Michael Chabon - The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

"A handshake before a hug," he told her. "Look it up."

I hugged Jane too, was enveloped briefly in smooth arms and Chanel No. 5, and then stood facing Cleveland, who pushed up his big black glasses and frowned.

"Enough touching already," he said.

We headed back toward the library, where Cleveland had parked the Barracuda. I was in a state of perfect ambivalence, worse than ever before. My arm was around Phlox's waist, chafing against the funny white leather belt she'd used to hitch up her dress, but I kept walking backward, turning to face Cleveland, Arthur, and Jane. I could tell it annoyed Phlox, but I told myself I had recently spent plenty of attention on her, and when Jane dropped Cleveland 's hand and came forward to talk to Phlox, I fell back among the boys. Jane liked Phlox, and said so all the time. Phlox thought that Jane was dull, that she was stupid still to be dragging herself through the mud for Cleveland, and, of course, that she was secretly in love with me.

"You're gonna get it," said Arthur, and smiled.

"Good to see you guys."

"Good to see you too," said Cleveland. He seemed to be in high spirits; he huffed along the sidewalk, boot heels pounding, gut pulled in. "Listen, Bechstein, when's your day off?"

"Wednesday," I said. I looked toward Phlox. She was laughing at some story Jane told with waving brown hands; I watched the pair of butts and the four high-heeled legs. I had promised Wednesday to Phlox.

"Meet me."

"Where?"

"Here. Oakland. Say by the Cloud Factory."

"To do what?"

He didn't say anything. Arthur, who was walking between us, turned to me, a look of mild annoyance on his face. I was surprised to note that apparently Cleveland hadn't told Arthur about my father. I felt a quick thrill when I saw that there was something between Cleveland and me that Arthur wasn't a party to, something outside their friendship, and then, just as quickly, I felt sadness and even shame at the nature of that something. It was not what I wanted us to have most in common. But the invitation, of course, was irresistible.

"Okay," I said, "but can we meet in the morning? I'm supposed to spend the afternoon with Phlox."

"Fine," said Cleveland. "Ten o'clock, say." He inhaled hugely, rattling all the snot in his nose. "Do we have to walk so fast?"

Phlox turned her head, squinting and opening and squinting her eyes in the light of sunset, her look changing from protective to vulnerable and back again.

We had planned on dinner and Ella Fitzgerald, who was playing Point Park that night. Cleveland claimed that they would be airlifting her into Pittsburgh with a sky hook, like Jesus in La Dolce Vita , and someday, he said, they would be doing the same thing with him. In the restaurant, I sat next to Phlox and across from Arthur; Jane was beside Arthur, and Cleveland took up all the space at the head of the table, making it awkward for the waitress, whom he apparently knew, in some connection that made Jane blush frequently. Arthur and Phlox had already started to go at each other in the car, in little ways, unfriendly jokes and a lot of smiling.

They were continuing that afternoon's show. The three of us, see, had been making an effort to meet for lunch now and then-behind the library, in the park, or on the lawn of Soldiers' and Sailors', but on this afternoon my luck had run out, and in the midst of a terribly important argument I had found myself siding with Arthur.

We were discussing Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen. I said that it was the most Roman Catholic record album ever made.

"Look what you've got," I said. "You've got Mary dancing like a vision across the porch while the radio plays. You've got people trying in vain to breathe the fire they was born in, riding through mansions of glory, and hot-rod angels, virgins and whores-"

"And 'She's the One,'" said Arthur. "It's Mariolatry city."

"Right."

"'Killer graces and secret places.'"

"I hate that," said Phlox, splitting open a tangerine with two long thumbs. "I hate that thing about 'secret places that no boy can fill.' I don't believe in that. There are no such places."

"Now, Phlox," said Arthur. "Surely you must have one or two secret places."

"She does," I said. "I know she does."

"I do not. What good would boys be if they couldn't fill all the places?"

Arthur and I presented a united front in support of the measureless caverns of a woman, Phlox sternly and with increasing anger defended her total knowability, and something about the situation upset Phlox. I guessed it was partly that the argument was so trivial, and partly that it was two against one, but mostly that the whole thing was so horribly in reverse.

Perhaps I did know all the reasons she could have for being upset with me, and perhaps there would be no mystery to women at all if I would just lift the corner of my own purdah. Anyway, it had been an ugly lunch, and now, over red plates of pasta, things were intensifying rapidly.

"That's because you're so insecure," Arthur was saying. "And besides, you love sitting in that window all day- admit it."

"I do not," said Phlox. "I hate it. And you just wish it was you."

"Okay, okay," said Cleveland, his mouth full.

"You're a crazy woman," Arthur said. "Those ladies have probably never even noticed you."

"You saw me crying! You should have heard the things they said about me!"

"What did they call you?" said Jane, very sweetly. As soon as she heard that anyone was or had been in any kind of distress, she became an engine of sympathy, hurtling to the rescue. She reached across the table and put her hand on Phlox's.

"I can't say it. I don't remember."

"I remember," said Arthur.

"Okay, Artie," said Cleveland.

"You said they called you a strange-looking white bitch who thought she was hot shit waving her ass in a window to the boys all day."

Silence fell over our party. Phlox threw her head back proudly and her nostrils flared. I had heard this story already, a few times, but Phlox's life was so full of incidents in which other women vented their jealous rage at her that the impressive, rhythmic hatefulness of the Hillman Library cleaning ladies hadn't really affected me before. I felt terrible, unfamiliar, unwilling anger toward Arthur.

"Wow," said Cleveland, finally.

A few little tears pooled at the corners of Phlox's eyes and rolled down her face, one two three. Her lower lip quivered and then stopped. I squeezed her other hand. Both of Phlox's hands were now being squeezed.

"Arthur," I said, "um, you should probably apologize."

"I'm sorry," he said immediately, without much conviction. He looked down at his lap.

"Why do you hate me, Arthur?"

"You're terrible, Arthur," said Jane. "He doesn't hate you, Phlox, do you, Arthur?" She hit him on the shoulder.

I looked at my linguine in red clam sauce. All the heat seemed to have suddenly gone out of it, the dusting of Parmesan I'd given it had cooled and congealed into a thick lumpy blanket of cheese spread across the top, and the whole thing, with the gray bits of clam, looked smeary red, and biological.

"I'm leaving," said Phlox. She sniffed and snapped shut her pocketbook.

I got up with her and we struggled around Cleveland.

"Looks like we've all got a fiin evening ahead," I said quietly. I dropped some money onto the table.

"Whom the gods would destroy," Cleveland said, "they first make pasta." He reached up and touched my elbow. "Wednesday."

"Wednesday," I said, and started to run.

Out on the street, Phlox was pulling herself together, snapping shut her purse. I came up behind her and pushed my face into her hair. She inhaled deeply, held her breath; exhaled; and her shoulders unbound. Just then-at the very instant she turned a fairly calm face to me-all the cicadas in the trees went ape, who knows why, and their music was as loud and ugly as a thousand televisions tuned to the news. In Pittsburgh, even the cicadas are industrial. We covered our ears and mouthed words at one another.