Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“No, thank you. What do you mean, ‘no future’?”

“Well, the young men usually understand that.” The old woman looked at the television set, scowled, and shifted her eyes to the window. She rubbed her hands together. “You can’t invest in her. You can’t do that at all. She won’t let you. I know. I know how she thinks.”

“We have women like that in my country,” Anders said. “They are—”

“Oh no you don’t,” the old woman said. “Sooner or later they want to get married, don’t they?”

“I suppose most of them.”

She glanced out the window toward the Detroit River and the city of Windsor on the opposite shore. Just when he thought that she had forgotten all about him, he felt her hand, dry as a winter leaf, taking hold of his own. Another siren went by outside. He felt a weight descending in his stomach. The touch of the old woman’s hand made him feel worse than before, and he stood up quickly, looking around the room as if there were some object nearby he had to pick up and take away immediately. Her hand dropped away from his.

“No plans,” she said. “Didn’t she tell you?” the old woman asked. “It’s what she believes.” She shrugged. “It makes her happy.”

“I am not sure I understand.”

The old woman lifted her right hand and made a dismissive wave in his direction. She pursed her mouth; he knew she had stopped speaking to him. He called a cab, and in half an hour he was back in his hotel room. In the shower he realized that he had forgotten to write down her address or phone number.

He felt itchy: he went out running, returned to his room, and took another shower. He did thirty push-ups and jogged in place. He groaned and shouted, knowing that no one would hear. How would he explain this to anyone? He was feeling passionate puzzlement. He went down to the hotel’s dining room for lunch and ordered Dover sole and white wine but found himself unable to eat much of anything. He stared at his plate and at the other men and women consuming their meals calmly, and he was suddenly filled with wonder at ordinary life.

He couldn’t stand to be by himself, and after lunch he had the doorman hail a cab. He gave the cabdriver a fifty and asked him to drive him around the city until all the money was used up.

“You want to see the nice parts?” the cabbie asked.

“No.”

“What is it you want to see then?”

“The city.”

“You tryin’ to score, man? That it?”

Anders didn’t know what he meant. He was certain that no sport was intended. He decided to play it safe. “No,” he said.

The cabdriver shook his head and whistled. They drove east and then south; Anders watched the water-ball compass stuck to the front window. Along Jefferson Avenue they went past the shells of apartment buildings, and then, heading north, they passed block after block of vacated or boarded-up properties. One old building with Doric columns was draped with a banner.

PROGRESS! THE OLD MUST MAKE WAY

FOR THE NEW

Acme Wrecking Company

The banner was worn and tattered. Anders noticed broken beer bottles, sharp brown glass, on sidewalks and vacant lots, and the glass, in the sun, seemed perversely beautiful. Men were sleeping on sidewalks and in front stairwells; one man, wearing a hat, urinated against the corner of a burned-out building. He saw other men — there were very few women out here in the light of day — in groups gazing at him with cold slow deadly expressions. In his state of mind, he understood it all; he identified with it. All of it, the ruins and the remnants, made perfect sense.

At six o’clock she picked him up and took him to a Greek restaurant. All the way over, he watched her. He examined her with the puzzled curiosity of someone who wants to know how another person who looks rather attractive but also rather ordinary could have such power. Her physical features didn’t explain anything.

“Did you miss me today?” she asked, half jokingly.

“Yes,” he said. He started to say more but didn’t know how to begin. “It was hard to breathe,” he said at last.

“I know,” she said. “It’s the air.”

“No, it isn’t. Not the air.”

“Well, what then?”

He looked at her.

“Oh, come on, Anders. We’re just two blind people who staggered into each other and we’re about to stagger off in different directions. That’s all.”

Sentences struggled in his mind, then vanished before he could say them. He watched the pavement pass underneath the car.

In the restaurant, a crowded and lively place smelling of beer and roasted meat and cigars, they sat in a booth and ordered an antipasto plate. He leaned over and took her hands. “Tell me, please, who and what you are.”

She seemed surprised that he had asked. “I’ve explained,” she said. She waited, then started up again. “When I was younger I had an idea that I wanted to be a dancer. I had to give that up. My timing was off.” She smiled. “Onstage, I looked like a memory of what had already happened. The other girls would do something and then I’d do it. I come in late on a lot of things. That’s good for me. I’ve told you where I work. I live with my grandmother. I go with her into the parks in the fall and we watch for birds. And you know what else I believe.” He gazed at the gold hoops of her earrings. “What else do you want to know?”

“I feel happy and terrible,” he said. “Is it you? Did you do this?”

“I guess I did,” she said, smiling faintly. “Tell me some words in Swedish.”

“Which ones?”

“House.”

“ Hus. ”

“Pain.”

“ Smärta. ”

She leaned back. “Face.”

“ Ansikte. ”

“Light.”

“ Ljus. ”

“Never.”

“ Aldrig. ”

“I don’t like it,” she said. “I don’t like the sound of those words at all. They’re too cold. They’re cold-weather words.”

“Cold? Try another one.”

“Soul.”

“ Själ. ”

“No, I don’t like it.” She raised her hand to the top of his head, grabbed a bit of his hair, and laughed. “Too bad.”

“Do you do this to everyone?” he asked. “I feel such confusion.”

He saw her stiffen. “You want to know too much. You’re too messed up. Too messed up with plans. You and your rust. All that isn’t important. Not here. We don’t do all that explaining. I’ve told you everything about me. We’re just supposed to be enjoying ourselves. Nobody has to explain. That’s freedom, Anders. Never telling why.” She leaned over toward him so that her shoulders touched his, and with a sense of shock and desperation, he felt himself becoming aroused. She kissed him, and her lips tasted slightly of garlic. “Just say hi to the New World,” she said.

“You feel like a drug to me,” he said. “You feel experimental.”

“We don’t use that word that way,” she said. Then she said, “Oh,” as if she had understood something, or remembered another engagement. “Okay. I’ll explain all this in a minute. Excuse me.” She rose and disappeared behind a corner of the restaurant, and Anders looked out the window at a Catholic church the color of sandstone, on whose front steps a group of boys sat, eating Popsicles. One of the boys got up and began to ask passersby for money; this went on until a policeman came and sent the boys away. Anders looked at his watch. Ten minutes had gone by since she had left. He looked up. He knew without thinking about it that she wasn’t coming back.

He put a ten-dollar bill on the table and left the restaurant, jogging into the parking structure where she had left the car. Although he wasn’t particularly surprised to see that it wasn’t there, he sat down on the concrete and felt the floor of the structure shaking. He ran his hands through his hair, where she had grabbed at it. He waited as long as he could stand to do so, then returned to the hotel.