Michael Chabon - The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

"Oh, it's from Phlox," I said. "Well. Hmm."

"Hmm."

"Well."

"Hmm." He grinned. "Jesus, Bechstein, are you going to read it?"

"Sure, yes-I mean, why not? Would you mind…?" I said, gesturing toward the unassembled sandwich.

"Of course. Let's see. Ah, bread, fine, perfect. Just the heels? Fine, that's fine. Love the heels. Bread and cheese, cadmium-orange American cheese-perfect, exactly. You're a minimalist. Go, go read." He turned from me and gave his attention to the food.

I stepped out of the kitchen with the envelope, trying not to guess at its contents, then broke it open and unfolded the two-page letter, also handwritten, in dark-purple ink on pale-purple stationery with her monogram-"PLU."

"The past tense of plaire , " she liked to say; her middle name was Ursula. My eyes skipped across the paper for a moment, before I could restrain them, and the words "sex," "mother," and "horrible" peered out at me like miserable inmates through the barbed tangle of her paragraphs. I forced myself to begin at the beginning.

ART,

I have never written to you before and it feels strange. I think it is going to be hard for me to write you a letter, and I am trying to decide why this is. Maybe it is because I know how intelligent you are, and I do not want you reading what I write, because you might look at my letter in a too critical fashion. Maybe it is also because I feel stilted when I express myself in a letter, confined. I am afraid to write long sentences or to use words wrongly. And then there's just the fact that before, everything I ever wanted to say to you I could just say, right into your ear. Isn't that how it should be? Writing is so unnatural. Nevertheless there are some things I must tell you, and since I cannot see you ever again, I must write.

You are probably afraid that I am mad at you, and I am. I'm furious. No one has ever done anything like this to me before. Not like this. Not so weirdly and horribly. Art, I have touched your throat and your sex, we have slept with each other as fierce and spoken to each other as close as a man and a woman possibly can. You must know that what you are now doing disgusts me utterly.

I keep hearing (and don't think this is stupid) a million Supremes songs in my head. Stop in the Name of Love, etc. Art, how can you have sex with a man? I know you and Arthur have slept together because I know Arthur. He has to have sex. He once said he always has to feel a man's hands on his body or he will die. I distinctly recall him saying this.

Oh, how can you? It is so unnatural, so obviously wrong, when you really think about it. I mean, think about it, really consider it. Isn't it ludicrous? There is only one place in the world where you are supposed to put your penis-inside of me. Anyway, all of this is beside the point now. It has been obvious to me for a long time that you have some kind of hang-up about your mother, but I did not think it was this grave. Believe me Art, because I do care about you- you need help, soon, and badly (from a qualified psychiatrist).

I still love you, but I will not be able to see you anymore. You say that you love me, but as long as you are seeing Arthur that just cannot be true. You don't understand how much this upsets me. You must know (I believe I told you) that this is not the first time I have fallen in love with a weak man who turned out to be homosexual. It's horrible. After you spend so much time looking out-not being jealous, just keeping an eye on the women who come around the boy you love-which is normal, after all, is it not?-they come and get you from behind. That's the worst.

Don't call me anymore, darling. I love you. I hope you're happy. I'm sorry for the letter. I never could have said any of this to you. It's easier this way. Call me sometime, maybe a long time from now, years, perhaps, when you have seen.

Phlox

"Let's go sit on the steps," said Cleveland, pointing, a hollow olive stuck on the tip of his index finger. The cheese in his sandwich stood an inch thick. "You look like you could use some fresh air, Bechstein. You really look sick."

"Hmm? Oh, no, no, it's just, um, something."

"Oh, well, something. That's a relief."

"I had a bad night."

We sat down on the cracked steps and I wondered if I really might be sick. It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening. I had a very dim memory of having woken up that morning, come out to the living room, and lain down again on the sofa; I'd slept for around seventeen hours. Cleveland slipped the paperback from his pocket and chucked it into my lap. It was a cheap old assortment of Poe, secondhand, a skull and a bat on the cover.

"Ten Tales of Tension and Terror," I read.

"I'm rereading the Big P," he said, talking around the cheese in his mouth. "I used to be crazy about him. I used to think I might be Poe reincarnated." He lifted his lank bangs to show me his pale Poe brow. "Whew. I'll tell you something, Bechstein." He poked his thumb into another olive and then flicked the olive, like a shooter, into his mouth. "The evil Carl Punicki is an okay fellow. He laughs a little too hard, and he throws his money around a little too much, and he slaps me on the back a little too often, but I can work with him."

"Work with him how?"

"I'm afraid to tell you."

"Oh."

"So what did you do last night?" he said, eyeing the half-crumpled letter in my hand.

I looked at him. He'd been babbling, he was eating the cheese sandwich almost without stopping to swallow, and I wondered if he might be stoned. The usual tracery of broken blood vessels on the skin of his face, under his eyes and across his nose, looked darker than usual; his eyes were pink, his hair was filthy. Although part of me wanted just to tell him everything, I resented his being so out of it, his doing something for Carl Punicki that was evidently worse than what he'd done for Frankie Breezy, and, finally, I was afraid that he would make fun of me, or-who knew?- even get angry. And what had I done last night?

"Yes, I'm stoned and I've been drinking all day. I'm half in the bag," he said. "Okay?"

"So you came over because there was no food at your house?"

"Right."

"Oh."

"Asshole. That isn't why I came over. I came to converse."

"You did?"

"Sure." He reached over and patted my thigh, then took the letter from between my lax fingers. "Disturbing news?"

"I'm not really sure. Confusing news."

"May I?"

"No. Come on, Cleveland." I reached for the letter, but he lifted it up over his head, out of my reach. "I can't believe you're going to work for that monster Punicki, I don't feel well, you're all fucked up-"

"I'm normalized. Look, Bechstein, you're upset; something's wrong. Here." He handed back the letter, tapping it against my knee. "Why don't you at least tell me something of what's contained therein."

My little neighbor started up again with her Beethoven. Cleveland wore a very sincere, if somewhat bleary, expression; there was only the faint trace of a sneer.

"It's a ransom note, right? She's taken herself hostage. 'Dear Art,'" he said, biting his lip in thought and rolling his eyes upward. "Um, 'Leave Arthur in an unmarked paper bag inside locker thirty-eight at the Greyhound station, or you'll never see me again.' Is that it?"

"Oh, here," I said. While he read Phlox's purple letter, which he did very slowly, as though he was having difficulty making sense of it, I listened to the music next door and stared down at a tiny white sliver of fluff that he had caught on a spider thread and was spinning in the breeze like a pinwheel, at the end of its miniature tether. Cleveland would ball up the letter and throw it to the ground; would stand and spit on my head; then he, too, would leave my life forever. I had ruined everything.