Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

He calls Laura when he gets to work. If she hasn’t left the apartment, he can at least tell her that he loves her and to have a good day. The phone rings and rings.

His boss asks him if he will have lunch with him. Charles is sure he is going to be fired. He works diligently until noon, when Bill said he would come for him. Bill does not appear until twelve-fifteen.

“Kid was on the phone. Sorry to be late.”

Bill is losing his hair. He is wearing a blue blazer and navy blue shoes — that’s something Charles has never seen before — and he has new glasses.

“Kid’s going nuts in the cold, wants an electric blanket. Jesus. My kid doesn’t even try to be self-sufficient. I said, ‘I sent you money galore. Can’t you go out and buy a blanket?’ and he says, ‘Do you want me to get into Harvard or not? Getting into Harvard requires that I do a lot of studying.’ So I said — I’ve always wanted to say this — I said, ‘I think you place too much importance on getting into Harvard. I don’t care if you get into Harvard or not, personally!’ That shook him up.”

“I’d be afraid to sleep under an electric blanket,” Charles says. He thinks of his mother: God — what if that occurs to her? What if she plugs herself in and roasts?

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Bill says. “I’ve been sleeping under number three for years. My wife’s nuts for the thing. She wants to be under number four. As I’m dropping off I hear her click it up a number.”

Charles smiles, waiting to be fired. The elevator doors open and they walk out of the building.

“That blind man gives me the creeps,” Bill says, when they are outside the building. “I’m all for hiring the handicapped, but that blind man’s something else.”

“What is it about him?” Charles says.

“I don’t know. I just can’t account for it.”

“Maybe he’s the devil,” Bill says. “Other morning I came in and bought a paper from him and he said, ‘Up late last night, huh?’ As it happens, I was out damned late. Playing cards. You don’t play cards, do you?”

“No,” Charles says.

“That’s too bad. I mean — it can be overdone. But an occasional game of cards.” Bill slaps Charles on the back. “That’s what I tell my wife. She doesn’t like me out playing cards. What the hell. An occasional game of cards. Not that it’s always cards exactly.”

Bill’s face lights up, and what started as a conspiratorial smile ends up a sneer.

“You play those cards, don’t you, Charlie?” Bill says. “Ha!” Bill says.

They are crossing the highway. That means either the drugstore or the delicatessen. “How about some hot pastrami?” Bill says. “Fine,” Charles says.

“You’re a very quiet guy,” Bill says. “Notice that?”

“I guess so,” Charles says.

“So’s my kid. And then I get a phone call about an electric blanket. I worry that he’s not getting any action up there at Dartmouth. I was going to say something about that to him, but he’s a great one for confiding in his mother. If he wants an electric blanket, though, that means there’s nothing else to keep him warm, huh?”

“I guess,” Charles says.

“That’s a shame,” Bill says. “Nice-looking kid like that. Always work work work.”

“Yeah. He’s a nice kid,” Charles says.

“He works so hard he doesn’t remember his mother or his father’s birthday. Top that. You don’t have kids, but when you do you’ll see that things like that matter. I still go out and get his mother a gift and sign his name, and she does the same thing. Sometimes I feel like shoving that pen up his ass.”

Bill holds open the door. The delicatessen is mobbed. Bill stands in the longest line, the one for “twos.”

“Reason I asked you to have lunch with me, I thought that you were closer to my son’s age than I am … I’ve got a few years on you, huh? And maybe you’d have some idea what I might say to him to slow him down.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can say if he doesn’t intend to slow down.”

“Aw, Charlie, there’s got to be some way to tell him to limber up. Are there any poets or singers or people like that I could introduce him to who would, you know, urge him to limber up?”

“I don’t know. I’m not as up on things as you probably think. Uh — you could get him a Janis Joplin record, one she sings ‘Get It While You Can’ on.”

“Tell me more.”

“Janis Joplin? You never heard of her?”

“I think I’ve heard of her.”

“She killed herself. She was a singer, at Woodstock? She was very free, you know, hippies identified with her. That one song …”

“Isn’t my kid going to know she killed herself? Won’t that make him think she’s nobody to listen to?”

“I don’t know. If he thinks that way.”

“I don’t know what he thinks, Charlie.”

“Well, try that one. Get him Pearl.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The name of the record.”

“I knew you’d come up with something,” Bill says, slapping his back and moving him up in line.

In a few minutes the hostess seats them. She brings menus and a bowl of bright green pickles. Bill’s hand shoots into the bowl.

“That record’s going to surprise him,” Bill says. “I’m not going to send it with a note or anything. I’m just going to let him figure the thing out. That song’s plain enough that he’d figure it out?”

“Couldn’t miss it,” Charles says.

They eat their sandwiches in silence. Bill looks very pleased with himself. Charles is let down; he expected to be fired. All that adrenalin surging around for nothing. For that asshole kid. He would like to break the record over the kid’s head. Harvard. Just as bad, Dartmouth.

“Would you send an electric blanket to your kid?” Bill asks.

“No.”

“Why not?” Bill says.

“That’s just a lot of crap. Anybody can pile some stuff on and keep warm in bed.”

“They’re good things,” his boss says.

Oh yeah. His boss has one.

“Maybe you ought to send it, then,” he says.

“I never know when I’m talking to you exactly what you’re thinking. Tell me honestly, now: should I send an electric blanket?”

“No. They’re useless crap manufactured to make money.” Bill nods.

“But that record will go over okay?” he says.

“I imagine,” Charles says.

“No poets that you can think of, though?”

“I don’t know any poets who deal specifically with the problem of not agonizing if you don’t get into Harvard.”

“Yeah,” Bill says. “My impression is that they never speak specifically to any point. You ever sense that?”

“Yeah,” Charles says. It is the easiest thing to say. Bill insists on paying for lunch. “Not only will I pay, but I’ll teach you poker if you want to learn.”

“Thanks. Sometime I might.”

“Tell me the truth, Charlie. Forget that I’m your boss. You were very honest about the electric blanket. Would you ever take me up on my offer to teach you poker?”

“No,” Charles says. “Cards bore me.”

“Ha!” his boss says, and slaps him on the back, pushing him against the door to the outside.

They walk down the arcade, to the record shop. Charles finds Pearl and hands it to Bill.

“Look at that,” Bill says. “That looks like an old lady.”

“She’s only around twenty-five,” Charles says.

“I thought you said she was dead.”

“I mean in that picture.”

“That looks like my mother. Except for the way she’s dressed.”

“Yeah. She burned herself out good,” Charles says.

Bill takes the record to the cashier. It is put in a bright orange bag for him. He swings it back and forth as they walk back to work.