Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

Laura is lying on the mattress. She sits up when he comes back.

“I thought you might be sick,” she says. “Why did you think that?”

“Were you? You look pale.”

“No,” he says.

“That’s what I thought. Rebecca was sick so much that the slightest thing makes me think somebody’s sick.”

“I was just standing around in there.”

“What?”

“I mean, I was washing my face.”

She frowns. “But you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

She turns on her side, propped on one elbow. Why did she pluck her eyebrows? She looks constantly quizzical. “What record is that?” he says.

“I don’t know. One that Frances had on. You can look, if you want.”

“No,” he says. He sits on the side of the mattress.

“Would he let you take your things?” Charles says.

“Jim, you mean?” He nods.

“I guess so. I don’t think there are bad feelings.” She sighs. “But I don’t really have anything. The furniture isn’t nice. He bought it.”

“It’s half yours.”

“I can’t haul it around like a pack rat,” she says. “Might as well leave it. I’m not attached to furniture, anyway. Sometime I’ll get around to going back for my clothes.”

“You could store anything you wanted at my house.”

“That’s nice of you. I might.”

He thinks about having boxes of her clothes near him. He could raise the lid and — better than a genie — Laura’s clothes. They would all smell like Vol de Nuit.

“Cookbooks,” she says. “I guess I should get them. Most of them are out of print. And the ones the French woman gave me.”

“It must be strange to walk out and leave all that stuff. It’s sort of the reverse of me walking into my grandmother’s house and being faced with all of it.”

The half-smile.

“Can I go to the store for you tomorrow?”

“I’ll have time,” she says. “And at the moment I can’t think of the ingredients. It’ll come to me in the store.”

“Would you like me to take you out to dinner first?”

“Let’s just eat here. I don’t feel like going out right now.”

“Whatever you want,” he says.

“I’m going to go to sleep. Come back tomorrow at seven,” she says.

“Okay,” he says. He does not move. He wants to say: Could I watch you sleep, Laura? He would just sit there and not make a sound all night. He has better sense than to ask — but not enough to leave.

“Don’t worry about the cab driver,” she says. “I wasn’t interested.”

“Good,” he says.

He gets up and looks at the record. It is Albinoni. The crack in the windowpane. At least the apartment is well heated. He remarks on this.

“You’re as trying as Rebecca. Good night,” she says.

“Good night,” he says. He even walks to the closet and gets his coat out. She gets up, then, and stands by the door. Without high heels on, she is shorter than he is. He puts his hands on her shoulders. She puts her arms out. He hugs her. He will never be able to let go. But what to do. It’s a gamble, but it’s all or nothing. He picks her up a few inches off the floor (she giggles) and waltzes her into the living room, spinning and dipping, dancing fast around the floor, the old boards creaking like mad. He hums to the music. He has Laura, and they are dancing a beautiful waltz, completely out of time with Albinoni. She is telling him to stop, and he is swirling, remembering, suddenly, Pete asking him what dances he knows. Pete, in the elevator: “Young people dance nowadays, don’t they?”

“La, la,” Charles sings, and with a final dip deposits her on the floor. He stands back and looks at her, but he doesn’t see her clearly. He had his eyes squeezed shut for the dip, and the light is blinding. Is she happy or angry? She smiles the half-smile.

“Go,” she says.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and goes to the door. He listens. No floorboards move behind him. If he turns and looks at her, he will never go. She says she wants him to go. He opens the door and walks out into the hallway. He leaves the door open behind him, but he walks all the way to the elevator without hearing it close. It is too silent in the elevator. He worries that it will crash. And where did he park, exactly? The cold air outside makes his face burn and he runs for the car, hoping that the tires aren’t slit. They are not. Neither has he forgotten the key. He gets in the car and starts it, his hand shaking. Someone on the radio is droning the news. He listens and gets more and more depressed until he realizes that he can turn it off. He does not have to hear Henry Kissinger’s well-modulated voice, speaking the words Henry Kissinger always speaks. With the radio off, he feels a little better, but it’s still too silent. Few cars are out this late, and the lights are flashing yellow. That means it’s after midnight. How did that much time go by? He says Laura’s name out loud a few times, to interrupt the silence. He puts on the heater, and by the time he is halfway home his legs have stopped jerking. He watches the speedometer and the rearview mirror; this is the time of night cops like best, watching for drunks speeding home. He would not want to be given a sobriety test. He knows he could not walk a straight line. He would lurch and weave and stand shaking in front of the policeman. He drives five miles below the speed limit, and has to stop at every light that isn’t just flashing. Well, it wasn’t a bad visit. He can’t tell if anything he did was very right or very wrong. He stayed too long. She kept telling him that. But other than that, he didn’t do too badly. Tomorrow he will do better. And she said the taxi driver didn’t mean anything to her. A taxi driver. Jesus.

J.D.’s car is still at his house, parked on the street. Charles pulls into the driveway — it seems steeper than usual, or perhaps he’s just a little sick to his stomach — and turns the ignition off and gets out. He walks to the front door and opens it. J.D. is passed out on the sofa, a blanket over him. The dog barks a greeting, and J.D. groans and rolls over to face the back of the sofa, the blanket falling on the rug. Charles picks up the dog, strokes it, and walks through the living room to his bedroom. The light is on in Sam’s room, and Sam gestures for him to come in.

“What did she do to you?” Sam says.

“Nothing. It went fine.”

“I’m surprised. But that’s good.”

“You look like you don’t believe me.”

“You look half dead. You don’t look good.”

Charles shrugs. “Neither does J.D.”

“J.D. got good and drunk. We walked the dog for a mile, and he still didn’t sober up, so there he lies.”

“Does he have to go to work or anything?”

“He’s just working part-time now.”

“Oh. Well, see you in the morning. You want the dog?”

Charles puts the dog on the bed. The dog walks up to the other pillow and curls up.

“Get me up when you get up,” Sam says. “You can drop the dog and me at the animal hospital in the morning. It’s got worms.”

Charles makes a face. “Worms?”

“Yeah. All dogs get worms. Drop me at the animal hospital and I’ll only have to pay for a bus home.”

“Okay. See you.”

“Hey, Charles?”

“Yeah?”

“Those worms don’t crawl out or anything, do they?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.” Sam says. “You should have seen the things.”

That night, as usual, the dog paces (Sam removes the collar at night, but you can hear the dog’s toenails on the floor if you listen carefully) and J.D. groans and goes to the bathroom many times. Charles is glad he isn’t either of them. He is glad to be himself, now that he’s going to get Laura. And he is . He reassures himself of this, and eventually falls asleep. He awakens several times, though (flushing toilet, the dog pacing), from nightmares that he is losing her. In one nightmare he meets Frances, and instead of being a woman, Frances is a tall, handsome man, and Laura is obviously in love with him. They tell him to go away, and he jumps out the window (these nightmares are faithful, down to the last detail: he sees the shattered pane of glass as he crashes through the window), and he awakes spread-eagled on the bed, his face in the pillow. J.D. flushes the toilet. He is now only half glad he’s not J.D. J.D. will vomit a few more times, and eventually it will be over with.