Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

Charles can see Sam’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His eyes are wide.

“Why didn’t you tell somebody inside? They could have called the cops.”

“I didn’t want to. I just didn’t want to.”

“You should have,” Charles says.

“I should have, but I didn’t want to. I thought: you might as well start doing what you want to do right now; this is as good a time as any other. So I called you.”

Sam turns the volume up again. “Nope,” he says.

Charles checks his watch. It is a little after noon, which will give him almost five hours of sleep before he has to go to dinner. His Saturday is shot. Sunday is always a bleak day, with nothing to do. Monday he goes back to work. His boss will come in and want to know what he thought of his son. He will lie. His boss always checks on his reaction: “Did you like those hors d’oeuvres my wife made for the party? I told her it looked pretentious. What did you think?” He has a new orange pencil sharpener he requisitioned, and the Steel City paper clips will be piled up on his desk, awaiting him. Also reports. He will eat alone. Maybe he will go to the Greek restaurant and have a good lunch, have Greek coffee and pudding for dessert. The food there is always very good, but it takes a long time to get served. What the hell. They’re not going to fire him. He’ll tell his boss that his son is a suave son of a bitch and take a long lunch hour. Pasticcio. He is hungry.

“Why don’t we stop off on the avenue and get something to eat?” he says.

“Okay with me,” Sam says.

“I’m starving,” Pamela Smith says.

“If you were starving, why didn’t you say anything?” Charles says.

“You’re angry at me,” she says.

“No I’m not. I’m not mad.” He is a little mad. He is too tired to be really mad.

“I misjudge you all the time,” she says. “When I came over the other night I thought you’d be very defensive and aloof, and you were very nice.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“Can’t a person tell you you’re nice?”

“No. Absolutely not”

“Where do you want to stop?” Sam says. “Kentucky Fried Chicken or some place like that?”

“What do you want?” Charles asks Pamela Smith.

“Anything.”

“Then stop at Kentucky Fried.”

The Saturday traffic is heavy. Charles combs his hair and tries to open his eyes wider. He winces.

“I guess we’d feel worse if we were J.D.,” Charles says.

“That’s for sure,” Sam agrees.

“Is that a friend of yours?” Pamela Smith asks.

“Guy we met last night … last night? Yeah. In a restaurant.”

“He was pretty drunk,” Charles says. “What do you think he does with his money?” Sam says. “There’s nothing in that apartment.”

“Maybe the rent is high.”

“How high can rent be for a place like that?”

“I don’t know. How much can he make being a waiter?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says.

“Money is worthless anyway,” Pamela Smith says. “I really felt like she might as well take it. What was twenty-five bucks going to do for me?”

Sam pulls into the Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot. He gets out and lets Charles out of the back seat. Charles goes inside. There is a line. One man has a child sitting on his shoulders. The child is picking a scab off its arm.

“A family pack,” Charles says when he gets to the counter. “And a large order of french fries.”

“That’s all?” the girl says. She rings it up on the cash register. He pays, and sits on the edge of a booth to wait for it. He looks around at all the families eating fried chicken. America is getting so gauche. If there’s a McDonald’s in Paris, is the Colonel there, too? Kentucky Fried bones thrown around the Eiffel Tower? He picks up his box, spots of grease dotting the outside, and walks out of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sam gets out of the car again and Charles sits up front, the box on his lap. Pamela Smith begins to eat a leg. Sam takes a breast. So that he doesn’t get both of them, Charles takes the other.

“Any more breasts?” Sam says after a few minutes. There are not.

Pamela Smith eats a wing. Charles eats a leg.

“I’m going to get something to drink,” Sam says. “What do you all want?”

“Coke,” Pamela Smith says.

“Milk,” Charles says.

Sam opens the car door and goes into Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“What am I going to do?” Pamela Smith says. “I don’t have any money. I can’t just eat off of you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Charles says.

She licks her fingers. “You won’t even let me say how nice you are.”

“That’s right,” Charles says, dropping a bone into the bag. Sam comes back to the car with a root beer, an orange, and a milk.

“Your choice,” Sam says. “They were out of Coke.”

“The orange,” she says.

“Okay,” Sam says, handing it to her.

They drop the tabs in the ashtray. Sam turns on the radio to hear what’s playing. It is not Dylan. He turns it off.

“A watched Dylan never plays,” Charles says.

They finish the rest of the chicken in silence. Pamela Smith reaches into the french fries box and puts several in her mouth.

“Give me some of those,” Sam says. He puts several in his mouth.

“Delicious,” Pamela Smith says.

“Now that I’ve eaten I’m sleepy,” Sam says. “Got to get you kiddies home before old Sammy falls asleep.”

“Why don’t you let me drive?” Pamela Smith says.

Sam starts the car. He turns the radio on again, and he turns it off.

Charles wonders what they will do with Pamela Smith. Just have her sleep on the sofa, feed her? Suddenly there are two other people in his house. What would his dead grandmother think of a lesbian sleeping on the sofa and an unemployed jacket salesman sleeping in the spare bedroom, all her furniture sold to Best Bird Antiques? Sometimes he wants to move out of the house, move out of town … to Bermuda. He is obsessed with going to Bermuda. He would buy an underwater camera and take pictures of fish. Laura would be with him. Laura in a bathing suit. They would eat papaya or whatever they eat in Bermuda and drink rum. Their drinking rum is always part of his fantasy, so he no longer questions the reality of it. Maybe they don’t drink rum. Whatever they drink. He would run around corners in Bermuda and collide with her. They would fish, pull starfish out of the water. Or whatever fish they have besides sharks in Bermuda. Laura would fix him fresh fish dinners. He would dance as happily as the restaurant menu cookie. They would walk the beach and look at the stars. They would fly to Paris and eat at the McDonald’s because it was très amusant (this would be the reason they would give all their friends), and for a while they would be as happy and nutty as Scott and Zelda. Zelda died in the bin, and Scott drank himself to death. Didn’t he drink himself to death? He fell over in Sheila Graham’s living room. Whatever he died of. Once Scott and Zelda put ladies’ purses in vats of spaghetti sauce because it was très amusant . They were assholes. The fun ended with a bang. He would be eaten by a shark; Laura would get an inoperable melanoma. Bermuda. It probably rains all the time in Bermuda. There are probably slums all around the beaches, to remind you of the real world. He would never have the nerve to spend a lot of money on an underwater camera. Maybe he should get himself a sunlamp and an aquarium and forget about it. He and Laura would probably be blown up in the plane flying them there. They would never get to Bermuda. The rum would be 151 proof and knock them out — they’d never want to screw. (“You’ve heard of screwing, right?”) Charles sighs.