Charles Baxter - The Feast of Love

She takes the sock in one hand, and the relay baton in the other. She looks up at me, and the wig on her head shifts a little, to the right, toward one o’clock. I can hear Laurel and Hardy ticking my precious time away. I’m afraid she’s going to tell me about her glory days when she was on the track team herself. “I don’t have to hold Oscar’s knife,” Mrs. Maggaroulian says. “You can hold Oscar’s knife. I can see everything clearly enough without it. Honey, what did you say your name was?”

“Chloé.”

“Chloé, honey, you know we’re not always right. Sometimes it’s a good idea to take the future with a grain of salt. We psychics, well, I don’t know. Psychics have bad days, too. We have our up days and our down days.” She puts the baton and the sock back on the table.

“Is this your bad day, Mrs. Maggaroulian?”

“Yes, it is, dear. I have a headache. I have a very terrible headache. All those little hammers.”

“What do you see about Oscar, Mrs. Maggaroulian?”

The room really filled up with the smell of meatloaf right about then, like a freight train of meatloaf just went by. I was beginning to want to get out of there, in the worst possible way. I could feel the cells of my skin revolting against the room. My individual skin cells wanted to get free of me just for being there. Mrs. Maggaroulian kept trying to smile at me, and she kept failing at it. “Well, honey,” she said, “everything I see about your boyfriend is not so hotsy-totsy. Both Laurel and Hardy are telling me that his future prospects are not bright. Did you say he was still alive?”

“Oscar? Oh yeah, he’s still alive.” I decided not to ask her about Laurel and Hardy, or how she talked to them. Some things don’t stand much looking into.

“Well, that’s wonderful. You go home to him and give him a big kiss and a bear hug, honey. That’s what I would do if I were you. You know, I haven’t seen all that much in your future, so I’m going to…” She stood up and went over to her little steel cashier’s box and took two fives out of it and handed them back to me. “I’m going to give you a little refund. Ten dollars. Think of this as a refund on your future. You should stop and get a cheeseburger on the way home, honey. Get two cheeseburgers. And some fries. Take it all to Oscar. He’ll be so grateful, I can guarantee. If you love him, he’s bound to stay alive for a while. Then go out bowling tonight with him like a good girlfriend. Do you like bowling? You do go bowling, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Okay. Go bowling with Oscar. ’Cause what I see is… you want something to eat? I’m making some meatloaf back there, in the kitchen.”

“No thanks.” I figured I had to ask. “Is it bad, Mrs. Maggaroulian, what you see? You gotta tell me. I paid you all this money. It’s like this week’s savings. Wages and even tips, that our customers put in the jar on the front counter? I have to know. About Oscar?”

“Listen to me.” She gave me a moment to look into her eyes. There was another person living in there, at least. You couldn’t tell if what was inside Mrs. Maggaroulian was human or just an honorary human. Maybe she was a resident alien. The IRS wouldn’t dare audit her, ’cause they’d find out she was an alternate life-form, and they don’t have income tables for that. “I can’t believe he’s alive, this Oscar of yours,” she said. “But if you really love him, he’ll stay alive for a while longer. Trust me on that. People can keep other people alive, you know. Now go, honey. You drive home.”

“I will.” I stopped at the door. “Mrs. Maggaroulian,” I said, “are you really a girl?”

She didn’t even look up. “No, dear,” she said, sniffing. “I am a lady.”

WHEN I CAME INTO the apartment, Oscar was all over the bed, half-asleep after his exertions and his shower and his beers. He had the TV on to baseball, and his eyes were closed, and I figured, worst-case scenario, that he was dead. So I took my shoes off and I put the two cheeseburgers and the big thing of French fries on the kitchen table, and I went running over to where he was, and I gave him a good shake. And, just like that — presto — his eyes open.

“Hey, Chloé,” he says, “whassup?”

I’m straddling him, and shaking him, and he smiles at me. “How was basketball?” I ask.

“Great,” he says. “Man, I was so hot, I was like an action figure. Hey, I see you took the car. Wheredja go?”

“Ypsi,” I said. “I went to a psychic. Mrs. Maggaroulian. I wanted to find some things out.”

“Yeah?” he says. “Cool. What’d she say?”

And that’s when I took a deep breath, and I looked down at Oscar, and I said, “Oscar, I’ve got this idea. Don’t get mad at me, okay?”

“Naw,” Oscar says, “I wouldn’t get mad. What’s your idea?”

“Well,” I say, “I know it’s early and all, and maybe we should go slow and everything, and I know that girls aren’t supposed to say this, but after talking to Mrs. Maggaroulian I’ve been thinking that maybe I should. I mean, this is going to sound real weird, ’cause here it is Saturday afternoon… anyway, what I was wondering was, Oscar, maybe we should get married. Oscar, would you marry me?”

And Oscar, who’s said that he loves me about a thousand times in the last week alone, he doesn’t even stop to think about it, he just sits up a little in bed, and he says, “Oh, yeah.” Just that, “Oh, yeah.” Like it’s a great idea that he hadn’t thought of recently, but should have. Then he says, “That’s a real cool idea, Chloé. You and me married. Like I’d be your husband, and you’d be my wife, right? Wow. I’d like to do that.”

Some things you think can’t ever happen, and then they do.

I gave him the hugest kiss he’d ever had, and then I went over and got the bag, and we did a four-alarm fuck, and afterward I fed him the cheeseburgers, both of them, his and mine too, from my hand to his mouth, bite after bite after bite after bite after bite.

YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE? I hate it when someone turns to me and says, “What’re you thinking, Bradley? Tell me. What’re you thinking?” Well, no. If it’s a-penny-for-your-thought time, here’s your penny back. Because, first of all, it’s private, whatever my thoughts are — and don’t think I’ll tell you all my thoughts, either — but secondly, most of the time I don’t, in the way of things, have any thoughts. There aren’t any thoughts, per se, is what I’m saying. Day after day it’s a long hallway up there, just a yard sale, interrupted with random images of my paintings, or my dog, or the coffee store, or memories, or a woman, her face or her body or something she said, all of it in free fall through the synapses.

And I don’t care if I’m mixing my metaphors. This is my second marriage I’m talking about now. I can damn well mix my metaphors on that marriage if I want to. I’ve got my rights.

The reason I say all this is that I couldn’t stop asking Diana what she was thinking. We’d be somewhere, like a restaurant, before or during our engagement, and she’d drop into these states, staring off into space or down at the breadsticks in the glass container. Then she’d look at the butter plate or the hors d’oeuvres instead of at me. And I just knew she was carrying on a serious conversation with herself. You could all but see her lips moving.

So I’d say, “Hey, Diana. What’re you thinking?”

She’d smile, suddenly. She’d sort of pick at her engagement ring. “Nothing.” As if she had been recalled to Earth from some asteroid belt or other. “Nothing. Why do you ask, Bradley?”