The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

by Michael Chabon

  They went past and I pressed my face against the glass to follow their disappearing forms. I felt like a South Sea Islander watching his white gods climb into their shining cargo plane and fly off, with the added and appropriate impression that I was somehow deluded in feeling this way. I turned wildly to see if anyone in the store had witnessed the theophany, but apparently nobody had, or at least nobody had been as commoved as I. I jumped up and down at the cash register, hopped from one foot to the other. I punched the clock. When they came back, at six sharp, I rushed out into the street and hung there, still confused after the lunchtime disaster, not knowing whom to embrace first; finally I shook hands with Arthur, before taking Phlox into my arms. I may have renewed with that error all the discord of lunch. As I held her she pinched my arm, lightly, and Arthur, of course, noticed.

  “A handshake before a hug,” he told her. “Look it up.”

  I hugged Jane too, was enveloped briefly in smooth arms and Chanel No. 5, and then stood facing Cleveland, who pushed up his big black glasses and frowned.

  “Enough touching already,” he said.

  We headed back toward the library, where Cleveland had parked the Barracuda. I was in a state of perfect ambivalence, worse than ever before. My arm was around Phlox’s waist, chafing against the funny white leather belt she’d used to hitch up her dress, but I kept walking backward, turning to face Cleveland, Arthur, and Jane. I could tell it annoyed Phlox, but I told myself I had recently spent plenty of attention on her, and when Jane dropped Cleveland’s hand and came forward to talk to Phlox, I fell back among the boys. Jane liked Phlox, and said so all the time. Phlox thought that Jane was dull, that she was stupid still to be dragging herself through the mud for Cleveland, and, of course, that she was secretly in love with me.

  “You’re gonna get it,” said Arthur, and smiled.

  “Good to see you guys.”

  “Good to see you too,” said Cleveland. He seemed to be in high spirits; he huffed along the sidewalk, boot heels pounding, gut pulled in. “Listen, Bechstein, when’s your day off?”

  “Wednesday,” I said. I looked toward Phlox. She was laughing at some story Jane told with waving brown hands; I watched the pair of butts and the four high-heeled legs. I had promised Wednesday to Phlox.

  “Meet me.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Oakland. Say by the Cloud Factory.”

  “To do what?”

  He didn’t say anything. Arthur, who was walking between us, turned to me, a look of mild annoyance on his face. I was surprised to note that apparently Cleveland hadn’t told Arthur about my father. I felt a quick thrill when I saw that there was something between Cleveland and me that Arthur wasn’t a party to, something outside their friendship, and then, just as quickly, I felt sadness and even shame at the nature of that something. It was not what I wanted us to have most in common. But the invitation, of course, was irresistible.

  “Okay,” I said, “but can we meet in the morning? I’m supposed to spend the afternoon with Phlox.”

  “Fine,” said Cleveland. “Ten o’clock, say.” He inhaled hugely, rattling all the snot in his nose. “Do we have to walk so fast?”

  Phlox turned her head, squinting and opening and squinting her eyes in the light of sunset, her look changing from protective to vulnerable and back again.

  We had planned on dinner and Ella Fitzgerald, who was playing Point Park that night. Cleveland claimed that they would be airlifting her into Pittsburgh with a sky hook, like Jesus in La Dolce Vita, and someday, he said, they would be doing the same thing with him. In the restaurant, I sat next to Phlox and across from Arthur; Jane was beside Arthur, and Cleveland took up all the space at the head of the table, making it awkward for the waitress, whom he apparently knew, in some connection that made Jane blush frequently. Arthur and Phlox had already started to go at each other in the car, in little ways, unfriendly jokes and a lot of smiling.

  They were continuing that afternoon’s show. The three of us, see, had been making an effort to meet for lunch now and then—behind the library, in the park, or on the lawn of Soldiers’ and Sailors’, but on this afternoon my luck had run out, and in the midst of a terribly important argument I had found myself siding with Arthur.

  We were discussing Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen. I said that it was the most Roman Catholic record album ever made.

  “Look what you’ve got,” I said. “You’ve got Mary dancing like a vision across the porch while the radio plays. You’ve got people trying in vain to breathe the fire they was born in, riding through mansions of glory, and hot-rod angels, virgins and whores—”

  “And ‘She’s the One,’ ” said Arthur. “It’s Mariolatry city.”

  “Right.”

  “ ‘Killer graces and secret places.’ ”

  “I hate that,” said Phlox, splitting open a tangerine with two long thumbs. “I hate that thing about ‘secret places that no boy can fill.’ I don’t believe in that. There are no such places.”

  “Now, Phlox,” said Arthur. “Surely you must have one or two secret places.”

  “She does,” I said. “I know she does.”

  “I do not. What good would boys be if they couldn’t fill all the places?”

  Arthur and I presented a united front in support of the measureless caverns of a woman, Phlox sternly and with increasing anger defended her total knowability, and something about the situation upset Phlox. I guessed it was partly that the argument was so trivial, and partly that it was two against one, but mostly that the whole thing was so horribly in reverse.

  Perhaps I did know all the reasons she could have for being upset with me, and perhaps there would be no mystery to women at all if I would just lift the corner of my own purdah. Anyway, it had been an ugly lunch, and now, over red plates of pasta, things were intensifying rapidly.

  “That’s because you’re so insecure,” Arthur was saying. “And besides, you love sitting in that window all day—admit it.”

  “I do not,” said Phlox. “I hate it. And you just wish it was you.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Cleveland, his mouth full.

  “You’re a crazy woman,” Arthur said. “Those ladies have probably never even noticed you.”

  “You saw me crying! You should have heard the things they said about me!”

  “What did they call you?” said Jane, very sweetly. As soon as she heard that anyone was or had been in any kind of distress, she became an engine of sympathy, hurtling to the rescue. She reached across the table and put her hand on Phlox’s.

  “I can’t say it. I don’t remember.”

  “I remember,” said Arthur.

  “Okay, Artie,” said Cleveland.

  “You said they called you a strange-looking white bitch who thought she was hot shit waving her ass in a window to the boys all day.”

  Silence fell over our party. Phlox threw her head back proudly and her nostrils flared. I had heard this story already, a few times, but Phlox’s life was so full of incidents in which other women vented their jealous rage at her that the impressive, rhythmic hatefulness of the Hillman Library cleaning ladies hadn’t really affected me before. I felt terrible, unfamiliar, unwilling anger toward Arthur.

  “Wow,” said Cleveland, finally.

  A few little tears pooled at the corners of Phlox’s eyes and rolled down her face, one two three. Her lower lip quivered and then stopped. I squeezed her other hand. Both of Phlox’s hands were now being squeezed.

  “Arthur,” I said, “um, you should probably apologize.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, without much conviction. He looked down at his lap.

  “Why do you hate me, Arthur?”

  “You’re terrible, Arthur,” said Jane. “He doesn’t hate you, Phlox, do you, Arthur?” She hit him on the shoulder.

  I looked at my linguine in red clam sauce. All the heat seemed to have suddenly gone out of it, the dusting of Parmesan I’d given it had cooled and congealed into
a thick lumpy blanket of cheese spread across the top, and the whole thing, with the gray bits of clam, looked smeary red, and biological.

  “I’m leaving,” said Phlox. She sniffed and snapped shut her pocketbook.

  I got up with her and we struggled around Cleveland.

  “Looks like we’ve all got a fun evening ahead,” I said quietly. I dropped some money onto the table.

  “Whom the gods would destroy,” Cleveland said, “they first make pasta.” He reached up and touched my elbow. “Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday,” I said, and started to run.

  Out on the street, Phlox was pulling herself together, snapping shut her purse. I came up behind her and pushed my face into her hair. She inhaled deeply, held her breath; exhaled; and her shoulders unbound. Just then—at the very instant she turned a fairly calm face to me—all the cicadas in the trees went ape, who knows why, and their music was as loud and ugly as a thousand televisions tuned to the news. In Pittsburgh, even the cicadas are industrial. We covered our ears and mouthed words at one another.

  “Wow,” she mouthed.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What?”

  “This is driving me nuts.”

  “What?”

  I pulled open the door of a restaurant adjacent to the one we had just quit, a coffee shop; we stood in the lobby next to the Kiwanis gum-ball machine and kissed in the quiet of forks and Muzak.

  13

  PINK EYES

  BY THIS TIME, ARTHUR resided at the Shadyside home of a rich young couple, his third residence of the summer. After leaving the Bellwethers’, he’d spent ten exultant and sinful days, so he said, in a small, pretty Shadyside apartment with a genuine rose window, of which I got a brief glimpse one hectic Sunday when I dropped by. Now, with this third place, he’d continued his upward journey through the World of Homes. The rich young couple, friends of some friends, had gone to Scandinavia for July. I’d seen the wife many times on television (she read the weather), and it was strange now to look at the framed Maxfield Parrish postcard over her toilet, or to wear one of her husband’s pale beautiful oxford-cloth shirts, or just to think that there I was, stretched out across the carpet of a lady I’d seen on television, her head wreathed in lightning and tiny paper storm clouds. Arthur had won his battle against the “little animals from hell,” but now all the shaved hair was growing back, which itched, apparently, and made him unable to sit still for more than a few minutes.

  The morning after Phlox and I did not see Ella Fitzgerald, I stopped by my house, to put on clean clothes for work. The telephone rang as I rumbled with the front door; in the mailbox was a fat wad of mail, most of it, at first glance, informing me of imminent bargains on beef, garden hose, and charcoal briquettes. The apartment felt stuffy, vacant, and the jangling telephone sounded somehow plaintive or lonely, as though it had not been answered in days. It was Arthur.

  “Hello,” I said. “No, I just walked in the door.”

  “I’m calling to say I’m sorry.”

  “Oh. Well.” I couldn’t think. It is always so simple, and so complicating, to accept an apology.

  “I was very rude and I hate myself for it.”

  “Um—”

  “Look, do you think we could meet today?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh, I don’t know.” There was an unusual warmth in his voice, a note of truth or of plainness. “Okay, maybe later today. I guess we have to talk about this?”

  “I’m home today. Call me after work. Oh, and, Art—”

  “Yes?”

  “Have a nice day.”

  Not only did Boardwalk suffer under the curse of having to sell books; there seemed also to be a curse on the premises themselves, so that throughout the summer entire days of business were lost, here and there, to the need to remedy some minor disaster or other: Sometimes a pipe would burst in the basement, ruining overstock and making the place stink of wet books, and sometimes the air-conditioning froze and quit working, and once some vandals smashed the huge display window; on this day, there was a fire. It was a small fire, caused by a paramedic cigarette, but Valerie closed the slightly blackened bookstore and sent us all home.

  I decided to walk to the Weatherwoman House through the clear, hot Monday morning. For some reason, many crews of men with tar-burning wagons were scattered across the rooftops of East Pittsburgh, and the smell of tar made everything seem even hotter, more yellow, more intensely summer. At the corner of St. James, a green Audi convertible passed, and then stopped short with a squeal ten yards beyond me. Dark man, big smile; Mohammad. I came up alongside and we shook. I said hello, comment ça va, where are you going, and where are you coming from? Momo told me one long semistory about both his having to appear in traffic court and his sister’s passion for Charles Bronson, which were in some way connected. Periodically he stepped on the gas pedal, making the engine race, to punctuate his story at crucial junctures.

  “What kind of mood is Arthur in today?” I said, just after we shook hands again.

  “He is in an ugly mind-state as hell,” said Mohammad. He smiled and put the car in gear.

  Either Mohammad was inexpert at reading Arthur, or Arthur’s mood had changed on the Arab’s departure, or perhaps the change came with my surprise arrival; in any case, when Arthur opened the door, his smile was the one he occasionally gave Cleveland, loose and puckish. I was touched.

  “Wonderful. Come in, come in,” he said. “Nice shirt. Nice pants. Nice shoes.” We both had on the usual dungarees, white shirts, and brown loafers. I had shaved, he had not. Neither of us mentioned Mohammad.

  He led me into the bright, uncomfortable living room. The decorator had made an effort, it seemed, to create the illusion that the whole house existed in some remote future, in the wan, empty years after the extinction from the planet of furniture and cushions. I sat down on three wide dowel rods and a piece of beige canvas and tried not to lean back.

  “Is it as lovely outside as it looks? Yes? We should take a walk,” he said. He spun on his heel and walked away. “Want coffee?”

  “Please. Do you know why I’m off today?” I shouted after him, into the kitchen.

  “Why? You quit?” I heard him pouring, then the little rhythm of cup and spoon.

  “Sure, I quit. No, I didn’t quit; there was a fire.”

  “My. What happened?”

  “The one copy of anything by Swift in the store, Gulliver’s Travels, finally couldn’t stand the indignity of living at Boardwalk anymore, and burst into righteous flames.”

  “I see.”

  “It was a very small fire.”

  Arthur came back with two white cups. “How do you know Swift started it? Maybe it was Fahrenheit 451.” He let himself down onto another odd tripod and made a display of easily seating himself, with a look of mock hauteur.

  “To the twenty-fifth-century manner born,” I said. “Ha ha.” I was a little nervous. We weren’t talking about anything.

  “Perfectly plain, isn’t it? Do you have a smoke?”

  I gave him a cigarette and a light, and my hand shook. Then we sat there, looking at the creamy walls. I decided I didn’t really want to talk about Phlox, but it had been very good to hear him say that he was sorry, and I would have liked to hear him say it again.

  “So,” he said finally, and it came out in a wobbling ring of smoke. “Do you want to walk? We can walk through Chatham.”

  “Sure.” I rose, or rather fell, from my chair thing. “What’s this kind of furniture called, anyway?” I said. I drained the tepid sour tail of my coffee.

  “That’s called science furniture, son,” he said. “For the spine of tomorrow.”

  He locked the door behind us; we stepped out into the stinking, lovely day and headed for Chatham College, a destination that made me think of the party the night we’d met, of our short face-off in the doorway at Riri’s, of all the possibilities for brown women, in that already distant June, which I’d surrendered with the advent
of Phlox. I thought for a quiet second or two; Arthur’s antennae operated inexorably.

  “We could drop by Riri’s,” he said. “Every time I see her she asks after you. She said she thought you were a very sweet boy.”

  His tone, this faint air of the panderer that he sometimes wore, brought to mind another picture from that evening, which until now I’d forgotten: the change that had come over his face in the Fiat, the aha! in his eyes, when first I asked him about Phlox.

  “Arthur, did you…? Why did you…?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “Okay. God, what a stink in the air, huh?” We watched his feet take steps along the slow, hot pavement. “What about Phlox?”

  “I just—I love Phlox, Arthur—”

  “Ooh, stop.”

  “Stop. There you go, see; I can’t understand it. We have to talk about this, right? I love her, and I love her because I want to love her, of course, but I always feel that somehow Phlox and I are together because of you. Except I can never figure out exactly why I feel that. It’s like doing algebra. I can’t keep the whole thing in my mind long enough to grasp it. But then every so often everything lines up just right, and I can see for, like, a second, that you made it happen. You’re behind it. Somehow. And if that’s the truth, then I can’t understand why you say the kind of thing you just said. Or why you do the kind of thing you did last night.”

  There was another long silence, which took us across Fifth Avenue and up the steep drive of the college. Nearby I could hear lawn mowers, and the voices of women at play.

  “I never thought you would like her,” he said at last.

  We came to the pond, and now we sat down in the grass, under some maples. The ducks chattered and splashed.

  “Are you angry? Do you hate me? I hope you don’t hate me, Art Bechstein. I’m glad you think Phlox is wonderful. Of course, I’m also shocked—no, that’s a joke, honestly. I’m very, very sorry. Really. I’m sure she’s very good for you.”