by Ann Beattie
“To sticking together,” J.D. says, downing the tequila.
“Whether we stick together or not, I’ve got the feeling we’re screwed,” Sam says. “Take my friend here: his last lady visitor was a lesbian.”
J.D. makes the sour face he didn’t make when swallowing the tequila.
“But she’s not my true love,” Charles says. “My true love lies across the city, in the arms of her true love, a builder of A-frames.”
“What’s that?” J.D. says.
“You mean what’s an A-frame?”
“Yeah.”
“A house. A pointed house.”
“Oh. She’s in love with an architect?”
“So much in love that she’s married the chap,” Sam says. “You wouldn’t like her,” Charles says. “She wears brassieres.”
Charles orders three more beers.
Sam and J.D. have a long discussion of women’s legs. They can not decide between short and lean and long and lean. “Just so the legs go over my shoulders,” J.D. says. Sam laughs. Charles smiles. The next naked woman he will see will be his mother, screaming in the tub on Saturday. He starts to feel very tired again. J.D. sings a song about a black woman, to the tune of “On Top Of Old Smokey.” It gradually becomes apparent that J.D. is drunk and in no shape to get himself out—not that he’s making any motion to leave. Charles tries to make a sign to Sam that he should stop encouraging J.D., but Sam’s eyes are squeezed shut with laughter. Charles looks at the smiling fish. The fish is a goner, but smiling. That is the way artist Al M. conceptualizes it. Artists are all crazy. Everybody is crazy. Charles wants to go home and go to bed.
“J.D., how far away do you live?” he asks.
“Why?” J.D. says. “I don’t have a thing to drink at my place. Cranberry juice. For my bad kidneys. That’s absolutely all. You can’t even drink the water.”
“I was just thinking that we’d give you a lift on our way. You don’t want to drive.”
“Last person who gave me a lift was a queer. He said, ‘I’d like to bury my head in that.’ ”
Charles winces. “We just want to get you home,” he says.
“I didn’t mean anything personal,” J.D. says.
“What do you think, Sam? Can’t we give him a ride home easy enough?”
“Sure,” Sam says. “You come back for your car tomorrow. We’ll take you home.”
“I don’t have my car. I took a bus. My car is still sitting there with slit tires.”
“You left it there on the street?”
“What else was I going to do? I had just worked eleven hours. I was dead tired. What the hell did I care? Junk. Detroit junk. They could make tires that were indestructible if they wanted to.”
“I’m going to take care of the bill, and you help J.D. into his jacket, Sam.”
“I didn’t mean anything personal about what I said before. I was just remarking,” J.D. says.
“I know,” Charles says. “Excuse me, while I pay the bill.”
J.D. staggers to his feet. Tammy Wynette is singing “Stand By Your Man” again. J.D. collapses in the booth when Charles leaves.
Charles goes to the front counter and pays the redheaded woman. He buys a chocolate mint and stands looking out the front door, eating it Then he goes back to the table, where J.D. has his coat on.
“Swear that you didn’t take it personal,” J.D. says.
“He doesn’t take it personal. He knows you were just making a remark,” Sam says.
“I like you guys.”
The snow is falling heavily when they go out, and everything is blanketed in white. If it only weren’t cold, Charles would love to go to sleep in it, in the deep white on the sidewalk. He takes J.D.’s arm, expecting another outburst, gets none, and leads him slowly to the car.
“Where do you live, J.D.?”
“I’ll give directions. Not so far.”
J.D. gives directions. He will not name streets, or give the address of his building, but he keeps swearing that it isn’t far. They are riding in back of a sanding truck. The road turns brown and ugly in front of them.
“Hell, I could live in New Mexico. Then what would you guys do?”
“Dump you,” Sam says.
“Don’t say that. You guys seem so nice.”
“How would we get you to New Mexico?” Sam asks.
“I don’t know,” J.D. says. He looks crestfallen.
“Am I going right? You’re watching where we are, aren’t you?”
“Turn left,” J.D. says. “That’s it. That building.”
There is a row of buildings.
“Which one?” Charles says.
“The ugliest.”
Sam pulls up in front of a brown glass building.
“Two down,” J.D. says. “I’m glad you don’t think mine is the ugliest.”
Sam coasts down another two buildings. It is uglier. He couldn’t see it well from where they were.
“I want you to come in for cranberry juice,” J.D. says.
“We’ve got to get home. It’s bad driving, J.D.”
“Aw, shit I want you guys to come visit You’re such nice guys.”
“We’ll give you a call tomorrow, if you’ll let us have your number,” Sam says.
“Just come up for a minute.”
Charles feels very sorry for J.D. “Sure,” he says. “We’ll come up.”
“That’s great,” J.D. says. He rolls down his window.
“Thanks,” Sam says, looking out J.D.’s window to back into a parking space. But that’s not why the window was down. J.D. leans out and vomits.
“Don’t hold it against me,” J.D. says.
“We don’t hold it against you,” Sam says.
“You guys are really goddamned nice. Anybody else, I wouldn’t have made the effort not to puke in their car.”
“I’m glad you spared me,” Sam says.
“Sure. I like you guys.”
The lobby is carpeted in bright blue, and there are fake plants in the corners by the elevator. Muzak plays in the elevator. They ride to the second floor.
“This way, please,” J.D. says. Charles is holding him up by the arm. J.D. reaches in his coat pocket and takes out a key ring.
“One of these,” J.D. says.
Sam starts trying them. Finally the door opens.
“Please come in,” J.D. says, as they lead him in.
There is nothing in the living room but a mattress and a black telephone. In the kitchen, four rubber plants are growing in holes in the stove where the burners used to be. There is a black wall phone.
“Look around, look around,” J.D. says. To placate him, they go into the bedroom. There is nothing in the bedroom except a brown and white rabbit standing on a pile of magazines. There is no shower curtain in the bathroom.
“You just move in or something?” Charles asks.
“Lived here one year, four months,” J.D. says, sitting on the mattress.
Charles nods.
“Well, now that you’re here safely, I think we’d better get home before the storm gets any worse. Can you let us have your phone number?”
J.D. gestures toward the black telephone. Sam copies down the number.
“We’ll be in touch.” Sam says. “You okay now?”
“You guys are so goddamn nice. I’m not drunk now. I realize that you wouldn’t want any of that cranberry juice, and I’m not going to push it. When you guys can, come on over and I’ll fix you a chili dinner.”
“Right,” Charles says. “Good night, now.”
“You’re not going to go out again, are you?” Sam says.
“I’ve ruined your evening,” J.D. says.
“No, you haven’t. We liked talking to you. You had a little to drink, that’s all.”
“I didn’t puke in your car,” J.D. says, lying down.
“No,” Sam says.
“Well, good night,” J.D. says.
They walk out of the apartment. J.D. waves.
&nbs
p; Back in Sam’s car, Sam lets out a long sigh.
“Everybody’s so pathetic,” Sam says, “What is it? Is it just the end of the sixties?”
“J.D. says it’s the end of the world.”
“It’s not,” Sam says. “But everything’s such a mess.”
“I told Susan I felt sorry for everybody, and she said there was something wrong with me.”
“She’s in love with that doctor. How can you expect her to be cynical?”
Charles shrugs. They ride home slowly, watching the snow mount up. Charles is glad Sam is driving, because Sam drives much better than he does in the snow. It has been such a cold, long winter. He used to like winter when he was a kid. He had a Fleetwood Flyer sled, and they’d close off the steep hill at one end of his parents’ block, and there would be nighttime sledding parties, with a bonfire and hot dogs. Even his mother rode the sled down the hill once. He was so proud of her. Now she just sits around and goes crazy, but then she’d try things-go sledding, make new cakes—she even got a set of records and tried to learn Spanish. She failed. On the sled, she scared herself and said she couldn’t get her breath and went home without eating a hot dog with them. The cakes were just mixes. Okay—so she never did anything right. At least she was pretty. Or prettier. She always had crooked teeth in the bottom of her mouth, and her hair never puffed out the way other women’s hair did. Her hair always looked defeated. She had a pot belly as long as he could remember. But she used to wear high-heeled shoes. Now she wears white sneakers. She used to wear high-heeled shoes.
Sam tries to get his car in the driveway, but he can’t do any more than get the nose a few feet up. The plow has been by, and it’s impossible to park on the street. The cars that are parked there have been plowed in.
“We’ve got to shovel,” Charles says. “You’ll be hit for sure.”
They get out of the car and go in the house for the shovel.
“There’s just one shovel. I’ll do it,” Charles says.
“Let me. I knew it was going to snow. I’m the one who didn’t get groceries.”
“We’ll take turns,” Charles says. “When you’ve been out for five minutes, come get me.”
Charles pulls a chair up to the kitchen window and watches. It is going to be a bad storm. He can hardly see Sam, even with the streetlights shining. He rubs the palm of one hand against the fingers of another, to warm himself. He goes into the living room and dials the thermostat up two degrees, then goes back out to relieve Sam, but Sam insists that he wants to shovel. Charles goes back to the house, takes his clothes off, and gets into bed. The bed is freezing. He lies there shaking, then falls asleep. He wakes up and hears Sam moving around the house, looks at the clock and sees that it is only midnight. He puts the pillow over his head and goes back to sleep, dreaming an intricate dream of sunflowers springing up in the snow, poisonous sunflowers that he is trying to rake under, that reappear elsewhere, in deeper drifts. Confused, he wakes up again. Sam is sitting on the bed. He pulls himself up, asking, “What are you doing here?” Is Sam really there? Yes. Sam is talking to him.
“Sorry to wake you up. Pamela Smith is on the phone. She says that she’s run into trouble and she was on her way back when she got stranded at the Clara Barton Service Area. She doesn’t have any money. She doesn’t sound very good. I said I’d try to get out to get her, but she said she wanted to talk to you.”
“What?” Charles says. “How much did you miss?”
“What do you mean the Clara Barton Service Area? On the New Jersey Turnpike, you mean?”
“Yeah. She came back East. She said there was trouble.”
Charles gets out of bed, taking the quilt off and wrapping it around himself. He walks across the cold tile to the kitchen phone.
“Pamela?” he says.
There is no answer.
“Pamela? Hello?”
“Isn’t she there?” Sam says. He takes the phone. “Pamela?” he says.
There is only silence on the other end.
“Hang up. She’ll call back,” Sam says.
Charles hangs up. They sit in the living room. The phone does not ring.
“Well, I don’t know what the hell to do,” Charles says. “It’s a real storm out there. Did she say what kind of trouble?”
“It was garbled. I don’t know well enough to tell you. The highway will be clear, if we can get off the block. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. She always overreacts. Let’s sit here a minute.”
Charles looks over his shoulder at the falling snow.
“I was having some odd dream,” he says. “I can’t remember.”
“Ask Fritz,” Sam says.
“What garbage,” Charles says.
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. Somebody’s got to know something.”
Charles gets up, staggers toward the bedroom. “I’m going to get my goddamn clothes on. We can take my car. It’s got studded tires. If you even intend to come, that is.”
“Yeah. I’ll come.”
“Are you awake enough to drive?” Charles asks.
“Yeah. But you will be too, man, when you hit that cold air out there.”
“Pamela Smith,” Charles says. “Pamela Smith doesn’t mean shit to me.”
“Why don’t you wait for another call then? If it’s important there’ll be another call.”
“She’d better goddamn well be there,” Charles says. “You’re sure that’s the service area she said?”
“How could I forget that?”
There is no answer from the bedroom. Charles is putting his dirty slacks back on.
It is a long ride to the Clara Barton Service Area, and it is late Saturday morning before they are close to being home. Pamela Smith will not talk about what went wrong. When they persisted, she cried. “Everything I said to you, everything I talked about was just bullshit. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I think.” She sat in the front seat wedged between them, and when Charles got in the back seat to try to sleep she moved over next to Sam. After half an hour of being bumped on his side, Charles sat up and sat cross-legged in the back seat, looking out the back window at the highway. He was so tired that he was giddy; he thought about waving to oncoming cars, seeing if they’d mistake him for a kid or think he was retarded and wave back. But he was too tired to play games. The morning sun was very bright, and it was tiring to squint so long fighting it. If only the sun warmed something. The radio was on, but it was turned down low, and Charles could only pick out a word or a phrase. Watching the bright highway, with all the cars, Charles felt even more fatigued: all of them going where? And what for? Pamela Smith turned around once and said, “I don’t have any money.” “It’s okay,” he said to her. Or he thinks he verbalized it. Pamela Smith looks very ill, with black circles swollen under her eyes. At the service area they bought her a glass of orange juice—all she would take—and she spilled some on her Wonder Woman T-shirt. She ran to Charles when he came in. He felt like a great savior, like he was really accomplishing something. The good feeling wore away as his body began to give out. Now he sits in the back seat, squinting. Occasionally there is a flurry of snow, and the sky clouds up, but for now it is mostly clear and harsh. The heater never makes the car warm enough.
“We’re getting there,” Sam says, to no one in particular.
Charles nods. Unless Sam was looking in the rearview mirror, he didn’t see him.
“Wonder if J.D. made it through the night,” Charles says. He thinks about the rabbit: a fat, bright-eyed rabbit in an empty room.
Sam did not hear Charles. He was mumbling.
“I figure maybe another half hour,” Sam says. “We’re lucky the snow stopped.”
“How can you think of any of this in terms of luck?” Charles says.
Pamela Smith turns around. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You’re really my only friend.”
“What about your brother?” Charles asks. Nasty, but he’s curious.
“H
e just gave me the money on the condition he wouldn’t have to see me again.”
“That’s brotherly,” Charles says.
Pamela Smith shrugs. “He didn’t want me to be born. My mother says he never looked at me in my crib. They’d have to call him over when they were giving me my bottle. He didn’t look at me until I started walking.”
“You didn’t get raped, did you?” Charles says.
“No,” she says.
“Are you ever going to tell us?”
“I’ll tell you later. It wasn’t any one thing.”
“A combination of things,” Charles says. That’s why Laura went back to Jim. Not just because he was now making enough money building A-frames to support her, but because of a lot of little things. A combination of things.
He looks out the side window at a big blue truck rolling by. If he were Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces he could hop a truck, start a new life. What new life would he like? The same life, but married to Laura. Or even living with Laura. Or even dating Laura. Or even getting to hear her holler out her car window again. She had looked so fragile, shouting out the window that she was sick. Once at her apartment she had been sick, and he had rocked her. There was no rocking chair, so he sat on the edge of a chair and rocked her by bending forward and back. His stomach muscles were constricted for a week after that She liked to be rocked; she liked to pretend to be a child again. He bought her a mobile of little matchstick ships that he hung from the bathroom light. It was a small apartment, and they were always running into each other. He loved that. He’d quicken his pace when he turned a corner, hoping she’d be there so he could smack into her. He tries to imagine bumping into Betty, turning a corner and running into Betty. He could never take Betty in his arms and apologize for hitting her. There is no way he could even date Betty. He could, but he’d be miserable. What would they do? Go to a movie, or go out to dinner? What for? He stares at the passing cars, slumps lower in the seat.
“Don’t you want me to take over for a while?” he says to Sam.
“Nah. This way I’ll stay awake. If I fall asleep in a car I get sick.”
“I could drive,” Pamela Smith says. Neither of them acknowledges it.
Sam turns up the volume on the radio. He quickly turns it down. “False alarm,” he says. “I thought it was from the new Dylan album.”