right on the spot, as that would have been the cowardly way out, and she would have sensed it…but so what? Hey, I was the BOSS! Except that there was something strangely intimate about a job interview, you were both revealing touches, moments and fragments of yourself and you didn’t want to come off weak. Not to mention the seductive element of a job interview, like any audition. From the start you were calculating the possibilities.

  With the right person, an interview was foreplay – as it was with Stephanie Eaton.

  “I’d like an answer,” she said.

  Why was she in control? I’m the director.

  She looked different from every angle. First thing you noticed was that squared-off, masculine jaw. Straight up the face was hard, lips thin, upturned nose, certainly not pretty, but all right in an across-the-river sort of way. I was willing to bet she was originally from Kentucky, Covington most likely. If she came from Newport she’d never admit it – Sin City, USA; comely Cincinnati’s unruly neighbor to the south. Covington, that’s where we went to get naughty and Newport? That’s where we went to get very naughty. Horse country was further south, though there were some thoroughbreds in Newport, along the outskirts. They don’t shoot horses in Newport. They shoot people.

  She was a blonde, this one was, but a very serious, grim and gloomy blonde, even when she smiled, which was really not a grin so much as a pre-emptive showing of teeth, doing what was unnatural but required. Smiling was not her strong suit. Her teeth could use some work but so could mine. (Get me make-up!) Her eyes did the scary business. No fluttering of eyelashes, like most of them do; no blinking, in fact. Actually, they were the eyes of an animal or some beast without a soul. She was so self-assured that it could only mean that she had something on me.

  I had secrets, of course.

  Her name was Sonja Frick. I kept studying her application form for an acceptable reason to dismiss her. Just say no, or offer the usual excuses, like overqualified or under-qualified, though she was neither. I didn’t like her and I didn’t trust her and I don’t know why. The interview was going poorly, from my end at least; I was flunking. If it were me on the other seat I’d never get the part.

  “I’m sure I can do whatever has to be done around here,” she said scornfully, scanning the room, a room without frills that’s for sure, walls that needed paint, windows that needed blinds, floors that needed linoleum that wasn’t ripped. The smell? Please! She observed the desks that had been borrowed ages ago from some elementary school, still with valentine hearts and “Leroy” carved into them.

  Not much else except the buzz of about a dozen girls on the phones pitching carpet.

  She wasn’t impressed.

  “Doesn’t seem too difficult,” she said with a snicker. “Nothing I can’t do.”

  I didn’t mind somebody scoffing this job, so long as that somebody was me. I wasn’t too thrilled when it came from someone else.

  Everybody’s a critic.

  This wasn’t brain surgery, true, but it was an honest living, even if it wasn’t completely honest and wasn’t much of a living.

  I asked her the usual big question, hoping she’d trip up.

  “Are you good with people?”

  “What people?”

  “People. People people.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’d be talking to strangers all day.”

  “I’m good with strangers. Are they people?”

  Wise guy, huh?

  Her hobby, according to the application form, was reading, which certainly wasn’t objectionable, except that her favorite authors were Edgar Cayce and Nostradamus, which frankly I didn’t consider reading. She also liked poetry, the gloomy kind – Sylvia Plath and all the others who had committed suicide. She also mentioned Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe. Nothing cheerful here, either.

  I was thinking of ways to tell her no. First of all, I didn’t need the grief. Second of all, I didn’t need girls with PERSONALITY. Personality was intrusive. Third, she’d never fit in. There was a group dynamics thing going on here in my boiler room and it wouldn’t do to have one girl so STRANGE. The others, even the newer ones, and there were always newer ones, managed to nest in together. This one wouldn’t. She felt superior, you could just tell, and she was a reflective sort. Then again, she needed the
work. This was a job of last resort, even for me. Nobody – except Mona maybe – grew up with dreams of becoming a telephone solicitor, even under today’s fancier term of telemarketing.

  But I had already decided to say no.

  “When do I start?” she said.

  “How about tomorrow?”

  Chapter 2

  Next day she arrived as a brunette. I had hired a blonde, hadn’t I? I hardly recognized her.

  “I changed my hair,” she said.

  She stared at me for a reaction. I didn’t react. What – changed hair changed person?

  “I knew you didn’t like it the other way.”

  Which was true. Though I didn’t like her too much this way, either, as a brunette.

  “How did you know?” I yawned.

  “I’m psychic,” she declared.

  “That’s all right,” I said, turning back to the work on my desk. There was no work on my desk. I didn’t want to hear any more. I’d heard it all. They all had stories and I wasn’t particularly in the mood for hers, although psychic was a new wrinkle, with all kinds of dire possibilities. Most of them told you about their drunken mothers and violent fathers and runaway husbands. Amazing how nobody came from a NORMAL family. But psychic was a new one, definitely.

  I didn’t need a psychic. All I needed was another TELEPHONE SOLICITOR!

  “Does it bother you?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “I see things,” she said.

  “I see things, too.”

  “I see the future.”