Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“Well, where do you get a drink around here?” Pete asks.

“I think there’s a place a couple of streets over.”

“Walk?” Pete says. “Do you mind walking?”

“No,” they both say.

“That’s good. My skin’s still crawling.”

“The place seemed pretty sedate tonight,” Susan says.

“That woman in the room with Mommy is a dog killer. Cat killer. She had a house full of cats and dogs and killed all of them. I don’t know the details. I said to Mommy, ‘You never know. Keep on the good side of her.’ ”

They are walking together in stride, Susan breaking step occasionally to keep up.

“Oh man, when is this winter ever going to end?” Pete says. “This morning, driving down to the hospital I was tempted to take my credit card — did you kids know I have a BankAmericard? — over to the airport and fly to Florida. Three years I’ve been wanting to fly to Florida, get the hell in the sun. I thought to myself, you’re freezing; you’re sixty-three years old and you’ve never done anything exciting in your life.”

“There’s not much exciting to do,” Charles says. The Paris McDonald’s.

“Florida, hell, you might not call that exciting, but you know what I mean: to be where it’s warm. It’s colder than I ever remember it here this winter.”

“I can’t keep up with you,” Susan says.

“Sorry, honey,” Pete says. They slow down a little.

“Another thing I thought about was getting a Honda Civic. Your mother thinks the things are too small to ride around in. She says we’ll be killed. I said, ‘What the hell. We don’t have kids. We don’t have any big dog. We can get us a little car.’ You know your mother.” Pete blows his nose, drops the tissue on the sidewalk. “This morning I thought, I’ve got time to go arrange for a Honda Civic on the way to the hospital. I was damned early. Couldn’t sleep. Got up to get breakfast, and it didn’t take me any time to wolf it down. So I thought: do it, Pete. Get a Honda Civic. Hell, I never do anything.”

“Get the car if it’s important to you,” Charles says.

“I don’t know.… How do I know if it’s important to me? This morning I really thought I wanted to go to Florida. If I had, I guess I would have.”

“I think you could use another car, Pete,” Susan says. “Yours is pretty old now. Maybe you could hang onto it and let her drive it.”

“You think I ought to get a Honda Civic, huh?” Pete says. He pulls another tissue out of his pocket and blows his nose. “I should,” he says.

The bar they walk into is called The Sinking Ship. Charles remembers that it’s usually crowded with college kids, but most of them are away on vacation, so there’s a strange mixture of businessmen and hippies.

“This is swell,” Pete says. “You want to sit at a table, don’t you?”

They move to a table against the wall. There is a framed newspaper picture above the table of Nixon, Bebe Rebozo, and Robert Abplanalp. Charles stands long enough to read the caption. The three are on a boat, it seems. They all look like Mafia characters. A waiter comes to the table.

“What do you want?” Pete says.

“Could we split a pizza?” Susan says.

“Sure we could,” Pete says. “What would you like to drink?”

“Scotch on the rocks,” Charles says.

“A glass of red wine,” Susan says.

“A pitcher of beer for me,” Pete says.

“Okay. And is that a plain pizza? Mozzarella?”

“Right,” Pete says. The waiter goes away. His jeans have a small buckle across the back. He has on cowboy boots. The heels are scuffed.

Pete leans across the table. “Tell me something,” he says to Charles. “What was the worst thing I ever did to you?”

Charles looks into Pete’s face. Pete has a little broken vein on the side of his nose. Pete has a sharply pointed nose. There is a plaid blue-and-red scarf hanging unevenly around his neck. Pete combs his hair straight back. It is white at the temples, light brown back to his bald spot. Charles’s father was very handsome. He had curly brown hair and a broad chest. When Charles was little, he used to have him stand next to his leg so he could tell how tall he was getting. He died on the bus coming home from work. He would have died in his car, but he left the car with Clara. Tuesday was grocery day. Charles hopes that there wasn’t an embarrassing time for his father before he died — that he didn’t scream in pain, or have to look into any of the other passengers’ eyes. He wanted to ask the policeman who came to the house, but his throat always choked up when he was in the presence of a policeman.

“We don’t dislike you,” Susan says, patting Pete’s shoulder. It is the first time Charles has ever seen her voluntarily touch him.

“Neither of you like me much, ” Pete says. “What did I ever do that was so awful?”

“One time when Susan was only about seven years old she made a snowman with some of your wood and …”

“Okay,” Pete interrupts. “I remember.”

Pete unfolds a napkin and puts it on his lap. He looks at it.

“But don’t kids forget about things like that? Forgive and forget and all that?” Pete says.

The envelope from Pamela Smith, Charles thinks.

“I forgive you,” Susan says.

“He doesn’t,” Pete says.

The waiter puts down the pitcher of beer. He puts a tray on the table and takes Susan’s and Charles’s drinks off it.

“I guess I’m not making you have a very pleasant time here,” Pete says. “After all this time you went out with me for a drink, and I sit here talking about the past.”

Maria Muldaur is singing “Midnight at the Oasis.” She offers to be a belly dancer; the person she is singing to can be her sheik. “Maria!” a middle-aged man hollers, raising his beer glass. “Boogie,” he says, bouncing in his chair.

“Aw c’mon,” Maria Muldaur sings.

“Boogie,” the man sings, rising again. The man sitting across from him reaches across the table and pushes him down. There is an argument. Charles expects one of the men to come flying at him, but the fight subsides. Once in a bar a man was thrown into his back. He was standing at the bar. He dropped his glass of beer. It went “clunk.” Charles didn’t know what had happened. Now he fears that people will fly into him at bars. He doesn’t stand at the bar any more because that way he has his back to all of them. Once he had a nightmarish vision of a policeman coming at him — crashing into him, actually — telling him he had an inoperable melanoma. He was so scared he froze. When the policeman said his father was dead he froze. Charles adjusts himself in his seat, to reassure himself that he can move all right.

“How’s college?” Pete says to Susan. “Have some pizza, Charles?”

“Thanks,” Charles says. The pizza is very good. He thinks about asking Pete to order another. This is very nice of Pete. He wishes he could say something nice to Pete that he felt sincerely. He frowns in concentration.

“Pizza’s hot, huh?” Pete says.

“Yeah,” Charles says.

“I don’t know, Pete,” Susan says. “I can’t figure out what to major in.”

“Not interested in anything, huh?” Pete says.

“I sort of like psychology and French, but I don’t know if I want to major in either of them.”

“No point in it, huh?” Pete says.

Charles is surprised; Pete sounds like him.

“A French major wouldn’t do me any good,” Susan says. “Because it’s the only language I know. To be an interpreter you have to know at least three.”

“Parlez-vous français? ” Pete says. “Hell. I used to know French.”

Pete picks up the last piece of pizza. “I’ll order another one of these,” he says. “They’re little.”