Richard Ford - Independence Day

“I guess I’m concerned that you’re making me up different from how I am. Maybe you think there’s only one person in the world for anybody, and so you keep making her up. Not that I mind being improved on, but you have to stick to my particular facts.”

“I have to forget about making people up,” I say guiltily, sorry I ever gave utterance to the idea. “And I don’t think there’s just one person for anybody. At least I hope to hell not, since I haven’t done so well yet.”

“We have some more fireworks out on the water here,” Sally says dreamily. “That’s very nice. Maybe I’m just feeling susceptible tonight. I felt good when you called.”

“I still feel good,” I say, and suddenly the bony, horseface woman who’s been banging the piano to death strides out into the foyer and looks down the hall straight at me, where I’m leaning on the wall above the phone table. She’s in step with the plump woman in the neck brace, whom she’s no doubt been making sing “Balls-de-reee, balls-de-rah.” She issues me another savage-eyebrowed look, as if I was where she knew I’d be and up to my pants pockets in the deceit of some angelic and unsuspecting wifey. “Look. I’m in a public phone here. But I feel a lot better. I just want to see you tomorrow if I can’t see you in ten minutes.”

“Where?” Sally says smally, still susceptible.

“Anywhere. Name it. I’ll come down there in a Cessna.” The two women stay standing in the lighted foyer, unabashedly ogling me and listening in.

“Are you still taking Paul to the train in New York?”

“By six o’clock,” I say, wondering where Paul could be at this minute.

“Well, I could take a train up there and meet you. I’d like that. I’d like to spend the Fourth of July with you.”

“You know, it’s my favorite holiday of a non-religious nature.” I am enthused to hear her even warily agreeable, though she can seem more agreeable than she is. (I have to tabulate all the declarations and forswearings I’ve committed to in the last ten minutes.) “You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“Oh.” She sniffs once. “You’re not really very easy to fix on. And I don’t think I’d be a good long-term lover or a wife for somebody like that. I had a husband who was hard to fix on.”

“That’s all right,” I say. Though surely I’m not as elusive as Wally! The Wally who’s been gone for damn near twenty years!

“Is that all right? For me to be a not very good lover or wife?” She pauses to think about this novel idea. “Don’t you care, or are you just not putting any pressure on me to do anything?”

“I care,” I say. “But I’d actually just be happy to hear any good words.”

“Everything isn’t just about how you say it,” Sally says, very formally. “And I wouldn’t know what to say anyway. I don’t think we mean the same things when we say the same things.” (As predicted.)

“That’s fine too. As long as you’re not sure you don’t love me. I read a poem someplace that said perfect love was not knowing you weren’t in love. Maybe that’s what this is.”

“Oh my,” she says, and sounds sorrowful. “That’s too complicated, Frank, and it’s not very different from how it was last night. It’s not very encouraging to me.”

“It’s different because I get to see you tomorrow. Meet me at seven at Rocky and Carlo’s on Thirty-third and Seventh. We’ll start new from there.”

“Well,” she says. “Are we making a business deal to be in love? Is that what’s happening?”

“No, it’s not. But it’s a good deal, though. Everything’s up front for a change.” She laughs. And then I try to laugh but can’t and have to fake laughing.

“Okay, okay,” she says, in a not very hopeful voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You better believe it,” I say in a better one. And we hang up. Though the instant she’s off I depress the plunger and shout into the empty line, “And so you’re nothing but a fucking asshole, are you? Well, I’ll have you killed before Labor Day, and that’s God’s promise.” I snap a vicious look around at the two women, framed by the screen door, peering at me. “I’ll see you in hell,” I say into the dead line, and slam the phone down as the women turn and head hastily upstairs to their beds.

I take a quick peek out onto the porch to see if Paul’s there. He’s not — only one of the gin players is left, asleep but managing to rock his rocker anyway. I make an investigative turn through the smelly dining room, where the light’s still on and the big boarding-house lazy Susan table is cleared and shining dully from being wiped with a greasy rag. Through the two-way kitchen door open at the back I see the young woman who was clanging the dinner bell, wearing a chef’s hat and waving when Paul and I arrived. She’s seated at a long metal table in the brackish light, smoking a cigarette and flipping through a magazine, her hand around a can of Genny, her chef’s hat in front of her. Clearly she’s immersed in her own well-earned and private quality time. But nothing would make me happier than a warmed-up plate of dinner spaghetti with a couple of cold-as-they-may-be slabs of garlic bread and maybe a brew of my own. I’d eat right here, standing up, or sneak a plate to my room by the back stairs so no other guests would have to know about it. (“The next thing, everybody’ll want to eat late, and we’ll be serving dinner from now to Christmas. It’s hard to know where to draw the line in these things”—which of course is true.)

“Hi,” I say in through the kitchen door, one room into the next, sounding meeker than I want to sound.

The young woman — who’s still wearing a chef’s boxy-looking white tunic, institutional baggy pants and a red neckerchief — turns and gives me a skeptical, unwelcoming look. A round tin ashtray sits on the table in front of her, beside a package of Winstons. She looks back and flicks her smoke on the ashtray’s rim.

“What can I do you for?” she says without looking up at me. I take a couple of minuscule steps nearer the doorframe. In fact, I hate to be the one asking for special treatment, who wants his dinner late, his laundry returned without his ticket, who can’t find his stub for his prints, has to have his tires rotated this afternoon because he needs to drive to Buffalo in the morning and the left front seems to be wearing a little unevenly. I prefer my regular place in line. Only tonight, after 10 p.m., worn uneven myself from a long, befuddling day with my son, I’m willing to bend the rules like anyone else.

“I thought I might get a good tip on dinner somewhere,” I say, with a you-know-what-I-really-mean look. My tired eyes dart around to what I can see of the kitchen: a giant cold box, a black eight-burner Vulcan, a bulky silver pot-washer, its door open, four big tub-sinks, dry as a desert, all utensils — pots, pans, skillets, whisks, spatulas — dangling like weaponry from a rack on the rear wall. Nowhere do I see a still-warm pot of spaghetti with a metal spoon handle poked up over the top. Nothing’s doing here food-wise.

“I guess the Tunnicliff’s kitchen shuts off at nine.” The lady chef glances at her wristwatch and shakes her head without looking up. “You just missed that by an hour. I’m sorry to break the news.”

She is a harder-boiled piece of business than I guessed. Frizzy blond hair, pallid indoor skin, blotchy where I can’t now see, thick little wrists and neck, and wandering breasts not well captained inside her chef’s getup. She is twenty-nine, no doubt, with a kid at home she’s slow getting back to, and in all likelihood rides a big Harley to work. (Almost certainly she’s the innkeeper’s squeeze.) Though whatever her arrangements, they haven’t left her easy to win over.