Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“Charades!” Spangle screamed, and she groaned and rolled over on the rug. She couldn’t believe that just a few hours ago — no, probably many hours, more hours than she wanted to count up, because then she would know how late at night it was — the two of them had come in and taken over again, as though it were old times, simply old times, and here they were.

“It can’t speak for itself,” he said, pointing to the towel on the rug beside Nina, “but it’s doing its imitation and it’s a book. The fucking towel is a book. And it wasn’t easy to spread it out flat on the floor, so everybody had better try to guess. What’s that towel on the floor? Name of a book.”

Jonathan kicked the towel and almost tripped on his way to the bathroom.

“You’re ruining it,” he hollered, and Nina said, “Sssh.”

“Okay,” he said, straightening the towel. “Towel on the floor, name of a book. Okay. What am I?”

“What are you , or what’s the towel?” she said.

“What’s the towel. I know what I’m doing. I’m concentrating,” he said, wandering into the kitchen. “Four words. No, five. Five words, a charade of what that towel on the rug is impersonating. Not hard to guess. Running out of Coke.”

“Go home,” she said. “I’ve got to work.”

“That’s six words,” he said.

“What?” she said. “Did you close the refrigerator door?”

She hoped so. She didn’t hear it creak closed, and she didn’t see how she could get up right away to close it.

“I’m completely fine,” Spangle said, coming back into the room and collapsing on the sofa. “If I was on an airplane, they wouldn’t serve me. They saw me trying to get on a plane like this, they wouldn’t let me on. You can’t get on an airplane when you’re in this kind of shape. They’ll leave you on the ground forever.”

“Metaphor for your life,” Jonathan said, coming out of the bathroom. His jeans were much too big for him, and he’d realized it. When he lost the belt the last time he’d gone to the bathroom, he’d stuffed a washcloth in the waistband. He hadn’t put the washcloth in very well. It was wadded up and stuffed in like a lumpy baseball.

“What did you say?” he said.

Jonathan went into a coughing fit. “I said it’s too hot in here,” he said.

“We’ve got to leave the country,” he said to Nina. “It’s too hot.”

“That’s not the answer,” she said. “Hard work and no play,” she said. “That’s the answer.”

“We’re in the middle of a game. What do you mean? See that towel on the floor? You know what it reminds me of?”

“What?” Jonathan said.

“The answer is How Green Was My Valley.” He put his arm over his eyes, as if he’d been struck blind by the sun. “I gave it away,” he said. “Fuck me, I gave it away.”

“What’s he talking about?” Jonathan said. He pulled the white washcloth out of the waist of his jeans and threw it on top of the green towel. “One’s short and the other one’s tall, but they’re the same kind,” he said. “They’ll get it on. Lots of pale-green hand-towels.”

“How come you two are still here?” Nina said. “What?” he said. “I’m not still here. I got stoned and died. I left the refrigerator door open.”

“Can you close it?” she said to Jonathan.

“I can do anything,” he said. He went back into the bathroom and closed the door. She smelled it again: grass. He was smoking more grass.

“No,” she said. She thought she said. Nobody said anything.

“I never read How Green Was My Valley . You read that, huh? You read that at Bard College?”

“We wouldn’t read crap like that at Bard.”

“Not at Bard,” he said, frowning down at her. “Where are we again?”

“Columbus Avenue.”

“Columbus didn’t discover America,” he said. “I’m fucked. I’m fucked. I smoked grass last week and it calmed me down. If I went out it would be all over. Stop telling us to leave.”

“I haven’t said that for an hour.”

“You’ve come to your senses.”

“No. I just know that you won’t leave.”

“If I tried to get on a plane in this condition, you know what they’d do? They wouldn’t let me get on. I would be denied boarding. I couldn’t even get a denied boarding pass, because if the plane was there and I was the one who was fucked, it wouldn’t even be their fault. They can crash DC-10ʼns, and that’s their fault, but if you have one puff too many, they keep you on the ground.”

“We missed the plane. Who cares. We missed the plane,” Jonathan said. “Then we got another one.”

“This idiot would have brought drugs through customs. You know what you get for being busted in Spain? Seven years and seven days. Longer than it took God to create the world.”

“Somebody close the refrigerator door,” she said.

“Does anybody object if I take a shower?” Jonathan said. “You’ll do okay without my company? Can I be enough at home that I can just take a shower?”

He was undressing. He left his T-shirt and jeans by the towel in the living room and walked — stumbled — into the bathroom in his Jockey shorts. He didn’t close the door. He relit the joint he’d left in the soap dish and started humming.

“Turn the water on,” she said. Thought she said.

“He’s taking a shower,” Spangle said. “I can close the refrigerator door, I just don’t want to. The truth is I don’t fucking want to.”

“Shut up,” Jonathan called from the bathroom. “I can hear you in here.”

“Bring it out, you grass-hog,” he said. “If you come out and don’t see your shadow, you can go back in with it.”

“How am I going to see my shadow out here?” Jonathan said, stumbling out into the room. “It’s all dark in here. You can’t see your shadow in the dark. Never mind shadows, there might be people all over, and you can’t see them in the dark.”

“Mind games,” he said. “You know who’s here.”

“I’m going to close the refrigerator,” Jonathan said. He got the towel from the floor and headed toward the bathroom. He left the towel there and came back into the room, jumped over Nina leapfrog style and went into the kitchen and closed the refrigerator door.

“Let’s send out for a pizza,” Jonathan said.

“I don’t want to eat,” Nina said.

“I don’t want to argue about what goes on the pizza,” Spangle said.

“Who said we had to argue? Extra cheese and mushrooms,” Jonathan said.

“So send out for a pizza. We can hang it on the wall and use it as a dartboard.”

“It would drip down the wall,” Nina said.

“Like that surrealist clock,” he said. “You could have an original work of art on your wall, Nina. Let’s fix Nina’s wall.”

“What does it cost to send out for a pizza?” Jonathan said. He looked over his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. Nina heard the water running.

“Here’s a riddle. See if you know this one,” he said. “Why did the little moron throw the clock out the window?”

“He tripped. There wasn’t any screen in the window. The clock fell on Columbus Avenue.”

“Fuck you. Come on, Nina. Why did he?”

“That’s such an old joke. I can’t believe you’re telling me such an old joke. I can’t believe you’re here. Will you round up Jonathan and please go home?”

“I can’t believe you’re here. New York chic. Christ’s thorns.”

“It’s a dumpy apartment on Columbus Avenue.”

“It wasn’t a riddle, it was a joke. Different thing. Pardon me. Let me go into the kitchen and see if he closed the refrigerator door.”