Chilly Scenes of Winter (30 page)

Sam is slumped in the seat, disgusted. He won’t speak. Charles sighs.

“If it were true, why wouldn’t I think about Jill Peterson?”

At five miles an hour, the car rolls by Laura’s driveway. The light is on in the kitchen again, but the kitchen window is too far from the road to see through. She could be standing right in the window and he wouldn’t know it. If only the house were closer to the road. If only she didn’t live in that house at all. She could live in his house. Did he ever make that clear enough to her? Yes. A hundred times. She even agreed that his house was more spacious. She is in there, somewhere in that house, in one of those lighted rooms. He turns in a driveway and rolls by again, this time even slower. The trees are blowing in the wind. He is nothing like Jay Gatsby. Gatsby waited all his life, and then Daisy slipped away. Charles has only been waiting for two years, and he’ll get her back. He has to get her back. He will get her back and take her to Bermuda. “Bermuda?” she will say. She always thought the things he said were strange. Maybe he was a weird conversationalist. And he can’t blame her for thinking him peculiar when he said the calendar had to go. In general, though, she didn’t think him peculiar. She loved him, in general. If she still loves him, he will get her back. She has to still love him. She just has to. She laughed wildly when he showed her the butter box trick.

“Jesus Christ.” Sam swears under his breath as they turn back onto the main road.

“I’ve got to get her back. Wasn’t she great, Sam?”

“Here we go. I knew. I just knew it.” Sam sighs dramatically. “Yeah, she was a swell woman.”

“I’m going to get her back.”

“I hope so.” Sam says. He shakes his head.

“If she didn’t like me, why would she have driven to school that day she said she’d meet me?”

Driving home, Charles realizes that it’s too late to suggest going to a movie. Just as well, because he spent all his money at dinner.

“I sure am waiting for that Dylan album,” Sam says. “I really want to know what Bob Dylan’s got to say in 1975.”

Charles thinks of the cookies at home and drives faster. Devil’s food cookies. In fifteen minutes they are there. Charles heads for the cookie bag as he goes through the door. He is suddenly starving.

“Have some,” he says to Sam, then sees the note next to the bag: “My brother is driving me to California. It’s a long story. I had intended to stay with you, but I realized talking to my brother that I really had to head west. I can never thank you enough for coming out that night to get me. I’m leaving some books here that you and Sam might like, and when I get to California, I’ll call with a longer explanation. My brother is waiting. Long explanation later. Love, Pamela.”

“Oh no,” Sam says, reading over his shoulder.

Charles shoves another cookie in his mouth. “I’m actually disappointed,” Charles says through the cookie.

“Why?” Sam says.

“After all we went through to get her, it seems like she should have stuck around for a while.”

“I know what you mean,” Sam says.

“She left her sweater,” Charles says, looking at the kitchen chair. “She left in a hurry.”

“You think that’s true? About her brother?”

“Maybe he figured he’d transport her himself, be sure to get rid of her.”

“Yeah. That could be it.”

“Wow. It really seems strange that she’s gone,” Charles says. Sam takes another cookie. “Well, back to cooking for ourselves,” he says. “Yeah.”

“We still might hear from her before she hits the West Coast, knock on wood,” Sam says, rapping his knuckles on the kitchen cabinet “Women,” Charles says.

“She’s a very odd one,” Sam says. “Do you remember when women didn’t use to be odd? I’d pick up some girl in the park and she’d be a nice, normal chick.”

“I’ve got to get Laura back” Charles says, putting another cookie in his mouth.

The phone rings.

“Don’t tell me,” Sam says. “Should I answer it?”

“Go ahead.”

“Hello?” Sam says. “Yes. Just a minute.” He covers the mouthpiece. “Pete,” he says. “Hello?” Charles says. “How’s my boy? Did I disturb you?”

“No. We just got in.”

“Get into those pants, ha ha ha?”

“She’s gone back to California.”

“That’s the breaks,” Pete says. Silence.

“I don’t have anything major to report,” Pete says. “I think sometimes that you must dread a call from me, because it might bring word of your mother being in trouble. It’s too bad I can’t just call you and we can’t chat without that hanging over us.”

“Yeah,” Charles says. “What’s new?”

“Well, the reason I called, I’ve been to two hardware stores today, and damned if I can find Turtle Wax. You know, that’s the stuff you want to take to your car. Get it waxed up while it’s new, you’ll never have a problem. But I can’t find the stuff anywhere. Now, it’s not what the manufacturer recommends, but I know my car wax, and I want to go over it with Turtle Wax. If in your travels you come across it, why, buy the stuff and I’ll reimburse you.”

“Sure,” Charles says. “I’ll look.”

“Cooked the chicken and it went fine,” Pete whispers.

“Good,” Charles says. “Things are looking up.”

Silence.

“I’ll hang up now and let you get on with it,” Pete says. “Good to talk to you, and thanks for keeping an eye out.”

“Sure,” Charles says. “Good-bye.”

It is nine-fifteen. He puts on a record that has always been one of his favorites: The New Lost City Ramblers with Cousin Emmy. Cousin Emmy has her red-painted mouth open wide. She looks like his mother being hauled out of the tub. He gets up and moves the needle to “Chilly Scenes of Winter.” Sing it, Emmy. He eats a cookie and tries to think what to do to get Laura. Sam is right; he can’t keep driving by her house. He will call her. Tomorrow. He’ll call her and ask to see her again, ask whether he can meet her at the school for just five minutes. Or maybe that doesn’t seem self-assured enough. He’ll ask if he can see her and put no time limit on it. He’ll be a little casual. He won’t say it’s important the way he did the other time. He will just say that he’d like to see her. He won’t tell her he loves her on the phone—nothing to scare her away, nothing to give her an excuse to say no. And then he’ll see her. What will he say? What will he say to persuade her never to drive home again? He gets up and walks around the house. Pamela Smith’s things are everywhere. He will have to box them and send them. He hates wrapping things for mailing. Maybe there’s a way to get Sam to do it. Sam has more time than he does. Get Sam to do it. He opens the Lido cookies. They are wonderful. He gets a glass of water and paces the kitchen. What can he say to her? What can he say to Laura?

He takes a shower and watches the eleven o’clock news. He gets in bed with a magazine. At midnight he calls good night to Sam and turns off the light. He thinks back over the day. One thing keeps coming back to him: when he was leaving work he stopped at the blind man’s stand for a Hershey bar. “What have you got?” the blind man said and Charles was suddenly tempted to break into song with, “I’ve got a never-ending love for you.…” He laughed out loud when he thought of singing that to the blind man. “Hershey bar,” he said, and laughed again. The blind man reached out and felt the Hershey bar before he took the money from Charles. He felt all along it, and had his head cocked to one side when Charles left. The blind man is beginning to distrust him.

ELEVEN

S
tanding on the eleventh floor waiting for the elevator, Charles sees Betty out of the comer of his eye. She had her coat on and must have been leaving, but she ducked back in the doorway when she saw him. She has given up on him, doesn’t even want to talk to him. She picked up his reports today without even saying hello. He couldn’t think of anything to say to her, so he didn’t look up. Now she won’t even wait for the elevator with him. He feels sorry that he has been cruel to Betty, but he just can’t get interested. He has been in a bad mood all day because Laura’s phone rang and rang. She never did answer. He stayed at work later than usual, hoping to catch her before Ox got home. He finally stopped dialing, sure that Ox would pick it up. He could have hung up on Ox, but he doesn’t want him suspicious. He doesn’t want Laura blaming him for anything. He has to be very nice and very careful and get her back.

Betty and another woman walk through the corridor to the elevator. The doors open just as they get there. Charles puts his hand over the edge of the door to make sure it stays open for them. The elevator is packed. He gets on along with ten people from the eleventh floor. Bob White is pressed in the back. He nods hello. Betty is standing next to Charles.

“How are you?” Charles says.

“Tired,” Betty says. She turns and talks to the woman next to her about dinner.

“If you’re not doing anything for dinner, why don’t you two come over to my place,” Charles hears himself say as he walks off the elevator in back of them.

They stop, looking confused. He has never seen the other woman. She is much prettier than Betty. Sam wouldn’t mind.

“I was just saying that I couldn’t go at all,” the woman says. I have no baby-sitter.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Charles says.

“Maybe some other time,” Betty says.

“Oh,” Charles says. “If you can’t make it.”

“I’m awfully tired to go out,” Betty says. “But thank you.”

“Let me walk to your car with you,” he says. Why is he saying this?

She shrugs. She says good-bye to the other woman at the door.

“Change your mind,” Charles says to Betty. “Actually, I have no car. It’s in the shop for a valve job. I was walking to the bus stop.”

“Let me drive you home, then.”

“All right,” she says. “Thank you.”

They walk silently to his car. He thinks of his dancing teacher: “Closer, closer.” He is walking six feet away from Betty. He moves over about a foot. She doesn’t seem to notice. Her coat collar is turned up. She looks like a turtle. She has a sharp nose like a turtle. On all fours she might look very much like a turtle.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stop by for dinner? I have to go to the grocery store anyway. A friend is staying with me and his battery’s dead, so he couldn’t go out to get groceries.”

“If you’d like me to,” Betty says. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“What would you like for dinner?” he asks.

“Whatever you’d planned to have is fine.”

He never plans dinner. He would have gone home and had water and cookies.

“I’ll stop and get us some steaks.” He opens the car door for her. Her legs are fat He averts his eyes—shower room etiquette—as she climbs in. He walks around the car and opens his door. She did not pull the lock up for him. She doesn’t like him. He doesn’t want her, and she doesn’t want to come.

“How long have you worked there?” he asks.

“Four years,” she says. “I started when I was twenty.”

This woman is only twenty-four? How could anyone be so … solid at twenty-four? He turns on the radio and catches the end of a plea for money. Just like going home and opening the mail. The Indians want him. The starving orphans in Ghana. The mistreated kittens. He realizes, suddenly, that this was the day Sam was going to drive him to work so Sam could clean out his apartment. They are both so disorganized that nothing gets done. He is amazed by people who can shop for a whole week’s groceries on one day—that they know what to get, and how much of it, and that they will want to eat those things for sure during the next week. He looks in his wallet at the first red light. There is plenty of money. He has forty, and there is a twenty tucked in the back to lend Sam. He could even use that in the grocery store if necessary. Betty looks at him looking in his wallet out of the corner of her eye.

“I’m fascinated by men who can cook,” Betty says. “My father wouldn’t even open a carton of milk for himself. My mother or my sister or I had to do it. It seems lately that quite a few men cook.”

“It’s that or go out,” Charles shrugs.

Betty says nothing. He has botched it. He cut her off, and she was making polite conversation.

“Your father really wouldn’t open a milk carton?” he asks.

“No. He wouldn’t. When my mother bought the things, she’d always open and close the milk again, and she’d take the caps off the soda bottles and put on those rubber ones to seal them. He’d pop one of those off. He’d carry on if he had to use a can opener or rip open the milk, though. That’s part of the reason I moved out. That and my mother telling me to use my salary for plastic surgery.”

“What for?” he says.

“My nose.”

“You don’t have a bad nose.”

Her nose is her worst feature. That and her weight.

“Thank you. I’m very self-conscious about it.”

He should say something else: flatter her more. He changes the station on the radio.

“What did you do before you started working?”

“I worked at Western Union for a while, and as a checker in a supermarket. I trained to work in a bank, but I quit after the training. The people were so nasty, and the money looked so ugly.”

“That’s quite an assortment of jobs.”

“I kept kidding myself that I was going to college. How can you save money working at Western Union? When I had a little extra money at the supermarket I spent it joining a health club. The exercises made me sore, and I got a kidney infection around that time and had to give up on it. So then I went to the bank and started learning the ropes. And then I took the exam to get into the government. I always knew how to type.”

“When did you get your apartment?”

“Over a year ago. A girl was living with me, but she quit and went back to Georgia.”

“She didn’t like the job?”

“She didn’t like the city. She had me so upset that after she left I was afraid to go out at night, and I had a bolt put on the front door. When you live with somebody who’s always telling you what danger you’re in you start believing it.”

Betty lights a cigarette. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead,” he says. Cigarette smoke makes him sick. They are almost at the supermarket, though. He concentrates on not coughing. He always coughed in Laura’s car. Laura, smoking Chesterfields. She will die young. He had better get her in a hurry.