Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

He walks all the way through the park without seeing anyone. Back on the sidewalk it’s crowded, though. He starts jogging, wanting to be home sooner. He’s too winded — can’t do it. He resolves to jog more, to get in shape. He will have the flu, then get better and jog.

It gets dark too early in the winter. The streetlights are on when he gets to his house. He fishes in his pocket for his key. He has forgotten it. There is a spare in his car. He opens the car door and reaches around under the floor mat. Aha! The key and twenty-five cents. He lets himself in, walks across the living room and into the kitchen to start water boiling. There is a note from Sam: “Stopped by. Phone rang when I was here. Somebody named Pauline Reynolds. Will call you later myself.—S.” Sam has gone away and left his own key to the house on the drainboard.

Charles puts up the thermostat before he takes off his coat. He rubs his throat, strokes downward, as though his throat might get soothed the same way a cat does. He is sipping his tea at the kitchen table, debating whether to go out to the grocery store for some food, when the phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Charles? This is Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Yes,” he says.

He forgot to call Susan. Elise is dead. Mrs. Reynolds is going to send hired killers after him.

“I have called to set your mind at rest. I knew you must be worried sick over my little Elise, although you were remarkably and reassuringly calm the other evening.”

“Oh. She’s okay. I knew she’d be okay, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Guess where she is?” Mrs. Reynolds says.

“There with you?”

“No. Guess again.”

“At college.”

He hates Elise. She bored him to death. This conversation bores him to death. It is better than being gunned to death by hired killers.

“No. Try again.”

“I give up, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Guess! You have to guess!”

“New York?”

“No. Not New York.”

Christ. Does he have to guess again?

“Guess again,” Mrs. Reynolds says.

“Paris? I don’t know. I have no way of knowing.”

“I knew you’d never guess. Elise is in Vail, Colorado.”

“That’s good. I knew she’d be okay.”

“I knew it too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let you placate me so easily on my last phone call to you. I was not drunk on that phone call, Charles, and it was not just flippancy, drunken flippancy, that made me terminate the conversation.”

“I didn’t think you were drunk, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“I’m not drunk tonight either, but I will have to tell my husband I was because otherwise he sees no excuse for making long distance calls.”

“I see,” Charles says.

Charles thinks of a joke his father told him, the first joke he can remember: “ ‘I see,’ said the blind man. ‘You do not,’ said the deaf one.” At the time, Charles had not understood. It was years before he could understand jokes. Jokes would be told to him tentatively, his father’s face earnest and worried, knowing he would fail, much the way a doctor must set his face before telling his patient he has an inoperable melanoma, expecting, of course, that the man will never have heard the word “melanoma” before.

“What’s she doing in Vail?” Charles says. Did Sam give her more than he said? Did he pay a lot for it and just not want to admit it? Maybe Sam has been down on his luck.…

“Skiing,” Mrs. Reynolds says. “And here’s another surprise. She’s with your friend.”

“My friend?” Charles says.

“Sam McGuire, the lawyer!” Mrs. Reynolds says.

Charles looks at Sam’s note, at the key, at his cup of tea. Christ.

“You didn’t know,” Mrs. Reynolds says. “I’ve called with a surprise. They were going to send you a postcard, I’m sure, and I spoiled it.”

“That’s okay.” Charles says. “I was wondering where Sam was.”

“In Vail, Colorado. I’m so glad she’s met a nice man. A lawyer. Is your friend very nice, Charles?”

A lawyer. Christ. Sam, who sells size thirty-eight regular jackets to men who wear forty-two extra long and gets commended for being made a monkey of. A lawyer. He didn’t have the money to go to law school. He’ll never have the money to go to law school, or to go skiing in Vail, Colorado.

“He’s my best friend,” Charles says.

“I’m sure he’s a nice person if he took Elise skiing. That’s where the President goes, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Do you ski, Charles?”

She must be mistaking him for George Nimkis.

“No, I don’t. It was very nice of you to call with this good news, Mrs. Reynolds, but I was just preparing my dinner.”

“Wasn’t your wife preparing dinner?”

“She usually does, but tonight I’m cooking.”

“That’s so nice of you. You and your wife must be such nice people. Was it your son who answered the phone earlier?”

“Yes. My son.”

“It sounded like a grown-up.”

“Oh, he’s getting to be a big boy. Well, thanks again for calling.”

He will call Susan and give her hell. He is getting pulled in deeper and deeper. If Sam the lawyer impregnates Elise, he will be held accountable. That’s when she’d run home to her mother. The hired killers, after all.

“You’re certainly welcome. And I appreciate you and your wife having Elise there. I think it’s good for teen-agers to be around young couples. My own husband is quite elderly. Elise always jokes that he’s dead! Well, that isn’t quite so. Elise said your wife was most gracious.”

“She is. Good-bye, Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Good-bye, Charles.”

Charles picks up the phone again so soon after having hung up that there is no dial tone. He puts it down a few seconds, then picks it up again. He does not have her number. He hangs up and gets his name book, dials. Doctor Mark answers.

“Mark? Charles. How are you? Is Susan there?”

“Charles. How are you? I want to thank you for your hospitality of the other night. It was. Very nice of you to have me sleep over.”

“I would have given you the bed, but I was in a bad mood. I’m still in a bad mood. May I speak to Susan?”

“She’s at a sauna right now.”

Christ. She’s getting in the spirit of the bourgeoisie.

“Tell her to call me, please, when she gets back.”

“Nothing wrong — not family trouble? If I may ask.”

“Trouble with her bubbleheaded girlfriend. She’s run off and told her parents Sam is with her. The guy who was sleeping at my place the night you were there.”

“Ah. And it wasn’t Sam, you mean. If I understand.”

“That’s right. And I don’t want to get involved in this mess. So tell Susan to call me.”

“So. How are things with you otherwise?”

“I think I’m getting the flu.”

“That’s been going around. Sorry I can’t help you. That sounds. Like what a doctor would say. Ha-ha.”

“Yeah. Well, tell Susan to call.”

“Right,” Mark says.

A sauna. Jesus Christ Elise ought to be in the sauna. Trapped in it for good.

Charles dials Sam. Sam gets it on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi. Guess where you are tonight.”

“What do you mean guess where I am?”

“You think you’re at home, don’t you?”

“Are you drinking?”

“No. I’m on the rebound from a phone call with Mrs. Reynolds, who has turned up Elise. She’s with you. You’re both in Vail, Colorado.”

Sam snorts.

“Guess what you are?” Charles says. “You mean my profession?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. What?”

“A lawyer.”

“That bitch. I told her I wanted to go to law school.”

“No sooner said than done.”