Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“I’ve screwed so many people this past year I don’t even want to remember it,” Pamela Smith says.

Charles starts. “That’s just what I was thinking,” he says.

“How do you know how many people I’ve screwed?”

“I wasn’t thinking about you. I was thinking about my first sex lesson — a talk I had with my father.”

“I was thinking about a pimply dyke I screwed who climbed out a toilet window and abandoned me.”

“We must all go to church tomorrow,” Sam says. He takes a bite of chicken leg.

“Did you ever go to church?” Pamela Smith asks.

“Me? Sure. I crayoned pictures of Our Lord in Sunday school that still grace my mother’s bedroom wall,” Sam says.

“What religion were you?”

“A Methodist.”

“What were you?” she asks Charles. “I was a Lutheran.”

“I was an Episcopalian,” she says. “I was going to switch to Catholicism. A long time back.”

“Remember to pray for guidance on Sunday,” Sam says.

“When was the last time you were in church?” she says.

“I think … twelve years ago. At Christmas.”

“I was in church a couple of months ago. A Catholic church,” she says. “With Marian. Did I ever tell you that was her name?”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It was her mother’s maiden name.” Pamela Smith winces. “Listen to me; maiden name. As if there are maidens any more.”

“Maybe there are,” Charles says. “Maybe there are maidens in the jungle.”

“What does ‘maiden’ mean, exactly?” Sam says. “A broad,” Charles says.

“It’s funny that women got to be called ‘broads,’ ” Pamela Smith says. “Does it mean they have broad asses?”

“I guess that’s what it means. Yeah.”

Sam pulls into the driveway. “Phew,” he says. “Seems like a week ago I shoveled this out. Those cars on the street really got plowed in good.”

“It does seem like a week ago,” Charles says. “It’ll be good to get some sleep.”

“Thank you very much for bringing us here,” Pamela Smith says to Sam.

“Oh,” Sam says. “I live here now.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah. I just moved in.”

“He lost his prestigious, high-paying job,” Charles says.

“I just realized,” Sam says. “I should have showed up to get the dope after work. Now we don’t have any grass.”

“What would we do with it anyway?” Charles says. “Jesus. Imagine getting stoned on top of all this.”

“If this were the sixties, we couldn’t wait to get stoned,” Sam says.

“Don’t talk about getting stoned. Marian’s daughter was puffing away all the time, listening to Dylan records and saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ to herself.”

“Get the chicken,” Sam says. Charles leans over and gets the box from the floor. They get out of the car and go to the front door.

“Look at me,” Sam says, and turns a cartwheel.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Charles says.

“I don’t think I ever had occasion to show you. You remember from grade school though, don’t you?”

“No,” Charles says. “And what’s the occasion now?”

“That we get to go to bed,” Sam says.

Charles puts the key in the front door. “If you hear my alarm and you don’t hear me moving around, shake me,” Charles says. “I’ve got to go over to my mother’s for dinner tonight.”

“That should top things off nicely,” Sam says.

Pamela Smith flops on the sofa. She turns over, pulls the pillow under her head.

“I’ll bring you a blanket,” Charles says. “In a minute.”

“Never mind. I’m already asleep,” she says.

“I’ll get you a blanket. Hang on,” Charles says. He hangs up his coat and pulls a blanket off the linen closet shelf. A pale blue blanket. His mother gave it to him. She usually gives him sweaters (the wrong size) and blankets. He has two other blankets in the linen closet: another blue one, and a yellow one. She also brings him light bulbs when she visits. When she used to go out of the house to visit. He puts the blanket over Pamela Smith.

“Take your shoes off,” Charles says. “You’re gonna wake up and be miserable.”

He walks into the bathroom. Sam is in there, running water over his wrists. “I froze my goddamn wrists,” Sam says. “Try to wake me up if you hear the alarm,” Charles says. “I will. Good night.”

“Good night,” Charles says.

He walks into his bedroom, undresses, leaves the clothes in a pile on the floor, and climbs into bed. He has forgotten to pull the drapes; it is light outside. He pulls the pillow over his head. It is still bright. He gets up and closes the drapes. He has forgotten to set the alarm. He gets up and sets the alarm, pulls the button. He will be getting up in four hours. Impossible. In five hours he will be in his mother’s living room. He laughs. She will serve Hawaiian Punch with rum; Pete will have prepared … chicken. It won’t be as tasty as the Kentucky Fried. They will have nothing to say to each other. That is, assuming he doesn’t have to pull her out of the tub or hold her hand while she twists and turns in bed, during which time they can discuss her illness. She will have on sneakers, and Pete will be all dressed up in a sports jacket and tie. He will have on the damned wing-tip cordovans again. They will sit in the living room, saying nothing, sipping the Hawaiian Punch and rum. A real travesty of the Bermuda dream.

Thinking of Bermuda, he falls asleep and has a dream of a jolly fat man, water-skiing. He must be the fat man, because the fat man is wearing his clothes, except that they are bigger than the clothes he wears, all stretched out of shape. He is water-skiing down a narrow, wavy line — not the real ocean at all, but a line that has been drawn. There are boundaries to Bermuda — to the left and right there are concrete walls, and if the fat man isn’t careful he will smash into one of them. There is nothing on the other side of the walls. The fat man is so jolly that he pays no attention, comes within a fraction of an inch of crashing into the walls. He laughs, soaring through the water in a full suit of clothes. Charles wakes up leaning on one elbow, smirking. “Jesus Christ,” he says out loud, and falls asleep again. In his next dream he and Laura are underwater — without air tanks, though, with no cameras — and they are flopping easily, like fish, her hair billowing behind her. She is very white and beautiful, and the water is blue-green. He can feel the water against his eyeballs. They are turning somersaults, and then Laura doesn’t come out of her somersault, but keeps sinking, bent in half, sinking deeper than he can go. He tries to make his body heavier, to sink with her, but he is light, buoyant, he can’t follow. He wakes up at the bottom of the bed, his feet pressing against the bedboard. He pulls himself up to the top of the bed, taking hold of the sheet to pull himself. He feels dizzy. The sun is so bright. What was he dreaming? He reaches for the pillow, sees that it is on the floor. Leave it there. Sun shining through the drapes, he falls asleep again, and this time the jolly fat man is following Laura down, laughing, cackling. There are bubbles as the fat man sinks. He can no longer see Laura, only the fat man’s head, grown immense, and the gush of bubbles. He wakes up with a headache. He sits on the side of the bed, after retrieving the pillow, but he’s afraid to shut his eyes. He leaves them open, pressed into the pillow. His throat is aching. He has a sore throat. He puts one hand across the front of his throat and somehow falls asleep again, sitting on the side of the bed, falls backward. He is sprawled lengthwise across the bed, naked, when he feels a hand on his arm. He is trying to catch the fat man’s arm, to hold him back, but he is sinking fast, and Charles is buoying upward, frightened, realizing that he has no air tank, that he will drown. He has to get to the top fast.