“I want to try it.”
“All right, then try it. But I’m telling you.”
“I could use some of our inside tables.”
“I said try it, didn’t I? Come on. We’ll have a drink.”
What we had the big blow-off over was the beer license, and then I tumbled to what she was really up to. She put the tables out under the trees, on a little platform she had built, with a striped awning over them and lanterns at night, and it went pretty good. She was right about it. Those people really enjoyed a chance to sit out under the trees for a half hour, and listen to a little radio music, before they got in their cars and went on. And then beer came back. She saw a chance to leave it just like it was, put beer in, and call it a beer garden.
“I don’t want any beer garden, I tell you. All I want is a guy that’ll buy the whole works and pay cash.”
“But it seems a shame.”
“Not to me it don’t.”
“But look, Frank. The license is only twelve dollars for six months. My goodness, we can afford twelve dollars, can’t we?”
“We get the license and then we’re in the beer business. We’re in the gasoline business already, and the hot dog business, and now we got to go in the beer business. The hell with it. I want to get out of it, not get in deeper.”