Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“What happened?” he said.

“Nothing, really. He just acted like we were old friends, or something. When I told him I was in a hurry, he just kept pace with me. So I got in a cab and got away. But it was strange, having him walk toward me on the street, and acting so casual, but when I was looking for a cab he seemed almost desperate to tell me things about some Houdini conference that was held every year, and to tell me what was behind Houdini’s trick of breaking out of chains when he was under water. I was really getting frightened. I just — I thought he was going to do something to me.”

“Christ,” he said. “I don’t think that’s nothing. I think you ought to stop going out alone.”

“New Haven’s full of nuts. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Really,” he said. “The way you describe it, it doesn’t sound harmless at all.”

She stopped running her fork over the top of her salad. She stopped, and ate some lettuce. He wanted to say more, but he didn’t want to scare her, and it was obvious that she wanted to change the subject. He picked up his sandwich and bit into it.

“You drive in all the way from New Haven?” he said.

She nodded yes.

“But you don’t like living in New Haven.”

“It’s close to Yale.”

“Do you live there alone?” he said.

“No. I live there with a man. The one who has the nightmares.” She laughed. “One of my students’ parents comes to see me and I say I’m living with a man who’s scared of looking at a fireball.”

“My heart can take it,” he said. “My sense of morality is not outraged.” He took another drink. “People should live together before they get married.”

“Except in the world of Vanity Fair .”

“Of course,” he said. “Of course not in the world of Vanity Fair .”

When they had finished eating, the waiter came and asked if they wanted anything else. He went away to add up the check. When he came back, he put the small tray with the piece of paper on it by Cynthia.

“He guessed wrong,” Cynthia said.

He reached for the check, took money out of his wallet. “Do you need money?” he said. He realized that even asking would be embarrassing, but if she did, maybe she would take it. Then maybe they would have another lunch sometime and she would pay him back.

“No,” she said, embarrassed. “I hope it didn’t sound like I was hinting for money.”

“Oh no,” he said. “I just thought you might need some money.”

They were both a little embarrassed, and he was embarrassed, too, in the parking lot when they had to shake hands. He almost always found it awkward to shake hands with a young woman. He also felt strange because her hand was so much like Nina’s, and he felt strange because there was a Nina, and strange that he had almost told Cynthia about her, but he had stopped short and only said that people should live together.

He drove into New York at sixty-five, sixty-eight, needle edging onto seventy at times, almost hoping that he would be stopped. He wanted to think, but he didn’t have time to stop and think. He was late for work.

He took a paper cup out of the dispenser by the water cooler and thought of two things: the robin’s egg (just as the cup seemed too fragile to hold water, the egg seemed too thin to have contained anything living) and the napkin, folded into a triangle in the Chinese restaurant, Louise carefully refolding it, putting it into the glass, walking out He had another throbbing headache and he would have to work until eight or nine o’clock to get everything done. The headache had come on him like a mosquito bite rising. His temple had suddenly been filled with pain when he opened his car door in the parking garage. He had gotten out, turned when the man gave him the receipt, and leaned back, touching the car, standing there with his hands curled into fists on top of the roof, supporting his head on them. The young black man working in the garage had hit him on the shoulder. “Don’t you grieve for it now,” he said. “Seven dollars and ninety cents, you can have it back any time.” The man had laughed at his own joke. Don’t you grieve for it. Certainly everything was not loaded with meaning. Why was he getting stopped by things so often? That things just fall into place. Because he wouldn’t be able to rest until the situation with Nina was settled .

He stood at the water cooler. Two aspirin weren’t going to help. He thought about going down to Nick’s office, but he didn’t know what to say. He took the aspirin and went anyway .

“What’s the matter?” Nick said when he saw him .

“I had lunch with her teacher. Mary’s summer-school teacher. I held her hand — I mean, I shook her hand — and with my eyes closed, it could have been Nina’s hand. I stood there shaking the hand of Mary’s summer-school teacher, and I wanted to go to bed with her.”

“So?” Nick said. Nick put down the piece of paper he had been studying. It was a graph: stalagmites and stalactites on an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper. “Why do you look so awful?” he said .

“I’ve got a headache. And you know what I think about that? You know the old I’m-too-tired, I’ve-got-a-headache routine?”

Nick opened his top drawer. “If you know so much, Freud, how come you’ve got cancer of the jaw?”

“Jesus Christ. What if this is all some midlife crisis? If I’m just becoming aware I’m losing my youth, and—”

“You were running down how old you were when I came to work here three years ago. Three years ago. You were thirty-seven.”

“You’re only thirty-five now. You want to disbelieve Passages?”

“You’re drunk?”

“I’m not drunk. My head is pounding.”

“You’re talking to me about Passages. Passages. I want to not believe Passages. Correct. You’re in a midlife crisis: correct or incorrect. Okay. This is the stupidest conversation I’ve had all day, and that includes nearly an hour-long conference with Metcalf this morning. This teacher was pretty?”

He sat in the chair across from Nick’s desk. Behind Nick was a Betty Boop clock. Out of her surprised mouth came two black arrows telling the time. Five of three .

“I love it,” Nick said. “In all my youthful innocence, I mean-that you care what the fuck the reason is. You must have gotten along very well with that schoolteacher today.”

John tapped Nick’s paperweight (a picture of Mary Pickford’s house, Pickfair, under glass) against the edge of his desk .

“My head is killing me,” he said. He put down the paperweight. “Thirty-five,” he said. “Did you ever read L’étranger in college?”

“The Stranger, by Albert Camus. I read it,” Nick said. “You can speak English here. You’re among friends.”

PARKER LIKED to eat as much as John Joel did, but he never had any money, and John Joel got tired of lending him money he knew he’d never see again. He couldn’t very well eat in front of Parker, though, so he ended up buying Parker’s lunch when they were in the city and not stopping for as many snacks as he would ordinarily. Parker hated the hot weather and was always mopping his brow with one of his assortment of Western bandannas. Today it was a wadded-up yellow bandanna to go with the yellow shirt he wore. He let the shirttail hang out of his slacks so that he could lift it every now and then and fan up some breeze. Parker liked to wear cotton shirts instead of T-shirts, and he thought jeans were too hot in the summer. John Joel felt vaguely as if he were with his father. Nobody else his age dressed like Parker. On Fridays Parker took the train into New York to see his shrink on West Fourth Street. Lately John Joel had been taking the train into town with him. There were no hamburgers in Connecticut to compare with New York burgers.