Chilly Scenes of Winter (20 page)

For some reason, his boss has been trying to find out for a year if he ever went to a shrink. He has not.

“I guess they are.”

“But listen, what I called about was this: would you mind if I went through your desk if you’re not there tomorrow? I
know
I left my silver pen in your office. You probably put it in the drawer.”

“I don’t remember seeing a silver pen.”

“Must have left it there. I think I had my pen with me on Monday because I went over that report with you. Well, I wouldn’t make anything of this, but my boy gave me the pen and he’s going to be coming home and he wants to visit my office. My wife put him up to that, to make me feel good. Anyway, it was a present from him for my birthday, and I thought it should be on the desk.”

“Sure, Bill. I don’t care if you look.”

“I thought it was only polite to call. It would look bad if you were out sick and I started rummaging through your things.”

“You could have looked anyway, Bill.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I was sure you’d be amenable, but wanted to check.”

“How’s your son doing at Dartmouth?”

“Very well. He wishes he could be at Harvard, though, and he’s making his mother very unhappy. He writes her the silliest ‘If only’ letters. I don’t know what to say to cheer him up. What can I say? Harvard wouldn’t have him.”

“Well, Dartmouth is a classy place.”

Bill loves to hear that things are classy: his son’s college, his shoes.

“Sure it’s classy. Try to tell him that. He says it’s cold, and he loves Harvard Square. I was at Harvard Square once. Cars and buses and cops. It was a mess.”

“Well, maybe he can get into graduate school there.”

“That’s what my wife writes him. I tell her, don’t write that. Drop the whole subject. But he’s her son. You know.”

“Yeah.”

I have a son of my own, I should know. Just ask Mrs. Reynolds if I don’t have a son.…

“So. We’ll be seeing you later. I hope it’s not the flu.”

“So do I. See you later, Bill.”

He goes into the bedroom, puts the towel over the lamp, and gets into bed. He is so tired he’s almost dizzy. He gets up again and sets the alarm, then goes back to bed. The hell with the pajamas. He turns out the light.

He is almost asleep when the phone rings. It couldn’t be Laura. But what if it is? He gets up and quickly walks to the phone. It is Pamela Smith, calling to thank him for his kindness and to say that he is really a very nice person. She is calling from a motel. She got a ride to California. She thanks him for helping her clear out her thoughts. She thanks him for the breakfast. “At one time I was in love with you,” she says. He does not know what to answer. He realizes, standing there, that he should have slept with her. He tells her to have a good trip and to enjoy herself in California. She says that she will make him something out of silver. “I didn’t get you out of bed, did I?” she says. He says she didn’t It’s the truth; Laura did.

EIGHT

H
e stops on the way to work to get gas. It is a self-service station. On the gas pump is a piece of cardboard: “See cashier for transaction settlement.” Why not “Pay cashier”? He is in a bad mood. He was not going to go to work at all, except that he began to feel much sicker and thought that if he got out of the house he might not think about it. In the house, he had thought about weeping in bed, calling Sam at work to tell him to come right over. He had even thought of calling his mother. That’s when he decided it would be best if he went to work.

When he walked into his office Bill was there, sitting in his chair, going through his desk.

“Thank God I called you!” Bill said, shooting up, as though he’d been caught doing something terrible anyway. “If I hadn’t called, imagine what you would have thought if you’d come in and found me with my hand in the till!”

“Find your pen?”

“I
just
got here,” Bill says.

“Try the drawer on the right,” Charles says.

“How are you feeling, Charlie? Try my home remedy?”

“Didn’t have any whiskey. I’ll get some on the way home.”

“You don’t look good,” Bill says.

“I feel awfully queasy.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I just didn’t feel like lying around the house.”

“Yeah. It must be rough when you’re sick, not having a wife to take care of you.”

“Yeah. So I figured I’d come in.”

“Well, take it easy.”

“I will.”

Charles sits in a chair against the wall, waiting for Bill to finish.

“Sometimes having a wife can present problems, too. Last night she got herself into a state about my boy not being accepted at Harvard. A very paranoid thing about how they would have taken him if he’d been black. I spent an hour calming her down. Her sister married a colored fellow ten years ago, and you should have heard her then. I told her—you don’t have to see your sister. What does it matter to you? She hasn’t seen her sister in ten years.”

“There’s too much emphasis put on what college you go to,” Charles says.

“That’s what I tell her. And Dartmouth isn’t the small time. She cries because he’s told her it’s very cold there. She thinks he’s suffering in the cold. She talks about him like he’s a stray cat or something.”

“That’s too bad. I hope she starts feeling better about it.”

Bill stands up. “I can’t find it. Thanks for letting me look. If you see it around, let me know.”

“A silver pen?”

“A narrow Cross number. My wife gave it to my son to give me for my birthday. You know.”

Charles looks at the paperwork he has to do. He closes his door and takes out his cassette and earphones and puts on “John Wesley Harding.” He works while he listens. When the tape has finished he clicks it off and stands up and stretches. His head is hot. He walks down the hallway to the library and stands looking at it. He goes in and asks for something he doesn’t need—a financial report from 1970. The new librarian (he thinks, sadly, that she’s not so new any more) writes the information down on a slip of paper and goes into the stacks to get it. He thinks about following her, whispering to her that he loves her, pinning her against the shelves. He shakes his head, smiling. Imagine Bill’s reaction: “Why, I just left his office and he was fine. He’d been sick, you know.…” Imagine the librarian’s reaction. Imagine even thinking of doing such a thing. When he gets the report he thanks the librarian and goes back to his office and gets four aspirin, goes to the drinking fountain and takes them, one at a time, tipping his head back to swallow each time. He reminds himself of a bobbing-bird toy he had when he was young. The birds would dip interminably over a glass of water. One night he felt sorry for them because they weren’t getting any rest and poured the glass of water on the floor and attached the birds to the empty glass. He denied doing it. Not much was made of it. His mother showed his father the wet spot in the rug, his father shrugged and filled the glass again.

He leaves the office at quarter after eleven, kidding himself that he’s going to meet Laura at school. He even drives to the school and circles the block, but of course Rebecca goes to school a full day now, and Laura won’t be there for her until three. He could go back then. Except that he doesn’t want to be pushy. Of course she would be polite. And beautiful. But she would think it was in bad taste. Maybe she’ll call. Maybe he will drive over around three.

Three o’clock comes and goes, and he is still working. At three-thirty Betty comes in for the typing and asks how he’s feeling. He is embarrassed, thinking, with his fever, that she knows he deliberately forgot to ask her number. Renounced. The villain.

“Okay,” he says.

“Do you need aspirin or anything?”

“No thanks,” he says.

If only she would leave him alone and not make him feel guiltier.

“Okay,” she says, taking the reports out of the basket. “I’ll get these back to you in the morning. Is that soon enough?”

“Certainly,” he says.

She leaves. He looks up only briefly, when she is almost out the door. The black boots are back. She has on a red miniskirt and a white sweater. She slumps. He should call her, put a little romance in her life, tell her he loves her, marry her. He still doesn’t know her last name.

Leaving work early (four twenty-five), he sees Sid from his floor in the elevator.

“Sid, do you know Betty’s last name? Betty in the typing pool?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

A curious look from Sid. Sid knows. Everything. Both sides of it. That Betty wants him to call, that he is going to call. Well, not without her name or number he isn’t. He could call Laura and ask. That would be loutish; it would be something one of Sam’s old girlfriends would do to him. And Sam wouldn’t mind. Would Laura?

He remembers, finally, to go grocery shopping. There is nothing in the entire store he wants to eat. He buys two frozen pizzas, some soup, some salami and cheese, a roast beef, and a can of lima beans. He goes to the dairy counter and gets another kind of cheese and a half gallon of milk. A hippie is standing at the far end, a half gallon of milk opened and being poured into his mouth. What if he’s caught? The hippie raises his milk carton in salute. Charles waves back. He leaves immediately, in case a store official thinks he knows the hippie.

Charles always has a moment of apprehension at the checkout counter, even though he has money. He checks his wallet several times while he’s still in the store. Other shoppers probably feel sorry for him, having to economize, poor fellow, but that’s all right. That’s better than putting all his things on the checkout counter and not having the money. He leaves the store and drives home. Sam’s car is out front. Sam is in the shower. He is doing his “singing in the tub” song, but he is quieter than usual. Usually he can hear Sam kicking (Sam has confessed to this), but the legs will not break tonight. Figuring that Sam hasn’t eaten, he unwraps the roast and puts it in a pan in the oven. He opens the can of lima beans and dumps them in a pan. He takes a piece of salami out of the white paper it is wrapped in and rolls it into a little tube, bites into it. It’s very strong. Too strong. He finishes it anyway, goes into the living room and turns the thermostat up, sits down with his coat still on. There is a postcard from Pamela Smith: “The Clocks: Walter Tandy Murch, American 1907–1967.” The message: “Thank you again for being so nice to me. I’ve found a ride to LA Will try to call. P.S.” It takes him a while to realize that there was never an additional message she left off; they are her initials. In fact, it takes that so long to register that he also goes into the bedroom and looks for the thermometer. He can’t find it. He goes back to the living room and looks at the rest of the mail. Kittens are apparently no longer being thrown out in trash cans: there is nothing from the Humane Society. There is a notice that he should make a dentist appointment. There is also a note from Pete: “Mommy (crossed out) Clara suggested I send a note to remind you of your dinner invitation this Sat. We will be eating around seven, unless anything goes wrong with the chicken. I’m going to stuff it. I hope there are no hard feelings. Called the other night, but the line was busy. Clara has been working a nice needlepoint footrest of a poddle that she thinks would be nice to put in front of my chair. Be sure to ask to see it. So far, the baths are at a minimum. I really enjoyed that drink you and Susan had with me. Maybe we can do it again sometime. I’ll see you Sat. Clara suggested that I write. I’ll show her the envelope now.”

“Hi,” Charles says to Sam.

“To dispense with formalities, I’m out of a job.”

“What? When did you find out?”

“Five o’clock. I was going to work until eight tonight, when they came around and told me that wouldn’t be necessary.”

“Oh, no. You said you were selling a lot of jackets.”

“I don’t know. They were very vague. They don’t even do you the favor of saying one specific thing that can stick in your mind for you to brood over.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Collect unemployment as long as I can.”

“Couldn’t they have switched you to another one of their stores?”

“I didn’t ask. They actually sent two of them around, probably in case I decided to take one of them on. They were both big.”

“Those bastards.”

“I looked around me at the rows of jackets, and I just couldn’t do anything but nod. I guess I’m glad to be out of there. At least for a while I can collect unemployment.”

“How much will that give you?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“That’s awful, Sam.”

“Now that I’m out of work I won’t have to pay back the college loan. Maybe I’ll actually have it easier.”

“It’s a rotten way to have it easier.”

“I don’t know. What did I do with the money anyway? I just realized going home that I don’t go out on dates any more. I don’t do anything any more.”

“You sound like Pete.”

“Pete says he doesn’t do stuff, but he does. He’s always doing stuff for your mother. I used to do stuff for my dog. Now she’s dead.”

“Don’t start feeling bad about the dog. Why don’t you get yourself another dog? You’d have time to train it.”

“Great. Get fired, and it gives you time to swat a dog’s ass when it shits in the house.”

“You get sarcastic every time I tell you to get another dog.”

“I liked the dog I had.”

“Go on, get another dog.”

“Get another girl friend.”

“Okay,” Charles says.
“Touché.”

Sam slumps in the chair.

“I’ve got a roast beef in the oven. Maybe we ought to go out and get a bottle of wine and celebrate: your loss of a job, my loss of Laura.”

“Maybe we should get a bottle of whiskey, too, and finish it off after the celebration.”

“Come on,” Charles says. “Want to go get some wine?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I haven’t had a decent dinner for so long I can’t remember.”

“Your car or mine?” Charles asks.

“Mine’s okay,” Sam says. He gets up, shakes his head. “I don’t think this is registering yet. I just realized that tomorrow I won’t have anywhere to go.”