Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

Inside the house, Christine was sitting at the dining-room table with two legal pads set up in front of her and a briefcase down by the floor. Behind her, in the living room, Alexander was lying on the floor in front of the TV set, his chin cupped in his hands. He was watching a Detroit Tigers game. They both looked up when Cooper knocked on the kitchen doorframe and came into the hallway, followed by Billy, whose hands were in his pockets and who nodded as he walked.

“Christine,” Cooper said. “This is Billy. I met him at the shelter.” Billy walked quickly around the table and shook Christine’s hand. “I brought him here for a beer.”

Christine did not change her posture. Behind a smile, she gave Billy a hard look. “Hello,” she said. “And welcome, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Billy said. Cooper went out to the kitchen, opened a beer, and brought it back to him. Billy looked at the bottle, then took a long swig from it. After wiping his mouth, he said, “Well, my goodness. I certainly never expected to be here in your home tonight.”

“Well, we didn’t expect you, either, Mr. — ?”

“Bell,” Billy said. “Billy Bell.”

“We didn’t expect you, either, Mr. Bell. You’re lucky. My husband never does this.” She looked now at Cooper. “He never never does this.”

Cooper pointed toward the living room. “Billy, that’s Alexander over there. He’s in the Alan Trammell fan club. I guess you can tell.”

Alexander turned around, looked at Billy, and said, “Hi,” waving quickly. Billy returned the greeting, but Alexander had already returned to the TV set, now showing a commercial for shaving cream.

“So, Mr. Bell,” Christine said. “What brings you to Ann Arbor?”

“Oh, I’ve always lived here,” Billy said. “Graduated from Pioneer High and everything.” He began a little jumping motion, then quelled it. “How about you?”

“Oh, not me,” Christine said. “I’m from Dayton, Ohio. I came here to law school. That’s where I met Cooper.”

“I thought he was a baker.”

“He is now. He dropped out of law school.”

“You didn’t drop out?” Billy glanced at Christine’s legal pads. “You became a lawyer?”

“I became a prosecutor, yes, that’s right. In the district attorney’s office. That’s what I do.”

“Do you like it?” Cooper thought Billy was about to explode in some way; he was getting redder and redder.

“Oh, yes,” Christine said. “I like it very much.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She touched her face and her smile faded. “I came from a family of bullies, Mr. Bell. Three brothers. They tied me up and played tricks on me, and they did this for years. Little-boy criminals. Every promise they made to me, they broke. Then I discovered the law, when I grew up. It’s about limits and enforced regulation and binding agreements. It’s a net of words, Mr. Bell. Legal formulas for proscribing behavior. That’s what the law is. Now I have a career of putting promise-breakers behind bars. That makes me happy. What makes you happy, Mr. Bell?”

Billy hopped once, then leaned against the counter. “I didn’t have any dreams until today,” he said, “but now I do, seeing your cute house and your cute family. Here’s what I’d like to do. I want to be just like all of you . I’d put on a chef’s hat and stand outside in my apron like one of those assholes you see in the Sunday magazine section with a spatula in his hand, and, like, I’ll be flipping hamburgers and telling my kids to keep their hands out of the chive dip and go run in the sprinkler or do some shit like that. I’ll belong to do-good groups like Save the Rainforests, and I’ll ask my wife how she likes her meat, rare or well done, and she’ll say well done with that pretty smile she has, and that’s how I’ll do it. A wonderful fucking barbecue, this is, with folding aluminum chairs and paper plates and ketchup all over the goddamn place. Oceans of vodka and floods of beer. Oh, and we’ve sprayed the yard with that big spray that kills anything that moves, and all the flies and mosquitoes and bunnies are dead at our feet. Talk about the good life. That has got to be it.”

Alexander had turned around and was staring at Billy, and Christine’s face had become masklike and rigid. “Finish your beer, Mr. Bell,” she said. “I think you absolutely have to go now. Don’t let’s waste another minute. Finish the beer and back you go.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding and grinning.

“I suppose you think what you just said was funny,” Cooper said, from where he was standing in the back of the kitchen.

“No,” Billy said. “I can’t be funny. I’ve tried often. It doesn’t work. No gift for that.”

“Have you been in prison, Mr. Bell?” Christine asked, looking down at her legal pad and writing something there.

“No,” Billy said. “I have not.”

“Oh good,” Christine said. “I was afraid maybe you had been.”

“Do you think that’s what will become of me?” Billy asked. His voice had lowered from its previous manic delivery and become soft.

“Oh, who knows?” Christine said, running her hand through her hair. “It could happen, or maybe not.”

“Because I think my life is out of my hands,” Billy said. “I just don’t think I have control over it any longer.”

“Back you go,” Christine said. “Good-bye. Fare thee well.”

“Thank you,” Billy said. “That was a nice blessing. And thank you for the beer. Good-bye, Alexander. It was nice meeting you.”

“Nice to meet you,” the boy said from the floor.

“Let’s go,” Cooper said, picking at Billy’s elbow.

“Back I go,” Billy said. “Fare thee well, Billy, good-bye and Godspeed. So long, Mr. Human Garbage. Okay, all right, yes, now I’m gone.” He did a quick walk through the kitchen and let the screen door slam behind him. Christine gave Cooper a look, which he knew meant that she was preparing a speech for him, and then he followed Billy out to the car.

On the way to the shelter, Billy slouched down on the passenger side. He said nothing for five minutes. Then he said, “I noticed something about your house, Cooper. I noticed that in the kitchen there were all these glasses and cups and jars out on the counter, and the jars weren’t labeled, not the way they usually label them, and so I looked inside one of them, one of those jars, and you know what I saw? I suppose you must know, because it’s your kitchen.”

“What?” Cooper asked.

“Pain,” Billy said, looking straight ahead and nodding. “That jar was full of pain. I had to close the lid over it immediately. Now tell me something, because I don’t have the answer to it. Why does a man like you, a baker, have a jar full of pain in his kitchen? Can you explain that?”

Out through the front windows, Cooper saw the reassuring lights of the city, the lamplights shining out through the front windows, and the streetlights beginning to go on. A few children were playing on the sidewalks, hopscotch and tag, and in the sky a vapor trail from a jet was beginning to dissolve into orange wisps. What was the price one paid for loving one’s own life? He felt a tenderness toward existence and toward his own life, and felt guilty for that.

At the shelter, he let Billy out without saying good night. He watched the young man do his hop-and-skip walk toward the front door; then he put the car into gear and drove home. As he expected, Christine was waiting up for him and gave him a lecture, in bed, about guilty liberalism and bringing the slime element into your own home.

“That’s an exaggeration,” Cooper said. He was lying on his side of the bed, his hip touching hers. “That’s not what he was. I’m not wrong. I’m not.” He felt her lips descending over him and remembered how she always thought that his failures in judgment made him sensual.