Chilly Scenes of Winter (31 page)

He pulls into the parking lot. As he walks in, he takes his wallet out of his pocket and checks. The forty is still there. He puts it back. He takes it out again, going through the electric door, and searches for the twenty. Because if it took more than forty, he would need that money. He knows he is being silly. He knows that steaks for three people don’t cost forty dollars.

“Do you have enough money?” Betty says.

“Oh, yes. Checking my wallet is a nervous habit.”

Betty nods. He is sure she doesn’t believe him.

He goes to the meat counter and gets three T-bone steaks. “What else do you like?” he asks.

“Potatoes,” she says.

“Potatoes. Where would they be?”

He follows her. He picks up a bag of potatoes. He gets a package of spinach and a large bottle of Coke. They stand in line. He wonders if anyone in the grocery store mistakes her for his wife. People used to mistake Laura for his wife. “Your wife left this,” the woman at the bank said, when Laura left her hat on the table. People used to smile at him when he was with Laura. They don’t smile now.

“Working makes me so tired,” Betty says.

“You could do some isometrics,” he says. What is he talking about?

“Do you know the exercises?” she says.

“I have a book you can borrow.” Pamela Smith left the book. What is she going to think if all those women’s lib books are still lying around? She’ll think it’s peculiar he reads Germaine Greer and Kate Millett and Simone de Beauvoir. And if she asks for an opinion on any of them he’s sunk. Maybe Sam cleaned. He is sure that Sam did not.

“I’ll probably be having that party this weekend,” he says. What did he bring that up for?

She nods. She does not believe him. She has no reason to believe him. There is no possible way he could have a party over the weekend. He could call J.D. J.D. might come to the party if he didn’t have to work. That would make him, J.D., Sam, and Betty. Pete would come for sure. Pete would be so flattered. What a travesty that would be. What would Betty say to Pete?

“I’d be glad to come over and help you get organized,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says.

He pays for the food and is very relieved when he sees that he has enough money. How would a psychiatrist work him through this trauma? Tell him to go to a store and get more food than he has money for and see that it’s not the end of the world? Probably. Shrinks. The indirect approach: “Don’t you think …”

They get back in his car and start toward the house. Sam is going to be very surprised. Charles himself is very surprised. It would be nice to take all this food home and have dinner with Sam. He pulls into traffic.

“Where do you live?” she asks.

“Colony Street”

“I don’t know where that is.”

“It’s not far from here.”

“Is your friend visiting from out of town?”

“He’s actually staying there. He just lost his job.”

“Things are awful,” Betty says. “What was he doing?”

“He had a shit job selling men’s jackets, and last week they fired him.”

“That’s too bad. Do you think he’ll find another job?”

“Eventually.”

“So many people are out of work. My sister’s fiancé says you wouldn’t believe the lines in Detroit for welfare checks.”

Come on, Charles. Keep the conversation going. He stares straight ahead at the line of cars he is in. When the light changes, the line begins to move. He turns right and is on an almost empty stretch of road that goes to his house.

“It’s nice out here.”

“Yeah. My grandmother bought the house I live in not too long before she died, and she left it to me in her will.”

“Wow. You never hear of things like that happening.”

“The other house was nicer. Handmade by my grandfather, but she sold that and got this newer one. Still, you’re right. It’s a nice house.”

“Are your neighbors nice?”

“I don’t know my neighbors.”

“That’s what Ginny—the girl who lived with me—complained about. That everything was so impersonal. In Georgia everybody knew everybody else, I guess.”

He turns into his driveway. She opens her own door and gets out He carries the grocery bag, walking in front of her. Sam opens the door.

“Prepare yourself,” Sam says. “Oh—hello,” he says to Betty.

“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing bad.”

“Betty, this is Sam.”

“How do you do?” Sam says. He has on a pair of ripped pants and his snowmobile socks and a black sweater with a hole over the left nipple.

“Hello,” Betty says.

Sam turns and pushes open the door. A black dog is sitting in the kitchen. It wags its tail and walks up to Charles. It is one of the ugliest dogs he has ever seen.

“Oh, a dog,” Betty says.

“I can explain why I got him. It was next in line, if you know what I mean. It cost me five dollars.”

“Look at it,” Charles says. “It’s a male?”

“Wait until you hear what they told me it was a mixture of. Can you guess?”

“Dachshund?”

“Right. And what else?”

“God. I have no idea.”

“Cocker spaniel. It’s seven months old.”

The dog does, on close inspection, have some cocker spaniel features. It has long curly ears and the sharp nose of a dachshund. Its fur is curly and a little long, but its body is all chest and no rear, like a dachshund. It is definitely one of the oddest dogs Charles has ever seen. It looks like a very old dog. There is white in its coat.

“Are you sure this is a puppy?”

“Yeah. They told me.”

“It’s …”

“I know. I just got it because it was so ugly I knew it would never be saved before nine
A.M
. tomorrow. I know,” Sam says, shaking his head.

“I think it’s a nice puppy,” Betty says.

“It is nice. It follows me around, and it’s not at all wild.”

Charles shakes his head. He picks it up and examines it in his arms. Its narrow rat-tail looks doubly awkward coming out of the soft, curly hair. He cannot believe that there is such a dog.

“Well. You got a dog.”

“You’ll get to like it. You really will. I like it already, and I’ve carried out the newspapers twice.”

Charles puts it back on the floor. “Got a name for it?”

“No. Can you think of anything?”

Charles shakes his head. “Well, come in,” he says to Betty. He leads the way into the living room and takes her coat He hangs it over Sam’s coat on the ironing board.

“Have a seat,” he says. She sits in the chair. On the footstool in front of it is
The Female Eunuch
.

“I’ll get the steaks ready to broil,” he says. “Excuse me.”

Sam is in the kitchen, stroking the dog. The dog is a terrible genetic mistake. And he urged Sam to get a dog.

Charles gestures with his thumb. “Go in there,” he mouths. Sam gets up and carries the dog into the living room.

“So. You work with Charles?” he says.

“Yes,” he hears Betty say.

He rummages around for the broiling pan. He unwraps the steaks and puts them in the pan. He takes the spinach out of the package and dumps it in a pot. He runs water over it, pours the water out, runs more water over it, pours that out, fills the pot with water and puts it on the stove. He rinses three potatoes and puts them in another pot and turns the fire on under them. He takes them out and slices them in half so they will cook more quickly. He drops them in. He goes back to the counter to get the cellophane to throw away and picks up a lottery ticket. Sam has bought a lottery ticket. He looks at the lottery ticket and feels very sad. He is embarrassed to have seen it It reminds him of another thing he saw by accident: a bloody Kotex of his mother’s that tumbled out when he dumped the trash. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t touch it. He pushed it back of the trash cans with a stick.

“No,” he hears Sam say. “I was born here.”

He gets three plates down and stacks them on the counter. He pushes the lottery ticket away with his elbow.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Jackets.”

Charles goes into the dining room and begins to clear the table. He takes
The Second Sex
into Sam’s room and throws it on the bed. The dog runs into the dining room and looks at Charles.

“Hi,” Charles says.

The dog wags its tail. It goes into Sam’s room, in pursuit of
The Second Sex
. Charles hears it skidding on the newspaper. Charles takes several record albums off the table, and his pajamas. He puts them on a chair they won’t be using, Sam seems to be conversing very easily with Betty. They are talking about Marvin Mandel. How did they get on that? He would never have the ingenuity to talk to Betty about Marvin Mandel, Maybe Sam is regaining his old touch with women. The dog stands at Charles’s feet, looking up. “Hey, did you feed this dog?”

“They had fed it. They said to try again tonight. When they’re scared they like to eat.”

“The dog doesn’t seem scared.”

“I didn’t think so either. That’s good, huh?”

“Yeah,” Charles says. He pats the dog. He has nothing else to do, so he goes into the living room.

“Betty was saying that she worked in a bank with a woman who grew up with Mandel’s new wife.”

“She let everybody know she was her friend, too,” Betty says. “She brought it up all the time and said she didn’t think it was scandalous.”

“That’s liberal of her,” Sam says.

“That’s just the way she put it: ‘I don’t think Jeanne’s romance with the Governor is at all scandalous,’ she said. She quit after training just like I did.”

“What’s it like looking at all that money?” Sam says.

“After a while you forget it means anything. It was depressing because I’d look at my paycheck I’d worked for and think that
it
meant nothing,”

“Must be strange,” Charles says.

“I thought I’d like the hours, but you always end up staying late.”

“You know what?” Sam says, looking at Charles. “I forgot to drive you to work so I could have the car.”

“Tomorrow,” Charles says.

“Or maybe I could just take it later tonight. Do it tonight. I haven’t done anything all day.”

“That’s a good idea. After we drop Betty off I can come help you.”

“You were living in an apartment?” Betty says.

“Yeah. A real dump.”

“It’s nice you can stay here,” Betty says. “It is. There’s not a bug in the whole place. How come you don’t have bugs?”

“I don’t know. It’s not too dirty.”

“I guess bugs are mostly in apartments.
I
swear to God, if you left a glass of water out overnight, you’d find something floating in it in the morning.”

Betty makes a face. “My apartment is pretty clean,” she says.

“I’d rather have bugs than rats, though,” Sam says.

“Don’t talk about it before dinner,” Charles says.

Betty laughs.

They eat in the dining room with four white candles burning in a wooden candle holder Susan gave him for his birthday. The dinner is good. They concentrate on eating because they have run out of things to say to each other. Ry Cooder’s “Paradise and Lunch” plays. It is not exactly dinner music, but Amy has gone out the window, so what the hell. Ry Cooder is doing a splendid job of “Mexican Divorce.”

“Have you ever been to Mexico?” Betty asks.

“I’ve never been anywhere,” Sam says.

“No,” Charles shakes his head.

“I went there when I was ten. I bought a stuffed armadillo. At customs they opened it underneath with a jackknife. They sewed it back up, but they did a sloppy job. That was traumatic, to have my toy taken away and sliced open.”

“Drugs, huh?” Charles says.

“I guess.”

“What’s it like in Mexico?” Sam asks.

“I don’t remember too well because I was so young. I just remember things like what the children looked like, and all the fruit stands.”

“It would be great to have money to take a vacation,” Sam says. Bermuda.…

He has forgotten to buy dessert. They go back to the living room, where the dog is sleeping. There is a small puddle on the floor by the lamp. Sam gets a sponge and wipes it up.

“You’re a nice puppy,” Betty says, patting it.

“Think of a name for him,” Sam says.

“I can’t think of anything,” Betty says. She looks proud of herself for not being able to think, the way Marilyn Monroe always smiled in the movies when she was apologetic.

“Did you two meet in college?” Betty asks.

“Grade school. A long time ago.”

“That’s amazing. You’ve known each other that long and you still like each other?”

“Yeah,” Charles shrugs.

“I was friends with a girl since we were sixteen, but lately we’re so different that we don’t get along. She married a stockbroker.”

Sam gets on the floor and plays with the dog.

“That was a very good dinner,” Betty says. “Thank you.”

After another half hour of awkward conversation (damn—he should have bought two of those big bottles of Coke) Betty says that she should go home.

“You don’t mind if I ride along?” Sam says.

“Of course not,” Betty says.

On the ride to her apartment Sam sits in the back. Betty wanted to sit back there, and both kept insisting until finally Sam pushed her aside and climbed in. Charles felt sorry for her, trying to act like one of the guys, to act indifferent. He thinks she is starting to like him again. He looks quickly at her legs. They are so fat. She is so plain. They have nothing to talk about. He knew it would be this way.

“What do you hear from Laura?” he asks, going around the circle. It is the same circle the old man shook his stick in, the circle he rode around with Laura.

“Oh, that’s right You know Laura. I was over at her apartment a couple of nights ago for spaghetti.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“She asked me over for dinner. What’s wrong?”

“Didn’t you say her apartment?”

Betty nods.

“But she lives in a house.”

“Oh. I told you she was living with her husband, didn’t I? She’s moved out, into an apartment She seems pretty unhappy about it because of the little girl. Did you ever meet her? She brought her to work one day.”

He has pulled over. He is shaking his head back and forth.