Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

Harrelson takes the spoon and the bowl into the living room and sits down at a wobbly desk five feet in front of the television set. In order to make room for the soup, he pushes three books to the side, and by accident one of them falls off the edge of the desk. It is an old book, a critical commentary. When it hits the floor, its binding breaks and several bookmarks fall out of it. The TV set picks up only one station, which is now showing a Charlie Chan movie, Charlie Chan at the Olympics , starring Harrelson’s favorite Chan, Sidney Toler. Fascinated, Harrelson watches as a world-class track star is discovered to have been murdered. Harrelson drinks the soup and helps himself to the bourbon. Gradually it occurs to him that the phone is ringing. Answering the phone means missing an important clue, but he rises with his eyes still on the television set and backs down the hallway into the bedroom, where the telephone sits inside the bottom drawer of his dresser to minimize the noise of its ringing whenever he has overslept.

He takes the phone out of the drawer and says hello. For a moment he hears nothing and suspects that some sort of prank is being played on him. His friends used to do such things until they found jobs and became respectable. At last a voice rises out of the static clutter and says, “I’m not asking for a favor. I’m demanding it.”

“Who is this?” Harrelson asks. He knows that it is a woman’s voice and that there is a slight edge of irritation to it.

“This is Meredith,” the voice says. She waits. “Meredith. Your fiancée.”

“Meredith!” he says delightedly. “It’s been a long time. Weeks. I can’t remember the last time you called over here. It’s great to hear from you! Are we still engaged? What’ve you been up to, anyway?”

“Cut it out,” she says.

“All right.” There is a gunshot on the sound track of the movie. Harrelson’s foot itches.

“I called because I need help.”

“Name it,” Harrelson says.

“I’m over here at the Mobil station on Stadium Avenue. My car won’t run. Something about the radiator or antifreeze or the water pump. They don’t make much sense here. Anyway, I need a ride home.”

“I’m drunk,” he says.

“How drunk?”

“How drunk what?”

“I mean, how drunk are you?”

“I don’t know.” He stands up in the bedroom, holding on to the telephone. “I was just having some soup when you called. Celery soup. And there’s a Charlie Chan movie on. Something about death and athletics.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Harrelson can hear a cash register clacking in the background of the filling station Meredith is calling from. “Listen,” she says. “I’d call a cab, except I didn’t bring enough money.”

“I will come,” Harrelson says.

“Don’t come if you’re too drunk,” Meredith says. “Can you stand?”

“Yes, I can stand. And,” he adds, “I can sit.”

“Jesus. You are drunk. How soon can you be here?”

“The Mobil station?” He thinks. He cannot remember where it is. He makes a guess. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Are you sure?”

“It is hard to be sure,” Harrelson says, “of anything in this life.”

“If you come to get me, promise you won’t say anything like that again. Promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Now listen,” she says. “It’s snowing out. You’re not sober. You’re going to have to be careful. Put on your seat belt. Avoid other cars.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be there in no time.” For some reason he repeats the words “no time” before he hangs up.

He remembers to turn off the range and the television set and the lights, but he forgets to put on overshoes and gloves. When he is walking down the front steps, his feet rush out from under him, and he falls on the middle step. He is unhurt. His hands are in the snow, and when he lifts them up, he is pleased to see an outline of his hands on the step. He can feel the snow falling on his hair. He sticks his tongue out. Snow lands on his tongue’s tip like airborne pieces of candy. Now he looks out at the street and sees his car, an ancient Buick, covered with snow, and snow falling in a peaceful rush underneath the streetlight, and more snow accumulating in the street, as if Meredith had thought this through and had wanted a few more difficulties than were absolutely necessary to test his loyalty. Harrelson feels a small quantity of snow working its way into his shoes. “Mr. Nice Guy,” he says, still sitting on the step. He puts his hands down in the snow next to the handprints he has already made. He would like to make a snow angel in the front yard, but Meredith is waiting. He stands up, holding on to the buttons of his coat, and walks with great precision and daring to his car.

As he tries to find his car keys, scattered in his pocket, he holds his head up and looks with an expression of vague speculation at his car and the street. There is certainly a great deal of snow all over everything. Some sort of muffled siren howls gently in the distance. Up the street an unclearly outlined figure is shoveling his sidewalk. Harrelson thinks of Meredith waiting for him in the sinister gas station and renews his efforts to find his car keys. He grasps a number of keys, pulls them out, and watches with neutralized dismay as several of them plop into the snow, leaving slots behind that, Charlie Chan — like, Harrelson uses for pursuit and detection. With all the cold, snowy keys gathered up in his hands, he selects the one that unlocks the car door, deposits the rest in his pocket, and gets in.

He says a prayer, turns the key in the ignition, and the engine starts after a few cranks. As it warms up, exhaust fumes begin seeping up from the floor. Harrelson reaches for a fugitive cigarette on the dashboard, left there by some random hitchhiker — he adores hitchhikers and picks them up at every opportunity — and lights up before getting out to clear the windshield. With his bare hands he sweeps the front and side windows, leaving a bit of ice on the glass for the defroster to take care of. When he is back inside the car, he looks in the rearview mirror and observes that he has not cleared the back window. He shrugs to himself and inhales from the cigarette, which brings on a fit of coughing. He opens the window, looks out into the street to see if anything is coming, prays to his guardian angel, puts the car into gear, and steps on the gas.

In any university town there are hundreds of men like Harrelson, out late at night buying pizzas, sitting at bars sipping their beers quietly, or roaming the streets in their old clunkers. They are all afraid of going home, afraid of looking again at the sheets of clean typewriter paper and the notebooks bare of written thought. They are afraid of facing again their sullen wives and lovers, their tattered and noisy children, if they have any. Against the odds, they refuse to succeed, and the wives and lovers know this and understand it as a rebuke to themselves and family life.

“You won’t grow up” is Meredith’s succinct way of putting it. She has put it to him this way many times, most recently two months ago, in December, the last time they talked. They were sitting in her apartment, its cleanliness a stark contrast to Harrelson’s squalor. Meredith is an accountant, a serious worker with a serious income. They have known each other since high school, when their romance took shape. This romance is now, according to Meredith, on its frail last legs. The fireplace in Meredith’s apartment supplied potent warmth against the December cold, and she had put out the brandy, a V.S.O.P. Despite the appearances, however, the evening was tense, the screws of pressure twisted by Meredith’s contempt for her four-year fiancé. “Look at you,” Meredith said. “Look at what you’ve done with your life. You could have been brilliant. I feel so sorry for you. I don’t want to marry a man I feel sorry for.”