Michael Chabon - The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

"The flowers arrived not five minutes ago," she said. "You're such a wonderful boy."

After work, we headed toward the steps where we had eaten lunch almost two months before, behind the Fine Arts Building, wanting to walk but undecided yet about where we would spend the evening and what we were going to do. I had suggested the Lost Neighborhood. We leaned against the rail and looked down. Arthur stood as though calm, but I caught from him a whiff of nervousness or excitement; his fingers on the rail tap-tapped. Down in the Lost Neighborhood they were grilling food; smoke rose in ragged fountains, and crickets talked in the dry brush that surrounded our perch. Arthur laughed. The sky was rosy red and orange with chemicals.

"Cleveland and I drove down there once," he said. "Right after he told me about this job of his. We took his motorcycle down along the junkyard, past the two Devil Dogs, and tried to pull into the neighborhood. But we couldn't get in; it was funny. That is, we really could have gotten in, but Cleveland didn't want to. There were all these little kids, and bicycles lying in the street, and Big Wheels, and toy trucks. He cut the engine. We sat there. Cleveland wanted to watch, I guess. I'm hungry. Where should we eat?"

"My choice this time."

"No, I believe it's my choice this time," he said. "In fact, you always choose."

"So choose."

"Chinese."

"Very good."

We went. The food was brown and wriggly and spicy as hell. We cursed the fiery soup and ate it up. The cashews in the chicken dish were quiet little bland islands in an ocean of pepper. My lips swelled and burned. We swallowed glass after glass of ice water and emptied three pots of tea. I plucked small naked tangles of rice from the bowl with chopsticks; Arthur used his fork and swirled the rice into the sauces that pooled on his plate. It was a meal that held one's attention. Arthur and I hardly spoke.

After we had finished cigarettes and read our fortunes twice-"It is the loosest string that sings the longest," mine said-we came outside. It was seven o'clock. I headed to the left, heard Arthur say the word "No," turned to the right, and there was Phlox, standing at the corner of At-wood and Louise with her hands at her sides. She whirled and walked off, and I ran after her, calling her name. I caught her at the avenue and took her elbow in my hand.

"Hey," I said, and then that was all I could think of. We looked at each other for a long time, and she did not cry.

"I'm a fool," she said. "I'm a complete fool. I'm an idiot. Don't say anything. Shut up. Go back. I'm a fool."

We turned toward Arthur, who walked our way. He looked serious, but it was false; I could tell by his smirking eyes.

"I hate both of you," she whispered.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

Rather than answer me, she looked up at Arthur as he came to stand beside us. They stared, Phlox angrily, Arthur furtively, shifting his gaze away from her to something that lay at his feet and then back.

"I was thinking of getting some lime sherbet, " he said at last.

"That's a good idea," I said. "Let's all go get some lime sherbet."

"No!" said Phlox. "I'm not going anywhere with you, Arthur. " She drew herself erect and threw back her shoulders, and her eyes glazed over with a kind of Vivien Leigh haughtiness; she enunciated. "Please come with me, Art. I'm only going to ask you this one time."

I looked at Arthur, who gave me a cool shrug.

"Okay, okay," I said. People on the sidewalk turned their heads our way. "That's enough. Stop. Okay? Can we cut it out? Can we just stop it? Okay? Okay, look, we have to get rid of this thing once and for all. " I was surprised that I could speak. I turned to Arthur and said, "Arthur, I love Phlox." I turned to Phlox. "Phlox," I said, "I love Arthur. We have to learn to be together. We can do it."

"That's bullshit," said Phlox. Her teeth flashed.

"She's right," said Arthur.

"I hate you, Arthur Lecomte." She whirled. She was atavistic and gorgeous in her anger, with her splayed fingers, her cheeks. "I'll never forgive you for doing this."

"You'll thank me."

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"Come with me, Art."

"Go on," said Arthur.

"I'll call you."

"That's all right," said Arthur, "really. Don't bother."

Phlox and I started off, at first without discussion or destination. It was twilight, and the Cathedral of Learning, pile and battlements, threw great beams of light into the air, and looked like the 20th Century-Fox emblem. I took Phlox's hand, but she let her fingers slip and we walked with a breeze between us.

"Did he tell you we were having dinner tonight?"

"Why did you lie to me?"

She put her fingers around my hand, lifted it, and then threw it from her like an empty bottle.

"Why?"

"How did you know?"

"I knew," she said. "That's all. I knew."

"Arthur told you."

"How stupid do you think I am?" She ran ahead a few steps and then turned on me, her hair sweeping out around her head. We had come to the Schenley Park bridge, which hummed with the cars that crossed it. The two stacks of the Cloud Factory were ink against the inky sky. "I didn't need Arthur to tell me. I knew when I got those roses."

"I bought the roses-"

"Forget it," she said. "I don't want to hear it. You'll just lie. You poor dumb liar." She turned.

"-before I knew I was having dinner with Arthur tonight." Each time I mentioned Arthur's name I heard him saying, "Don't bother," and felt dizzy; it was like peering over a cliff, and now, as Phlox walked off, the ground on the other side of me split and began to give way. I thought, I fancied, that in a moment I would be standing on nothing at all, and for the first time in my life, I needed the wings none of us has. When Phlox, who had vanished into the darkness along the bridge, reached the other side, she reappeared briefly in the streetlight, skirt and scarf and two white legs, and then the park closed around her.

"Bechstein." Blackness. "Bechstein." Light. "Bechstein."

"Hey. What. Oh."

Filling my front doorway, in a welter of bloody twilight, was the huge silhouette of a man, hands on his hips. He raised one black arm and the red rays shifted around it like the blades of a fan.

"Jesus." I blinked and sat up on one elbow. "Good thing this isn't a Sergio Leone movie."

"Bang."

"I guess I fell asleep. Time is it?"

"Night is falling," said Cleveland. He came and sat on the arm of the couch, down by my feet; the top of a paperback protruded from his jacket pocket, and he held a white envelope. "Look at you-you're all sweaty," he said. With a vast, rattling sigh, he leaned back, against the wall, and patted his fat gut. "What do you have to eat?"

I twisted around, sat full up. Arthur's laugh pealed in my ear for an instant, and I realized I'd been dreaming of him.

"I can probably manage some form of cheese sandwich," I said. I tried to stand, tottered slightly, caught myself; I was sore all over. "I may have a few olives."

"Great. Olives." He lit a cigarette. "You sick?"

"I don't think so. No." Hannah, the little girl next door, was practicing "Fur Elise" again. There had been piano music in my lustful dream. "I'll get you a sandwich. Um, what have you been up to?"

I went into the kitchen and took out the necessary jars and packages. It felt nice inside the refrigerator.

"Oh, just a million and one things. Poon things, I'm afraid. This was on the doorstep, Bechstein," Cleveland said, clunking into the kitchen behind me. He handed me the envelope I'd noted, on which was printed only my name, in Phlox's schoolish handwriting, without stamp or address. It was a business envelope. My heart made a sudden violent motion-leapt, sank. It's the same feeling.