Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“I tried to call Nina and couldn’t get her. I just wanted to talk to somebody.”

“You should have been around today. The whole city left town. I went with Laurie to the Metropolitan and we sprawled in the grass in Central Park. Nice. Going to Hopper’s tonight. The bad news is that my wife called to say that Martin has to have his tonsils out. I told her to find a more progressive doctor — they don’t yank tonsils the way they used to.” Nick sighed. “I went over there early in the morning and talked to Martin. I asked him if he wanted to come along with us, but he didn’t. He was going roller-skating. A fever almost a hundred, and she lets him go roller-skating.” Nick sighed.

“I’d tell you what I’m in the middle of, but I don’t know myself. I’ll have a good story for you Monday morning. Want to meet me at the Brasserie early for coffee?”

“Sure. Eight?”

“Eight.”

“Nina all right?”

“I guess so. There wasn’t any answer.”

“I almost didn’t answer it. I thought it was Metcalf again. How he stays sober as a judge Monday through Friday, I’ll never know.”

“Valium. That’s not really sober.”

“He doesn’t take that much. Beats me.”

“What was his joke?”

“You know the joke. I’m sure you know it. Stop me, so I don’t have to tell the whole thing: What’s the difference between a Polish woman and a bowling ball?”

“What?” John said.

“Come on. You’ve heard it.”

“I haven’t heard it.”

“Why would anybody laugh at a sexist Polish joke anyway?”

“Okay. Forget it. See you Monday morning.”

“The other thing Metcalf does — Metcalf doesn’t call you on the weekends, does he?”

“No. He doesn’t bother me at work, either.”

“He’s afraid of you. He’s not afraid of me, and he calls me. You know how he starts conversations: ‘Hey, gork—’ Not even hello.”

“Gork?”

“I don’t know. His twin brother’s a neurosurgeon, and he gets these medical acronyms from him. It’s something insulting. I think his brother’s being a famous neurosurgeon fucked him up royal. I was out at his house in Sneden’s Landing last summer when his brother was there, and Metcalf was running around chasing his brother with a bread knife, saying he was going to do a vasectomy.”

When they hung up, John tried Nina again. No answer. He got in the car and drove, fast, to the drugstore. Before he got there, he could see that the lights were out. He pulled into one of the empty places in front of the drugstore and looked around, without getting out of the car. It was getting darker. In half an hour, on the ride home, it would be dark. He didn’t see her. If she had meant to run off, why wouldn’t she have done it when she left the restaurant? He got out of the car and peered into the dark drugstore. He stood with his back to the door, looking to the left and right. A man on a motorcycle pulled into the next space, turned off the ignition and kicked the kickstand down. He had on a helmet, gold and silver flecked, and mirrored sunglasses you could see out of, but not into. “Have change for a quarter?” he asked.

John reached in his pocket. He sorted through a palmful of change, and gave the man two dimes and a nickel.

“Thanks,” the man said. “I was going to buy a Hershey bar, but the drugstore’s closed. Suck-ass motherfucking town.” He walked around the corner.

“Louise!” John hollered. “If you’re here, this is your chance for a ride.”

The man jerked his head around the corner. “What’d you say?” he said.

“I came to pick up my wife,” John said. “You said it about this motherfucking town.” He looked at the motorcycle rider, who looked half interested, half put off. “What’s the difference between a bowling ball and a Polish woman?” John said to him.

The motorcycle rider didn’t miss a beat. “If you were really hungry, you could eat a bowling ball,” he said. He smiled. He was missing a bottom tooth. “Good joke,” the motorcycle rider said, and walked around the side of the drugstore.

John followed him around the corner. The man came to a stop in back of Louise, who was talking on the phone. The man put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and bounced on his toes, as Louise talked on the telephone. The phone booth was against the side of the drugstore. Louise had her hand cupped over the receiver. She was standing with her feet crossed at the ankles, talking quietly. She looked up and saw him.

“I guess you didn’t hear me,” he said, coming up next to her.

“See you tomorrow,” Louise said. “The hero has returned.” Her eyes were red. Her hair was pushed behind her ears, and she looked about twelve years old. Her face was freckled from the sun. She hung up and walked past John without speaking, on her way to the car.

“What was that, a conference call to Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller?”

“Very funny. Feminists as a class are very funny. We all know that.”

“I apologized,” he said. “But you had to get the upper hand, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to argue,” she said. “What I’d like to do is take a drive out to the water. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll drop you at home.”

He thought about it. It would be nice to see the moon over the water, particularly if she didn’t want to argue.

“All right.”

“In fact, I’d like to drive, unless you would consider that getting the upper hand.”

“You want to drive?”

She nodded yes. He thought about it. When they got to the car, he opened the door on the driver’s side and closed it when she sat down. As he moved away, the headache hit. When he got to the other side of the car, he was glad to sit down.

“I’m sick,” he said. “I’ve got a headache. Let’s just go sit by the water.”

“That was where I was going.”

The air changed when they went around the next bend. He reached out and turned off the radio; in his pain, he had been conscious of, and not conscious of, the way to stop the quiet rumble of the man’s voice. Leaning forward to turn off the radio sent a jab of pain through the top of his head. He rubbed it. He closed his eyes and kept rubbing.

“You know what I’d like?” she said. “Even if you hate me. Hate all of us. I’d like to go to Nantucket before the summer is over.”

“I thought you didn’t like it there.”

“I’ve been having dreams about it. There were things I did like. I’d like it if we could rent a boat.”

“You made me sell the boat,” he said.

“You did nothing but complain and worry all summer. And all winter, whenever anybody mentioned the boat, you’d roll your eyes and talk about how many problems it had and how much it cost. Remember on Christmas Eve when you started going through July and August’s checks, and adding up the cost of keeping up the boat?”

“Christmas makes me nervous. I was acting funny because it was Christmas Eve.”

“That’s a lie,” she said. “When you don’t want to talk straight, you don’t talk straight.”

“I don’t want to talk,” he said. He had also just realized that the window on his side was rolled up. He put it down and put his elbow out the window. He tried to rest his head on his arm, but that made his head pound worse.

“I’d sympathize if I thought this had to do with your emotions,” she said, “but at the risk of making you mad, I’ll say it anyway: You should tell them to hold the MSG. MSG gives you headaches.”

The air was almost cold. He waited for her to tell him to put up the window, but she didn’t. He opened his eyes and looked at her, finally. Her short hair was lifted by the breeze, but it just fluttered in place; there was no way for it to tangle, no strand long enough to blow forward and obscure her face. She had on lipstick. She had had an argument with him, and eaten, and talked on the phone, and through it all, her lips were not their real color. They were pinker. A color pink he didn’t see women wear anymore, but he thought it was preferable to the red-black lipstick women in the office wore. Their nails were always painted the color of a bruise.