Ann Beattie - Love Always

“I trust you,” the other man said. “I was at Henry’s the night you poured the coffee.”

“Go on,” the waitress said. “That was nothing.”

“What did she do?” the other man said.

“You don’t know about that? Henry put six mugs on the top of the bar and let her look for about six seconds, and then he put his bandanna around her eyes and damned if she didn’t hit every mug dead center.”

The waitress walked away from the booth, smiling again. In a few seconds, she came back from the kitchen with their eggs. “Nothing for you?” she said to Hildon, as she put a mug of steaming coffee down in front of Lucy.

“No thanks,” he said.

Crystal Gayle was singing. The food was heavy. He ate faster, because it didn’t taste good.

“It this the only lunch we’re having?” Lucy said, deciding to be the one to start the game.

“Are we going back to your house?” he said.

“If you want to drive that far.”

“What are my options?” he said.

“What’s this?” she said. “ ‘Mother, May I?’ ”

He put his legs on each side of hers and pressed hers together. She smiled. With her knees, she pushed his apart. Finally he stopped resisting and let her part his legs. She rubbed her foot in his crotch. She had taken off her shoes. He resisted the temptation to break eye contact with her.

“Coffee?” the waitress said, passing by. He looked at the steam. It was fascinating: a cloud of white steam. It was something to look at.

“No thanks,” Lucy said. She looked at Hildon. “Do we want the check?” she said.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything else?” he said. She had eaten half her eggs. The toast was untouched. She had cut three bites of ham. “No thanks,” she said.

“I think I’ll have a piece of pie,” Hildon said. “What kind of pie do you have?”

“Apple cherry blueberry,” the waitress said.

Lucy’s foot stopped moving. She brushed her hair back, looking at him.

“Blueberry, please,” he said.

The waitress walked away. A woman with a crying child came in and sat at the counter. “Because I said so,” the woman said to the child. “And you’d better quiet down and like it.” The men from the booth behind theirs were at the cash register, rolling toothpicks out of a dispenser and paying their bill. Johnny Cash was singing. In all the time he had come here, Hildon had never heard the songs he selected. Even with the rules of chance operating, he should have heard Charley Pride at least once.

The waitress put down his piece of pie and refilled Lucy’s coffee mug without asking. Lucy’s face was expressionless, but she was looking straight at him. “Some pie?” he said, turning the fork toward her.

“No thanks,” she said. “I don’t think it looks good.”

He cut a piece of pie and ate it. “It’s very good,” he said.

“And you want me to just wait while you eat it.”

“ ‘Mother, May I?’ ” he said.

He took another bite of pie. It was doughy and too sweet. He smiled as he swallowed. “I forgot to tell you. There’s a party at the Hadley-Cooper’s this weekend,” he said. “I’m quite taken with Antoinette. How about coming along so she’ll be jealous?”

She nodded. She got up and went to the bathroom. A dancing elephant, pirouetting like a ballerina, was painted on the varnished wooden door. He didn’t eat any more pie while she was gone. When she came back, she was smiling. She looked very pretty. Her hair was combed, and she had put on pink lipstick. She continued to smile. She folded her hands. She watched the woman, whispering in the child’s ear, as he tried to swirl his stool back and forth. She looked beyond Hildon, to the old man who had just come in and who sat in the booth behind them. He puckered his lips and blew a breeze across the table. She closed her eyes slightly and smiled.

“Going off to the bathroom and snorting coke’s not fair,” he said.

“Cheating is perfectly fair in any game.”

She thought about it. She unzipped her purse, reached in and took out a tiny glass vial with a coke spoon attached to it. The chain sparkled for a second, before he could clasp his hand over hers, so no one would see. Her hand was cold. She turned her hand in his and opened it to release the vial. The glass was colder than her skin. It made him feel colder than he was, the way putting a finger on an ice cube will freeze the sweat on your face on a hot day. He remembered the pony, light brown snout down, rooting around in the clover. The boy standing there, holding the pony. All the sun, outside the diner. He closed her hand around the vial and gestured for the waitress. The waitress came to their booth with the bill. “You have a good day now,” she said, slapping the bill onto the table, even though he was holding out his hand.

“Want to have a good day?” he said to Lucy, getting up.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I might wait until the party to have a good time.”

She followed him to the cash register, but when the cashier dropped her pen on the floor and hopped down to get it, Lucy wandered out to the vestibule. Hildon looked at her, reading business cards that had been tacked up on the big bulletin board. He saw a large flyer from the ASPCA. Lucy walked out the door. He gave the cashier a dime and took two mints.

Lucy was walking ahead of him. She opened the car door and sat in the driver’s seat. The news on the radio droned on. He opened the door on the driver’s side. “Move over,” he said. She didn’t resist. She lowered the emergency brake and carefully maneuvered her way across it. Her lips were chalky pink in the sun. On the news, they were talking about the Montrealer. She sat in the passenger’s seat, with her hands folded in her lap.

He dropped his hands into his lap and looked straight ahead. She caught on and laughed. He leaned over and kissed her. He unwrapped one of the mints, one-handed, and put it in her mouth. The chocolate had already begun to get sticky soft. While she was sucking on the mint, he kissed her again. This time he waited for her to end the kiss. She ended it when she had to swallow. He put his arm around her, and put his other hand around the side of her thigh, stroking his thumb across the top of her leg. Someone started a car and drove away. He leaned over farther and kissed her shoulder through the material. “Where’d you get the coke?” he said.

“I visited one of the kids in my art class, who had a tumor removed. His mother had coke. We did some in the hospital bathroom. I bought this from her later.”

MYRA was deep into the article. She cleared the dinner dishes off the card table and went back to her desk. The chair she usually pulled up to the card table had broken, so she typed sitting on the ironing board facing the kitchen counter. She had a sudden brainstorm after a day of sitting this way: she turned it so that it was parallel to the high counter. That way, she did not feel as if she was poised at the end of a diving board, about to plunge into her Smith-Corona.

She had done all the necessary research, and all that she needed to do now was bang out the rough draft. Cameron Petrus, the hard-hitting reporter, actually lived for the time he could throw his javelin. Nigel McAllister, who took such wonderful photographs and who submitted his work to photography magazines, expressed his cynicism about photography’s ability to communicate to the students whom he befriended at the community college where he taught and spent his time meditating at an Ashram. Noonan, who had made a fine art of parody, was deeply committed to campaigning for gay rights. And Lucy Spenser, the lady counselor, was apparently unable to guide her own life gracefully. Myra had found that out when she discovered the letter to Cindi Coeur from Les Whitehall.