Chilly Scenes of Winter

by Ann Beattie

“You’re twenty-seven.”

  “Dates are a waste of time. I’d just as soon scrub the toilet.”

  “Jesus! Shut up about the toilet.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Do you want the rest of this wine?”

  “No. You finish it,” Sam says.

  “Okay, I will.”

  “This was just great. I’m not even depressed now.”

  “It’ll hit you in the morning,” Charles says. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Sorry.”

  Charles drains his mug. “You know, if you want to, you can move in here. I don’t mind having you around.”

  Sam looks up. His fork is raised above his roast. “That’s very nice of you. But I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s your place.”

  “Hell, if your landlord’s going to raise your rent, what are you going to do?”

  “I haven’t thought about it. Maybe I could pay the rent okay, not having to pay back the loan.”

  “How much is it being raised?”

  “Twenty-five bucks.”

  “And how much unemployment will you be collecting?”

  “I told you before. I don’t have any idea.”

  “Call tomorrow and find out.”

  “Stop talking about tomorrow.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Charles gets up, taking his plate and Sam’s, and goes to the kitchen. He did not turn off the burner after all. He turns it off. Then he puts it on again—silly to turn it off—and puts the coffeepot on it.

  “If you think there’s milk, there isn’t,” Charles says.

  The hippie raising the milk carton, smiling …

  “I don’t drink milk in my coffee.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s good.”

  “You’ve been watching me drink black coffee for years.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve only seen you drinking coffee when you’re sobering up. I thought you drank it black to sober up.”

  “No. I drink it black anyway.”

  Charles drums on the table with his fork. He puts his fork on the plate with what’s left of the roast.

  “Thanks for offering, though,” Sam says. “I appreciate it.”

  “I think you’re nuts not to take me up on it. It’s a big house. I would have asked you years ago, but all those women trailing in and out would have depressed me.”

  “You’ve given up on me too, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On me finding a woman.”

  “I don’t care if you find a woman or not. I just don’t want a lot of them trailing in here.”

  “Women don’t like me anyway.” Charles shrugs. “Women are getting strange.”

  “I read The Dialectic of Sex. You ever read that?”

  “What are you reading all this junk for?” Charles says. “That one’s not junk. She’s exactly right. Men are incapable of loving.”

  “You’re out of your mind. Why did you start reading all that crap?”

  “I don’t know. I read a lot of stuff over Christmas.”

  “You ought to be in law school. Then you wouldn’t have time to poison your mind with that crap.”

  “No. If you read this one you wouldn’t think it was crap.”

  “I thought I was spared when Pamela Smith was here. She leaves with no feminist lecture at all, and you start in.”

  “I didn’t start in. I mentioned that I read a good book.”

  “I’m getting the coffee.”

  “But anyway, it was nice of you to ask me over here.”

  Charles goes into the kitchen, lifts the boiling water from the burner, and pours it into two cups. He forgot the coffee. He gets a spoon and puts coffee in the boiling water, stirs, and walks back to the dining room.

  “I was thinking about my dog,” Sam says.

  “Don’t think about your dog. You’ll get depressed.”

  “I already am depressed. I was thinking about my dog the whole time you were gone. You know what I was thinking? That I should have let the vet do an autopsy. She might have been poisoned. Somebody might have poisoned her.”

  “Nobody poisoned your dog.”

  “I’m not paranoid. I don’t think it was deliberate. I just think that there might have been poison somewhere and she might have eaten it.”

  “Her heart gave out.”

  “Yeah. Unless she was poisoned.”

  “Stop depressing yourself.”

  “Shit. She was a great dog. I wouldn’t want to think that anybody poisoned her.”

  “So. You don’t have an autopsy, you don’t have to think that.”

  “I guess so,” Sam says. “But I feel like I ought to know for sure.”

  “If she was poisoned you’d go around mad all the time. She’s dead, whatever she died of.”

  “Okay. I don’t want to talk about my dog any more.” The dog, head thrown back, silly toy in her mouth … “I should have bought something for dessert,” Charles says. “Couldn’t hold it,” Sam says. “Ice cream,” Charles says. Sam looks into his coffee cup.

  “What’s the matter? Now you’re feeling rotten because you think somebody poisoned your dog.”

  “Not just that. I don’t have a job, and I’m in debt, and women don’t like me any more. I’ve been reading those books to try to find out how women think.”

  “That’s pathetic.”

  “It’s not pathetic. You ought to read some of that stuff. You’d never believe what’s going through their heads.”

  Sam, slapping his mother’s hand …

  “I don’t want to know. I’ve got enough crap knocking around my own head.”

  “But you’re right. Women have changed. You’ve got to try to understand them now.”

  “What for?”

  “So you can get one.”

  “I don’t want one. I mean, the only one I want is taken.”

  “You still thinking about her?”

  “She was so great. How can I not think about her?”

  “I don’t know. I was just asking.”

  “Yeah. I’m still thinking about her. I used to dream about her, but now I’ve stopped. I wish I could still dream about her.”

  “Old Everly Brothers philosophy, huh?”

  “Yeah. The Everly Brothers.”

  The dancing instructor, hands clapping together: get closer, get closer.…

  “What are you grinning about? We’re old fuckers. We remember the Everly Brothers.”

  “I wonder what happened to them?”

  “They’re still around, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know. You never hear about the Everly Brothers.”

  “I could check in with that girl at work and see if they’re still alive. Except that I won’t be going to work any more.”

  “Don’t think about that. You’ll depress yourself.”

  “Okay. Say something funny.”

  “One time somebody sent Cary Grant a telegram: ‘How old Cary Grant?’ Cary Grant wired back, ‘Old Cary Grant fine, how you?’ ”

  Charles’s father had told him that one. He had had to explain it twice before Charles got it. The second time his father wrote it out, showed him what the telegrams actually looked like. “Think about it,” his father had said, his face earnest. “See how Cary Grant kids around in the telegram he sends back? He pretends not to understand.” His father has been dead for sixteen years.

  Sam snickers.

  “It doesn’t take much to amuse you,” Charles says. “Not when I’m this loaded it doesn’t.” Charles realizes, for the first time, that he is also a little drunk.

  “How’d we get loaded on a bottle of wine?”

  “I never drink any more. I never do anything any more.”

  “You do too.”

  “What do I do?”

  “How should I know? You do stuff.”

  “I don’t do anything,” Sam s
ays sadly.

  “Let’s go out to a bar,” Charles says. “I don’t want to just sit around here all night.”

  “Let’s catch the news. See what we can find out about Rod Stewart.”

  “It’s not time for the news.”

  “Okay. Let’s go to a bar.”

  “Your car or mine?” Charles asks.

  “Mine is okay.”

  They put their coats on and leave the house, dishes still on the table. Charles ducks back in to check the burners. They are off. He goes back out the front door. It is very cold, and almost every light on the block is off. Riding along, Charles stares at the dark houses with wonder. How can they go to bed so early? It must be habit, years of training. Got to get up for work, got to go to bed. And they do it. He once asked Laura what time she went to bed, so he could think of her. She wouldn’t tell him. “It would end up depressing you,” she said. She was right; it would depress him to know. But at least he would know—he wouldn’t think of her asleep at ten, eleven, twelve, one.… He gives the finger to the house he thinks the cripple lives in.

  They end up at the same bar he went to with Pete. The college kids are back, though, and it’s crowded and noisy. The bar smells of sweat. There is a clock over the jukebox that shows a beer mug perpetually bubbling. Charles decides to drink a beer. He has more than twenty dollars. He can get good and drunk. In a few minutes a couple gets up to leave, and they sit at a table. The same waiter who took Pete’s order comes to the table. Tonight he is wearing dark green slacks. They look like velvet. There is a big grease stain across the thigh. Janis Joplin says, loudly, “This is a song called ‘Get It While You Can.’ Cause it ain’t gonna be there when you get up.” Do the kids in the bar even know who Janis Joplin is, or do they accept anything that comes to them by way of the ceiling speakers? What a depressing song. Janis Joplin is dead. Maybe Rod Stewart.

  “I don’t think Rod Stewart is dead,” Charles says.

  Sam doesn’t say anything. He is staring at a girl across the room. Charles orders a pitcher of beer for them.

  “Hey, hey, get it while you can,” Sam says.

  “Looks like reading those trash book didn’t do you any good,” Charles says.

  “It did. You don’t see me getting up, do you?”

  “Maybe you should go over. Don’t listen to me. I’m just being witty,” Charles says.

  “To tell you the truth, I’d rather have my dog back than that girl,” Sam says.

  “Forget the dog. Stop talking about her.”

  The dog, sitting down, rolling over, shaking hands for a beef bone …

  “ ’Atta way, Maria!” a drunk shouts at the speakers. It is the same man.

  “That clown was here when I came for a drink with Pete.”

  “He’s always here.”

  “He looks like he’s in bad shape.”

  “I heard that he was a sociology professor.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Sam turns around and stares at the checked tablecloth. The pitcher of beer is put down in the middle of the table.

  “Good centerpiece,” Sam says.

  “Amy Vanderbilt would think so.”

  “She doesn’t think shit any more,” Sam says.

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  “That Elise was really a dummy.”

  “She wasn’t even very good-looking,” Charles says.

  “She wasn’t,” Sam agrees. “I should have kept my fifteen. Then I could contribute to the beer fund.”

  “I’ve got plenty of money.”

  “That was a subtle hint, in case you’d forgotten I was broke.”

  “I didn’t forget”

  “Did you forget that you asked me to come live at your place?”

  “Of course not How drunk do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to check.”

  “You ought to do it, Sam. I don’t think we’d get on each other’s nerves.”

  “I couldn’t do that. It’s nice of you, though.”

  “Think about it,” Charles says.

  “I’ll think about it,” Sam says.

  “Oooooh, Mama,” the drunk shouts. “Maria!”

  “He’s no sociology professor,” Charles says.

  “I’ll ask him,” Sam says. Sam gets up. Charles stares straight ahead, in case there is a fight. He doesn’t want to get involved. If only Sam hadn’t gotten up so quickly, he could have dissuaded him.

  “He is,” Sam says, sitting down again.

  “You really asked him? What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Yeah.’ ”

  “Jesus,” Charles says.

  Charles pours another glass of beer.

  “Then what did you say? You didn’t just ask and then walk away, did you?”

  “I said, ‘You’re not giving a graduate course this semester, are you?’ And he said he wasn’t”

  “What if he had been?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam says. “I would have thought of something.”

  Clever Sam, the drinking fountain handle twisted off … Sam pours another glass of beer. “I wish I was back in college,” he says.

  “Yeah,” Charles says.

  “But I don’t think I’d want to go to college now,” Sam says. “With these people, I mean. They look just like they’d go to a prom.”

  Charles fills his half-empty beer glass.

  “You want to hear something sad?” Charles says.

  “Do I?”

  “It’s not that sad. It’s just something I read. You know Jacques Cousteau?”

  “Sure. You think just because I’m not in law school I’m an ignoramus?”

  “I think you’re very intelligent That’s why I wish you could be a lawyer.”

  “I don’t have any goddamn money. Or motivation.”

  “Jacques Cousteau had this dolphin he was working with …”

  “If the goddamn dolphin died, I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “It didn’t die. The dolphin liked Cousteau and all the attention he gave her so much that she always had her head out of the water, and she got sunburned.”

  Sam laughs. “That’s not depressing,” he says.

  “I think it is.”

  “It’s not as depressing as some things I could think of.”

  “Such as my unrequited love for Laura?”

  “I was thinking more selfishly.”

  “I’m paying for the beer. Think charitably.”

  “Well, I wish she liked you.”

  “She does like me. She might even love me. She just won’t leave her husband.”

  “We’ve been through this before.”

  “Be charitable, goddamn it. I love her.”

  “Yeah. She was nice.”

  “I know she was nice. Why did her husband have to meet her before I did?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam says. “I don’t know, either. She says she doesn’t know.”

  “Maybe you can shame her into leaving him or something.”

  “I doubt it”

  “I don’t know. I never have anything intelligent to say on the subject.”

  “I just like to talk about her. I’m a masochist. Susan says I am. Do you think I am?”

  “I don’t want to insult you. You’re my best friend.”

  “You do think so, then?”

  “I guess you are.”

  “Maybe I am. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  “Mama Maria, ooh la la,” the man hollers.

  The waiter brings another pitcher of beer.

  “You know what you could do for me?” Charles says.

  “What?” Sam says, picking up the pitcher.

  “You could just drive me past her house.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “I want to see if the lights are off.”

  “You’ll make yourself miserable.”

  “Come on, Sam.”

  “I don’t t
hink it’s a good idea.”

  “Then we’ll go over to your apartment and get as much of your stuff as we can haul and bring the stuff to my place.”

  “No, no. I can’t move in with you. But thanks.”

  “What’s the real reason you won’t move in?”

  “I just wouldn’t feel right about it. It’s your house.”

  “You can pay half the bills. That would still be a hell of a lot less than the rent you pay.”

  “Jesus, I can’t do that. You mean just move out of my apartment?”

  “Yeah. Then if you find another cheaper place to move, go ahead and move. Meanwhile you’d be out of there.”

  “I don’t know,” Sam says.

  “Anyway, there’s a gas leak in your apartment.”

  “Everybody who’s got a gas stove has a smell like that.”

  “That’s because they leak.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “You’re not able to fight with me.”

  “I wouldn’t want to anyway.”

  “Come on, finish this beer with me and we’ll get moving.”

  “What if you’re just drunk and you wake up in the morning and I’ve moved into your house?”

  “I asked you at dinner. I wasn’t drunk at dinner, Sam.” Sam bends his fingers, cracks his knuckles. “Well?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam says.

  “You could save some money. You could look around and find some better place to live. You’re not going to give them twenty-five bucks more a month for that place that’s poisoning you, are you?”

  “Let me finish this beer,” Sam says.

  “Will you at least drive me past Laura’s?”

  “Yeah. It seems maudlin to me, but if that’s what you want.”

  “Maria Muldaur!” the man hollers.

  Charles smiles. If Sam had said no, he was going to have Sam drop him off and drive his own car. He doesn’t want Laura to look out her window and see his car, though. He doesn’t want her to think he’s harassing her. She doesn’t know Sam’s car. Not that she’ll be awake.

  “Maybe I could move in temporarily,” Sam says. “Until I get another job.”

  Charles nods.

  “That’ll surprise the landlord,” Sam says.

  “Yeah. Just move out on him.”

  “It’ll be strange not going home and riding in the elevator,” Sam says.

  “Apartments are for shit.”

  “Yeah,” Sam says.

  Charles pours the last of the beer into his glass. It’s flat. He pours a little salt in. It will make him thirsty during the night, but so what. He stares at the head rising on his beer.