Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“I’ll write you.”

“He’s right there?”

“Yes. The sauna was great. I think you would enjoy it.”

This is just the way Laura would talk to him if he had called — a one-way conversation that made no sense. We have enough brushes. Thank you for calling.

Charles goes into the bathroom and begins undressing. He has lost weight He has to remember to start grocery shopping again, lay in some food. Too bad Sam had already eaten. Not that he’s hungry. He piles his clothes on the toilet and steps into the shower. It feels very good. It would be nicer to be stretched out, though, on a raft in Bermuda, dangling his fingers in the cool water. Sharks would slice them off. He has always had problems with reality encroaching on his fantasies. One night when he was dreaming, a figure actually stepped into his dream and told him it was time to stop dreaming. Charles woke up and sure enough, the electricity had gone off and the alarm would not have rung. The only problem was that it was six A.M., and he could have slept until seven-thirty. Except that there was no way to set the alarm. So he sat there in bed, reading, for an hour and a half, thinking about the figure who walked into his dream. What to make of the fact that the man looked like Jesus?

The phone is ringing as he steps out of the shower. For a man with no friends, he thinks, the phone certainly rings a lot.

“Hello?”

“Charlie? Hello. Bill.”

He did not need to identify himself. Only one person calls Charles “Charlie”: his boss. “Hi, Bill. What can I do for you?”

“What can I do for you? Hear you’re not well.”

“I’ll probably be back tomorrow.”

“What is it, the flu?”

“I thought so, but it’s just a sick feeling. My throat’s pretty sore.”

“You ought to drink some whiskey with lemon. Put sugar in if it proves too much for you. Hal”

“I might take that advice.”

“My son goes to Dartmouth with a kid — his roommate, actually — who had a sore throat for two months. Finally the doctor sent him to a shrink. The shrink told him his throat was sore because he was deliberately constricting it to stop himself from screaming.”

“God. That’s awful.”

“Those shrinks are pretty clever fellows, huh?”

For some reason, his boss has been trying to find out for a year if he ever went to a shrink. He has not.

“I guess they are.”

“But listen, what I called about was this: would you mind if I went through your desk if you’re not there tomorrow? I know I left my silver pen in your office. You probably put it in the drawer.”

“I don’t remember seeing a silver pen.”

“Must have left it there. I think I had my pen with me on Monday because I went over that report with you. Well, I wouldn’t make anything of this, but my boy gave me the pen and he’s going to be coming home and he wants to visit my office. My wife put him up to that, to make me feel good. Anyway, it was a present from him for my birthday, and I thought it should be on the desk.”

“Sure, Bill. I don’t care if you look.”

“I thought it was only polite to call. It would look bad if you were out sick and I started rummaging through your things.”

“You could have looked anyway, Bill.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I was sure you’d be amenable, but wanted to check.”

“How’s your son doing at Dartmouth?”

“Very well. He wishes he could be at Harvard, though, and he’s making his mother very unhappy. He writes her the silliest ‘If only’ letters. I don’t know what to say to cheer him up. What can I say? Harvard wouldn’t have him.”

“Well, Dartmouth is a classy place.”

Bill loves to hear that things are classy: his son’s college, his shoes.

“Sure it’s classy. Try to tell him that. He says it’s cold, and he loves Harvard Square. I was at Harvard Square once. Cars and buses and cops. It was a mess.”

“Well, maybe he can get into graduate school there.”

“That’s what my wife writes him. I tell her, don’t write that. Drop the whole subject. But he’s her son. You know.”

“Yeah.”

I have a son of my own, I should know. Just ask Mrs. Reynolds if I don’t have a son.…

“So. We’ll be seeing you later. I hope it’s not the flu.”

“So do I. See you later, Bill.”

He goes into the bedroom, puts the towel over the lamp, and gets into bed. He is so tired he’s almost dizzy. He gets up again and sets the alarm, then goes back to bed. The hell with the pajamas. He turns out the light.

He is almost asleep when the phone rings. It couldn’t be Laura. But what if it is? He gets up and quickly walks to the phone. It is Pamela Smith, calling to thank him for his kindness and to say that he is really a very nice person. She is calling from a motel. She got a ride to California. She thanks him for helping her clear out her thoughts. She thanks him for the breakfast. “At one time I was in love with you,” she says. He does not know what to answer. He realizes, standing there, that he should have slept with her. He tells her to have a good trip and to enjoy herself in California. She says that she will make him something out of silver. “I didn’t get you out of bed, did I?” she says. He says she didn’t It’s the truth; Laura did.

He stops on the way to work to get gas. It is a self-service station. On the gas pump is a piece of cardboard: “See cashier for transaction settlement.” Why not “Pay cashier”? He is in a bad mood. He was not going to go to work at all, except that he began to feel much sicker and thought that if he got out of the house he might not think about it. In the house, he had thought about weeping in bed, calling Sam at work to tell him to come right over. He had even thought of calling his mother. That’s when he decided it would be best if he went to work.

When he walked into his office Bill was there, sitting in his chair, going through his desk.

“Thank God I called you!” Bill said, shooting up, as though he’d been caught doing something terrible anyway. “If I hadn’t called, imagine what you would have thought if you’d come in and found me with my hand in the till!”

“Find your pen?”

“I just got here,” Bill says.

“Try the drawer on the right,” Charles says.

“How are you feeling, Charlie? Try my home remedy?”

“Didn’t have any whiskey. I’ll get some on the way home.”

“You don’t look good,” Bill says.

“I feel awfully queasy.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I just didn’t feel like lying around the house.”

“Yeah. It must be rough when you’re sick, not having a wife to take care of you.”

“Yeah. So I figured I’d come in.”

“Well, take it easy.”

“I will.”

Charles sits in a chair against the wall, waiting for Bill to finish.

“Sometimes having a wife can present problems, too. Last night she got herself into a state about my boy not being accepted at Harvard. A very paranoid thing about how they would have taken him if he’d been black. I spent an hour calming her down. Her sister married a colored fellow ten years ago, and you should have heard her then. I told her — you don’t have to see your sister. What does it matter to you? She hasn’t seen her sister in ten years.”

“There’s too much emphasis put on what college you go to,” Charles says.

“That’s what I tell her. And Dartmouth isn’t the small time. She cries because he’s told her it’s very cold there. She thinks he’s suffering in the cold. She talks about him like he’s a stray cat or something.”

“That’s too bad. I hope she starts feeling better about it.”