Michael Chabon - The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

"Wow," she mouthed.

"Let's get out of here."

"What?"

"This is driving me nuts."

"What?"

I pulled open the door of a restaurant adjacent to the one we had just quit, a coffee shop; we stood in the lobby next to the Kiwanis gum-ball machine and kissed in the quiet of forks and Muzak.

By this time, Arthur resided at the Shadyside home of a rich young couple, his third residence of the summer. After leaving the Bellwethers', he'd spent ten exultant and sinful days, so he said, in a small, pretty Shadyside apartment with a genuine rose window, of which I got a brief glimpse one hectic Sunday when I dropped by. Now, with this third place, he'd continued his upward journey through the World of Homes. The rich young couple, friends of some friends, had gone to Scandinavia for July. I'd seen the wife many times on television (she read the weather), and it was strange now to look at the framed Maxfield Parrish postcard over her toilet, or to wear one of her husband's pale beautiful oxford-cloth shirts, or just to think that there I was, stretched out across the carpet of a lady I'd seen on television, her head wreathed in lightning and tiny paper storm clouds. Arthur had won his battle against the "little animals from hell," but now all the shaved hair was growing back, which itched, apparently, and made him unable to sit still for more than a few minutes.

The morning after Phlox and I did not see Ella Fitzgerald, I stopped by my house, to put on clean clothes for work. The telephone rang as I fumbled with the front door; in the mailbox was a fat wad of mail, most of it, at first glance, informing me of imminent bargains on beef, garden hose, and charcoal briquettes. The apartment felt stuffy, vacant, and the jangling telephone sounded somehow plaintive or lonely, as though it had not been answered in days. It was Arthur.

"Hello," I said. "No, I just walked in the door."

"I'm calling to say I'm sorry."

"Oh. Well." I couldn't think. It is always so simple, and so complicating, to accept an apology.

"I was very rude and I hate myself for it."

"Urn-"

"Look, do you think we could meet today?"

"I don't think so. Oh, I don't know." There was an unusual warmth in his voice, a note of truth or of plainness. "Okay, maybe later today. I guess we have to talk about this?"

"I'm home today. Call me after work. Oh, and, Art-"

"Yes?"

"Have a nice day."

Not only did Boardwalk suffer under the curse of having to sell books; there seemed also to be a curse on the premises themselves, so that throughout the summer entire days of business were lost, here and there, to the need to remedy some minor disaster or other: Sometimes a pipe would burst in the basement, ruining overstock and making the place stink of wet books, and sometimes the air-conditioning froze and quit working, and once some vandals smashed the huge display window, on this day, there was a fire. It was a small fire, caused by a paramedic cigarette, but Valerie closed the slightly blackened bookstore and sent us all home.

I decided to walk to the Weatherwoman House through the clear, hot Monday morning. For some reason, many crews of men with tar-burning wagons were scattered across the rooftops of East Pittsburgh, and the smell of tar made everything seem even hotter, more yellow, more intensely summer. At the corner of St. James, a white Fiat convertible passed, and then stopped short with a squeal ten yards beyond me. Dark man, big smile; Abdullah. I came up alongside and we shook. I said hello, comment ça va, where are you going, and where are you coming from? Dudu told me one long semistory about both his having to appear in traffic court and his sister's passion for Charles Bronson, which were in some way connected. Periodically he stepped on the gas pedal, making the engine race, to punctuate his story at crucial junctures.

"What kind of mood is Arthur in today?" I said, just after we shook hands again.

"He is in an ugly mind-state as hell," said Abdullah. He smiled and put the car in gear.

Either Abdullah was inexpert at reading Arthur, or Arthur's mood had changed on the Arab's departure, or perhaps the change came with my surprise arrival; in any case, when Arthur opened the door, his smile was the one he occasionally gave Cleveland, loose and puckish. I was touched.

"Wonderful. Come in, come in," he said. "Nice shirt. Nice pants. Nice shoes." We both had on the usual dungarees, white shirts, and brown loafers. I had shaved, he had not. Neither of us mentioned Abdullah.

He led me into the bright, uncomfortable living room. The decorator had made an effort, it seemed, to create the illusion that the whole house existed in some remote future, in the wan, empty years after the extinction from the planet of furniture and cushions. I sat down on three wide dowel rods and a piece of beige canvas and tried not to lean back.

"Is it as lovely outside as it looks? Yes? We should take a walk," he said. He spun on his heel and walked away. "Want coffee?"

"Please. Do you know why I'm off today?" I shouted after him, into the kitchen.

"Why? You quit?" I heard him pouring, then the little rhythm of cup and spoon.

"Sure, I quit. No, I didn't quit; there was a fire."

"My. What happened?"

"The one copy of anything by Swift in the store, Gulliver's Travels, finally couldn't stand the indignity of living at Boardwalk anymore, and burst into righteous flames."

"I see."

"It was a very small fire."

Arthur came back with two white cups. "How do you know Swift started it? Maybe it was Fahrenheit 45I." He let himself down onto another odd tripod and made a display of easily seating himself, with a look of mock hauteur.

"To the twenty-fifth-century manner born," I said. "Ha ha." I was a little nervous. We weren't talking about anything.

"Perfectly plain, isn't it? Do you have a smoke?"

I gave him a cigarette and a light, and my hand shook. Then we sat there, looking at the creamy walls. I decided I didn't really want to talk about Phlox, but it had been very good to hear him say that he was sorry, and I would have liked to hear him say it again.

"So," he said finally, and it came out in a wobbling ring of smoke. "Do you want to walk? We can walk through Chatham."

"Sure." I rose, or rather fell, from my chair thing. "What's this kind of furniture called, anyway?" I said. I drained the tepid sour tail of my coffee.

"That's called science furniture, son," he said. "For the spine of tomorrow."

He locked the door behind us; we stepped out into the stinking, lovely day and headed for Chatham College, a destination that made me think of the party the night we'd met, of our short face-off in the doorway at Riri's, of all the possibilities for brown women, in that already distant June, which I'd surrendered with the advent of Phlox. I thought for a quiet second or two; Arthur's antennae operated inexorably.

"We could drop by Riri's," he said. "Every time I see her she asks after you. She said she thought you were a very sweet boy."

His tone, this faint air of the panderer that he sometimes wore, brought to mind another picture from that evening, which until now I'd forgotten: the change that had come over his face in the Fiat, the aha! in his eyes, when first I asked him about Phlox.

"Arthur, did you…? Why did you…?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

"Okay. God, what a stink in the air, huh?" We watched his feet take steps along the slow, hot pavement. "What about Phlox?"

"I just-I love Phlox, Arthur-"

"Ooh, stop."

"Stop. There you go, see; I can't understand it. We have to talk about this, right? I love her, and I love her because I want to love her, of course, but I always feel that somehow Phlox and I are together because of you. Except I can never figure out exactly why I feel that. It's like doing algebra. I can't keep the whole thing in my mind long enough to grasp it. But then every so often everything lines up just right, and I can see for, like, a second, that you made it happen. You're behind it. Somehow. And if that's the truth, then I can't understand why you say the kind of thing you just said. Or why you do the kind of thing you did last night."