Chilly Scenes of Winter

FIVE

At lunch time (if only it were eleven again, instead of twelve-thirty) Charles goes alone to a restaurant at the end of the block. He orders a well-done cheeseburger, a salad without dressing, and a Coke. He thinks if he eats salad without dressing that when he eats it with dressing again it will taste good. All of the food is terrible. He oversalts it and is thirsty all day.

“Gimme a nickel,” a black kid says to him as he walks back to the office, “and I’ll do a somersault in the air for you.”

Charles gives the kid a quarter. “You don’t have to do a somersault,” he says. The kid flips in the air.

“That’s amazing,” Charles says.

“My brother’s working on a double flip,” the kid says, and walks away to accost another man.

Back at his desk early, Charles puts on his earphones and turns on his cassette player: “Folk Fiddling from Sweden.” After he has listened for a few minutes he dials his number.

“Hello?” Sam says groggily.

“I woke you up,” Charles says.

“Glad you did. I was having nightmares. I dreamed you and I were hunting wolves, and there were so many of them we didn’t know where to start, and if we didn’t start soon …”

“God, I hope I don’t catch this,” Charles says.

Sam is panting.

“Is there anything you want me to bring you back tonight?”

“Can you get me some Mr. Goodbars?”

“Mr. Goodbars? They’re no good for you when you’re sick.”

“Maybe they’ll finish me off and I won’t ever have to go back to work.”

“I know what you mean,” Charles says.

“Susan’s doc didn’t show. She’s still here.”

“Is she disappointed?”

“Doesn’t act it. I’m not exactly too sensitive to the state of others right now, I guess.”

“Take aspirin. She’ll bring it to you.”

“She does.”

“Well, I’ll see you tonight.”

Charles hangs up. If Laura isn’t still sick — she can’t still be sick — she’ll be leaving her house in an hour to pick up Rebecca. Lucky Rebecca. If Rebecca grows up to be like Laura she will be a heartbreaker. Maybe he will become like Humbert Humbert and get Rebecca. Because it certainly doesn’t look like he’s going to get Laura.

A woman from typing comes in to pick up two reports to do for him. The woman has on a blue dress that is unfashionably short and heavy black boots pulled tightly over her heavy legs. But her face is pretty. She was Laura’s friend. He wants to think that she knows all about the two of them, but Laura said that she never told anybody. He wishes she had; then he wouldn’t doubt, as he sometimes does, that it happened at all. He and the woman could exchange secret, knowing glances. Laura, they would both be thinking. She walks out with the piece of paper, and he looks at the big black boots walking across the blue carpet. Laura always dressed beautifully. She had suede boots and several pretty dresses, just a few but very pretty, and she always looked very delicate. Her husband is nicknamed “Ox.” Charles has not gotten back to work, and he has been at his desk for fifteen minutes. He has just cheated the government of five minutes. He cheats it of another two, turning his chair to look out the window, playing a little game and imagining that when he turns around Laura will be there, even though he knows that he would see her reflection in the glass if she were there. Even though she cannot be there, because she is getting ready to go for Rebecca. He wishes he were Rebecca’s father. If he were her father and Laura were her mother they could be a family. They are already a family: Laura, Rebecca, and Ox. He imagines with horror that when he turns around they will all be there, that he will actually have to face that fact. He turns around immediately and looks at the piece of paper on his desk.

The woman from typing comes back. “There should be another piece attached to this,” she says. He sits up a little higher so that he can look down at the boots. They are menacing. He wonders why she wears them. She couldn’t think they’re pretty. He reaches in the bottom of the basket on the comer of his desk. “Sorry,” he says.

“First day back,” she says.

“What do you hear from Laura?” he asks.

“Oh. I had dinner there last night. She went back to her husband,” the woman says knowingly.

The A-frame. Ox. Maybe more freshly baked bread. So she’s well.

“What did you have?” He can’t contain his curiosity.

“Lobster Newburg. It was wonderful. I’ve been trying to lose weight, but with the holidays and that dinner, I’m never going to make it.”

“You’re going to think this is terrible, but I don’t think I ever knew your name,” he says.

“Betty,” she says.

“That’s right,” he says. “I did know it.”

He’d had no idea what her name was.

She stands there, smiling. He wants very much to know if she had the orange thing for dessert.

“I get into work and I become a robot,” he says. “It’s awful.”

“I hate it here,” Betty says. “But I’m lucky to have a job. My sister just graduated from Katy Gibbs, and she’s been looking since before Thanksgiving.”

“It’s rotten,” he says. “It’s nice if you can have perspective on ft and be glad you’ve got a job.”

“I just am glad today,” she says. “Most days I come in and hate it.”

“Is your sister looking for work around here?”

“In New York. But if she doesn’t find something soon she’s going to have to come live with me. My parents kicked her out. They don’t think she’s trying, because they sent her to college and then to Katy Gibbs and all.”

“Don’t they read the papers?”

She shrugs. “I guess I’d better start this,” she says, and turns to leave.

She’s very nice, Charles thinks. Why couldn’t you like her? He looks down at the piece of paper again and makes a notation on the pad. He has the eerie feeling that when he looks up Laura and Jim and Rebecca will be there. He throws his pen down. He gets up and picks up the pen, goes back to the desk and sits down. Lobster Newburg. That must have been delicious. That cheeseburger was awful.

He leaves at five-fifteen instead of five-thirty, stopping at the stand on the ground level for two Mr. Goodbars. The man who runs the concession is blind. “What have you got?” he asks.

“Not Laura” seems like the logical answer. He has got to stop thinking about her. It’s true that he wasn’t that wild for her when he had her. If he ever had her. When he was with her. Once when he was with her they sat at a drugstore having coffee and she gave him a picture of herself. Remember something better he says under his breath. “Two Goodbars,” he says out loud.

“Thirty-two,” the man says. The man reaches into an open metal box and feels around for the change. The blind man is never wrong. Charles looks at the three pennies. Laura, he thinks. He drops the change in his coat pocket and zips the coat. Tries to zip it. He pulls more slowly. Sure enough, it works. He goes through the revolving door and into the cold. His car is a long walk away. He turns on the cassette player he is holding in his other hand and “Folk Fiddling from Sweden” blares out. It is still playing when he gets to his car. The lock is frozen. He kicks it with his foot. Much to his surprise, the lock turns. He drives to a store and buys a big package of pork chops and a bag of potatoes and a bunch of broccoli and a six-pack of Coke. He remembers cigarettes for Sam when he is checking out, in case he’s well enough to smoke. He buys a National Enquirer that features a story about Jackie Onassis’s face-lift. James Dean is supposed to be alive and in hiding somewhere, too. Another vegetable. Not dead at all. East of Eden is one of his favorite films. He saw it, strangely enough, on television shortly after he and Laura went to a carnival and rode on a Ferris wheel. He felt so sorry for James Dean. Back then he didn’t feel sorry for himself at all. No reason to. Now he feels sorry for himself. Feeling sorry for himself, he gets back in the car and drives home. He thinks about Rebecca’s bird trapped in his glove compartment. At a stop sign he closes his eyes and inhales, hoping to smell Vol de Nuit. Cold air sears through his nostrils. Turning onto his block, he sees the man from Audrey’s party getting out of his car. Charles stops, rolls down his window. “Hey,” he says. “Hi. Hello.”

“Hello,” the man says. “Cold as a witch’s tit, isn’t it?” The man is wearing a black coat and scarf. He looks menacing.

“Yeah,” Charles says. “Farmer’s Almanac says we’re in for a big storm the eighteenth.”

“You were going to come for a drink,” the man says. “Come for a drink.”

“Okay,” Charles says. “I’ll get over.”

“Any time,” the man says.

“Good. Thanks,” Charles says.

He feels good about that until he realizes that the man’s car was parked far away from either the red brick or the white house with blue shutters and that he still doesn’t know where he lives.

He runs with the grocery bag from the driveway to the front door. Susan opens it.

“It’s awful out,” she says. “How did it go?”

“I got through the day,” he says, then realizes that that was melodramatic. He expects her to inform him that his attitude is wrong, but she doesn’t.

“How are you?” he says. “Doctor desert you?”

“No. He’ll be in later tonight. His car broke down.”

Charles feels sorry for him because his car broke down. He does not want to feel sorry for the man.

“What kind of jackass wouldn’t get rid of a Cadillac anyway?” he says.

He takes the groceries into the kitchen, then goes to the bedroom to see Sam. Sam is asleep, his feet again out of the covers. This time his fly is hanging open and his pajama top is all bunched up around him. Charles is sure that he is getting pneumonia. He backs out of the room, goes to the kitchen and gets a glass of grapefruit juice.

“What makes you so sure he doesn’t have pneumonia?” Charles asks.

“He doesn’t have pneumonia. He was awake for several hours today.”

Charles is glad she’s still there. He wishes the Cadillac would break apart in the middle.

“Would you like me to cook these?” Susan asks, taking the pork chops out of the bag.

He will never have that dessert again. “Sure,” he says.

“After dinner we’ve got to go see her,” Susan says.

He had forgotten. “I know,” he says. “Pete call back?”

“No.”

“I guess I’ll get it in person then.”

Charles checks the thermometer: thirty-two degrees.

“It’s freezing,” he says. He goes into the living room and lies down on the sofa. It reminds him of lying in the hospital bed, no energy to move, his mother sitting at his side, on top of her coat on a chair. The man who shared his room was named somebody-or-other Brownwell. Brownwell, it turned out, had an inoperable melanoma. Charles had no idea what that was, and Brownwell didn’t either, and as hard as he tried not to, hands over his ears, Charles still heard the doctor say “cancer” through the thin screen that was pulled around Brownwell’s bed. It was so depressing there. He’d wake up in the morning and see Brownwell’s head against the pillow; the rest of his body already seemed to have shrunken up, given up, disappeared. Sometimes Charles would raise himself in bed the little he could to make sure that Brownwell was still there below the shoulders. Brownwell sat and stared. Charles’s mother always asked Brownwell if he wanted a glass of water when she came and when she left. Once he did. Charles turns on the couch, trying to get the hospital out of his mind. The sheets were so stiff. Once he woke up a little to see Brownwell, who paced for four days until they discharged him, pacing by his bed. Brownwell stopped to pull Charles’s blanket up. Charles pretended to be asleep and lay very still, but it was all he could do to restrain himself because he wanted to reach out and kiss Brownwell’s hand. He almost did kiss his hand. Not because he straightened the sheets, but just because he felt so damn sorry for Brownwell. Every day when the doctor came to see him, Charles waited to hear the word “melanoma.” He hung on the doctor’s every word. “You’re very alert today, that’s a good sign,” the doctor said. Another time, the doctor asked him if his mother was “emotionally disturbed.” He never found out what his mother had done that made the doctor ask. Pete came every night — damn, he should like that man — and brought Playboy and, for some reason, an inflatable plastic pillow he could blow up and put under the one on the bed. Actually, it came in handy. He was too weak to sit up well without calling the nurses to haul him up by his armpits, but with the pillow he was a little higher and could see a little more. Brownwell’s son blew it up for him. The son was a cub scout. Brownwell looked like he could die every night during visiting hours. He looked better when his wife and son left. Charles gets up. He’s going to remember as long as he lies there. He goes out to the kitchen and watches Susan pour Sam’s leftover white wine over the cooking pork chops.

“I hope she’s not so sedated she doesn’t know us,” Susan says.

“She fakes that. She almost always knows us.”

He sits in a chair. The pork chops smell good. He is glad she is there, because he is too tired to cook. He shouldn’t be so tired. He should have a checkup. He doesn’t want to. They will find out he has an inoperable melanoma.

They eat dinner at the table, even though Charles and Susan told Sam that they should bring a tray to him in bed and bring chairs in for them to sit on to keep him company. Charles was secretly glad to see Sam get up, because that would keep pneumonia away. Nothing would keep inoperable melanoma away, but walking would keep pneumonia away. He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind so he can enjoy dinner.

“Did you get the candy bars?” Sam asks. Sam is very hoarse.

“Oh, yeah. They’re in my coat pocket.”

“Probably won’t be able to eat that much, though,” Sam says.

“Sure you will.”

“I’ve got to get back to work tomorrow,” Sam says.

“You’re nuts. You can hardly stand up.”

“Then let them send me to the doctor and send me home. That way I won’t lose my job.”

“Call them and tell them you’re sick.”

“Won’t work.”

“Bastards,” Charles says.

“I’m lucky to have the damned job,” Sam says.

“A Phi Beta Kappa is lucky to be selling men’s jackets. Yeah.”

“The money, I mean.”

“Speaking of which, you’ve still got a twenty of mine for grass.”

Susan looks up, surprised.

“Coming in end of the week,” Sam says. He gets it from a woman whose son gives it to her. She puts it in her lunch pail. The woman works in the “Bath Accessories” shop. She’s a nice woman — a dumb, nice woman. Charles met her once when he came to pick up Sam, and Sam was walking out with her. “I like being dangerous,” she said, swinging the pail. “Only I don’t got the nerve to use it. You boys have a good time. I’m dependable. My boy can get you more.”

“One time Sam got a memo from the boss saying that he should wear a tape measure around his neck to make himself look more official,” Charles says to Susan.

“He didn’t.”

“I did,” Sam says. “God, did I drink a lot that weekend.”

“You don’t wear the thing, do you?” she asks.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh, Sam, that’s awful.”

“I sort of think it’s funny now. Another time, when I first started working there, he sent his brother around. His brother was a big fellow. He took forty-two extra long. And the guy told me he wanted a thirty-eight regular. He could hardly squeeze into it. What did I care. I rang it up. Next day the boss came around to congratulate me. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The customer is always right.’ ”

Susan shakes her head and laughs.

“Laugh while you can. Wait until you get out,” Sam says.

“She’s going to marry the doctor,” Charles says. “She’s got no worries.”

“It’s nuts to get married,” Sam says. “What would you get married for?”

“I never said I was getting married. He did.”

“I should know,” Charles says. “According to you, I’m so smart”

Susan looks at her watch. “I don’t know when visiting hours are, do you?”

“We’re family. I don’t think it matters. It would be good to avoid the regular hours because we’d probably miss Pete that way.”

“We ought to at least say hello to him. He’s awfully upset, you said.”

“We cheer him up a lot. We’re such good-natured kids.”

“We could try to act nice tonight. It could be a sort of rehearsal for you, Charles. For when Mark gets here.”

“I already like him immensely,” Charles says.

“I do too,” Sam says.

“Will you let him in?” Susan says to Sam.

“When he makes his house call, you mean?”

Susan sighs.

“Iffen I don’t shoot at the varmint from behind the moonshine machine,” Sam says. Sam puts down his napkin. “Good dinner,” he says. He walks slowly back to the bedroom.

“Let’s get ready,” Susan says.

“Let’s do the dishes.”

“Come on,” she says. “We don’t want to find her asleep when we get there.”

Charles goes to the closet for his jacket. He takes out the candy bars and takes them in to Sam. Sam is propped up in bed, watching the news.

“Thank you,” Sam says.

“Welcome,” Charles says. “I got you cigarettes, too. Do you want them?”

“Not right now. Thanks, though.”

Charles meets Susan at the front door, and they go outside to the car. He notices that the birds have eaten all the seed, and that he will have to put out more. Predictable: put out birdseed, it disappears, you put out more, it disappears, and so on. Susan is nervous. She wants to drive, and he lets her. He puts on the radio. John Lennon is singing “Mind Games.” John Lennon thinks that “love is the answer.” But John — what if she won’t get out of her A-frame to be loved? The snow that was not predicted until the eighteenth has started to fall lightly.

“Road’s getting slick. Watch it on the turns,” Charles says.

“I drive Mark’s car all the time,” she says. She is in a bad mood. It always upsets her to see Clara in the bin.

“Stop at that drugstore,” he says. “I’m going to get a pack of cigarettes. They all want cigarettes.”

She stops in front of the drugstore, and he gets out and buys a pack of Camels. A woman in front of him is buying a magazine with Cher on the cover. “Bonos Bust” the headlines read. Cher, in a low-cut silver gown, is pictured holding their daughter, Chastity, and Sonny has his arm against his brow, as if shielding himself from the sun. The three people have all been cut out of separate photos and jumbled into this one. Charles stares at Sonny, who is wearing boots and fringed pants and a pink shirt. If you don’t shield yourself from the sun you can get an inoperable melanoma, Charles thinks. He would not really care if Sonny Bono died at all, if he didn’t have to be in the bed next to him. The outfits the Bonos are wearing look like something mental patients would put together. Except that then Cher would have on bedroom slippers with her silver dress. The bin. He pays for the cigarettes and walks back to the car. The announcer is talking about the attempt to deport John Lennon. “Does anybody out there want John out of the country? Call in and let us have your views. You know, some people say the government has harassed John. Some of our best citizens have written letters or appeared in John’s behalf. Should they continue? Should John Lennon stay in the U.S.A.? Call us at.…” The announcer’s message is followed by “The Ballad of John and Yoko”: “Christ, you know it ain’t easy, you know how hard it can be, the way things are goin’….” John sings about eating chocolate cake from a bag. Now there’s something nice to remember, one of those crazy in-love things, like special songs and Chinese restaurants. He didn’t do enough of that. Even then he was tired. Right now he is very tired. He rests his head against the foggy side window. He closes his eyes and imagines scenes that never took place: he and Laura went to the beach, and she got sunburned and he rubbed Solarcaine on her back; Laura cooked a ten-course Chinese dinner for him, gave him a surprise birthday party; she asked him for advice, and he gave her good advice that made her happy; they ate Fudgsicles in a park in Paris. Do they have Fudgsicles in Paris? They must. They have a McDonald’s. Revision of that fantasy: he and Laura had a Big Mac in the Paris McDonald’s, later went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Her eyes were wide at the Lido, the horses racing to the edge of the stage. They climbed a mountain in Switzerland, drank hot mulled cider. They held hands and walked down a street in the spring. She tripped, he fixed the heel of her shoe. She dropped a scented handkerchief, he picked it up, smelled Vol de Nuit. They were together at Christmas, and the house smelled of turkey. She gave him a pineapple. He parted her hair, smoothing his hand down in between brush strokes. In a supermarket, she kissed his ear. They went ice-skating, she in a long skirt, he in a long scarf just like the Currier and Ives print that used to be in his sixth-grade history book. In the rain in Mexico she bought a big white bowl with a rooster in it that he carried. They had a villa and a maid, and where they were the water was so blue it seemed to burn. In actuality, they once had cheeseburgers at McDonald’s on Saturday and were happy eating them there, in spite of the noise the children made and how downtrodden the people looked. Once he got in the tub with her, and she didn’t kick him out. She taught him to play chess, and they drank a delicious, expensive French wine. She gave him a sweater, and he had it for a long time before he lost it. He gave her Vol de Nuit, and she smiled. Once he got in the shower with her and she laughed at him, but didn’t kick him out. She did an imitation of the way he slouched when he walked; he imitated her distracted gaze. Nobody got mad. The roller coaster, and the Ferris wheel. They made cookies together. She took her picture in a photo booth to give to him. They ate at a famous seafood restaurant and had brandy. They got stoned and listened to Schubert. She sent him a valentine signed “Anonymous” and always swore that she didn’t do it, even though it was her handwriting. He gave her a chair for her apartment, brought it to her in the rain. She sat in it. It was all wet.

He looks out the window at the snow. They are already at the hospital. There are three lights in a row, and a few cars. Susan pulls into a place at the end of the row, and they get out and walk toward the side door. A security officer points them to their mother’s wing. Room 14-B. Walking to room 14-B he gives away four cigarettes and lights four cigarettes. He gives out a fifth on the threshold of his mother’s room, turns to light it. “Don’t shake,” the woman says, holding his hands. She frowns at them, no doubt realizing she’ll have little success. She exhales in his face.

“We’re here, Mom,” Susan says to their mother.

She is sitting in bed with a bright yellow ribbon tied around her hair.

“I’m going home tomorrow,” she says. “They knew, they knew it was a mistake to put me here.”

Susan looks at Charles.

“That’s great,” he says. “How are you?”

“Charles, they won’t believe me, but a young doctor here does believe me that I nearly died in that hospital, and I had to get the card of laxatives from my purse and into the bathroom I went, only to get rid of the pain.”

“What does the doctor say about the pain? What caused it?”

She stares at him. “The laxatives. So many laxatives. No one believes me that I almost died with the pain. I had to go into the bathroom and take them, those that I had with me from home, in my purse.”

“Pete at dinner?” Charles says.

“Yes, he is. I want you to meet a very fine friend, Mrs. DeLillo.”

“The lord have mercy on your soul,” she says. “Do you smoke?”

“A cigarette. Yes,” Charles says, extending the pack. She folds the pack into her hand, puts it down the front of her nightgown.

“Matches?” she says.

“Can you have matches?” he asks.

“What good are cigarettes without matches?” she asks. He gives her a book of matches.

“Charles, I’m so glad not to be dead. My first baby.”

“We’re having quite a snow,” Susan says.

“Imagine the snow in Madison, Wisconsin,” their mother says. “My girl goes to school far away,” she says to Mrs. DeLillo.

“I don’t have to imagine snow,” Mrs. DeLillo says. “I can see it right out this window.”

“My friend Mark is coming down tonight. He’s going to drive me back.”

“Who’s that?” Clara says.

“I told you, Mom. Mark. The pre-med student.”

“When did you tell me?”

“In a letter.”

“I save all your letters. My second baby.” She looks past Mrs. DeLillo, out the window. The lights in the parking lot are visible through the window. They light up the slowly falling snow.

“How long ago did Pete leave?” Charles asks.

Clara opens a night-table drawer. There is a piece of paper inside. She hands it to Charles. “Gone to dinner, 7:15, return approximately 7:45,” it says. He should like Pete. He nods and hands it back.

“Charles, they don’t believe me, except for the young doctor who knows I’m telling the truth, about the woman in the bed next to me dying.”

“I’m not dead, I’m here,” Mrs. DeLillo says. She lights a cigarette.

“She was discharged, I heard,” Susan says.

“With a blanket over her head, honey?”

“I don’t know.… I wasn’t there,” Susan says.

Their mother takes the yellow ribbon out of her hair. “When they put this on me, I said, ‘Oh, the yellow ribbon of the old oak tree.’ Everything you say to them here they think you’re crazy.”

“It’s a song,” Charles says stupidly. He looks at his watch. It is 7:40.

“Here’s my family,” Pete says, coming up in back of Charles and Susan.

“I’m Mrs. DeLillo,” Mrs. DeLillo says.

“I should have called to save you the trip. Mommy’s coming home tomorrow. The doctor says it was a mistake to have Mommy brought here, but since Mommy’s so weak, she might as well rest up one place as another.”

“And I’ve met my fine friend Mrs. DeLillo,” she says.

“Thank you,” Mrs. DeLillo says. Mrs. DeLillo has a green ribbon in her hair. Her hair is too short to hide the ribbon. You can see it going around both sides of her head.

“My Pete,” Clara says. Pete is sweating. He looks like he’s been drinking.

“Mighty cold and snowy out,” Pete says. “I saw it start, sitting down in the cafeteria.”

“Do you have snow tires?” Susan asks. She is better at making conversation with Pete than he is.

“Studded snow tires,” Pete says.

“All my family take care of themselves,” Clara says.

“Today was my first day back at work,” Charles says.

Pete slaps him on the back. “Thatta boy,” he says.

“You don’t drive in the rush hour, do you?” Clara says.

“I have to drive in the rush hour. I have to be there at nine o’clock.”

“Oh, Mommy knows the way things are,” Pete says, slapping Charles again. “Nobody’s going to put one over on Mommy.”

“She’s a sensible woman,” Mrs. DeLillo says.

“Charles, when I came here the nurse reported something I said to the doctor, the young doctor …”

“What a fine fellow,” Pete interrupts.

“And he came to me and he said, ‘You know that song about the yellow ribbon on the old oak tree, don’t you?’ Charles, I was very sick in the hospital, but now that I’m not so weak I see that I’m not so sick. I told the young doctor that I was much improved, and if it hadn’t been for the pain, you have my word of honor, Charles, I would not have medicated myself with the laxatives.”

“They give you laxatives here,” Mrs. DeLillo says.

“Talk to the doctor,” Clara says.

“The doctor?” Susan says.

“He will tell you — the young one — that my word is good, and it was an accident that I made the mistake of taking the laxatives in the bathroom.”

“Well,” Pete says. “Let’s not dwell on past mistakes.”

“Did you get to see the football game Sunday?” Susan asks Pete.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t.”

Susan seems to have run out of things to talk to Pete about.

“But I wish I had,” Pete says.

Charles looks at Pete’s shoes. They are shiny brown cordovans.

“What did the doctor say about a few twirls?” Pete says.

“Take them,” Clara answers.

“Ya-hoo!” Pete says. He says it very quietly; it sounds absurd not being shouted.

“What has happened to Wilbur Mills?” she asks.

“He showed up in Boston where Fanne Foxe was stripping and got on stage drunk,” Pete says, brightening.

“I knew that. I mean, how is he now?”

“A wife cheater,” Mrs. DiLillo says. “You know the saying: ‘Wife cheater, child beater.’ ”

“He’s still there, as far as I know,” Susan says. “In Walter Reed.”

“I read that that place was a firetrap,” Charles says.

“You be very careful when you drive to work tomorrow, Charles.”

“I will,” he says.

“Bring my fitch coat when you come tomorrow,” Clara says to Pete.

“Yes, sir,” he says. “Mommy’s going home in style.”

“In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?” Clara says.

“What’s that?” he says.

“Another song!” she says, delightedly.

“I remember that one,” Mrs. DeLillo says. “Not so long ago, huh?”

“Do you remember that one?” their mother says to Charles.

“Sure,” Charles says.

“No,” Susan says.

“Mommy knows her music,” Pete says. He looks at his watch. “Mommy,” he says, “if we don’t leave on time they come around, you know. Shall we say goodnight?”

“My Pete,” she says. “And my Charles and Susan.”

“Good-bye, Mom,” Susan says, kissing her. “I’ll be home in a while. I have to leave tomorrow.”

“Be careful in rush-hour traffic,” she says, pressing Susan’s hand.

“I’ll see you soon,” Charles says.

“I know you will,” she says, pressing his hand. “And my Pete.”

“Tomorrow,” Pete says. “Good night, honey.”

“My family,” she says.

In the corridor, Pete says, “What do you think?”

“Is she weak, is that why she’s acting so strange?”

“What do you think?” Pete says. “She took herself a dozen laxative tablets. She’s still not on solid food. Only soup and milk.”

They walk past the guard’s desk. “All clean,” Pete says, flashing the inside of his overcoat. The guard does not smile. Charles glances at the book on the guard’s desk: Seventeenth Century Poetry. Probably the only job the guard could get.

“I guess my asking you for a drink is getting to be a joke,” Pete says. “I guess you wouldn’t have a drink with me after I called and said that you were a son of a bitch.”

“Sure I would,” Charles says. “Maybe I should get Susan home, in case Mark is there, and meet you somewhere.”

“Couldn’t you come for a short drink?” Pete says to Susan.

“Sure I could.”

“You mean you’re both coming?”

“Sure,” Charles says. Pete looks surprised. He smiles — the same smile he gave when he came to the hospital to visit Charles and saw his plastic pillow in use.

“Well, where do you get a drink around here?” Pete asks.

“I think there’s a place a couple of streets over.”

“Walk?” Pete says. “Do you mind walking?”

“No,” they both say.

“That’s good. My skin’s still crawling.”

“The place seemed pretty sedate tonight,” Susan says.

“That woman in the room with Mommy is a dog killer. Cat killer. She had a house full of cats and dogs and killed all of them. I don’t know the details. I said to Mommy, ‘You never know. Keep on the good side of her.’ ”

They are walking together in stride, Susan breaking step occasionally to keep up.

“Oh man, when is this winter ever going to end?” Pete says. “This morning, driving down to the hospital I was tempted to take my credit card — did you kids know I have a BankAmericard? — over to the airport and fly to Florida. Three years I’ve been wanting to fly to Florida, get the hell in the sun. I thought to myself, you’re freezing; you’re sixty-three years old and you’ve never done anything exciting in your life.”

“There’s not much exciting to do,” Charles says. The Paris McDonald’s.

“Florida, hell, you might not call that exciting, but you know what I mean: to be where it’s warm. It’s colder than I ever remember it here this winter.”

“I can’t keep up with you,” Susan says.

“Sorry, honey,” Pete says. They slow down a little.

“Another thing I thought about was getting a Honda Civic. Your mother thinks the things are too small to ride around in. She says we’ll be killed. I said, ‘What the hell. We don’t have kids. We don’t have any big dog. We can get us a little car.’ You know your mother.” Pete blows his nose, drops the tissue on the sidewalk. “This morning I thought, I’ve got time to go arrange for a Honda Civic on the way to the hospital. I was damned early. Couldn’t sleep. Got up to get breakfast, and it didn’t take me any time to wolf it down. So I thought: do it, Pete. Get a Honda Civic. Hell, I never do anything.”

“Get the car if it’s important to you,” Charles says.

“I don’t know.… How do I know if it’s important to me? This morning I really thought I wanted to go to Florida. If I had, I guess I would have.”

“I think you could use another car, Pete,” Susan says. “Yours is pretty old now. Maybe you could hang onto it and let her drive it.”

“You think I ought to get a Honda Civic, huh?” Pete says. He pulls another tissue out of his pocket and blows his nose. “I should,” he says.

The bar they walk into is called The Sinking Ship. Charles remembers that it’s usually crowded with college kids, but most of them are away on vacation, so there’s a strange mixture of businessmen and hippies.

“This is swell,” Pete says. “You want to sit at a table, don’t you?”

They move to a table against the wall. There is a framed newspaper picture above the table of Nixon, Bebe Rebozo, and Robert Abplanalp. Charles stands long enough to read the caption. The three are on a boat, it seems. They all look like Mafia characters. A waiter comes to the table.

“What do you want?” Pete says.

“Could we split a pizza?” Susan says.

“Sure we could,” Pete says. “What would you like to drink?”

“Scotch on the rocks,” Charles says.

“A glass of red wine,” Susan says.

“A pitcher of beer for me,” Pete says.

“Okay. And is that a plain pizza? Mozzarella?”

“Right,” Pete says. The waiter goes away. His jeans have a small buckle across the back. He has on cowboy boots. The heels are scuffed.

Pete leans across the table. “Tell me something,” he says to Charles. “What was the worst thing I ever did to you?”

Charles looks into Pete’s face. Pete has a little broken vein on the side of his nose. Pete has a sharply pointed nose. There is a plaid blue-and-red scarf hanging unevenly around his neck. Pete combs his hair straight back. It is white at the temples, light brown back to his bald spot. Charles’s father was very handsome. He had curly brown hair and a broad chest. When Charles was little, he used to have him stand next to his leg so he could tell how tall he was getting. He died on the bus coming home from work. He would have died in his car, but he left the car with Clara. Tuesday was grocery day. Charles hopes that there wasn’t an embarrassing time for his father before he died — that he didn’t scream in pain, or have to look into any of the other passengers’ eyes. He wanted to ask the policeman who came to the house, but his throat always choked up when he was in the presence of a policeman.

“We don’t dislike you,” Susan says, patting Pete’s shoulder. It is the first time Charles has ever seen her voluntarily touch him.

“Neither of you like me much,” Pete says. “What did I ever do that was so awful?”

“One time when Susan was only about seven years old she made a snowman with some of your wood and …”

“Okay,” Pete interrupts. “I remember.”

Pete unfolds a napkin and puts it on his lap. He looks at it.

“But don’t kids forget about things like that? Forgive and forget and all that?” Pete says.

The envelope from Pamela Smith, Charles thinks.

“I forgive you,” Susan says.

“He doesn’t,” Pete says.

The waiter puts down the pitcher of beer. He puts a tray on the table and takes Susan’s and Charles’s drinks off it.

“I guess I’m not making you have a very pleasant time here,” Pete says. “After all this time you went out with me for a drink, and I sit here talking about the past.”

Maria Muldaur is singing “Midnight at the Oasis.” She offers to be a belly dancer; the person she is singing to can be her sheik. “Maria!” a middle-aged man hollers, raising his beer glass. “Boogie,” he says, bouncing in his chair.

“Aw c’mon,” Maria Muldaur sings.

“Boogie,” the man sings, rising again. The man sitting across from him reaches across the table and pushes him down. There is an argument. Charles expects one of the men to come flying at him, but the fight subsides. Once in a bar a man was thrown into his back. He was standing at the bar. He dropped his glass of beer. It went “clunk.” Charles didn’t know what had happened. Now he fears that people will fly into him at bars. He doesn’t stand at the bar any more because that way he has his back to all of them. Once he had a nightmarish vision of a policeman coming at him — crashing into him, actually — telling him he had an inoperable melanoma. He was so scared he froze. When the policeman said his father was dead he froze. Charles adjusts himself in his seat, to reassure himself that he can move all right.

“How’s college?” Pete says to Susan. “Have some pizza, Charles?”

“Thanks,” Charles says. The pizza is very good. He thinks about asking Pete to order another. This is very nice of Pete. He wishes he could say something nice to Pete that he felt sincerely. He frowns in concentration.

“Pizza’s hot, huh?” Pete says.

“Yeah,” Charles says.

“I don’t know, Pete,” Susan says. “I can’t figure out what to major in.”

“Not interested in anything, huh?” Pete says.

“I sort of like psychology and French, but I don’t know if I want to major in either of them.”

“No point in it, huh?” Pete says.

Charles is surprised; Pete sounds like him.

“A French major wouldn’t do me any good,” Susan says. “Because it’s the only language I know. To be an interpreter you have to know at least three.”

“Parlez-vous français?” Pete says. “Hell. I used to know French.”

Pete picks up the last piece of pizza. “I’ll order another one of these,” he says. “They’re little.”

“I forget everything,” Pete says, pouring beer into his glass. “I know that on the way in you kids were telling me to do something.”

“Buy the car,” Charles says.

“That’s right. Buy a Honda Civic.”

Connie Francis is singing “Where the Boys Are.” He saw that movie. Yvette Mimieux got raped. He would like to rape Laura. That’s not even true. He would just like to have a cheeseburger at McDonald’s with Laura. For almost half an hour he had not thought of Laura. He tries to switch his thoughts to … what was her name … Betty, to have an erotic vision of Betty. He sees a slightly plump woman in a dress and heavy black boots. He tries to imagine her without the black boots. It is impossible. The black boots will not come off her.

“I’m here, Connie,” the man who was hollering to Maria Muldaur calls to the ceiling speakers. “Boogie, boogie,” he calls.

The waiter comes to the table. “Another pizza,” Pete says. “More to drink?”

“I’ll have another one,” Charles says.

“A Coke for me,” Susan says.

“I’m set,” Pete says. When the waiter walks away, Pete says, “She wouldn’t come here with us even if she was out of the hospital.”

“She won’t go to bars?” Charles asks.

Pete shakes his head. “Anywhere. I tried to get her to take a boat ride this summer. They had a jazz band that played on the boat. You know, just a two-hour boat ride. Drinks and stuff. She locked herself in the bathroom. Said the boat would sink.”

“Did you tell the doctor about that?” Charles asks.

“I forgot about it. I’ve told so many stories to so many doctors. I’m always rambling about heating pads all over the house and how my bed pillow’s been missing for six months, and about the look she gets that I can’t describe. I’m always looking into doctors’ faces, trying to do imitations. The last doctor wanted her to go for group therapy. She wouldn’t go. Probably thought the chair would collapse.”

Susan laughs. Charles smiles. God, I’m glad I don’t live with her, Charles thinks.

“We ought to work on that,” Charles says. “Group therapy.”

“She wouldn’t go,” Pete says.

The second pizza is put on the table. Pete cuts a piece off with a little plastic fork. The tines are bent under. The pizza is very hot.

“I did an awful thing. When the pillow had been gone for a week, I cornered her. I cornered her in the kitchen. ‘You tell me where that pillow is,’ I said. She started to shake, looking right into my eyes, shoulders going back and forth. I was ashamed of myself.”

“Ever find the pillow?” Susan asks.

“No,” Pete says, draining his glass.

Mick Jagger begins “Wild Horses”: Tiiiiiiired of living …”

It occurs to Charles that songs are always appropriate. No matter what record is played, it is always applicable. Once, on a date in high school, when he was going to tell his date he loved her, Elvis Presley came on the radio singing “Loving You.” It always happens: politicians are always crooks, records are always applicable to the situation. Charles shrugs off his sweater. Martha and the Vandellas start to sing “Heat Wave.” Charles laughs.

“I know,” Pete says. “It is funny. A grown man with a messed-up wife, and what does he do but sit around his office stewing all day, then come home and corner her about a pillow.”

Susan laughs again. She pours some of Pete’s beer into her glass.

Mick Taylor has left The Rolling Stones. Mick Taylor replaced Brian Jones. Brian Jones is dead. Women all over the world claim to have babies that are his. All the babies look like Brian Jones. Mick Jagger got dumped by Marianne Faithfull (“It is the evening of the day.…”), who took drugs with him, and married Bianca, who walks around with a feather hat and cane. She has expensive jewelry. They have a child. A daughter? Should John Lennon stay in the U.S.A.? John Lennon went to the Troubadour with a Kotex on his head. In reply to the announcer’s query, a girl called to say, “I think John should stay here because he’s such a groovy musician.” “And what do you think about people being denied citizenship because of drug offenses?” The girl hung up.

Pete is having a very good time. He is smiling and wolfing pizza and looking all around.

“I hope they don’t change their minds tomorrow,” Pete says. “They always do that at that place.”

“She was only there once before,” Susan says.

“One night I took her there. She was home the next night, though,” Pete says. “Then some doctor called. ‘Who discharged your wife?’ he said. He hung up on me.”

Bob Dylan: “Time will tell just who has fell and who’s been left behind.…”

Pete reaches in his pocket for his wallet. “Look at this,” he says, handing his BankAmericard to Susan. She turns it over, looks at the front of it again, hands it back. Pete takes a twenty out of his wallet and puts it on top of the tray with the bill. The waiter picks it up.

“Back into the cold,” Pete says. As they leave, Charles looks back and sees the man who screamed to Maria Muldaur with his hands over his head. His head is resting on the table. Lou Reed is singing: “Good night ladies, ladies good night.…”

The snow is falling fast now — big wet flakes that probably won’t last.

“Thanks for having a drink with me,” Pete says. There is a mustache of sauce above his top lip.

“Thanks for taking us,” Charles says.

“Yes,” Susan says.

“I wish I had kids,” Pete says. “You kids are nice. But if I had my own kid it would probably be nuts about me, don’t you think?”

“Well,” Charles says. “Kids are so alienated from their parents now …”

“It’s too late anyway,” Pete says.

They break into a trot, Pete taking Susan’s hand to guide her around slick patches. They are all out of breath and shivering when they reach the hospital parking lot. The three lights have been turned off.

“Well, I’ll be seeing you,” Pete says. “Thanks for having a drink with me.”

“Good-bye,” Charles says.

“Thanks again,” Susan says.

“Hell, if you didn’t have a drink with me, I don’t know what kids would,” Pete says. “I got none of my own.”

Charles and Susan get in the car and drive away. He should have said something nice to Pete. He finds it impossible to bring himself to say something really nice. What is there really nice to say that wouldn’t just sound foolish? Even the fruit that Pete brought to the house after their father died was always wrong. The time he brought the oranges they had just been sent a crate of oranges from neighbors visiting Florida. Their mother made them take all the oranges out of the refrigerator — there were a lot of oranges — and put them in the crate and hide the crate so Pete’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt. Charles had to sleep with the crate of oranges under his bed. He felt like there was a bomb there. He couldn’t sleep. He tried to tell his mother that the Florida oranges were better; they should just mix Pete’s in with them. The crate stayed under the bed. Every morning they had fresh-squeezed orange juice, and at school, in their lunch box, there was always one and maybe two oranges. Susan got diarrhea. Charles didn’t; he always gave both of his oranges away. He gave them to a Japanese boy. None of the other kids wanted the oranges. They all had cookies. When he pressed them on the Japanese boy he took them without saying anything and put them in his desk. The second day he gave them to the Japanese boy Charles noticed that when the boy opened his desk the two oranges were still there. When there were six oranges the Japanese boy took them all home in a bag. The Japanese boy had no friends. He wouldn’t talk to anybody, even when they talked to him. He’d say hello to Charles, though. He called him “Mister Oranges.” Charles could never get beyond that with him. He asked him to come over to his house and play, and the boy just shook hands. When the oranges stopped coming, no questions were asked. The Japanese boy didn’t come back for the sixth grade. Somebody in the class found out that he had gone to Japan.

Charles had the same teacher for fifth and sixth grades. Her name was Mrs. Witwell. Of course she was called Witchwell, or just Mrs. Witch. This name was given to her when Mrs. Witwell dressed up as a witch at Halloween to pay a call on a friend’s first-grade class. She showed the fifth grade her getup: a long black skirt and blouse, pointed black hat and broom. She had powdered her face white. “The first grade will think I’m a real witch!” Mrs. Witwell said. Her fifth grade believed she was a real witch. The Japanese boy looked terrified.

Mrs. Witwell came to the funeral parlor. He was embarrassed to have her see him there. She came with an old lady, her mother. The book was signed “Eleanor and Dora Witwell.” It was the same handwriting with which Mrs. Witwell criticized his penmanship. He got up and ran to look at the book when she left. He no longer has any idea what he expected to see.

He turns into his driveway, surprised that Doctor Mark’s car still isn’t there. He has trouble getting up the driveway; it’s very slippery. After spinning awhile at the bottom, the car finally makes it halfway up, and he settles for that, putting on the emergency brake.

“That really wasn’t bad with Pete,” Susan says.

“He does try,” Charles says. “I just don’t feel comfortable with him. I was around him for so many years that I should, but I just don’t.”

“I hope he goes ahead and buys the Honda Civic,” Susan says. “I think he’s sad. Not to ever get to do anything.”

“He’s a grown man. There’s no reason he can’t bring himself to do anything. Living with her depresses him.”

“He ought to get out,” Charles says.

“Don’t wish that on her,” Susan says. “What would she do?”

“Plug in the heating pads, drink, read movie magazines. What she does now. I can’t believe she loves him.”

“It’s hard to tell how she feels,” Susan says.

“He should corner her and ask her that.”

“That’s cruel,” Susan says.

“I know. I don’t know. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for everybody,”

“If you just categorically feel sorry for everyone, it must be something bothering you.”

“That’s profound,” he says, taking off his coat. She hands him hers and sits down on the sofa, pulls the afghan over her.

“Can I say something you won’t want to hear?” Susan says.

“I have to hear things I don’t want to hear all the time. Go ahead.”

“I think you’re an egomaniac.”

Charles laughs. He had been expecting something terrible.

“Yeah. So what?”

“So you dismiss everything, even helpful criticism. You refuse to think.”

“Susan, I think all the time. I shake my head to try to stop the thoughts from coming.”

“What do you think about?”

“Isn’t that a little broad?”

“I know what you think about. You think about that girl. You deliberately make yourself suffer all the time because then you can be aware of yourself.”

“What’s all this?” he says. “Some dollar twenty-five Bantam paperback philosophy? One of those books with multicolored arrows going off in all directions or something?”

“Don’t you think I could have any thoughts of my own?”

“Everybody’s thoughts are acquired. Where did you acquire yours?”

“I don’t know, Charles. I just realized that what I’m saying now is true. You’re infantile.”

“Thanks for coming here to stay with me so you could put me down.”

“It’s not to put you down. I can tell it’s not working. You’re probably thinking of her right this minute.”

“You keep bringing her up. Don’t you notice that, Susan?”

“Just tell me whether I was wrong when I said that. Were you thinking about her?”

“I wasn’t,” he says. He was.

“You’re even a liar. I know you were thinking about her.”

“I was. So what?”

“It proves my point. That you dwell on it; you try to make yourself miserable. You’ve got to snap out of it.”

“What’ll happen to me if I don’t?” he says. He really is curious, but she thinks he’s making fun of her.

“You want me to preach so you can accuse me of preaching. You always have to be in control, like a two-year-old.”

Sam comes into the living room. He has on the same pajamas, the same ski socks.

“She’s giving me hell,” Charles says.

“I heard,” Sam says.

“Hi,” Susan says.

“Hi,” Sam says. “Some woman not Laura called,” he says to Charles.

“How do you know?”

“I know her voice. I’m very good with people’s voices on the phone.”

“A woman … who was it?”

“I should have asked. I was asleep. Wasn’t thinking.”

“Then it might have been Laura.”

“No. I’d know her voice.”

“Did she say she’d call back?”

“Yeah.”

Charles shrugs. Sam sits down on the floor and takes the ashtray off the sofa arm, lights a cigarette and throws the match in the ashtray.

“This thing wiped the shit out of me,” Sam says.

“Mark didn’t call again?” Susan says.

“Nope,” Sam says.

Sam sits with his elbows resting on his knees. He seems to have lost weight. His hair is dirty and stringy. He is still just as hoarse when he talks. Charles no longer thinks that he is dying of pneumonia. He is glad. He has known Sam since fourth grade, when Sam’s family moved to the area. He remembers Sam’s mother holding her son’s hand, leading him into the fourth-grade classroom. Sam whirled and slapped her hand as they came through the door. Sam was a troublemaker. Charles was not. He worshiped Sam. Sam would pretend to have coughing fits so that he’d be excused to get a drink of water, and then he’d go into the bathroom and get the door off the stall before he came back. Sam was quick, and he always had the right tools with him. Once he got the handle off the drinking fountain, and when everybody came in from the blacktop and raced for the fountain, the handle was gone. He was too smart to have it on him when the teacher checked. He had put it in a girl’s desk. After school the teacher watched Sam, so he couldn’t get it. The next morning when the girl opened her desk she found it and gave it to the teacher. Sam waited until the end of fifth grade, but he finally thought of the perfect thing to do: throw a mud ball at her. The girl threw a mud ball back and hit him in the forehead. There was a rock or something in her mud ball, and he still has the scar above his left eyebrow.

Charles picks up a pile of mail and opens first a small blue envelope addressed to him in unfamiliar handwriting. It is a small blue booklet: “Why you didn’t get a Christmas card from us.” He begins reading: “Did you wonder, in all the holiday hassle, why you didn’t get a Christmas card from Carolyn and Bud? The answer can be quickly given: Carolyn and Bud were having problems. But there’s more to the story than that. After all, each could have sent a card. But each was too preoccupied during the season of brotherly love to do so. To wit: Bud told Carolyn a week before Christmas that he was going to divorce her for a blonde cutie. Carolyn cried, agreed. Bud ran off that night with the cutie, and Carolyn ran around in her sweat suit in the cold streets all night, crazy with jealousy. The next morning she found Bud back, but she threw him out. The cutie called: Please, Carolyn, take him back. I know he never loved me. Not on your life (jog, jog). Bud then got irate. Mad at both of them. Would Bud have thought of sending you a Christmas card? Non, mesdames. Non, messieurs. Would Carolyn? Non. But here’s a late wish from her, and a ‘Here’s hoping your New Year is Merry.’ ” On the back page is written: “Sequel: Bud and C. are back together. How tasteless of C. to send this. Wait till Bud finds out. Will you be the one to tell? Love, C.”

“Whew,” Charles says. “Take a look at this, or did you already get one?”

Carolyn works at the store with Sam. Once he and Charles had dinner at their apartment. That was at least a year ago. How did they get his address?

“What do you make of that?” Charles says.

“I’m reading,” Sam says.

“What is it?” Susan says.

“A crazy letter sort of thing from Sam’s friends.”

“Good God,” Sam says, reading. “We went over there for dinner one time. Remember?”

“Good God,” Sam says, tossing it back to Charles. “Isn’t anybody happy? Or even sane?”

“Everybody’s not crazy,” Susan says. “You two are depressed all the time.”

“You’d be depressed too if you felt like I do,” Sam says.

“That’s not what I mean. I mean all the time.”

“You’re not here all the time. How do you know?”

Susan sighs, goes into the kitchen.

“I’m too depressed to apply my usual trenchant wit,” Sam says.

“I wasn’t depressed until she started in,” Charles says.

The phone rings. It is Pete, sounding very drunk.

“You don’t want to hear any more from me tonight, do you?” Pete says. He does not say “Hello.”

“Hello,” Charles says, stalling for time.

“ ‘Hello?’ ” Pete says. “I said hello. Now I’ve got to know the answer to my question.”

“Pete, you profess to love her. You’re not going to do her any good going out and getting juiced the night before she comes home.”

“Don’t criticize me,” Pete says. “Just answer my question.”

“You asked if I was glad to hear from you, didn’t you? I was, Pete, until it turned out that you were drunk.”

“In my day a youngster would never never speak to an old man that way.”

“Pete, you’re not an old man. Try to cheer up. She’s coming home tomorrow and it might work out this time.”

“I’ve got one thing to tell you,” Pete says. “I found the pillow. Do you know where I found it? In the attic. Some birds had gotten into it. It will never, never work out.”

“Pete, maybe some friend of yours not so close to the problem could advise you better than I can. I don’t really know what to say.”

“What did you say was the worst thing I ever did to you again? I’ve forgotten.”

“Pete, you’re drunk. Where are you?”

“I’m at home. Where do you think my attic is?”

“I’m glad to hear that, because the driving is very dangerous. You’re just drinking at home?”

“If I went nuts,” Pete says, “I wouldn’t have anybody to take care of me. My brother came from Hawaii. Now where is he? Running around an orchid patch. Eating macadamia nuts. I don’t know. I don’t have anybody but myself to depend on.”

“Would you like me to come over?” Charles says.

“That’s very decent of you. But I don’t want you to come.”

“Okay. I hope things go okay tomorrow. Take it easy, Pete.”

“Are there any old people you like a lot?” Pete asks.

Charles does not know any old people. “No,” he says.

“So what you’re saying is that it’s nothing personal,” Pete says. “I’m glad to hear that. You’re a very honest young fellow. Now tell me honestly, Charles, what was it you said was the worst thing I ever did to you?”

“In the bar I told you about the time Susan made the snowman with your wood. You never really did one particularly rotten thing to me, Pete. I don’t hate you, and I never did. I’m not too close to you. That’s all. You never paid any attention to Susan or me. We never talked. How can you expect us to talk now?”

“You mean that if I had a boy he’d talk to me the same way?” Pete says. “My own boy would shoot straight from the hip, too?”

“That’s just an assumption I make, Pete. I don’t know very many people my age who don’t have trouble talking to their parents.”

“That’s kind of you to say,” Pete says. “You mean to console me, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Charles says. He sits in the chair, figuring he’s in for a long talk. Pete hangs up.

“Pete? Hello?”

Charles puts the phone down, shakes his head, goes back to the living room. The phone rings again immediately.

“He’s not making a monkey of me,” Charles says.

Susan gets up.

“I’m not going to talk to him again,” Charles says. It is Doctor Mark, who will be there within the hour.

Sam sighs and goes to bed. Charles sits beside Susan on the sofa and stares across the room. There are tiny cracks in the wall. Fitting, fitting. He takes off his shoes, puts his feet under him. It is cold in the house. Is it less cold or more cold in Laura’s A-frame? Susan files a fingernail. Charles looks through the rest of the mail: a fuel oil bill for $6441, a letter from the Audubon Society, telling him that animals are dying. He can buy a set of “endangered species” glasses, or salt and pepper shakers with cardinals on them. A letter from the Humane Society, telling him that people throw their kittens in trash cans, etc., and asking for money. An overdue notice for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It is eleven o’clock. In nine and a half hours he will be sitting at his desk. He wishes he could work at night when nobody was there. He asked his boss about that, and his boss said, “You’re lucky I don’t say anything about your taking off for lunch at five of eleven.” “I only take an hour for lunch,” Charles said. “You can’t work at night,” his boss said. One night his boss asked him if he wanted to be in a poker game “over the line.” Charles said he didn’t know how to play poker. His boss thinks that he is hopelessly dumb. Not the quality of his work, but the personal things he has found out about him: ready for lunch at eleven, wants to work at night, can’t play poker, has a boxwood plant in his window. “What’s the story on that?” his boss said, pointing to the little white plastic container with the little green bush in it. “I bought it in the supermarket,” Charles said. Charles didn’t think he was being evasive. Behind his back, his boss tells people that he is evasive even about small things.

In five years he has had two promotions. He is probably going to get a third promotion. After the first promotion he moved into a different building, the building he is in now and the building he will stay in, even if he gets the third promotion. He has always requisitioned an unusually large number of U. S. Government pens and boxes of paper clips, which he gives away: a box to Susan at school, a box for his mother (“These might come in handy by the telephone”); he even gave Laura a box once, and that was crazy, because she could have requisitioned a box if she had wanted them. When he began working there everyone wore a jacket and tie. Now nobody does. He has a jacket hanging on the coatrack in his office just in case, but he has never had to put it on except for a few days in the summer when the air conditioning got so cold that he needed it. When he heard that he might be getting another promotion he had a nightmare in which his secretary — he would have a secretary if he got the promotion — came into his office and he said to her, “Take a letter. Any letter.” Then he laughed wildly. The woman stood there. In the dream she had been a short, brown-haired woman, not as old as he might have feared. His first building wasn’t bad. It was a ten-story brown brick building, and he walked up to his office on the fifth floor every day to keep in shape. Now he works in a mud-colored glass building and only walks to his office on the twenty-first floor once a week, on Friday. One Friday, walking up, his cassette player going, he saw an employee flatten himself against the wall, wide-eyed, frightened, obviously, of what might have been coming for him. The employee had acted very strangely. It was about the sixteenth or seventeenth floor and Charles was very winded, so he just lifted his hand in greeting. The employee ran under his arm, like an animal running out a gate. There were a lot of nervous people in the building, and it always seemed to him that quite a number of women coming out of the rest room looked as if they had been crying. Laura said that wasn’t so; she had never seen a woman crying in the rest room. He was always surprised that so many people in the employees’ cafeteria kept their plates on the wet brown tray. He always took the dishes off and put the tray in the rack, but most of the people ate right from the tray.

The knock on the door is Doctor Mark. He rushes in when Susan opens the door as if he’s really glad to be there. He is as she described him. Passing him on the street, Charles might have thought he was a musician. His hands, circling Susan’s back, are very large and graceful. In a bar, Charles might have mistaken him for a homosexual.

“How do you do?” Mark says, extending one of the big hands. Susan is still pressed against him with the other.

Charles shakes his hand. “Hello,” he says.

“Mighty cold and snowy,” Mark says. The big hand goes back around Susan.

“Can I get you some coffee?” Charles says.

“I take no artificial stimulants,” Mark says. “But. Thank you.”

“Milk?” Charles says. Is there any milk?

“I’m loaded with calcium for the day, thank you,” Mark says.

Charles revises his opinion of him. He would never work up to Disque Bleu’s. The most he can hope for is Gauloises.

“Sue, Sue, let me look at you,” he says.

Definitely homosexual.

“It’s very nice, you letting me barge in on you tonight,” Mark says.

Charles frowns. Susan hugs Mark’s neck, lets go of him to sit in a chair.

“May I stay the night? I’m afraid I’m. Much too late to start back now.”

“Sure,” Charles says.

“May I ask. How is your mother?”

“She’s going home tomorrow, Mark,” Susan says.

“That’s very lucky,” Mark says, emphasizing the words to convey that it is not.

“Just before you came Pete called, though, and he’s drunk again.”

“That actually kills brain cells,” Mark says.

“I don’t think he cares. He’s so miserable living the way he does now,” Charles says.

“That’s it!” Mark says. “In the final analysis it’s up to the individual. No amount of coaxing can make a person care who does not want to care.” Mark’s voice goes up loudly on the last five words.

Charles looks at Mark’s feet. Soaking wet tennis shoes.

“Take your shoes off. I can get you some socks.…”

“No, no,” Mark says, as if Charles had asked to see his penis. “I’m fine. Feet are fine.”

“They’re wet,” Charles says.

Mark frowns. “Rose hips?” he says.

“What?” Charles says, leaning forward.

“Rose hips,” Mark replies.

“He doesn’t have any,” Susan says.

“Ah,” Mark says, as if delighted.

“How was your trip?” Susan asks.

“My trip. Well, I can tell you that it was long and cold, made less so by Brahms. A wonderful station that played much Brahms the last stretch.”

“Are you a musician?” Charles says.

“I play piano. Unprofessionally.”

Charles wants very much to ask if he’s gay.

“How was the car?” Susan asks.

“Well. I can tell you it started off with problems. And a stopover at a service station was necessary because of overheating. Clouds of smoke came out of the car. A small puncture. In. The hose.”

Charles breaks into a smile. That’s it … the guy talks like a J. P. Donleavy character.

“Do you read Donleavy?” Charles asks.

“Donelly?” Marks says. He turns his head to the side. Charles wishes he had a kidskin glove to slap his cheek with.

“No, no, Donleavy! Yes. The Ginger Man.”

Mark looks at Charles, expecting the conversation to go on.

“Of course I don’t read the number of novels I would like to,” Mark says.

“What would you like to read?” Charles asks.

“You’re being obnoxious,” Susan says.

Charles is genuinely curious. He wishes Susan knew that. She misunderstands him, thinks he’s obnoxious every time he’s curious.

“Jane Austen,” Mark says with gravity.

Figures. And probably Thomas Pynchon, too.

“I’ve got a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow I’m done with. Would you like it?” Charles says.

The head turns to the side again. “By …?” Mark says.

“Pynchon.”

“Ah! Pynchon. V.”

Susan is filing a fingernail.

“Thank you, but I have little time to read novels.”

“I guess med school is really rough,” Charles says. “Susan says you plan to specialize in surgery.”

“Neurosurgery, yes,” Mark says.

“I read a thing in some newspaper about a doctor in some South American country who pulled a woman’s eyes out of the socket and cleaned them and picked off tumors and put the eyes back. TO cure her of migraines and double vision.”

“God!” Marks says. “That’s revolting. That’s not possible, I’m sure.”

“Oh God,” Susan groans.

“No wonder people are afraid of doctors when they read things like that,” Mark says.

“That’s sickening,” Susan says. “Did you make that up?”

“No. It’s in the same paper that has a denial from representatives of Frank Zappa that Frank Zappa had a bowel movement on stage.”

“Oh God,” Susan says.

“I follow those rags for kicks,” Charles says. “You know, they’re still full of JFK gossip. JFK jumping out of women’s windows when he was President, JFK a vegetable on Onassis’s island.…”

Susan puts down the fingernail file. “I’m going to have something to drink,” she says. “Is anyone else?”

“Oh. No.” Mark says.

“Maybe I’ll go to bed,” Charles says. “It’s been another long, though glorious, day.”

Mark stands. “Thank you very. Much for your kindness,” he says.

“You’re welcome,” Charles says.

“Good night,” Susan says, going into the kitchen.

“Good night,” Charles says.

In his dream that night Charles is sitting behind a desk — in his office, presumably — and Mark is standing in front of him. “Take a letter. Any letter,” Charles says, and wakes up laughing. The house is silent. He hopes they didn’t hear him. He lies there with his eyes open for some time, listening to the silence.

What if JFK is a vegetable somewhere? He closes his eyes and pictures Kennedy, round-faced and thick-haired, then sees him as a dancing green pepper, his smiling round face a little knob on top. He opens his eyes. Blackness. Kennedy’s favorite fiction writer was Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming was turned into a neurotic by his crazy mother. He closes his eyes and pictures Sean Connery driving a broad-nosed sports car that metamorphoses into a corncob. He opens his eyes again. He is hungry. He imagines dancing apples. There is nothing good in the house to eat. Tomorrow he will go to the Grand Union and buy all his favorite foods. Grand. Holden Caulfield hated that word. He thought it was phony. That cover illustration of Catcher In The Rye: Holden in a big gray overcoat, hat turned around, pointing down his back. Saw a movie once starring William Holden that was scary. Can’t remember the title or the plot, just the name William Holden. The dancing apples. “Aw, c’mon now, Mama.…” “Geoooooooorge Stevens!” George Washington. Famous portrait of Washington left unfinished because artist took on more than he could handle. Very ambitious artist. Washington who chased his slaves or Jefferson? Laura. Chasing Laura. “I’m gonna get you, Laura.” Cornered in the library. “Are you crazy, Charles?” Government employees. If I were a carpenter, if Laura were a lady. First of 1975. Guy Lombardo waving his stick around, head moving more energetically than the stick, old Guy up there, shaking his stick. Guy Fawkes Day. Firecrackers. Fanne Foxe, The Argentine Firecracker. “Ya-hoo, I’m just a country girl from Argentina.” The girl from the north country. She once was a true love of mine. Laura. Laura against the bookshelf: “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” “Aw, now, Sapphire, I can explain …”