Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

He is glad Susan is there. She doesn’t tell him what to do much, but sometimes she does, and that makes it easier.

At lunch time (if only it were eleven again, instead of twelve-thirty) Charles goes alone to a restaurant at the end of the block. He orders a well-done cheeseburger, a salad without dressing, and a Coke. He thinks if he eats salad without dressing that when he eats it with dressing again it will taste good. All of the food is terrible. He oversalts it and is thirsty all day.

“Gimme a nickel,” a black kid says to him as he walks back to the office, “and I’ll do a somersault in the air for you.”

Charles gives the kid a quarter. “You don’t have to do a somersault,” he says. The kid flips in the air.

“That’s amazing,” Charles says.

“My brother’s working on a double flip,” the kid says, and walks away to accost another man.

Back at his desk early, Charles puts on his earphones and turns on his cassette player: “Folk Fiddling from Sweden.” After he has listened for a few minutes he dials his number.

“Hello?” Sam says groggily.

“I woke you up,” Charles says.

“Glad you did. I was having nightmares. I dreamed you and I were hunting wolves, and there were so many of them we didn’t know where to start, and if we didn’t start soon …”

“God, I hope I don’t catch this,” Charles says.

Sam is panting.

“Is there anything you want me to bring you back tonight?”

“Can you get me some Mr. Goodbars?”

“Mr. Goodbars? They’re no good for you when you’re sick.”

“Maybe they’ll finish me off and I won’t ever have to go back to work.”

“I know what you mean,” Charles says.

“Susan’s doc didn’t show. She’s still here.”

“Is she disappointed?”

“Doesn’t act it. I’m not exactly too sensitive to the state of others right now, I guess.”

“Take aspirin. She’ll bring it to you.”

“She does.”

“Well, I’ll see you tonight.”

Charles hangs up. If Laura isn’t still sick — she can’t still be sick — she’ll be leaving her house in an hour to pick up Rebecca. Lucky Rebecca. If Rebecca grows up to be like Laura she will be a heartbreaker. Maybe he will become like Humbert Humbert and get Rebecca. Because it certainly doesn’t look like he’s going to get Laura.

A woman from typing comes in to pick up two reports to do for him. The woman has on a blue dress that is unfashionably short and heavy black boots pulled tightly over her heavy legs. But her face is pretty. She was Laura’s friend. He wants to think that she knows all about the two of them, but Laura said that she never told anybody. He wishes she had; then he wouldn’t doubt, as he sometimes does, that it happened at all. He and the woman could exchange secret, knowing glances. Laura, they would both be thinking. She walks out with the piece of paper, and he looks at the big black boots walking across the blue carpet. Laura always dressed beautifully. She had suede boots and several pretty dresses, just a few but very pretty, and she always looked very delicate. Her husband is nicknamed “Ox.” Charles has not gotten back to work, and he has been at his desk for fifteen minutes. He has just cheated the government of five minutes. He cheats it of another two, turning his chair to look out the window, playing a little game and imagining that when he turns around Laura will be there, even though he knows that he would see her reflection in the glass if she were there. Even though she cannot be there, because she is getting ready to go for Rebecca. He wishes he were Rebecca’s father. If he were her father and Laura were her mother they could be a family. They are already a family: Laura, Rebecca, and Ox. He imagines with horror that when he turns around they will all be there, that he will actually have to face that fact. He turns around immediately and looks at the piece of paper on his desk.

The woman from typing comes back. “There should be another piece attached to this,” she says. He sits up a little higher so that he can look down at the boots. They are menacing. He wonders why she wears them. She couldn’t think they’re pretty. He reaches in the bottom of the basket on the comer of his desk. “Sorry,” he says.

“First day back,” she says.

“What do you hear from Laura?” he asks.

“Oh. I had dinner there last night. She went back to her husband,” the woman says knowingly.

The A-frame. Ox. Maybe more freshly baked bread. So she’s well.

“What did you have?” He can’t contain his curiosity.

“Lobster Newburg. It was wonderful. I’ve been trying to lose weight, but with the holidays and that dinner, I’m never going to make it.”

“You’re going to think this is terrible, but I don’t think I ever knew your name,” he says.

“Betty,” she says.

“That’s right,” he says. “I did know it.”

He’d had no idea what her name was.

She stands there, smiling. He wants very much to know if she had the orange thing for dessert.

“I get into work and I become a robot,” he says. “It’s awful.”

“I hate it here,” Betty says. “But I’m lucky to have a job. My sister just graduated from Katy Gibbs, and she’s been looking since before Thanksgiving.”

“It’s rotten,” he says. “It’s nice if you can have perspective on ft and be glad you’ve got a job.”

“I just am glad today,” she says. “Most days I come in and hate it.”

“Is your sister looking for work around here?”

“In New York. But if she doesn’t find something soon she’s going to have to come live with me. My parents kicked her out. They don’t think she’s trying, because they sent her to college and then to Katy Gibbs and all.”

“Don’t they read the papers?”

She shrugs. “I guess I’d better start this,” she says, and turns to leave.

She’s very nice, Charles thinks. Why couldn’t you like her? He looks down at the piece of paper again and makes a notation on the pad. He has the eerie feeling that when he looks up Laura and Jim and Rebecca will be there. He throws his pen down. He gets up and picks up the pen, goes back to the desk and sits down. Lobster Newburg. That must have been delicious. That cheeseburger was awful.

He leaves at five-fifteen instead of five-thirty, stopping at the stand on the ground level for two Mr. Goodbars. The man who runs the concession is blind. “What have you got?” he asks.

“Not Laura” seems like the logical answer. He has got to stop thinking about her. It’s true that he wasn’t that wild for her when he had her. If he ever had her. When he was with her. Once when he was with her they sat at a drugstore having coffee and she gave him a picture of herself. Remember something better he says under his breath. “Two Goodbars,” he says out loud.

“Thirty-two,” the man says. The man reaches into an open metal box and feels around for the change. The blind man is never wrong. Charles looks at the three pennies. Laura, he thinks. He drops the change in his coat pocket and zips the coat. Tries to zip it. He pulls more slowly. Sure enough, it works. He goes through the revolving door and into the cold. His car is a long walk away. He turns on the cassette player he is holding in his other hand and “Folk Fiddling from Sweden” blares out. It is still playing when he gets to his car. The lock is frozen. He kicks it with his foot. Much to his surprise, the lock turns. He drives to a store and buys a big package of pork chops and a bag of potatoes and a bunch of broccoli and a six-pack of Coke. He remembers cigarettes for Sam when he is checking out, in case he’s well enough to smoke. He buys a National Enquirer that features a story about Jackie Onassis’s face-lift. James Dean is supposed to be alive and in hiding somewhere, too. Another vegetable. Not dead at all. East of Eden is one of his favorite films. He saw it, strangely enough, on television shortly after he and Laura went to a carnival and rode on a Ferris wheel. He felt so sorry for James Dean. Back then he didn’t feel sorry for himself at all. No reason to. Now he feels sorry for himself. Feeling sorry for himself, he gets back in the car and drives home. He thinks about Rebecca’s bird trapped in his glove compartment. At a stop sign he closes his eyes and inhales, hoping to smell Vol de Nuit. Cold air sears through his nostrils. Turning onto his block, he sees the man from Audrey’s party getting out of his car. Charles stops, rolls down his window. “Hey,” he says. “Hi. Hello.”