Chilly Scenes of Winter (14 page)

Another report finished, he takes off for lunch. He has fried shrimp and a beer and mashed potatoes that can be lifted all in one mound with his fork. He eats part of the potatoes and plays with the rest, pays the bill, and walks back to the office. Passing the typing pool, he sees that Betty is eating at her desk. He goes in and pulls an orange plastic chair up to her desk. Two women at desks in back of her who were talking normally begin to whisper. There is a brown vase on Betty’s desk with four paper flowers in it. There are no pictures. There is a paperweight with a picture of a cat inside. Doctors tell old people, people whose mates have died, to get a pet—something to love. Betty must already have given up.

“Is that your cat?” he says.

“Yes. That was a Christmas present from my nephews.”

“My best friend had a dog that died not long ago,” he says. Why did he say that?

“Did it have heartworms?”

“What’s that?”

“Heartworms. They can cure a dog once, usually, if they get it in time.”

“I don’t know what it died of. It just died.”

Betty shakes her head. “Heartworms, I bet.”

Betty is eating cottage cheese. She is trying. She is trying to lose weight so she will get a husband and not have to rely on her Siamese cat. Poor Betty. If only she were Laura he would love her madly, blindly, forever.

“You’ll only have to type two more from me today,” he says.

“Have you gone to lunch?” she says.

“I’m on my way back.”

“Oh,” she says. “Okay. I’ll be down for them later.”

He leaves, convinced that there’s no possibility of romance. She should have said something witty. She is so dogged. But what could she have said witty? What’s the witty comeback about a dead dog? If she were Hemingway, at least she would have said something strange—that a dead dog lying in the sun was beautiful. But she is Betty. She says Sam’s dog died of heartworms, which can be cured once, usually. Unlike inoperable melanomas. He gets a drink of water at the water fountain, hoping to wash down the glutinous mashed potatoes. They are still right there, even after a long drink.

Why didn’t you even try to be a painter? he asks himself as he sits down to begin another report. Why don’t you paint at night? You could paint primitives—then it wouldn’t matter if they were sort of sloppy.

The sun is in the middle of the window. In the morning it is on the left, at noon in the middle, and to the far right before it gets dark and he goes home. He amuses himself by thinking that the sun rises and sets in his window, that it is confined to this rectangle, that the window is like one of those games they have in bars, with the little squares that beep from left to right. If he doesn’t find out Betty’s last name or her phone number, he will be spending another Friday night in a bar with Sam. He would ask Sam to come along, but the women always fall in love with Sam. Except Laura. She just thought Sam was nice. Sam didn’t fall in love with Laura either. Oh, hell—it was perfect. His best friend didn’t love his girlfriend. The three of them could have knocked around forever.

At the end of the day (4:25 today) he leaves the building. Bob White is in the elevator. He wants to say “Bob White! Bob White!” to him, chirp it at him, and he bites his tongue. Susan is right; he is infantile. “Glad to be going,” Bob White says. “Yeah,” Charles agrees. “Going to juvenile court with my kid tonight,” Bob White says. Charles looks at him for the explanation. “Threw a bottle through a window,” Bob White says. Bob White gets out first, quickly walks through the lobby to the revolving door and disappears. Charles stops at the blind man’s stand and picks up an Almond Joy. “What have you got?” the blind man asks. Sometimes, Charles is convinced, he just stops at the stand because the blind man’s question has such a nice ironic ring. Going out of the building, he wonders if Marsha Steinberg would defend him if he killed Laura’s husband. He has forgotten to ask Betty her last name. Well, all these things we forget are deliberately forgotten. Thanks, Freud. You probably would have forgotten too. The more exotic appealed to you. The more exotic appeal to me. He crunches into his Almond Joy.

At home, he sorts through the day’s mail: a letter from the Humane Society saying that kittens are being thrown in the trash, a note left in the mailbox from Susan, thanking him for “a good time,” a Burpee’s seed catalog. The bed that Sam slept in is a mess in one bedroom. He did not make the bed he slept in the night before. He goes into the bathroom, which is relatively uncluttered, and soaks a washrag in warm water, rubs it over his face. It is quiet in the house. He turns on the television and lies in bed to watch it. Sam’s snowmobile socks are hanging off each side of the bed rail. Like the coquette who forgets her handkerchief, Sam will be back for the snowmobile socks.

The evening news features a plane crash, the parents of a child who was roughed up in a Boston school, and a word about former President Nixon going golfing. There is a picture of the former President He looks like a lean old mafioso.

HOME
: San Clemente, California

AGE
: 62

PROFESSION
: Retired

HOBBIES
: Going out to Bob Abplanalp’s island, playing golf with ambassadors, shooting the breeze with Eddie Cox.

MOST MEMORABLE BOOK
:
Six Crises
.

LAST ACCOMPLISHMENT
: Surviving surgery.

QUOTE
: “Y’know, I love my country.”

PROFILE
: Aging, embarrassed, a crook. This man will not live long.

SCOTCH
: Yes, and pills, too, but don’t tell anyone.

He turns off the television and goes out to the kitchen to fix dinner. The phone rings.

“May I speak to Elise Reynolds?”

“Elise. Elise left a few days ago.”

“She did? To whom am I speaking?”

“Charles.”

“And is Susan there?”

“Susan left, too.”

“Where did they go? This is Mrs. Reynolds.”

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Reynolds. Elise left before Susan did. I thought she said she was going home.”

“This is the home, and I’m in the home, but Elise isn’t in the home. Just where do you think she is?”

“I can’t say, Mrs. Reynolds. Maybe she’s back at school.”

“Maybe you
murdered
her.”

Charles almost drops the phone. He sits down, eyes wide. Let’s see; she left the day before yesterday.…

“Mrs. Reynolds, get hold of yourself. I’m sure she’s back at school.”

“Did she tell you I was an alcoholic?”

Susan told him she was an alcoholic. “No,” he says honestly.

“I
am
an alcoholic, but it’s a popular misconception that alcoholics never sober up. They
do
sober up, and when they sober up they
search their nest.
”

“Is your husband at home, Mrs. Reynolds?”

“Didn’t she tell you he was dead?”

Oh, Christ, he thinks. She’s flipped out and there’s nobody there.

“Well, he isn’t,” Mrs. Reynolds says. “She exaggerates everything. She’s had him in the grave for five years. He’s considerably older than I am.”

“Okay, okay. I just wondered if somebody was there with you … if you’re worried.”

“I haven’t had anything all day but a Peppermint Schnapps, and I
am
worried.”

“Elise seemed to have had a fine time here. You know kids. They’re unpredictable. I’m sure she’ll return to your house or to school.”

“Excuse me. I didn’t realize I was speaking to an adult. I think we do understand each other. We know that when I looked in the nest, she had flown.”

“Try not to worry, Mrs. Reynolds. It will work out okay.”

“Where is Susan?” Mrs. Reynolds asks.

“She left this morning with her boyfriend for college.”

He is going to call Susan and yell at her about this. Why did she bring that screwed-up girl to his house? What if Mrs. Reynolds tries to do something—call the police or something?”

“You get back in touch if you get worried, Mrs. Reynolds.”

Please don’t get back in touch. Please leave me alone. I didn’t like your daughter. I’m glad she’s gone. You sound like another crazy woman, and I don’t like you either. I will keep the phone off the hook. Laura. I can’t keep the phone off the hook.

“You can tell that I’m concerned, can’t you, Charles? I
am
concerned. Do I sound drunk to you, or concerned?”

“Naturally you’re concerned.”

“That’s not what I asked! I asked if I sounded drunk.”

“No. You certainly don’t. You only sound concerned.”

“I
am
concerned. It’s a popular misconception that alcoholics aren’t concerned. If I weren’t concerned, I wouldn’t be an alcoholic, Charles.”

He has no idea what to say to terminate the conversation.

“Some people are unwilling to carry on a conversation once they find out that someone is an alcoholic, but you’ve been most gracious. Naturally, when we tend an egg, we look beyond the crack in the shell. We look to see the infant bird, to care for it, to care that it is all right. And since I haven’t heard from Elise for so long, naturally I am wondering.”

“Certainly you are. And I’m sure she’ll get in touch.”

You bet she will, that bitch, and Susan will see to it. Somehow.

“You can’t know how reassuring it is to discuss this with an
adult,
” Mrs. Reynolds says.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you, Mrs. Reynolds, but I’m certain that she’s back at school now. She’s okay, I’m sure of that.”

She will be dead somewhere. Twisted and dead. And the police will find his fingerprints on her coat—he lifted her coat from the sofa when she was here—and they will come to work and arrest him.

There will be a scuffle—he will try to keep his balance when he stands to greet the policemen. He will have a bemused, curious look on his face. And one of them—the big one—will misunderstand and think he is preparing to fight his way out. Why else would he lean to one side, why else that rigid spine, prepared for a fight? The big one will pick him up and throw him through the glass, and he will fall twenty-one stories. Braced briefly and miraculously between two snow-cushioned tree limbs, he will scramble for safety, but lose his grip and fall from the tree to the ground, while the policemen look through the hole in the glass and slap each other on the back. A sex pervert; he deserved that fall, O’Hara.

He calls Sam to see if he knows anything about where Elise might be. Sam reports that his temperature is ninety-nine and that he doesn’t know where Elise is. He did give her fifteen dollars though. “All she was worth—at the most.”

“You
paid
her for it, you
paid
for it?” Charles says.

Things are really taking a new turn if Sam paid for it.

“It wasn’t that overt. She told me she needed money. I think she said she needed twenty dollars. I gave her fifteen, which is definitely all she was worth.”

Sam sort of paid for it. Things are sort of taking a new turn.

“But she didn’t say anything about where she was thinking of going?”

“The only thing even remotely related to travel that she talked about was how she envied the Kennedys, except for the amputee who has a bit of trouble with it, for being able to go siding.”

“You don’t think she took off for some ski lodge?”

“Not on fifteen bucks.”

“She might have had more.”

“Not in her wallet. Well, she had about ten or fifteen more in there, I guess.”

“You went through her wallet.”

“She was showing me some pictures. I saw a little bit of money in the back.”

“It could have been hundred dollar bills.”

“I don’t think so. She was really grateful when I gave her the fifteen. She should have been. Even with inflation, that was a five-dollar lay.”

“Okay,” Charles says. “You don’t know anything.”

“Maybe you know whether my snowmobile socks are at your place,” Sam says.

“Yeah, they are.”

“I looked all over the place for them before I left. Ended up going to work in a pair of yours.”

“Bring them back.”

“I will. Why would I want a pair of your socks?”

“They’d better not be the ones Laura gave me.”

“How should I know? They’re a pair of navy blue socks.”

“No. She gave me gray ones.”

“Christ, you’re nuts. My dinner’s getting ready to burn.”

“What are you having?”

“Stouffer’s lasagna.”

“It’s good you’re eating. Keep your strength up.”

“You sound like somebody’s grandmother.”

“You’re as testy as I am. Guess you’ve got a right if you’ve still got a fever.”

“I’ve got a right if I have to stand here gassing to you while my lasagna bums up.”

“Okay. Good-bye.”

“Bye,” Sam says.

Charles puts the phone back on the hook, taking his hand away slowly, debating whether it might not be wiser to let it dangle. Might as well let her call again, get it out of her system so she doesn’t start that “You murdered her” stuff again. Murder. Jesus. Elise couldn’t drive anybody to murder. Who would bother? Except all those murderers out there … the ones who’ll wear rubber gloves and not have their fingerprints on her coat. In comes Detective O’Hara, out the window goes Charlie.
Then
she’ll be sorry. Then, too late, she’ll realize that she didn’t want her husband and Rebecca. She’ll go back to work in the same library, just to be in the building where he once cornered her against the bookshelf. Twice. Three times at least.

He puts a box of taco hors d’oeuvres in the oven and finds a beer in the bottom of the refrigerator that he decides to save to go with the tacos. Laura and her husband and daughter are probably having a nourishing dinner. They are having baked ham, sweet potatoes, asparagus, freshly baked bread, milk, and that dessert. Laura used to come home with him sometimes and cook dinner. She’d take off her stockings and go get a pair of the soft gray socks she had given him and stand in the kitchen in the socks, cooking dinner. In her dress and socks she looked like some bobbysoxer. If he had known her in the fifties they would have jitterbugged. She would have worn a ribbon in her hair, and a long pleated skirt, blazer, and white socks and saddle shoes. The socks would have a funny weave that looked like rivulets when they got twisted around a little. Gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight.