Ann Beattie - Chilly Scenes of Winter

She sighs again. “You’re so subtle,” she says.

“You’re so lovely. Imagine a taxi driver getting lucky enough to pick you up.”

“Enough! I don’t want to hear any more about the taxi driver.”

“Imagine me being that lucky. When I was that lucky.”

“I’ve never understood why you like me so much,” she says.

“I know it. And you always talk about my ‘liking’ you. You won’t even say out loud that I love you.”

“I don’t understand why you love me.”

“The orange soufflé.”

“Sometimes I think it really is something as crazy as that You love me because of a dessert I make. The recipe is in a cookbook.”

“I looked through all the ones at my house. I couldn’t find it.”

She laughs. “That’s the one book I took, I think.”

“You do have the recipe here, don’t you?”

“If I don’t, I can remember it.”

“Tell me. Tell me how you make the orange soufflé.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. I want you to tell me.”

He closes his eyes.

“You peel four oranges and … I can’t tell you. I’m embarrassed.”

He opens his eyes, drinks more scotch. “You peel oranges … go on.”

“I can’t. I feel too silly.”

She laughs. She has big front teeth. He loves her. “Then I’m going to watch you.”

“You can watch if you don’t talk. I don’t want you to embarrass me. Then I wouldn’t be able to make it.”

“No! You can’t threaten me about the orange soufflé. You promised you’d make it!”

“You’re crazy,” she says.

“I am completely normal. So normal that others come to me for advice. My own boss, for example. I know more than my boss.”

“You don’t know how to make dessert I’m the only one who knows that,” she says.

“No kidding around. I want that dessert”

“Would you like me to make the dessert and forget about dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she shrugs.

“And I’m watching,” he says.

“You’re drunk, I think.”

“I’m not. If I were drunk I’d be on a talking jag. When you go into that kitchen I am going to stand there and be utterly silent.”

“You’ll have to say something. Otherwise I’ll get nervous.”

“When you want me to talk, hit me with an egg.”

“I’m serious,” she says.

She gets up and goes into the kitchen. He follows (far enough behind to stare at her ass). He sits in a chair. He gets up, pours a glassful of scotch, sits in the chair again. Laura takes a white pot out of the cabinet, opens cream and pours it in, puts it on the stove.

“Say something,” she says.

“I was thinking about that snow fort we discovered in the park that winter when we had a bad storm. How strange it was that no kids were in it, just a big white enclosure.”

She jiggles the handle of the pot on the stove, stares into it.

“Which further made me think about not being able to get to work because of the snow, and how bright the glare was that day in the apartment”

She opens the refrigerator, takes out a carton of eggs.

“In support of the fact that I really am crazy, I never called you — except that once — when you went back.”

“I don’t know why I did,” she says. She is separating eggs. The yolks slide from the shells into the bowl.

“And that, in turn, made me think about you running out in the kitchen naked for something to eat, and me finding you jumping around in misery in front of the refrigerator. You couldn’t decide what you wanted, but your feet were cold.”

She laughs. She begins to whip the egg yolks. He takes a long drink of scotch, thinking how good the orange soufflé will taste.

“And how I told you I had a bath toy for you, and it turned out to be me.”

He takes another drink of scotch. “It would be nice to have a huge bathtub, one big enough to go under and come up, like seals. To really float in.”

“The dream tub bath,” Laura says. The cream bubbles to the top of the pan and she lifts it off the burner, adds it to the eggs, pours in cognac, leans over to smell.

“That was a swell apartment,” he says. “I miss it.”

She turns around. “Why are you so nice to me?” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you hate me for walking out like that? For making you so unhappy?”

“What would I gain by not being nice to you?”

“You mean you’re just acting nice to get me back?”

“Sure.”

“What do you really want to say? Go ahead and say it.”

“You just want to hear bad things. I don’t know any bad things I want to talk about. It’ll give you an excuse to stop fixing this soufflé.”

She shakes her head (brownish-blond hair). She begins to whip egg whites.

“And you love me because I make this dessert,” she says.

“Because of all of the above.”

Her head is still shaking. “I guess I should follow through and let you down again,” she says. She puts the whisk aside and walks over to his chair, sits in his lap. She smells like oranges. He puts his nose in her hair. He kisses her hair.

“I got my way,” he says.

“YOU did,” she says.

“A story with a happy ending,” he says.

He rocks her in the chair. The kitchen is a mess. If he rocks her for three and a half more hours — which is possible — her roommate (who exists) will come home to find the kitchen a mess. He looks out the window, sees through the steamy panes that it has begun to snow.

“Look at that,” he says. She raises her head a little.

“Just before I left,” she says, “there was a snow. We went to see his wife. We stopped on the way for all the usual disgusting food, and we got her magazines — because the magazines there are all ripped apart — and soap, and things like that. When we came in she had her chair sideways, by the window, looking out at the snow, and she said, without even looking up to know that it was us, that the doctors had said that sitting and staring at the snow was a waste of time; she should get involved in something. She laughed and told us it wasn’t a waste of time. It would be a waste of time just to stare at snowflakes, but she was counting, and even that might be a waste of time, but she was only counting the ones that were just alike.”

Ann Beattie lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry.