Ann Beattie - Secrets & Surprises

Her key ring was on the table. If he had the keys, he could be heading for the Lincoln Tunnel. Years ago, they would be walking to the car hand in hand, in love. It would be her birthday. The car’s odometer would have five miles on it.

One of Kirby’s cats jumped up on the table and began to sniff at the butter dish there.

“Would you like to walk over to the Star Thrower and get a cup of coffee?” Nick said.

She got up slowly.

“Don’t mind me,” Kirby said.

“Would you like to come, Kirby?” she asked.

“Not me. No, no.”

She patted Kirby’s shoulder, and they went out.

“What happened?” she said, pointing to his hand.

“It’s broken.”

“How did you break it?”

“Never mind,” he said. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

When they got there it was not yet four o’clock, and the Star Thrower was closed.

“Well, just tell me what’s happening with Stephanie,” Karen said impatiently. “I don’t really feel like sitting around talking because I haven’t even unpacked yet.”

“She’s at my apartment, and she’s pregnant, and she doesn’t even talk about Sammy.”

She shook her head sadly. “How did you break your hand?” she said.

“I was mugged. After our last pleasant conversation on the phone — the time you told me to come over immediately or not at all. I didn’t make it because I was in the emergency room.”

“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I was embarrassed to call you.”

“Why? Why didn’t you call?”

“You wouldn’t have been there anyway.” He took her arm. “Let’s find some place to go,” he said.

Two young men came up to the door of the Star Thrower. “Isn’t this where David had that great Armenian dinner?” one of them said.

“I told you it wasn’t,” the other said, looking at the menu posted to the right of the door.

“I didn’t really think this was the place. You said it was on this street.”

They continued to quarrel as Nick and Karen walked away.

“Why do you think Stephanie came here to the city?” Karen said.

“Because we’re her friends,” Nick said.

“But she has lots of friends.”

“Maybe she thought we were more dependable.”

“Why do you say that in that tone of voice? I don’t have to tell you every move I’m making. Things went very well in Bermuda. He almost lured me to London.”

“Look,” he said. “Can’t we go somewhere where you can call her?”

He looked at her, shocked because she didn’t understand that Stephanie had come to see her, not him. He had seen for a long time that it didn’t matter to her how much she meant to him, but he had never realized that she didn’t know how much she meant to Stephanie. She didn’t understand people. When he found out she had another man, he should have dropped out of her life. She did not deserve her good looks and her fine car and all her money. He turned to face her on the street, ready to tell her what he thought.

“You know what happened there?” she said. “I got sunburned and had a terrible time. He went on to London without me.”

He took her arm again and they stood side by side and looked at some sweaters hanging in the window of Countdown.

“So going to Virginia wasn’t the answer for them,” she said. “Remember when Sammy and Stephanie left town, and we told each other what a stupid idea it was — that it would never work out? Do you think we jinxed them?”

They walked down the street again, saying nothing.

“It would kill me if I had to be a good conversationalist with you,” she said at last. “You’re the only person I can rattle on with.” She stopped and leaned into him. “I had a rotten time in Bermuda,” she said. “Nobody should go to a beach but a sand flea.”

“You don’t have to make clever conversation with me,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “It just happened.”

Late in the afternoon of the day that Stephanie had her abortion, Nick called Sammy from a street phone near his apartment. Karen and Stephanie were in the apartment, but he had to get out for a while. Stephanie had seemed pretty cheerful, but perhaps it was just an act for his benefit. With him gone, she might talk to Karen about it. All she had told was that it felt like she had caught an ice pick in the stomach.

“Sammy?” Nick said into the phone. “How are you? It just dawned on me that I ought to call and let you know that Stephanie is all right.”

“She has called me herself, several times,” Sammy said. “Collect. From your phone. But thank you for your concern, Nick.” He sounded brusque.

“Oh,” Nick said, taken aback. “Just so you know where she is.”

“I could name you as corespondent in the divorce case, you know?”

“What would you do that for?” Nick said.

“I wouldn’t. I just wanted you to know what I could do.”

“Sammy — I don’t get it. I didn’t ask for any of this, you know.”

“Poor Nick. My wife gets pregnant, leaves without a word, calls from New York with a story about how you had a broken hand and were having bad luck with women, so she went to bed with you. Two weeks later I get a phone call from you, all concern, wanting me to know where Stephanie is.”

Nick waited for Sammy to hang up on him.

“You know what happened to you?” Sammy said. “You got eaten up by New York.”

“What kind of dumb thing is that to say?” Nick said. “Are you trying to get even or something?”

“If I wanted to do that, I could tell you that you have bad teeth. Or that Stephanie said you were a lousy lover. What I was trying to do was tell you something important, for a change. Stephanie ran away when I tried to tell it to her, you’ll probably hang up on me when I say the same thing to you: you can be happy. For instance, you can get out of New York and get away from Karen. Stephanie could have settled down with a baby.”

“This doesn’t sound like you, Sammy, to give advice.”

He waited for Sammy’s answer.

“You think I ought to leave New York?” Nick said.

“Both. Karen and New York. Do you know that your normal expression shows pain? Do you know how much Scotch you drank the weekend you visited?”

Nick stared through the grimy plastic window of the phone booth.

“What you just said about my hanging up on you,” Nick said. “I was thinking that you were going to hang up on me. When I talk to people, they hang up on me. The conversation just ends that way.”

“Why haven’t you figured out that you don’t know the right kind of people?”

“They’re the only people I know.”

“Does that seem like any reason for tolerating that sort of rudeness?”

“I guess not.”

“Another thing,” Sammy went on. “Have you figured out that I’m saying these things to you because when you called I was already drunk? I’m telling you all this because I think you’re so numbed out by your lousy life that you probably even don’t know I’m not in my right mind.”

The operator came on, demanding more money. Nick clattered quarters into the phone. He realized that he was not going to hang up on Sammy, and Sammy was not going to hang up on him. He would have to think of something else to say.

“Give yourself a break,” Sammy said. “Boot them out. Stephanie included. She’ll see the light eventually and come back to the farm.”

“Should I tell her you’ll be there? I don’t know if—”

“I told her I’d be here when she called. All the times she called. I just told her that I had no idea of coming to get her. I’ll tell you another thing. I’ll bet — I’ll bet —that when she first turned up there she called you from the airport, and she wanted you to come for her, didn’t she?”