Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

Charles stops for gas, sees cashier for transaction settlement, parks in the parking lot next to the gas station, and goes into the store. He has been craving devil’s food cookies. Infantile. He checks his wallet and sees that he has ten dollars. He will have to go to the bank. The lunch at the Greek restaurant set him back seven dollars, and ten will never be enough to get through the week. He walks down the aisle, looking for cookies. He sees the dog food and misses Sam’s dog. There are a lot of dog toys in plastic, too. He wishes that he’d bought more toys for the dog. The dog only had three or four, and she loved them. If anybody poisoned that dog, they ought to burn in hell. They could bum in hell with the North Koreans and former President Nixon. And Mrs. DeLillo, if she really killed all those animals. And the people who do all the things the Humane Society keeps him posted on. He hopes that he does not burn in hell for adultery. He wishes he could be committing adultery now, instead of looking for the cookies in the supermarket. But the devil’s food cookies will be some consolation when he finds them. He intends to rip them open and eat them on the way home. It is nice to know that there will be a good dinner to follow the cookies. He is very glad that Pamela Smith forgot and ate the chicken — he heard about that for hours — and no longer considers herself a vegetarian. (“Oh no!” she said. “Do you know what I did without thinking?” And he was overcome with horror, expecting her to announce that she had stabbed somebody on the New Jersey turnpike and rolled him into a ditch. She’s just crazy enough to forget something like that.) Last night she fixed a platter of vegetables and chicken with spaghetti. She keeps out of the way and doesn’t bother him. She certainly isn’t bothering Sam. He gets the devil’s food (two packages) and a box of vanilla wafers and laments the fact that Hydrox are no longer the same. He gets some Pepperidge Farm Lidos. He puts them all back on the shelf and rechecks his wallet. Yes, that bill he saw was a ten. Is ten dollars enough to buy four packages of cookies? Of course it is. He adds them up in his head, finds that it is plenty. He re-adds. He forces himself to pick up all the cookies again and move away from the cookie counter, where he is lost in calculations.

The rush-hour traffic is subsiding. He puts a devil’s food cookie in his mouth and chews. His mother always told him to bite twice on cookies. Therefore, he always puts the whole cookie in his mouth, no matter what the size. With very large cookies from the bakery, he breaks them in several pieces — which is not the same as biting them. Still, although the bakery cookies are very good, he prefers the ones he can shove in his mouth all at once.

He turns right and drives down the street that will take him to his block. He should go out at night — go to the movies — do something. Maybe he will suggest that they all go to the movies. He rolls into his driveway, Bob Dylan singing “Like A Rolling Stone.” It feels like every other day. He thinks about Bob Dylan’s children running around on the beach at Malibu. Imagine having Dylan for a father. Imagine if his own father were alive. That would be nice. His father made cookies once a year, at Christmas. Then he and Charles went out looking for cookie tins. They bought some, and covered Crisco cans with wrapping paper for others. He made German cookies with chocolate sprinkles on top that were wonderful — ruined only slightly by the fact that his mother told him to bite twice.

He opens the front door and walks in. There is a copy of The Second Sex on the kitchen counter. He puts the bag of cookies down on top of it and goes into the living room and looks at the thermostat. He takes off his coat and is hanging it up when Sam comes out of his room.

“She’s over at her brother’s,” Sam says. “She said not to wait for her for dinner.”

“Is there anything to eat, then?” Charles says.

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked. I was taking a nap.”

“It was a gray day,” Charles says. “Maybe more snow. It’s getting colder.”

He goes out to the kitchen. There is a box of dried litchi nuts next to a bottle of wine. There’s isn’t much in the cabinets.

“We ought to go out for dinner,” Charles says. “I don’t have any money,” Sam says.

“I’ve got money. Wait a minute — I don’t. I mean, I’ve got six bucks.”

“We can get a pizza,” Sam says. “That’s right. Okay. Do you want to go now?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“What?” Charles says.

“You remember when you closed the bedroom door?”

“Yeah. You want me to leave it open in the future?”

“There won’t be any ‘in the future.’ That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“Your cock fell off?”

When Charles was a child he read an article about leprosy. He thought that his limbs were going to fall off, go clunk on the sidewalk. He was very young when he read it, and didn’t understand that it was a gradual thing. For a long time he went around expecting to hear a clunk. What a twisted childhood.

“She came into my bedroom that night and wanted to know if I thought it was okay to wake you up and lay you, I said I thought it was a good idea to let you sleep. So she jumped me.”

Charles laughs. “Whisper women’s liberation propaganda in your ear?”

“Seriously.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

“And I wanted to tell you, because I didn’t want you thinking, I mean, I want to apologize if I did you out of anything you wanted.”

“I don’t find her attractive,” Charles says.

“I don’t either. She and I don’t talk about it.”

“Hell, there goes a treasured illusion: that you and Pamela Smith were shaking ass all over my house while I worked.”

“Nah,” Sam says.

“Did you go to get signed up for your money?” Charles asks.

“Yeah, I went down this morning. They suggested jobs I could look for and I said, ‘uh-huh.’ I hinted around that I wanted to work in something related to religion — as a janitor in a church or something like that.”

“What did you do that for?”

“Just off the top of my head.”

“So what did they say?”

“That I can’t get a check for two weeks.”

“That’s nice of them. Do they let you starve for two weeks, or what?”

“I guess they figure I’ve got a lot salted away, making all that money selling jackets.” Sam holds open the door and they go out to Charles’s car.

“Good you headed for that one,” Sam says. “Mine gave out Died.”

“When you were driving?”

“Fortunately, no. Battery’s dead. It just wouldn’t turn over. I took the bus down to unemployment. That was really something. Everyone on the bus looked like a fat person in a sideshow. Except for the ones who were so old they looked like dried leaves.”

“I almost took a bus the other day and decided to walk instead,” Charles says.

“I’d say to avoid them if you can,” Sam says.

“I’m going to the bank tomorrow during lunch, so I’ll remember to bring you some cash. You can pay me back when they come through.”

“Thanks,” Sam says. “No wonder she says you’re so nice. You are nice.”

“You’re my only friend,” Charles says.

“You’re my only friend,” Sam says.

“That’s pathetic,” Charles says. “How did this happen?”

“I don’t know. I just stopped seeing people or they moved or something.”

“You used to have women falling all over you.”

“I did, for a while. I don’t think women like me any more.”

“They don’t like me, either. I think Betty might, but she’s giving up on me. I can tell.”

“They never give up once they’re interested.”