by Ann Beattie
The phone rings. Charles sits up, trying to hear Sam’s end of the conversation. It sounds as though Sam is mumbling. Maybe Sam has left and has been replaced by his boss’s kid.
“It was Pete,” Sam hollers. “I told him you were in the tub. He said you don’t have to call back, but he wanted to remind you to act surprised about the Honda Civic.”
“Oh, Christ,” Charles says.
“You didn’t tell me he bought a new car.”
“It’s not the first thing I’d think to tell you about.”
“He sounds happy as hell,” Sam says.
“She’ll ruin it for him. Just give her time,” Charles says. He lifts the stopper and puts it in the soap dish. He lets most of the water drain out before he reaches in for the soap.
“I don’t want to rush you, but if we’re taking my car; we’d better get out there before the lock re-freezes,” Sam says. He is drinking V-8 and listening to the stereo through the headphones. He screams the statement. Charles nods, goes into his bedroom and throws the towel over the lamp. He puts on underwear, goes through his drawer looking for a clean pair of jeans. His clothes are all dirty. He has to go to the laundromat. Maybe on the way to his mother’s. Saturday. He lies on the bed, suddenly tired. He flips the bedspread over him. He looks like a mummy. He closes his eyes. A party he’s giving. My God. Call Audrey and the cripple, ask Pete to stop by? Have Sam carry around trays of little crackers with bits and pieces of things on top?
His mother and father used to give birthday parties for him. His father would blow up balloons on the bicycle pump and hang them on crepe paper that was strung from tree to tree in the back yard. When the pin oak died there was nowhere left to string them to, so the crepe paper tapered down to his mother’s clothesline—one of those metal things that look like an umbrella blown inside out. That was his last party. After that his father was dead. First the pin oak, then his father. Once he had a chocolate cake shaped like a football. Another time three kids gave him the same present, and he and his father rode down to the hospital to donate the other two to a playroom there. His father was pronounced D.O.A. at that hospital not long after that. He and his mother went to the hospital in the police car. Inside, Charles wanted very much to think of an excuse to go back to that playroom to see if the toys were still there. His attention kept wandering. His mother kept crying. The toy was called “Mr. Jumping Bunny”—a metal bunny that could be wound with a key to jump. He got a lot of nice presents at his birthday parties. One of his all-time favorites was a pair of wooden stilts that he wore to school to march in the Halloween parade, and that he later walked around the cellar with, pretending to be his dead father. Once he and his father had a “fencing” duel with the stilts, and his mother had run out into the backyard to stop them. “Those huge pieces of wood! What if one of you had an accident?” When Pete first married his mother he used to try to initiate games with Charles, but he never wanted to play because Pete didn’t know how to improvise. He played everything straight, and it was a big bore: with badminton rackets he played badminton (his father had made a game of picking dandelions from the lawn and hitting them as though they were baseballs and the badminton rackets bats), with the Monopoly board he played Monopoly, there were no unexpected twists to the card games they played (his father had asked, “Ever play 52 pickup? Want to?”).
Charles turns on his side, facing the wall. He closes his eyes and tries to remember his father. He can’t. He gets an image of a black-haired man with a handlebar mustache and blue eyes, the man who was painted on the mug Charles gave him one Father’s Day. He closes his eyes again and tries to picture Pete. He sees him perfectly, opens his eyes immediately.
He gets up and puts on a pair of dirty pants, a blue shirt, and an old sweater.
“Ready to go?” he asks. Sam looks at him blankly, takes the headphones off.
“Ready to go?” Charles says.
“Oh. Sure. Let me get my coat.”
They put on their coats (he will have to take all that stuff out of the closet so Sam will have some place better than the upright ironing board to hang his things on).
“If you want to bring any of your furniture over here, even if you just want to stick it in the attic to store, feel free. We could use some tables and things like that.”
“Oh. That’s very nice of you,” Sam says, starting the car. “If you’d like me to, I can bring the coffee table over and the round table.”
“Sure. Bring it. I don’t care what the place looks like.”
Sam looks hurt. He has said the wrong thing.
“It’s nice-looking stuff, anyway.”
Sam looks less hurt “I’ll get it tomorrow,” he says. “It’s going to be here when you come home.”
Big thrill. Tables will await him. He could, of course, have that little party, and there would be tables to put the hors d’oeuvres on. He and Sam could make the hors d’oeuvres he had at his boss’s house three years ago: crackers with a slice of hard-boiled egg on them, topped with caviar. What a swell time they could all have. They could invite the man who comes around to inspect the meter in the cellar—a very nice man named Ray Roy. When Charles isn’t home, he leaves a little piece of paper saying, “Be by end of week. Ray Roy.”
Pete takes pride in the fact that no one has been admitted to read the meter since he came to the house. “Why let them down in my cellar? What for?” It would give Pete and Ray Roy something to talk about, as they nibbled hors d’oeuvres.
“What are you smoldering about?” Sam asks.
“I’m just in a lousy mood. I’m tired.”
“Do a lot of work today?”
“No. I haven’t had a lot of work to do for months, for some reason. I asked Betty for her telephone number today, though.”
“Going to take her out?”
“I told her I was going to have her over to a party.”
“When are you having a party?”
“When I make some friends.”
“Oh,” Sam says. “I don’t get it.”
“I didn’t want to ask her for a date on the spot, but I’d asked her for her number, and I had to say something.”
“Yeah. I was always giving my dog orders or calling her when I didn’t need her. I was always retracting my statements to the dog. She got to know what ‘never mind’ meant.”
“Why don’t you get yourself another dog? Bring it to my place. I wouldn’t mind have a dog around.”
“It depresses me that I have time to train it, that I could actually just sit around all day teaching it stuff.”
“Why should that depress you? Get the dog and teach it stuff.”
“Nah. There’s too much stuff to teach them. It’s too much effort.”
“Get one already trained.”
“I like puppies.”
“Sure is snowing like hell,” Charles says. “Maybe this will get me out of dinner tomorrow.”
“It’s tomorrow, huh?”
“You’re lucky your parents only expect you to show up on Christmas.”
“I go over there more than that.”
“Yeah, but they only expect you on Christmas.”
“That’s true.”
“And at least you don’t have to fish them out of the tub and watch them medicate themselves the whole time you’re there.”
“On Christmas I got to sit at a card table my father had put up in the living room that he was working a puzzle on top of. I had to pretend to be interested in fitting a pizza puzzle together.”
“That’s not as bad as having to fish somebody out of the bathtub.”
“Why won’t she stand up?”
“She sits there perspiring until she collapses. I think she soaks the strength out of her. Really. And then we have to pull her out. That causes bruises, and that gives her something else to complain about”
“She’s really nuts,” Sam says.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe I will think about getting a dog,” Sam says. “You ha
ve any preference?”
“No. Just some mutt from the pound.”
“What if I find another job, though? Then I’d have to leave it, and it wouldn’t be trained.”
“I told you. Get a dog that’s been trained.”
“I’d miss not having a puppy.”
“Then get a puppy and just figure on not looking for a job.”
“I feel bad, just sitting around.”
“You can go get the groceries.”
“I feel like a goddamn wife.”
“If you feel like a wife, forget the groceries. I can’t see how you’d mind working with a dog, though.”
“I’m just being silly. I’m going to get groceries tomorrow.”
“I never had anything you cooked.”
“Sure you did. I used to make banana bread.”
“Is that what you plan on making for dinner?”
“I might make that and something to go with it.”
“Go ahead. I can eat anything.”
Another mistake. Sam doesn’t look enthusiastic any more. He pulls into the parking lot next to the restaurant.
They walk into the restaurant and get a booth in the room next to the raw bar. One of the old men who works behind the raw bar has the underside of his thumb missing, a deep, perfectly shaped oval, from opening clams when he was drunk. Charles thinks about the thumb, even though he doesn’t have to see it. Sam and Charles sit down in a booth. The person at the table next to the booth nods to Charles, and Charles nods back. Who is it? He’d ask Sam if he looks familiar, but Sam already has the menu in front of his face. Sam always orders the same thing: crab imperial. He also always looks at the menu. Charles picks up his menu. There is what appears to be a dancing cookie on the plastic cover: a circle with dancing feet and arms akimbo, pulling a fish out of the water. The water is represented by a wavy line. There are no other fish in the water; only the one the dancing cookie pulls out. The fish who has been pulled out is smiling. Inside, all the prices have been crossed out or inked over—fives changed into eights with strangely shaped tops—and there is a little piece of paper stapled to the top left, saying that there is a ten percent increase on all marked prices. Still, it’s a good place for the money. The crab imperial is only four-fifty, and the shrimp are four dollars even. Beer is still fifty cents a bottle. The waitress comes to the table. She looks very much like the only other waitress in the restaurant, except that the other one has bright red hair. This one has bright blond hair, a black uniform, and hands ragged with varicose veins.
“I’ll have the crab imperial and a Miller’s,” Sam says.
“The crabcakes,” Charles says.
“What to drink?” she says.
“A Bass Ale,” Charles says.
She walks away, leaving the menus. Charles studies the cover. At the bottom is written “art by Al M., 1973.” He puts the menu on top of Sam’s, looks around the restaurant. The hippie at the next table catches his eye again, and smiles.
“The waiter from The Sinking Ship,” the hippie says.
“Oh, sure. I knew your face was familiar.”
The hippie’s plate is empty, and there are several empty beer mugs on the table.
“Good food here,” the hippie says.
“Yeah. We come here quite often,” Charles says. “This is my friend, Sam. My name is Charles, by the way.”
“Oh, hi,” the hippie says, lifting his hand to Sam. “I think I’ve seen you around.” He spins an empty beer mug.
“Just don’t eat the food there,” the hippie says to Charles.
“Why?” Charles says.
“I was making a club sandwich one night and cut my finger, and I was so fed up with the whole thing that I just turned the piece of bread over and served the thing anyway.” He takes a long drink from his half-empty mug.
“My name’s J.D. I don’t guess you’d have any reason to remember that,” he says. “They make us sign the checks. They tell us to use an exclamation point, too, after the ‘Thank You.’ ”
“Been there long?” Sam says.
“I was there for a year part-time at night when I was in school. But after I dropped out I started working ten hours a day, six days a week. It’s a drag. Today’s my day off.”
“That’s rough,” Charles says.
“It’s rough, and I don’t have anything to show for it. Last night somebody slashed my tires. I get out after eleven hours—my replacement didn’t show—and there were the cut tires.”
“Neighborhood’s getting bad,” Sam says.
“It is,” J.D. says.
The waitress comes to their booth with the beer, puts it down on Miller’s coasters.
“How about joining us?” Charles says.
J.D. nods, moves his almost entirely empty mug to their table, sits next to Charles.
“Who’s that clown who’s always shouting for Maria Muldaur?” Charles asks.
“He’s a sociology professor. I kid you not. He takes a new one home every night The way he operates, he’ll get Maria Muldaur home eventually.”
“Shit,” Sam says. “I wish I was still a goon back in college.”
“Fine goon you were. Phi Beta Kappa,” Charles says.
“Yeah, but I acted goony. I hollered in bars.”
“You should have been there last night,” J.D. says. “Some drunk kept flicking matches at the ceiling speakers, and damn if he didn’t launch one high enough to set it on fire.”
“You’d think it would burn out before it got up there,” Charles says.
“I can’t understand it either, and I was in physics,” J.D. says. “If I had the money, I’d sit around bars again,” Sam says. “I used to have a good time sitting around bars.”
“What do you do?” J.D. asks. “Unemployed jacket salesman.” J.D. shakes his head, drains his beer.
“Hey, you guys do me a favor? Loan me fifty cents so I can get another one of these things. I’ll give it to you next time you’re in the bar.”
“Sure,” Charles says. “Just go ahead and order.”
“I was supposed to have a date tonight,” J.D. says, “but when I called she said—you’re not going to believe this—she said, ‘I’m not going to be ready at seven.’ I said, ‘What time should I come by?’ She said, ‘I’m not going to be ready ever.’ Then she hung up.”
“Why’d she do that?” Sam says.
“Beats me. She asked me if I’d take her to the movies. Called me and asked me if I’d take her. Hell, I’m better off not being with her, I guess, if I’ve got to sit through Paul Newman.”
“Hey,” Sam says. “Did you hear anything about Rod Stewart being dead?” J.D. shakes his head.
“He’s not dead,” Sam says. “That girl was putting me on.”
“Somebody told you he was dead?”
“Yeah. Girl I used to work with.”
“Nuts. Women are all nuts. Another time this same girl, the one who called me to ask if I’d take her to a Paul Newman movie, had me take her to the zoo. She had me buy her an ice cream cone and a balloon, then she said she wanted to go home. ‘Don’t you want to do anything else while we’re here?’ I said, and she said, ‘Yeah. Buy postcards.’ That was it. We went home.”
“She sounds like a million laughs,” Charles says. “I don’t know. I don’t have any luck finding nice chicks,” J.D. says. “I don’t either,” Sam says. The waitress puts down their dinners. “One more beer,” J.D. says. She nods and goes away.
“She’s married to the guy behind the raw bar,” J.D. says. “I saw them having a fight out in the parking lot one night.”
“She’s a beauty,” Sam says. “There’s just not many good-looking women around any more.”
“They all wear brassieres now too,” J.D. says.
“Yeah. What the hell’s happening?” Sam says, spooning out some crab imperial.
“It’s the fucking end of the world is what’s happening,” J.D. says.
The waitress comes back to the table with J.D.’s
beer.
“When women put their brassieres back on and want you to take them to Paul Newman movies. I used to live with a woman in New Mexico. I wish I’d never left New Mexico. Small stuff pissed me off. I got tired of looking at roosters. She hasn’t put any goddamn brassiere on.”
“I don’t care if they wear brassieres or not,” Sam says, “as long as they’ve got tits. They sure don’t act like they’ve got tits any more.”
“Everything’s going to hell,” J.D. says. He swirls the beer in his mug. “I sure am glad I ran into you guys.”
“I don’t think we’ll prove too uplifting,” Charles says.
“You’re making this beer possible. That’s uplifting.”
Somebody starts the jukebox. Tammy Wynette sings “Stand By Your Man.”
“That’s all that’s left that thinks right,” J.D. says. “Redneck women.”
“You see that movie?” Charles asks. “That was a great movie.”
“Five Easy Pieces. Yeah. I was so goddamn happy when Jack Nicholson gave that waitress a hard time, even if it was just a movie.”
“I should think you’d sympathize with the waitress, being a waiter and all.”
“No. She deserved it” J.D. points to Charles’s piece of lemon. “Are you planning to use that?”
“No. Go ahead.”
J.D. squirts lemon juice in his mouth, swallows beer. “I’m pretending it’s tequila,” he smiles.
“Have a tequila,” Charles says. “You can pay me back next time I see you.”
“That’s mighty nice of you. It was a real break running into you guys.”
“A tequila, please,” Charles says to the waitress.
She gives no sign that she heard. In a few minutes she returns with a shot of tequila.