Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

“How do you know that?”

“That foreign broad told me she was a murderer. Showed me all these photographs of kittens and puppies, one hand showing the picture, the other clutching her throat.”

Charles sighs. They are standing in front of Pete’s Honda Civic.

“You know what my consolation is?” Pete says. “You want to know what my one consolation is?”

“What?”

“That car,” Pete says. “Well. It’s very nice.”

“That car must get a thousand miles to the gallon. I get in that in the morning and just leave the past behind.” Charles smiles.

“I do. You don’t believe me?”

“Sure.”

“Sure is right That thing gets a thousand miles a gallon.” Charles stares at the little white car.

“Looks like a whale, doesn’t it?” Pete says. “Friendly like a whale?” Charles resumes his smile. “Wait till I take that wax to her. Some shine.” Pete unlocks the car. “Take a sit,” he says. Charles sits in the car. His legs are cramped. “What a beaut,” Pete says. Charles gets out.

“So what brought you by?” Pete says.

“Just wanted to give you the Turtle Wax.”

“Jesus, that’s very nice of you. When I saw you standing there I thought: he’s come to tell us he’s getting married.”

“What? Why would you think that?”

“I thought for sure. I don’t know.”

“I’m not getting married,” Charles says.

“If you were my own boy I’d pry,” Pete says. “Ask what happened to that California honey.”

“She went back. She’s a lesbian, anyway.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re kidding me. How’d you meet one of those?”

“Long time ago. When she wasn’t.”

“No kidding,” Pete says. “Must make you feel bad.” Charles shrugs.

“Whew,” Pete says. “Glad I don’t know her.” He shakes his head sideways.

“I guess I’ll be getting home,” Charles says.

“Don’t bother to go back in,” Pete says. “She’ll have all her clothes off.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you have — I don’t mean you, I mean anybody — anybody has a conversation with her and they turn their back, she’s as naked as a jay.”

“Pete, you’re going to have to do something.”

“I’m sitting tight. I know eventually I will.”

“Well. Call if you need me.”

Pete nods. Charles shakes his hand.

“See you,” Charles says.

Pete stands on the sidewalk waving as he pulls off. He waves back, and lets out a long sigh when he turns off their block. His father is dead, his mother is crazy, Pete is all alone. He puts on the radio for the appropriate song. It is “Rocket Man” by Elton John. He listens to the radio and worries all the way to Wicker Street. Once again there is no parking space on Wicker Street. He parks on the same street he parked on the night before and cuts through an alley to Wicker Street, holding the tulips, in their white bag, inside his coat for extra warmth.

Laura opens the door wearing a black sweater and a long gray skirt. He is so surprised by how beautiful she is that he forgets to hold out the bag of tulips.

“Hi,” she says.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. “These are for you.”

“Oh, thank you.”

He walks into the apartment. Incense. He watches her put the bag on the floor and pull it apart at the top. “Tulips! They’re beautiful!”

“They’re in a thing. A container. So they won’t die or anything.”

“Thank you, Charles. It’s so gray out. These will be beautiful.” She looks around for a place to put them, settles on the coffee table.

“Your roommate studying again?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really have a roommate?”

“You don’t believe I have a roommate?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. She’s at the library. She studies there until midnight. Sometimes later.”

“Did I make you mad?”

“No,” she says. “It was just a foolish question.”

“What’s that on the stereo?”

Damn! He was going to bring her records. He was right in the store and he forgot. “Keith Jarrett.”

“Beautiful,” he says.

He sits on the sofa. The two black lines have not yet done in the rainbow. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes,” he says.

She goes into the kitchen and takes a bottle off the counter and pours scotch into a glass. She drops in an ice cube. “Just scotch, or water with it?” she says. “Just scotch.”

“I might have a job,” she says, handing him the glass. There is writing on the glass: Hot Dog Goes To School. A dog, knees crossed, is beaming. He holds a piece of paper that says 100 %.

“A job?”

“A job selling cosmetics.”

“Oh. Would you like that?”

The perfume in his mother’s room … Pete throwing his mother in the bath.… “It’s a job.”

“When will you hear?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then you have to wait home for the phone call?”

“Yes,” she says. “You’re not very subtle about playing detective.”

“If you’re here I can call and say good morning. I like to hear your voice.”

She sighs. He looks at the window — the cracked glass. A nightmare: he had some nightmare about that glass. He takes her hand.

“If I’m not all smiles it’s because I just visited my mother,”

“How is your mother?”

“Loony.”

“But, I mean …”

“She’s loony and well cared-for. She’s stopped bathing, and I think she’s stopped getting out of bed.”

“What is your stepfather going to do?”

“That’s a funny way to think of Pete. I always think of him as Pete.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Nothing, he says. Unless she gets unmanageable.”

“That’s so awful,” Laura says.

“I shouldn’t tell you my problems. You’ve got enough of your own.”

“I’ve got a job, probably. What problems do I have?”

“You’re feeling good now?” he says, his mood lifting.

“No. Heavily ironic.”

“Oh,” he says.

“Would you like another?”

He gives her the empty glass. The ice cube hardly melted at all. It is the last scotch he will drink.

He looks at her standing in front of the kitchen counter, pouring. He stares at her ass.

“I’ll tell you something funny. My boss asked my advice today about his son, who wants — in this order — to get into Harvard and an electric blanket.”

She laughs. “What advice did he want?”

“He seemed to want to know if there were some poets who advised young men not to worry about getting into Harvard.”

“Were you able to help him?” She is coming back with the drink. The drink is yellow. Her sweater is black, her skirt gray, her boots black, her hair brownish blond. It is Laura.

“You must have been,” she says, “with that grin.”

“Actually, I was. I recommended ‘Get It While You Can’ by the late, great Miss Janis Joplin.”

Laura nods. “A fine selection. Sure to change his thinking entirely. Then all he’ll yearn for is the electric blanket.”

Laura has fixed herself a drink. “You don’t mind eating a little late, do you?”

He shakes his head no. She is really quite beautiful in profile.

“You’re smiling too much,” she says. “You’ve had enough scotch.”

“No,” he says. “I’m just smiling.”

The radiator hisses. He looks at the plant hanging in the window above the radiator and at the yellow tulips. There is loud applause as the record ends.

“Jesus,” he says, stroking her shoulder with his free hand, “I’m going to get that dessert.”

“I didn’t realize you liked it that much.”

“I was wild for it. I crave it constantly. A riddle: how is orange and chocolate soufflé like Laura?”