Chilly Scenes of Winter

NINE

Coming home from work, Charles sees Sam’s car parked outside. The car looks as though it has a flat tire on one side; it tilts noticeably to the right. Charles gets out of his car and looks it over. There is no fiat tire. The car does tilt noticeably to the right. While he is there, Charles tries to open the door on the passenger’s side. It doesn’t open. He tries the driver’s side. It doesn’t open. Charles walks up his front lawn to take this good news to Sam. Sam is in the tub, doing his “singing in the tub” number. He is grunting, so he must be kicking. The radio is turned to a classical music station. There is a can of V-8 on the table.

Charles sits down and begins opening the mail. There is a letter from Susan. Not a letter, it turns out, but a brief note. “I couldn’t tell you over the phone that Mark swallows to avoid stuttering. Isn’t it amazing how well that works? Found out Elise is in Vail. But by the time you get this she’ll probably be back at school. I’m sorry she caused you so many problems. I hope Mother isn’t. Love, Susan.”

“Hiya,” Sam says. “I brought over a few boxes. I’ve decided to sell my furniture. I gave away the two black chairs today to people in the building. I might get some money for that crummy sofa.” His mother gave him the sofa when his father got the apartment. His father went out and bought one just like it for his apartment, but still complains that the original sofa isn’t still at the house.

“How did it go at work?” Sam asks.

“I got up the nerve to find out Betty’s phone number.”

“Who’s Betty?”

“A secretary there. She used to pal around with Laura.”

“You don’t mean you’re going to get at Laura somehow through her?”

“No. In fact, I’m so unimpressed with Betty that I left the piece of paper with her number on it out in my car. Which reminds me: you were right. Both doors are stuck.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. I tried them. And there’s something funny about the way that car is balanced. Your shocks must be gone or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“It tilts.”

“I’ll just prop it up with cinder blocks.”

“How are you going to drive it?”

“I’ll put roller skates on the cinder blocks.”

“You’re in a jovial mood.”

“My hangover finally went away. I’ve slept on every piece of furniture in your house today. Kept falling asleep. I finally feel okay again.”

“That’s good. Want to go out for dinner?”

“Yeah. Where should we go?”

“Some place close. The seafood place. Feel like that?”

“Those old men are depressing.”

“We don’t have to sit at the bar. We can get a table.”

“I don’t think they’re too clean.”

“Where do you want to go, Sam?”

“Delicatessen?”

“Okay. Sure. I want to wash my face first.”

“You’re not pissed off that I’m moving in?”

“No. I’m glad you took me up on it. You can save some money this way.”

“Thanks a lot,” Sam says. “I’m really a very nice person,” Charles says. “You do a good imitation of her,” Sam says.

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to go out and see if I can get one of my doors open,” Sam says.

Charles takes a swig of the V-8, goes into the bathroom, and runs the water. Sam’s toothbrush is in the toothbrush holder: a red toothbrush. Even Sam’s toothbrush is falling apart; the bristles splay outward. Charles fills the sink and leans over, closing his eyes and putting his face in the water. He puckers his lips and blows a thin stream of bubbles underwater. It would be wonderful to be submerged in water, to wade out, off the coast of Bermuda, until the water slowly covered his head, and then to blow a thin stream of bubbles before bobbing up for air. To arch his back and glide in the water until his body was horizontal, eyes on the blue, blue sky. The idea is so appealing that he runs the water in the bathtub. At least he can get all of his chest underwater before his knees come up. He sits on the toilet watching the water flow into the bathtub. He thinks of his mother, of the time she called him to get her out because she was having terrible stomach cramps, and how he had to go into the bathroom and lift her from under her arms. She was dead weight, and was complaining so much she wouldn’t follow orders. He started laughing, because he suddenly thought of her as a big shark, a big, slippery fish that he could just let go of, and it would return to the depths of the ocean. He was laughing so hard, and she was complaining so loudly, that neither of them heard Pete come in. Charles didn’t know he was there until Pete spoke from behind him, and then he was so genuinely surprised that he almost did let go. Pete held a towel in front of her as Charles hauled her out. After it happened about ten more times, though, Pete not only didn’t hold a towel in front of her, he didn’t even wrestle her into her bathrobe once she was on the bed. Saturday. He has to go over there for dinner Saturday.…

“Frozen,” Sam calls, walking through the house. “Pipes in the kitchen, too. The water running in there?”

“Yeah,” Charles says.

“Mind if I come in and fill a pan with hot water so I can pour it on the car lock?”

“Just a minute,” Charles says. He gets up and sits in the bathtub. He ran the water too hot, and whistles as he sits down. “Okay,” Charles says.

Sam’s cheeks are very pink, and his hair covers his forehead.

“Man, is it ever cold out there. I’ll bet this is the coldest night of the year. If I’d only thought, I could have bought some groceries so we wouldn’t have to go out.”

“Delicatessen’s not far. We’ll make it.”

“Why don’t we eat at the seafood place? That was where you wanted to go, wasn’t it?”

Sam turns off the water, leans against the sink facing Charles in his bath. His mother used to do that. “If you can wash yourself so good, let’s see you wash,” she’d say.

“Delicatessen’s all right with me,” Charles says.

“I’d just as soon have some oysters,” Sam says. “Why don’t we go ahead and eat at the seafood place?”

“I thought you said the old men depressed you.”

“So we can eat at a table.”

“I said that to you before.”

“Okay. That’s what we’ll do then,” Sam says, leaving the bathroom.

Charles sighs. He was all set for hot pastrami and potato salad. He leans back to relax, knocking over a shampoo bottle on the edge of the tub. He retrieves it, leans back again. He thinks about how nice it would be to be a fish, a trout, maybe, fanning his gills in the dark, cold water. A trout is a phallic symbol. He shakes the thought out of his head. “I know too much,” he says out loud. He picks up the soap and makes a lather, drops it back into the soap dish. It slips out. He reaches into the water for it, then realizes that it is his bar of soap, and if he wants to be wasteful, he can be. His mother used to nag him about putting the soap back in the dish. “If you’re so smart you can put the soap back in the dish so the next person who bathes can have more than a chip.” Saturday. Maybe something will happen and he can get out of it.

“It’s started to snow,” Sam hollers.

“Did you hear me?” Sam hollers again. “It’s snowing.”

“Yeah,” Charles says. “I heard it was supposed to snow.”

“I really blew it,” Sam says. “I should have gone out for food.”

Charles runs a little hot water into the tub, swirls it around with his foot. He thinks back on his day; his boss’s son came in to meet him, and he disliked him. He had on an argyle vest and black loafers, and mumbled like Marlon Brando. He had Brando’s gestures, too — a wave of the hand to dismiss something (usually his own statement), a turn of the head to look first away, then down. He said very little, and what he did say was so softly spoken that Charles couldn’t pick up on anything except the wave of the hand and the ironic laugh that followed. He is glad not to have children. He remembers sitting on a stool in his father’s workroom. “You’ve heard of screwing, right?” He is glad he doesn’t have a child he would have to explain sex to. Betty. Does Betty want to get married and have children? She seems to want only reports that she can type. He asked her today for her phone number. He said that he intended to call her to invite her to a small party he was giving soon. What small party? He doesn’t know anybody. At the last minute he chickened out, couldn’t say the word “date.” Betty looked very hopeful all the same. She wrote the number, very efficiently, on his memo pad, coming around to his side of the desk to do it. Laura would know what her perfume was. A very heavy scent, obviously fake. Everything about Betty is obvious: the clothes she wears betray her bulges, the perfume is meant to draw attention. Today she had on one of the new longer skirts (he saw this in last week’s Sunday Times: “the new longer skirts,” they were called) and a pale blue blouse that wasn’t bad. Except that she had on some ugly piece of jewelry that hung down the front of it. And the black boots. Maybe he could ask her to go puddle jumping.

The phone rings. Charles sits up, trying to hear Sam’s end of the conversation. It sounds as though Sam is mumbling. Maybe Sam has left and has been replaced by his boss’s kid.

“It was Pete,” Sam hollers. “I told him you were in the tub. He said you don’t have to call back, but he wanted to remind you to act surprised about the Honda Civic.”

“Oh, Christ,” Charles says.

“You didn’t tell me he bought a new car.”

“It’s not the first thing I’d think to tell you about.”

“He sounds happy as hell,” Sam says.

“She’ll ruin it for him. Just give her time,” Charles says. He lifts the stopper and puts it in the soap dish. He lets most of the water drain out before he reaches in for the soap.

“I don’t want to rush you, but if we’re taking my car; we’d better get out there before the lock re-freezes,” Sam says. He is drinking V-8 and listening to the stereo through the headphones. He screams the statement. Charles nods, goes into his bedroom and throws the towel over the lamp. He puts on underwear, goes through his drawer looking for a clean pair of jeans. His clothes are all dirty. He has to go to the laundromat. Maybe on the way to his mother’s. Saturday. He lies on the bed, suddenly tired. He flips the bedspread over him. He looks like a mummy. He closes his eyes. A party he’s giving. My God. Call Audrey and the cripple, ask Pete to stop by? Have Sam carry around trays of little crackers with bits and pieces of things on top?

His mother and father used to give birthday parties for him. His father would blow up balloons on the bicycle pump and hang them on crepe paper that was strung from tree to tree in the back yard. When the pin oak died there was nowhere left to string them to, so the crepe paper tapered down to his mother’s clothesline — one of those metal things that look like an umbrella blown inside out. That was his last party. After that his father was dead. First the pin oak, then his father. Once he had a chocolate cake shaped like a football. Another time three kids gave him the same present, and he and his father rode down to the hospital to donate the other two to a playroom there. His father was pronounced D.O.A. at that hospital not long after that. He and his mother went to the hospital in the police car. Inside, Charles wanted very much to think of an excuse to go back to that playroom to see if the toys were still there. His attention kept wandering. His mother kept crying. The toy was called “Mr. Jumping Bunny”—a metal bunny that could be wound with a key to jump. He got a lot of nice presents at his birthday parties. One of his all-time favorites was a pair of wooden stilts that he wore to school to march in the Halloween parade, and that he later walked around the cellar with, pretending to be his dead father. Once he and his father had a “fencing” duel with the stilts, and his mother had run out into the backyard to stop them. “Those huge pieces of wood! What if one of you had an accident?” When Pete first married his mother he used to try to initiate games with Charles, but he never wanted to play because Pete didn’t know how to improvise. He played everything straight, and it was a big bore: with badminton rackets he played badminton (his father had made a game of picking dandelions from the lawn and hitting them as though they were baseballs and the badminton rackets bats), with the Monopoly board he played Monopoly, there were no unexpected twists to the card games they played (his father had asked, “Ever play 52 pickup? Want to?”).

Charles turns on his side, facing the wall. He closes his eyes and tries to remember his father. He can’t. He gets an image of a black-haired man with a handlebar mustache and blue eyes, the man who was painted on the mug Charles gave him one Father’s Day. He closes his eyes again and tries to picture Pete. He sees him perfectly, opens his eyes immediately.

He gets up and puts on a pair of dirty pants, a blue shirt, and an old sweater.

“Ready to go?” he asks. Sam looks at him blankly, takes the headphones off.

“Ready to go?” Charles says.

“Oh. Sure. Let me get my coat.”

They put on their coats (he will have to take all that stuff out of the closet so Sam will have some place better than the upright ironing board to hang his things on).

“If you want to bring any of your furniture over here, even if you just want to stick it in the attic to store, feel free. We could use some tables and things like that.”

“Oh. That’s very nice of you,” Sam says, starting the car. “If you’d like me to, I can bring the coffee table over and the round table.”

“Sure. Bring it. I don’t care what the place looks like.”

Sam looks hurt. He has said the wrong thing.

“It’s nice-looking stuff, anyway.”

Sam looks less hurt “I’ll get it tomorrow,” he says. “It’s going to be here when you come home.”

Big thrill. Tables will await him. He could, of course, have that little party, and there would be tables to put the hors d’oeuvres on. He and Sam could make the hors d’oeuvres he had at his boss’s house three years ago: crackers with a slice of hard-boiled egg on them, topped with caviar. What a swell time they could all have. They could invite the man who comes around to inspect the meter in the cellar — a very nice man named Ray Roy. When Charles isn’t home, he leaves a little piece of paper saying, “Be by end of week. Ray Roy.”

Pete takes pride in the fact that no one has been admitted to read the meter since he came to the house. “Why let them down in my cellar? What for?” It would give Pete and Ray Roy something to talk about, as they nibbled hors d’oeuvres.

“What are you smoldering about?” Sam asks.

“I’m just in a lousy mood. I’m tired.”

“Do a lot of work today?”

“No. I haven’t had a lot of work to do for months, for some reason. I asked Betty for her telephone number today, though.”

“Going to take her out?”

“I told her I was going to have her over to a party.”

“When are you having a party?”

“When I make some friends.”

“Oh,” Sam says. “I don’t get it.”

“I didn’t want to ask her for a date on the spot, but I’d asked her for her number, and I had to say something.”

“Yeah. I was always giving my dog orders or calling her when I didn’t need her. I was always retracting my statements to the dog. She got to know what ‘never mind’ meant.”

“Why don’t you get yourself another dog? Bring it to my place. I wouldn’t mind have a dog around.”

“It depresses me that I have time to train it, that I could actually just sit around all day teaching it stuff.”

“Why should that depress you? Get the dog and teach it stuff.”

“Nah. There’s too much stuff to teach them. It’s too much effort.”

“Get one already trained.”

“I like puppies.”

“Sure is snowing like hell,” Charles says. “Maybe this will get me out of dinner tomorrow.”

“It’s tomorrow, huh?”

“You’re lucky your parents only expect you to show up on Christmas.”

“I go over there more than that.”

“Yeah, but they only expect you on Christmas.”

“That’s true.”

“And at least you don’t have to fish them out of the tub and watch them medicate themselves the whole time you’re there.”

“On Christmas I got to sit at a card table my father had put up in the living room that he was working a puzzle on top of. I had to pretend to be interested in fitting a pizza puzzle together.”

“That’s not as bad as having to fish somebody out of the bathtub.”

“Why won’t she stand up?”

“She sits there perspiring until she collapses. I think she soaks the strength out of her. Really. And then we have to pull her out. That causes bruises, and that gives her something else to complain about”

“She’s really nuts,” Sam says.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I will think about getting a dog,” Sam says. “You have any preference?”

“No. Just some mutt from the pound.”

“What if I find another job, though? Then I’d have to leave it, and it wouldn’t be trained.”

“I told you. Get a dog that’s been trained.”

“I’d miss not having a puppy.”

“Then get a puppy and just figure on not looking for a job.”

“I feel bad, just sitting around.”

“You can go get the groceries.”

“I feel like a goddamn wife.”

“If you feel like a wife, forget the groceries. I can’t see how you’d mind working with a dog, though.”

“I’m just being silly. I’m going to get groceries tomorrow.”

“I never had anything you cooked.”

“Sure you did. I used to make banana bread.”

“Is that what you plan on making for dinner?”

“I might make that and something to go with it.”

“Go ahead. I can eat anything.”

Another mistake. Sam doesn’t look enthusiastic any more. He pulls into the parking lot next to the restaurant.

They walk into the restaurant and get a booth in the room next to the raw bar. One of the old men who works behind the raw bar has the underside of his thumb missing, a deep, perfectly shaped oval, from opening clams when he was drunk. Charles thinks about the thumb, even though he doesn’t have to see it. Sam and Charles sit down in a booth. The person at the table next to the booth nods to Charles, and Charles nods back. Who is it? He’d ask Sam if he looks familiar, but Sam already has the menu in front of his face. Sam always orders the same thing: crab imperial. He also always looks at the menu. Charles picks up his menu. There is what appears to be a dancing cookie on the plastic cover: a circle with dancing feet and arms akimbo, pulling a fish out of the water. The water is represented by a wavy line. There are no other fish in the water; only the one the dancing cookie pulls out. The fish who has been pulled out is smiling. Inside, all the prices have been crossed out or inked over — fives changed into eights with strangely shaped tops — and there is a little piece of paper stapled to the top left, saying that there is a ten percent increase on all marked prices. Still, it’s a good place for the money. The crab imperial is only four-fifty, and the shrimp are four dollars even. Beer is still fifty cents a bottle. The waitress comes to the table. She looks very much like the only other waitress in the restaurant, except that the other one has bright red hair. This one has bright blond hair, a black uniform, and hands ragged with varicose veins.

“I’ll have the crab imperial and a Miller’s,” Sam says.

“The crabcakes,” Charles says.

“What to drink?” she says.

“A Bass Ale,” Charles says.

She walks away, leaving the menus. Charles studies the cover. At the bottom is written “art by Al M., 1973.” He puts the menu on top of Sam’s, looks around the restaurant. The hippie at the next table catches his eye again, and smiles.

“The waiter from The Sinking Ship,” the hippie says.

“Oh, sure. I knew your face was familiar.”

The hippie’s plate is empty, and there are several empty beer mugs on the table.

“Good food here,” the hippie says.

“Yeah. We come here quite often,” Charles says. “This is my friend, Sam. My name is Charles, by the way.”

“Oh, hi,” the hippie says, lifting his hand to Sam. “I think I’ve seen you around.” He spins an empty beer mug.

“Just don’t eat the food there,” the hippie says to Charles.

“Why?” Charles says.

“I was making a club sandwich one night and cut my finger, and I was so fed up with the whole thing that I just turned the piece of bread over and served the thing anyway.” He takes a long drink from his half-empty mug.

“My name’s J.D. I don’t guess you’d have any reason to remember that,” he says. “They make us sign the checks. They tell us to use an exclamation point, too, after the ‘Thank You.’ ”

“Been there long?” Sam says.

“I was there for a year part-time at night when I was in school. But after I dropped out I started working ten hours a day, six days a week. It’s a drag. Today’s my day off.”

“That’s rough,” Charles says.

“It’s rough, and I don’t have anything to show for it. Last night somebody slashed my tires. I get out after eleven hours — my replacement didn’t show — and there were the cut tires.”

“Neighborhood’s getting bad,” Sam says.

“It is,” J.D. says.

The waitress comes to their booth with the beer, puts it down on Miller’s coasters.

“How about joining us?” Charles says.

J.D. nods, moves his almost entirely empty mug to their table, sits next to Charles.

“Who’s that clown who’s always shouting for Maria Muldaur?” Charles asks.

“He’s a sociology professor. I kid you not. He takes a new one home every night The way he operates, he’ll get Maria Muldaur home eventually.”

“Shit,” Sam says. “I wish I was still a goon back in college.”

“Fine goon you were. Phi Beta Kappa,” Charles says.

“Yeah, but I acted goony. I hollered in bars.”

“You should have been there last night,” J.D. says. “Some drunk kept flicking matches at the ceiling speakers, and damn if he didn’t launch one high enough to set it on fire.”

“You’d think it would burn out before it got up there,” Charles says.

“I can’t understand it either, and I was in physics,” J.D. says. “If I had the money, I’d sit around bars again,” Sam says. “I used to have a good time sitting around bars.”

“What do you do?” J.D. asks. “Unemployed jacket salesman.” J.D. shakes his head, drains his beer.

“Hey, you guys do me a favor? Loan me fifty cents so I can get another one of these things. I’ll give it to you next time you’re in the bar.”

“Sure,” Charles says. “Just go ahead and order.”

“I was supposed to have a date tonight,” J.D. says, “but when I called she said — you’re not going to believe this — she said, ‘I’m not going to be ready at seven.’ I said, ‘What time should I come by?’ She said, ‘I’m not going to be ready ever.’ Then she hung up.”

“Why’d she do that?” Sam says.

“Beats me. She asked me if I’d take her to the movies. Called me and asked me if I’d take her. Hell, I’m better off not being with her, I guess, if I’ve got to sit through Paul Newman.”

“Hey,” Sam says. “Did you hear anything about Rod Stewart being dead?” J.D. shakes his head.

“He’s not dead,” Sam says. “That girl was putting me on.”

“Somebody told you he was dead?”

“Yeah. Girl I used to work with.”

“Nuts. Women are all nuts. Another time this same girl, the one who called me to ask if I’d take her to a Paul Newman movie, had me take her to the zoo. She had me buy her an ice cream cone and a balloon, then she said she wanted to go home. ‘Don’t you want to do anything else while we’re here?’ I said, and she said, ‘Yeah. Buy postcards.’ That was it. We went home.”

“She sounds like a million laughs,” Charles says. “I don’t know. I don’t have any luck finding nice chicks,” J.D. says. “I don’t either,” Sam says. The waitress puts down their dinners. “One more beer,” J.D. says. She nods and goes away.

“She’s married to the guy behind the raw bar,” J.D. says. “I saw them having a fight out in the parking lot one night.”

“She’s a beauty,” Sam says. “There’s just not many good-looking women around any more.”

“They all wear brassieres now too,” J.D. says.

“Yeah. What the hell’s happening?” Sam says, spooning out some crab imperial.

“It’s the fucking end of the world is what’s happening,” J.D. says.

The waitress comes back to the table with J.D.’s beer.

“When women put their brassieres back on and want you to take them to Paul Newman movies. I used to live with a woman in New Mexico. I wish I’d never left New Mexico. Small stuff pissed me off. I got tired of looking at roosters. She hasn’t put any goddamn brassiere on.”

“I don’t care if they wear brassieres or not,” Sam says, “as long as they’ve got tits. They sure don’t act like they’ve got tits any more.”

“Everything’s going to hell,” J.D. says. He swirls the beer in his mug. “I sure am glad I ran into you guys.”

“I don’t think we’ll prove too uplifting,” Charles says.

“You’re making this beer possible. That’s uplifting.”

Somebody starts the jukebox. Tammy Wynette sings “Stand By Your Man.”

“That’s all that’s left that thinks right,” J.D. says. “Redneck women.”

“You see that movie?” Charles asks. “That was a great movie.”

“Five Easy Pieces. Yeah. I was so goddamn happy when Jack Nicholson gave that waitress a hard time, even if it was just a movie.”

“I should think you’d sympathize with the waitress, being a waiter and all.”

“No. She deserved it” J.D. points to Charles’s piece of lemon. “Are you planning to use that?”

“No. Go ahead.”

J.D. squirts lemon juice in his mouth, swallows beer. “I’m pretending it’s tequila,” he smiles.

“Have a tequila,” Charles says. “You can pay me back next time I see you.”

“That’s mighty nice of you. It was a real break running into you guys.”

“A tequila, please,” Charles says to the waitress.

She gives no sign that she heard. In a few minutes she returns with a shot of tequila.

“To sticking together,” J.D. says, downing the tequila.

“Whether we stick together or not, I’ve got the feeling we’re screwed,” Sam says. “Take my friend here: his last lady visitor was a lesbian.”

J.D. makes the sour face he didn’t make when swallowing the tequila.

“But she’s not my true love,” Charles says. “My true love lies across the city, in the arms of her true love, a builder of A-frames.”

“What’s that?” J.D. says.

“You mean what’s an A-frame?”

“Yeah.”

“A house. A pointed house.”

“Oh. She’s in love with an architect?”

“So much in love that she’s married the chap,” Sam says. “You wouldn’t like her,” Charles says. “She wears brassieres.”

Charles orders three more beers.

Sam and J.D. have a long discussion of women’s legs. They can not decide between short and lean and long and lean. “Just so the legs go over my shoulders,” J.D. says. Sam laughs. Charles smiles. The next naked woman he will see will be his mother, screaming in the tub on Saturday. He starts to feel very tired again. J.D. sings a song about a black woman, to the tune of “On Top Of Old Smokey.” It gradually becomes apparent that J.D. is drunk and in no shape to get himself out — not that he’s making any motion to leave. Charles tries to make a sign to Sam that he should stop encouraging J.D., but Sam’s eyes are squeezed shut with laughter. Charles looks at the smiling fish. The fish is a goner, but smiling. That is the way artist Al M. conceptualizes it. Artists are all crazy. Everybody is crazy. Charles wants to go home and go to bed.

“J.D., how far away do you live?” he asks.

“Why?” J.D. says. “I don’t have a thing to drink at my place. Cranberry juice. For my bad kidneys. That’s absolutely all. You can’t even drink the water.”

“I was just thinking that we’d give you a lift on our way. You don’t want to drive.”

“Last person who gave me a lift was a queer. He said, ‘I’d like to bury my head in that.’ ”

Charles winces. “We just want to get you home,” he says.

“I didn’t mean anything personal,” J.D. says.

“What do you think, Sam? Can’t we give him a ride home easy enough?”

“Sure,” Sam says. “You come back for your car tomorrow. We’ll take you home.”

“I don’t have my car. I took a bus. My car is still sitting there with slit tires.”

“You left it there on the street?”

“What else was I going to do? I had just worked eleven hours. I was dead tired. What the hell did I care? Junk. Detroit junk. They could make tires that were indestructible if they wanted to.”

“I’m going to take care of the bill, and you help J.D. into his jacket, Sam.”

“I didn’t mean anything personal about what I said before. I was just remarking,” J.D. says.

“I know,” Charles says. “Excuse me, while I pay the bill.”

J.D. staggers to his feet. Tammy Wynette is singing “Stand By Your Man” again. J.D. collapses in the booth when Charles leaves.

Charles goes to the front counter and pays the redheaded woman. He buys a chocolate mint and stands looking out the front door, eating it Then he goes back to the table, where J.D. has his coat on.

“Swear that you didn’t take it personal,” J.D. says.

“He doesn’t take it personal. He knows you were just making a remark,” Sam says.

“I like you guys.”

The snow is falling heavily when they go out, and everything is blanketed in white. If it only weren’t cold, Charles would love to go to sleep in it, in the deep white on the sidewalk. He takes J.D.’s arm, expecting another outburst, gets none, and leads him slowly to the car.

“Where do you live, J.D.?”

“I’ll give directions. Not so far.”

J.D. gives directions. He will not name streets, or give the address of his building, but he keeps swearing that it isn’t far. They are riding in back of a sanding truck. The road turns brown and ugly in front of them.

“Hell, I could live in New Mexico. Then what would you guys do?”

“Dump you,” Sam says.

“Don’t say that. You guys seem so nice.”

“How would we get you to New Mexico?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know,” J.D. says. He looks crestfallen.

“Am I going right? You’re watching where we are, aren’t you?”

“Turn left,” J.D. says. “That’s it. That building.”

There is a row of buildings.

“Which one?” Charles says.

“The ugliest.”

Sam pulls up in front of a brown glass building.

“Two down,” J.D. says. “I’m glad you don’t think mine is the ugliest.”

Sam coasts down another two buildings. It is uglier. He couldn’t see it well from where they were.

“I want you to come in for cranberry juice,” J.D. says.

“We’ve got to get home. It’s bad driving, J.D.”

“Aw, shit I want you guys to come visit You’re such nice guys.”

“We’ll give you a call tomorrow, if you’ll let us have your number,” Sam says.

“Just come up for a minute.”

Charles feels very sorry for J.D. “Sure,” he says. “We’ll come up.”

“That’s great,” J.D. says. He rolls down his window.

“Thanks,” Sam says, looking out J.D.’s window to back into a parking space. But that’s not why the window was down. J.D. leans out and vomits.

“Don’t hold it against me,” J.D. says.

“We don’t hold it against you,” Sam says.

“You guys are really goddamned nice. Anybody else, I wouldn’t have made the effort not to puke in their car.”

“I’m glad you spared me,” Sam says.

“Sure. I like you guys.”

The lobby is carpeted in bright blue, and there are fake plants in the corners by the elevator. Muzak plays in the elevator. They ride to the second floor.

“This way, please,” J.D. says. Charles is holding him up by the arm. J.D. reaches in his coat pocket and takes out a key ring.

“One of these,” J.D. says.

Sam starts trying them. Finally the door opens.

“Please come in,” J.D. says, as they lead him in.

There is nothing in the living room but a mattress and a black telephone. In the kitchen, four rubber plants are growing in holes in the stove where the burners used to be. There is a black wall phone.

“Look around, look around,” J.D. says. To placate him, they go into the bedroom. There is nothing in the bedroom except a brown and white rabbit standing on a pile of magazines. There is no shower curtain in the bathroom.

“You just move in or something?” Charles asks.

“Lived here one year, four months,” J.D. says, sitting on the mattress.

Charles nods.

“Well, now that you’re here safely, I think we’d better get home before the storm gets any worse. Can you let us have your phone number?”

J.D. gestures toward the black telephone. Sam copies down the number.

“We’ll be in touch.” Sam says. “You okay now?”

“You guys are so goddamn nice. I’m not drunk now. I realize that you wouldn’t want any of that cranberry juice, and I’m not going to push it. When you guys can, come on over and I’ll fix you a chili dinner.”

“Right,” Charles says. “Good night, now.”

“You’re not going to go out again, are you?” Sam says.

“I’ve ruined your evening,” J.D. says.

“No, you haven’t. We liked talking to you. You had a little to drink, that’s all.”

“I didn’t puke in your car,” J.D. says, lying down.

“No,” Sam says.

“Well, good night,” J.D. says.

They walk out of the apartment. J.D. waves.

Back in Sam’s car, Sam lets out a long sigh.

“Everybody’s so pathetic,” Sam says, “What is it? Is it just the end of the sixties?”

“J.D. says it’s the end of the world.”

“It’s not,” Sam says. “But everything’s such a mess.”

“I told Susan I felt sorry for everybody, and she said there was something wrong with me.”

“She’s in love with that doctor. How can you expect her to be cynical?”

Charles shrugs. They ride home slowly, watching the snow mount up. Charles is glad Sam is driving, because Sam drives much better than he does in the snow. It has been such a cold, long winter. He used to like winter when he was a kid. He had a Fleetwood Flyer sled, and they’d close off the steep hill at one end of his parents’ block, and there would be nighttime sledding parties, with a bonfire and hot dogs. Even his mother rode the sled down the hill once. He was so proud of her. Now she just sits around and goes crazy, but then she’d try things-go sledding, make new cakes — she even got a set of records and tried to learn Spanish. She failed. On the sled, she scared herself and said she couldn’t get her breath and went home without eating a hot dog with them. The cakes were just mixes. Okay — so she never did anything right. At least she was pretty. Or prettier. She always had crooked teeth in the bottom of her mouth, and her hair never puffed out the way other women’s hair did. Her hair always looked defeated. She had a pot belly as long as he could remember. But she used to wear high-heeled shoes. Now she wears white sneakers. She used to wear high-heeled shoes.

Sam tries to get his car in the driveway, but he can’t do any more than get the nose a few feet up. The plow has been by, and it’s impossible to park on the street. The cars that are parked there have been plowed in.

“We’ve got to shovel,” Charles says. “You’ll be hit for sure.”

They get out of the car and go in the house for the shovel.

“There’s just one shovel. I’ll do it,” Charles says.

“Let me. I knew it was going to snow. I’m the one who didn’t get groceries.”

“We’ll take turns,” Charles says. “When you’ve been out for five minutes, come get me.”

Charles pulls a chair up to the kitchen window and watches. It is going to be a bad storm. He can hardly see Sam, even with the streetlights shining. He rubs the palm of one hand against the fingers of another, to warm himself. He goes into the living room and dials the thermostat up two degrees, then goes back out to relieve Sam, but Sam insists that he wants to shovel. Charles goes back to the house, takes his clothes off, and gets into bed. The bed is freezing. He lies there shaking, then falls asleep. He wakes up and hears Sam moving around the house, looks at the clock and sees that it is only midnight. He puts the pillow over his head and goes back to sleep, dreaming an intricate dream of sunflowers springing up in the snow, poisonous sunflowers that he is trying to rake under, that reappear elsewhere, in deeper drifts. Confused, he wakes up again. Sam is sitting on the bed. He pulls himself up, asking, “What are you doing here?” Is Sam really there? Yes. Sam is talking to him.

“Sorry to wake you up. Pamela Smith is on the phone. She says that she’s run into trouble and she was on her way back when she got stranded at the Clara Barton Service Area. She doesn’t have any money. She doesn’t sound very good. I said I’d try to get out to get her, but she said she wanted to talk to you.”

“What?” Charles says. “How much did you miss?”

“What do you mean the Clara Barton Service Area? On the New Jersey Turnpike, you mean?”

“Yeah. She came back East. She said there was trouble.”

Charles gets out of bed, taking the quilt off and wrapping it around himself. He walks across the cold tile to the kitchen phone.

“Pamela?” he says.

There is no answer.

“Pamela? Hello?”

“Isn’t she there?” Sam says. He takes the phone. “Pamela?” he says.

There is only silence on the other end.

“Hang up. She’ll call back,” Sam says.

Charles hangs up. They sit in the living room. The phone does not ring.

“Well, I don’t know what the hell to do,” Charles says. “It’s a real storm out there. Did she say what kind of trouble?”

“It was garbled. I don’t know well enough to tell you. The highway will be clear, if we can get off the block. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. She always overreacts. Let’s sit here a minute.”

Charles looks over his shoulder at the falling snow.

“I was having some odd dream,” he says. “I can’t remember.”

“Ask Fritz,” Sam says.

“What garbage,” Charles says.

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. Somebody’s got to know something.”

Charles gets up, staggers toward the bedroom. “I’m going to get my goddamn clothes on. We can take my car. It’s got studded tires. If you even intend to come, that is.”

“Yeah. I’ll come.”

“Are you awake enough to drive?” Charles asks.

“Yeah. But you will be too, man, when you hit that cold air out there.”

“Pamela Smith,” Charles says. “Pamela Smith doesn’t mean shit to me.”

“Why don’t you wait for another call then? If it’s important there’ll be another call.”

“She’d better goddamn well be there,” Charles says. “You’re sure that’s the service area she said?”

“How could I forget that?”

There is no answer from the bedroom. Charles is putting his dirty slacks back on.

It is a long ride to the Clara Barton Service Area, and it is late Saturday morning before they are close to being home. Pamela Smith will not talk about what went wrong. When they persisted, she cried. “Everything I said to you, everything I talked about was just bullshit. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I think.” She sat in the front seat wedged between them, and when Charles got in the back seat to try to sleep she moved over next to Sam. After half an hour of being bumped on his side, Charles sat up and sat cross-legged in the back seat, looking out the back window at the highway. He was so tired that he was giddy; he thought about waving to oncoming cars, seeing if they’d mistake him for a kid or think he was retarded and wave back. But he was too tired to play games. The morning sun was very bright, and it was tiring to squint so long fighting it. If only the sun warmed something. The radio was on, but it was turned down low, and Charles could only pick out a word or a phrase. Watching the bright highway, with all the cars, Charles felt even more fatigued: all of them going where? And what for? Pamela Smith turned around once and said, “I don’t have any money.” “It’s okay,” he said to her. Or he thinks he verbalized it. Pamela Smith looks very ill, with black circles swollen under her eyes. At the service area they bought her a glass of orange juice — all she would take — and she spilled some on her Wonder Woman T-shirt. She ran to Charles when he came in. He felt like a great savior, like he was really accomplishing something. The good feeling wore away as his body began to give out. Now he sits in the back seat, squinting. Occasionally there is a flurry of snow, and the sky clouds up, but for now it is mostly clear and harsh. The heater never makes the car warm enough.

“We’re getting there,” Sam says, to no one in particular.

Charles nods. Unless Sam was looking in the rearview mirror, he didn’t see him.

“Wonder if J.D. made it through the night,” Charles says. He thinks about the rabbit: a fat, bright-eyed rabbit in an empty room.

Sam did not hear Charles. He was mumbling.

“I figure maybe another half hour,” Sam says. “We’re lucky the snow stopped.”

“How can you think of any of this in terms of luck?” Charles says.

Pamela Smith turns around. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You’re really my only friend.”

“What about your brother?” Charles asks. Nasty, but he’s curious.

“He just gave me the money on the condition he wouldn’t have to see me again.”

“That’s brotherly,” Charles says.

Pamela Smith shrugs. “He didn’t want me to be born. My mother says he never looked at me in my crib. They’d have to call him over when they were giving me my bottle. He didn’t look at me until I started walking.”

“You didn’t get raped, did you?” Charles says.

“No,” she says.

“Are you ever going to tell us?”

“I’ll tell you later. It wasn’t any one thing.”

“A combination of things,” Charles says. That’s why Laura went back to Jim. Not just because he was now making enough money building A-frames to support her, but because of a lot of little things. A combination of things.

He looks out the side window at a big blue truck rolling by. If he were Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces he could hop a truck, start a new life. What new life would he like? The same life, but married to Laura. Or even living with Laura. Or even dating Laura. Or even getting to hear her holler out her car window again. She had looked so fragile, shouting out the window that she was sick. Once at her apartment she had been sick, and he had rocked her. There was no rocking chair, so he sat on the edge of a chair and rocked her by bending forward and back. His stomach muscles were constricted for a week after that She liked to be rocked; she liked to pretend to be a child again. He bought her a mobile of little matchstick ships that he hung from the bathroom light. It was a small apartment, and they were always running into each other. He loved that. He’d quicken his pace when he turned a corner, hoping she’d be there so he could smack into her. He tries to imagine bumping into Betty, turning a corner and running into Betty. He could never take Betty in his arms and apologize for hitting her. There is no way he could even date Betty. He could, but he’d be miserable. What would they do? Go to a movie, or go out to dinner? What for? He stares at the passing cars, slumps lower in the seat.

“Don’t you want me to take over for a while?” he says to Sam.

“Nah. This way I’ll stay awake. If I fall asleep in a car I get sick.”

“I could drive,” Pamela Smith says. Neither of them acknowledges it.

Sam turns up the volume on the radio. He quickly turns it down. “False alarm,” he says. “I thought it was from the new Dylan album.”

“I didn’t think that was out yet,” Pamela says.

“Supposed to come out sometime soon, isn’t it?” Sam says.

They turn off the beltway and start down the exit ramp. Sam hums softly.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” she says. “I got robbed. That was the last straw. I had twenty-five bucks, and a woman with a little kid made me fork it over. She said we were stopping for a Coke, made her kid stay in the car, and walking into the service area she said she was going to stab me in the back if I didn’t give her my money. I couldn’t believe it. She looked so goddamned maternal, in a blue coat and loafers. ‘What are you waiting for, to see the knife?’ she said. ‘It cuts. That’s the first you get to see it.’ I gave her the money, and she left me there.”

Charles can see Sam’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His eyes are wide.

“Why didn’t you tell somebody inside? They could have called the cops.”

“I didn’t want to. I just didn’t want to.”

“You should have,” Charles says.

“I should have, but I didn’t want to. I thought: you might as well start doing what you want to do right now; this is as good a time as any other. So I called you.”

Sam turns the volume up again. “Nope,” he says.

Charles checks his watch. It is a little after noon, which will give him almost five hours of sleep before he has to go to dinner. His Saturday is shot. Sunday is always a bleak day, with nothing to do. Monday he goes back to work. His boss will come in and want to know what he thought of his son. He will lie. His boss always checks on his reaction: “Did you like those hors d’oeuvres my wife made for the party? I told her it looked pretentious. What did you think?” He has a new orange pencil sharpener he requisitioned, and the Steel City paper clips will be piled up on his desk, awaiting him. Also reports. He will eat alone. Maybe he will go to the Greek restaurant and have a good lunch, have Greek coffee and pudding for dessert. The food there is always very good, but it takes a long time to get served. What the hell. They’re not going to fire him. He’ll tell his boss that his son is a suave son of a bitch and take a long lunch hour. Pasticcio. He is hungry.

“Why don’t we stop off on the avenue and get something to eat?” he says.

“Okay with me,” Sam says.

“I’m starving,” Pamela Smith says.

“If you were starving, why didn’t you say anything?” Charles says.

“You’re angry at me,” she says.

“No I’m not. I’m not mad.” He is a little mad. He is too tired to be really mad.

“I misjudge you all the time,” she says. “When I came over the other night I thought you’d be very defensive and aloof, and you were very nice.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“Can’t a person tell you you’re nice?”

“No. Absolutely not”

“Where do you want to stop?” Sam says. “Kentucky Fried Chicken or some place like that?”

“What do you want?” Charles asks Pamela Smith.

“Anything.”

“Then stop at Kentucky Fried.”

The Saturday traffic is heavy. Charles combs his hair and tries to open his eyes wider. He winces.

“I guess we’d feel worse if we were J.D.,” Charles says.

“That’s for sure,” Sam agrees.

“Is that a friend of yours?” Pamela Smith asks.

“Guy we met last night … last night? Yeah. In a restaurant.”

“He was pretty drunk,” Charles says. “What do you think he does with his money?” Sam says. “There’s nothing in that apartment.”

“Maybe the rent is high.”

“How high can rent be for a place like that?”

“I don’t know. How much can he make being a waiter?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says.

“Money is worthless anyway,” Pamela Smith says. “I really felt like she might as well take it. What was twenty-five bucks going to do for me?”

Sam pulls into the Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot. He gets out and lets Charles out of the back seat. Charles goes inside. There is a line. One man has a child sitting on his shoulders. The child is picking a scab off its arm.

“A family pack,” Charles says when he gets to the counter. “And a large order of french fries.”

“That’s all?” the girl says. She rings it up on the cash register. He pays, and sits on the edge of a booth to wait for it. He looks around at all the families eating fried chicken. America is getting so gauche. If there’s a McDonald’s in Paris, is the Colonel there, too? Kentucky Fried bones thrown around the Eiffel Tower? He picks up his box, spots of grease dotting the outside, and walks out of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sam gets out of the car again and Charles sits up front, the box on his lap. Pamela Smith begins to eat a leg. Sam takes a breast. So that he doesn’t get both of them, Charles takes the other.

“Any more breasts?” Sam says after a few minutes. There are not.

Pamela Smith eats a wing. Charles eats a leg.

“I’m going to get something to drink,” Sam says. “What do you all want?”

“Coke,” Pamela Smith says.

“Milk,” Charles says.

Sam opens the car door and goes into Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“What am I going to do?” Pamela Smith says. “I don’t have any money. I can’t just eat off of you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Charles says.

She licks her fingers. “You won’t even let me say how nice you are.”

“That’s right,” Charles says, dropping a bone into the bag. Sam comes back to the car with a root beer, an orange, and a milk.

“Your choice,” Sam says. “They were out of Coke.”

“The orange,” she says.

“Okay,” Sam says, handing it to her.

They drop the tabs in the ashtray. Sam turns on the radio to hear what’s playing. It is not Dylan. He turns it off.

“A watched Dylan never plays,” Charles says.

They finish the rest of the chicken in silence. Pamela Smith reaches into the french fries box and puts several in her mouth.

“Give me some of those,” Sam says. He puts several in his mouth.

“Delicious,” Pamela Smith says.

“Now that I’ve eaten I’m sleepy,” Sam says. “Got to get you kiddies home before old Sammy falls asleep.”

“Why don’t you let me drive?” Pamela Smith says.

Sam starts the car. He turns the radio on again, and he turns it off.

Charles wonders what they will do with Pamela Smith. Just have her sleep on the sofa, feed her? Suddenly there are two other people in his house. What would his dead grandmother think of a lesbian sleeping on the sofa and an unemployed jacket salesman sleeping in the spare bedroom, all her furniture sold to Best Bird Antiques? Sometimes he wants to move out of the house, move out of town … to Bermuda. He is obsessed with going to Bermuda. He would buy an underwater camera and take pictures of fish. Laura would be with him. Laura in a bathing suit. They would eat papaya or whatever they eat in Bermuda and drink rum. Their drinking rum is always part of his fantasy, so he no longer questions the reality of it. Maybe they don’t drink rum. Whatever they drink. He would run around corners in Bermuda and collide with her. They would fish, pull starfish out of the water. Or whatever fish they have besides sharks in Bermuda. Laura would fix him fresh fish dinners. He would dance as happily as the restaurant menu cookie. They would walk the beach and look at the stars. They would fly to Paris and eat at the McDonald’s because it was très amusant (this would be the reason they would give all their friends), and for a while they would be as happy and nutty as Scott and Zelda. Zelda died in the bin, and Scott drank himself to death. Didn’t he drink himself to death? He fell over in Sheila Graham’s living room. Whatever he died of. Once Scott and Zelda put ladies’ purses in vats of spaghetti sauce because it was très amusant. They were assholes. The fun ended with a bang. He would be eaten by a shark; Laura would get an inoperable melanoma. Bermuda. It probably rains all the time in Bermuda. There are probably slums all around the beaches, to remind you of the real world. He would never have the nerve to spend a lot of money on an underwater camera. Maybe he should get himself a sunlamp and an aquarium and forget about it. He and Laura would probably be blown up in the plane flying them there. They would never get to Bermuda. The rum would be 151 proof and knock them out — they’d never want to screw. (“You’ve heard of screwing, right?”) Charles sighs.

“I’ve screwed so many people this past year I don’t even want to remember it,” Pamela Smith says.

Charles starts. “That’s just what I was thinking,” he says.

“How do you know how many people I’ve screwed?”

“I wasn’t thinking about you. I was thinking about my first sex lesson — a talk I had with my father.”

“I was thinking about a pimply dyke I screwed who climbed out a toilet window and abandoned me.”

“We must all go to church tomorrow,” Sam says. He takes a bite of chicken leg.

“Did you ever go to church?” Pamela Smith asks.

“Me? Sure. I crayoned pictures of Our Lord in Sunday school that still grace my mother’s bedroom wall,” Sam says.

“What religion were you?”

“A Methodist.”

“What were you?” she asks Charles. “I was a Lutheran.”

“I was an Episcopalian,” she says. “I was going to switch to Catholicism. A long time back.”

“Remember to pray for guidance on Sunday,” Sam says.

“When was the last time you were in church?” she says.

“I think … twelve years ago. At Christmas.”

“I was in church a couple of months ago. A Catholic church,” she says. “With Marian. Did I ever tell you that was her name?”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It was her mother’s maiden name.” Pamela Smith winces. “Listen to me; maiden name. As if there are maidens any more.”

“Maybe there are,” Charles says. “Maybe there are maidens in the jungle.”

“What does ‘maiden’ mean, exactly?” Sam says. “A broad,” Charles says.

“It’s funny that women got to be called ‘broads,’ ” Pamela Smith says. “Does it mean they have broad asses?”

“I guess that’s what it means. Yeah.”

Sam pulls into the driveway. “Phew,” he says. “Seems like a week ago I shoveled this out. Those cars on the street really got plowed in good.”

“It does seem like a week ago,” Charles says. “It’ll be good to get some sleep.”

“Thank you very much for bringing us here,” Pamela Smith says to Sam.

“Oh,” Sam says. “I live here now.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah. I just moved in.”

“He lost his prestigious, high-paying job,” Charles says.

“I just realized,” Sam says. “I should have showed up to get the dope after work. Now we don’t have any grass.”

“What would we do with it anyway?” Charles says. “Jesus. Imagine getting stoned on top of all this.”

“If this were the sixties, we couldn’t wait to get stoned,” Sam says.

“Don’t talk about getting stoned. Marian’s daughter was puffing away all the time, listening to Dylan records and saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ to herself.”

“Get the chicken,” Sam says. Charles leans over and gets the box from the floor. They get out of the car and go to the front door.

“Look at me,” Sam says, and turns a cartwheel.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Charles says.

“I don’t think I ever had occasion to show you. You remember from grade school though, don’t you?”

“No,” Charles says. “And what’s the occasion now?”

“That we get to go to bed,” Sam says.

Charles puts the key in the front door. “If you hear my alarm and you don’t hear me moving around, shake me,” Charles says. “I’ve got to go over to my mother’s for dinner tonight.”

“That should top things off nicely,” Sam says.

Pamela Smith flops on the sofa. She turns over, pulls the pillow under her head.

“I’ll bring you a blanket,” Charles says. “In a minute.”

“Never mind. I’m already asleep,” she says.

“I’ll get you a blanket. Hang on,” Charles says. He hangs up his coat and pulls a blanket off the linen closet shelf. A pale blue blanket. His mother gave it to him. She usually gives him sweaters (the wrong size) and blankets. He has two other blankets in the linen closet: another blue one, and a yellow one. She also brings him light bulbs when she visits. When she used to go out of the house to visit. He puts the blanket over Pamela Smith.

“Take your shoes off,” Charles says. “You’re gonna wake up and be miserable.”

He walks into the bathroom. Sam is in there, running water over his wrists. “I froze my goddamn wrists,” Sam says. “Try to wake me up if you hear the alarm,” Charles says. “I will. Good night.”

“Good night,” Charles says.

He walks into his bedroom, undresses, leaves the clothes in a pile on the floor, and climbs into bed. He has forgotten to pull the drapes; it is light outside. He pulls the pillow over his head. It is still bright. He gets up and closes the drapes. He has forgotten to set the alarm. He gets up and sets the alarm, pulls the button. He will be getting up in four hours. Impossible. In five hours he will be in his mother’s living room. He laughs. She will serve Hawaiian Punch with rum; Pete will have prepared … chicken. It won’t be as tasty as the Kentucky Fried. They will have nothing to say to each other. That is, assuming he doesn’t have to pull her out of the tub or hold her hand while she twists and turns in bed, during which time they can discuss her illness. She will have on sneakers, and Pete will be all dressed up in a sports jacket and tie. He will have on the damned wing-tip cordovans again. They will sit in the living room, saying nothing, sipping the Hawaiian Punch and rum. A real travesty of the Bermuda dream.

Thinking of Bermuda, he falls asleep and has a dream of a jolly fat man, water-skiing. He must be the fat man, because the fat man is wearing his clothes, except that they are bigger than the clothes he wears, all stretched out of shape. He is water-skiing down a narrow, wavy line — not the real ocean at all, but a line that has been drawn. There are boundaries to Bermuda — to the left and right there are concrete walls, and if the fat man isn’t careful he will smash into one of them. There is nothing on the other side of the walls. The fat man is so jolly that he pays no attention, comes within a fraction of an inch of crashing into the walls. He laughs, soaring through the water in a full suit of clothes. Charles wakes up leaning on one elbow, smirking. “Jesus Christ,” he says out loud, and falls asleep again. In his next dream he and Laura are underwater — without air tanks, though, with no cameras — and they are flopping easily, like fish, her hair billowing behind her. She is very white and beautiful, and the water is blue-green. He can feel the water against his eyeballs. They are turning somersaults, and then Laura doesn’t come out of her somersault, but keeps sinking, bent in half, sinking deeper than he can go. He tries to make his body heavier, to sink with her, but he is light, buoyant, he can’t follow. He wakes up at the bottom of the bed, his feet pressing against the bedboard. He pulls himself up to the top of the bed, taking hold of the sheet to pull himself. He feels dizzy. The sun is so bright. What was he dreaming? He reaches for the pillow, sees that it is on the floor. Leave it there. Sun shining through the drapes, he falls asleep again, and this time the jolly fat man is following Laura down, laughing, cackling. There are bubbles as the fat man sinks. He can no longer see Laura, only the fat man’s head, grown immense, and the gush of bubbles. He wakes up with a headache. He sits on the side of the bed, after retrieving the pillow, but he’s afraid to shut his eyes. He leaves them open, pressed into the pillow. His throat is aching. He has a sore throat. He puts one hand across the front of his throat and somehow falls asleep again, sitting on the side of the bed, falls backward. He is sprawled lengthwise across the bed, naked, when he feels a hand on his arm. He is trying to catch the fat man’s arm, to hold him back, but he is sinking fast, and Charles is buoying upward, frightened, realizing that he has no air tank, that he will drown. He has to get to the top fast.

“Charles.…”

But Laura. And the fat man. What does the fat man want with Laura? Why isn’t he floating? Everybody knows fat people float easily, but Charles is floating upward, neck craning for the top, for air.…

“Charles.…”

He snaps his head forward and sees Sam sitting on the side of the bed.

“Charles … the phone. I called you, but you didn’t answer.”

“What? The phone?”

“Yeah. It’s Pete. I said I’d have you call back, but he insisted.”

“What time is it? I was dreaming something horrible.”

“I figured you were. I couldn’t get you to wake up.”

“I was in Bermuda. Pete. Pete’s on the phone now?”

“Yeah. He says he’s got to talk to you.”

“What time is it?”

“Four o’clock,” Sam says, looking at the clock. The alarm is still pulled. The hand is going around and around. The clock. Dinner. Pete. He walks into the kitchen naked, forgetting Pamela Smith. But she’s fast asleep, arms thrown open, feet hanging off the sofa.

“Pete?” Charles says. “What?”

“I’m sorry to be bothering you, Charles. Sam said you two had a rough night. I had to talk to you, though, because I know you were expecting to come to dinner. At least I don’t imagine you forgot about dinner.”

“No. What is it, Pete?”

“Well, I was washing the chicken. I had planned on a chicken dinner. Stuffed. I was rinsing it, and Mommy — Clara — got a little upset, saying that she was going to prepare the meal. I thought that was great. I went out for a bottle of wine and left her there, and when I got back she seemed pretty confused. She was sitting on the kitchen stool holding the chicken. She said she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to make the dinner, but she wasn’t feeling well. I told her I’d do it, to go lie down. She wouldn’t get off the stool. She was sitting there holding this damned chicken. She refused to let me fix it. I finally got her to put it back in the refrigerator, but if she doesn’t let me fix it, there isn’t going to be any dinner, because she’s not going to fix it.”

“Oh, Christ, what’s she pulling now?”

“She said she was your mother and she wanted to fix the dinner. I was just doing it to do her a favor. But now there’s not going to be any dinner. She says so herself. I thought I’d call and let you know. Damn. And I wanted to show you my Honda Civic.”

“Oh, Christ. I don’t know what to say.”

“She’s in bed now. Everything’s under control.”

“Okay. I guess there’s nothing I can do. I feel sorry for you, for what that’s worth.”

“I always thought you did. You and your sister are real nice kids. Sometimes I think about what you said — that my own wouldn’t do any better by me — and it’s a consolation. Well, I’d bought olives for you and everything. You remember you wanted them for that New Year’s Day supper we had? Things don’t go in one ear and out the other with me. I got olives and a chablis wine. Taylor chablis. If she had let me make it, it would have been a damn fine meal.”

“I’m sure it would have been. If things get worse, call me.”

“I’m getting hungry,” Pete says, “but I don’t dare cook the chicken, even just for the two of us. That chicken is better left forgotten. I’ll go out and get us a pizza.”

“I’ll drive by on my way to work Monday and take a look at your car. I leave earlier than you do.”

“No. Don’t do that. I want to show you myself.”

“Okay. You show it to me. I’ll see you later, Pete.”

“Promise you won’t drive by and look at it.”

“I won’t. I’ll see you, Pete.”

“Good-bye,” Pete says.

Charles goes back to bed. He sees that Sam is already in bed in his room. He pulls the covers up over himself and falls asleep. He wakes up at five o’clock when the alarm goes off. He gets up, pushes in the button, and goes back to bed. He doesn’t wake up again until midnight, when he gets up to take some aspirin for his throat. The door to Sam’s room is still open. Charles looks in and does a double take. Silently, Sam is screwing Pamela Smith. Charles closes the door. He goes to the bathroom and gets two Excedrin. He sits on the sofa, in the dark, swallowing the water slowly. He does not feel so much like medicating himself as like drowning. The water seems too cold going down; he finds it hard to breathe. He lies back on the sofa, listening to the whispers and creaking mattress in the other room, and falls into a deep sleep.