Permafrost

by Peter Robertson

  For the sake of Beth, Connie had told her two well-meaning identical sons and her well-meaning identical daughter-in-laws to take her house off the market. She would stay on for a while, and keep little Beth company, until things died down. And if she ever moved from the Handle, it would definitely be back to her beloved New Orleans, either under her own steam, to a small vine-shrouded house in the Garden District, or else in a watertight box, bound for the family vault in the elegantly decrepit grounds of the Lafayette Cemetery.

  She ended by wishing me well with my life. And she hoped we would meet again soon. She hoped too that I would visit New Orleans in the near future. She didn’t remember if I had been there (I hadn’t, in fact).

  I finished her letter. She was a lovely person. And she’d got me thinking about a trip.

  Later that same night I sat in the semi-darkness and listened to the traffic. At two o’clock I picked up the phone and dialed an international number. I had been putting off calling Jimmy Tait for five days, but somehow, a little of Connie’s natural resilience seemed to be all I needed. I waited. When he at last answered I spoke.

  It wasn’t much fun for either of us.

  Nye poured the wine and handed me a glass.

  “The apartment is . . . ?” he cautiously ventured.

  “Very nice indeed,” I said. “And thank you.”

  We sat in my office.

  The store sound system was louder than usual, and I was fairly certain we were listening to the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I wasn’t terribly strong on classical music. Nye was. As was Patricia. They both liked Bach, although Nye’s position was in truth closer to an outright addiction.

  “Bach?” I gingerly ventured.

  He nodded slowly and sipped his wine.

  “Early or late?” I was faintly aware that Gould had recorded the piece as a child prodigy, and then again much later, toward the end of his singularly odd and unhappy life.

  “Late.”

  I suspected that knowing which version he had chosen to listen to should provide some valuable insight into the hidden and controlled personality of my stalwart Nye, but I was as usual powerless to go anywhere with the information.

  ArtWorks had been closed to the public for a full twelve minutes, and we had had the place to ourselves for two of them. Nye had closed up shop and I had found glasses, plates and whatnot. We had ordered two Caesar salads from a local restaurant and Nye had wordlessly produced a bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet from some secret hidey-hole of his.

  “It’s not really suitable for salad,” he said apologetically.

  I had ordered the salads, knowing that Nye liked them. Nye had produced the wine, knowing my fondness for red wine. As was often the case, we were very subtly at cross-purposes.

  “Are we celebrating?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Your return,” he said with a rare faint smile. “It’s been a week now.”

  “I wasn’t gone especially long.”

  “No.” He paused with some significance.

  I spoke. “I know. It felt like a long time for me too.”

  He carefully put his glass down. “Was it satisfying? Your trip?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know quite what I expected. It certainly felt as if a lot happened. I didn’t expect to come back to my own divorce.”

  Nye nodded but said nothing.

  I asked, “You’ve been to the house?”

  Was his look slightly sheepish? “I’ve helped Patricia with the computer you left her. I took all your programs off the hard drive and loaded Novell’s PerfectWorks instead. I also helped her with Quicken, and showed her where Solitaire was.”

  I smiled. “She’ll like that last part. But don’t for God’s sake treat her like an idiot.”

  He smiled. “I’ll try not to. She’s a much faster learner than you were.”

  “I see.”

  He hesitated.

  “Can I say something?”

  “We’re drinking your wine.”

  “Actually . . . it’s two things.”

  “Okay. What’s the first?”

  “I would just like to say that I strongly suspect that your marriage is salvageable.”

  “By me?”

  “Oh by both of you, I think. But perhaps by you first.”

  “The proverbial first move?”

  “Correct. It does fall within your province. But if you do make it, I think she will be willing to listen.”

  “Did Patricia say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re simply guessing.”

  “Partly. But I still think I’m right.”

  “Is this advice from an agony aunt?”

  “No. It’s simply an observation.”

  “But one you think I should act on?”

  “Are you at all interested in resurrecting your marriage?”

  I paused. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I don’t know.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you know that I often feel a lot like Captain Kirk when we talk?” I said suddenly.

  “Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Enterprise?” Nye was gazing quizzically at me.

  “The very same,” I replied.

  “I presume I have the part of Spock in this scenario?”

  “That would be correct,” I said, smirking.

  “Well then,” Nye said, “I should admit that the thought has also occurred to me on occasion.”

  “You mentioned something about a second question?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “It’s a little trickier.” And I knew that it would be about money and not love. Personal money that is, not business money, because the flow and ebb of ArtWorks money is largely Nye’s domain.

  “In the past ArtWorks has just about broken even.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “And you were happy enough with that?”

  “Correct. I was.”

  “Am I right in assuming that we have to do better than that now?”

  “I don’t quite follow.”

  He spoke carefully. “You’re very possibly getting divorced in the near future.”

  “It would certainly seem that way.”

  “And by way of settlement Patricia is receiving . . .”

  “Ah, I think I can see where this conversation is going.”

  “Surely this places a new onus on the store to generate more money.”

  “No. Oh, it would be nice. But let me ask you, could we make more money?“

  Nye shook his head slowly at that.

  “Perhaps the tiniest little bit more profit?”

  “That’s a possibility.” He paused. “But you could always sell. The business. The property. Both. The property is certainly valuable.”

  I cut him off. “I know it is. But the truth is I like ArtWorks. I even like pretending that I run it. After my divorce, I will still have plenty of money by any standards. I’ll have less than I did, I’ll admit that, but since you’re bluntly asking, I’ll bluntly state that much of what Patricia and I jointly owned was more Patricia’s, or her father’s, than mine, and I was never especially comfortable with my name attached to it. Perhaps that statement exemplifies the problematic nature of my marriage. I can’t argue. So now all of that will return to Patricia, and ArtWorks will be wholly mine. I know you know the mechanics of our ownership, but very little about the actual profits everything generates. Patricia is destined to die a very rich woman, and if I keep my nose relatively clean and don’t do anything earth-shatteringly stupid, I should survive to live well and long without the need of Medicare.”

  “We could do something else with the property?” Nye ventured.

  “We could. Any thoughts on that?”

  “No.” Ny
e said. “I’ll start thinking.”

  “Good. I’d also like you to start thinking about being my equal partner.”

  “Suppose I don’t come up with a good idea.”

  “Then you can still be my partner in poor old ArtWorks, and we’ll share in the poverty. Tell me, would firing Tye help to turn a tiny profit?”

  “It’s a nice thought, but I would have to say no.”

  “Oh well,” I shrugged. “It was just a thought.” I sipped my wine.

  There was a silence.

  “I would very much like to stay here.” Nye spoke quietly. “And I’d be honored to be your partner.”

  I smiled. “That’s a tremendous relief, because otherwise I’d actually have to do some work. Speaking of which, is my presence required for the next few days?”

  He sighed audibly. “Another trip?”

  “I thought perhaps New Orleans.”

  “A very nice town.” He said.

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once. A while ago. Are you taking the laptop?”

  I made a very quick decision. “Nope,” I said. “It’s a real holiday.”

  “We will miss you,” he said dutifully.

  “I seriously doubt that,” I scoffed.

  At that point, we stopped.

  The pitch of the conversation had been on a personal level several floors removed from the place where we were most comfortable, and we were both acutely aware of it. Yet we’d truthfully only said what needed to be said. But now, seized with mild embarrassment, we both picked up our forks and ate our salads in silence, as the older but very possibly no wiser Gould played on.

  Three large television sets were mounted to the walls and squawked at the endless cavalcade of tired travelers. I had unwittingly picked a seat equidistant from all three, and was being relentlessly assaulted by two channels of dueling news broadcasts and a rerun of Cheers. Inexplicably, the public address system was equally strident, and we were being treated to the later works of Bruce Springsteen, who had apparently made the sorry descent to elevator, or in this case, train station muzak.

  I had called the airlines in the morning and received the sad news that all the day’s flights to New Orleans were overbooked. There was no explanation tendered.

  At Amtrak, however, no such problems existed, and I was quickly booked a coach seat for that same night. I was asked by an extremely courteous woman if I wanted a pillow. I told her that I certainly did. I was also informed that for a pittance more I could indulge in three months of unlimited travel up and down and across the Midwest, with only minor restrictions applied. I was sorely tempted, but I thought of Nye and declined her kind offer.

  My train was scheduled to leave early in the evening and arrive in New Orleans in the middle of the next day. I was proudly informed by the woman on the phone that the seats were more comfortable and spaced further apart than those found on a plane. I hoped she was right, since I’d never sat on a plane for eighteen straight hours.

  But first there was the train station to endure.

  My packing had largely consisted of consolidating the items of new clothing Nye had procured for me into my one larger bag. It didn’t appear as though anything had been overlooked, but I was being uncharacteristically blasé about the whole affair. I could always buy there, and then give Nye grief when I returned.

  I had nothing to read, as I was unable to muster the necessary enthusiasm for a large and doubtless very dry history book. At the train station, I bought an Anne Rice paperback and a guidebook of the city on impulse.

  I read the first paragraph of the novel. Then I read it again. The noise was brutal. In stereo, a prominent city official was reputed to be being fired and indicted, in that order, and Sam was making a botch of babysitting Frasier and Lilith’s son, Frederick.

  A preschool child sat down three seats away from me, and listened to Ringo Starr loudly narrate the adventures of a train, on a cheap cassette recorder that didn’t appear to have headphones.

  I opened my guidebook instead, locating the Garden District on the map, the cemetery, even Anne Rice’s own house. I had already found a room in a house offering bed and breakfast that faced a park beside a zoo, that was close to the university, and right on the streetcar line.

  It all sounded both intimate and convenient.

  Was the city really that small? It appeared that it was. I rejected the idea of renting a car, reasoning that between the streetcar and a lot of walking I could surely reach all the places I wanted to explore.

  I would sip cafe au lait and eat beignets till they poured out of my ears. I would gaze at hidden courtyards and flowered gardens till my eyes glazed over with horticultural and architectural overload. I would devour seafood possibly three times a day, and I would forget myself, even if I chanced to wander onto the hormonal war-zones of Bourbon Street, where a red-faced teenager from Wisconsin would doubtless chose to relieve himself of a stomach full of sickly sweet hurricanes all over my fresh new trousers.

  I would forget myself.

  It would be dishonest of me not to remark that, as passengers, we were a decidedly scruffier crew than the airlines normally attract. We were on the whole younger. We looked much more tired. Our tiny children fell more often and cried louder. Our bags were more mismatched and not one of us possessed the wheeled suitcases mandatory to flight attendants. A few of us had reached a fashion plateau somewhere in the late seventies or early eighties, and were seemingly content to stay there in acid-washed purgatory.

  This might seem a cruel series of observations, as a few of us were no doubt wearing the best clothes that we owned, and traveling the only way we could afford to travel.

  Bruce no longer sang for the lonely (or was it Roy Orbison who sang for Bruce who, in those days, was one of the lonely himself?), and a new voice silenced the cathode trio, announcing the imminent departure of our train.

  The window seat proved to be initially less of a godsend, as the southern half of the city opened up its industrial innards to the glow of the red dusk, which did little to soften the decades of industrial decay that lay there.

  But eventually we passed beyond the edge of the city and found the flat green-gold of the traditional Midwest.

  In a college town further downstate, a tall, tanned girl dressed sensibly for hiking took the empty seat next to me. She looked obscenely healthy and practical, her hair tied up with a frilly knot that did double duty as a fluffy bracelet, her knapsack stowed away, her travel bag unpacked; thick brown-bread sandwiches, domestic bottled water, cassette tapes and letters with foreign stamps rubber banded neatly together.

  She told me her name was Kate Carmichael. She was twenty-seven and the recipient of a postgraduate degree in business studies. She was traveling to New Orleans to meet a close friend. They were hostelling to conserve their money. She pulled the bracelet away as she spoke and her hair exploded in brown-red curls that flopped down beneath her shoulders. I tried not to look impressed.

  Later she removed her hiking boots and her thick wool socks and slipped on ropey sandals that looked inelegant yet very comfortable. She wore a plain white T-shirt and old jeans cut off for walking comfort, rather than for sex-bomb effect.

  Even allowing for the truly berserk wanderings my romance-fixated heart was currently doing, Kate was quite breathlessly beautiful.

  We talked until late about college years and I tried to sound as young and impressionable as a man a full decade older, and almost twenty years away from campus life, could. If I had had it in me to blush and be altogether winsome, I would have cheerfully done it.

  But I suspected that I would only register as truly desperate, and after a while I found it impossible to deny the passage of the years, as all my jaded nonchalance escaped to the surface. I hoped that it somehow masqueraded as heroic world-weariness rather than chronic trepidation, but I wasn’t especia
lly confident on that score.

  Across the border into Tennessee, the train abruptly went dark, a movie was offered, the dining car was declared closed, and the snack car put their ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches with potato chips and a soft drink, on special until midnight.

  I offered to buy her something (I had previously suggested dinner and been smilingly turned down, as she waved one of her sandwiches at me) and was again gently rebuffed.

  I returned to my seat much later, having in my ignorance been made to eat my food purchases in the snack car, and not to return to my seat, until I’d damn well finished every bite.

  Kate was asleep and half smiling by then. She no longer wore lipstick, I noticed. She had her own blanket wrapped tightly around her. She had received a pillow, and mine was sitting on my seat, waiting patiently for me.

  So I edged past her and sat down, pushing the handles and buttons that flattened the seat out, positioned the leg rests, turned out the reading light, and pulled down the window shade.

  Then I lay wide-eyed and a million miles away from sleep close to an inch from her face and gazed under the curls at the half smile that was still shimmering on her innocent and pretty young face.

  Much later, our train was inexplicably motionless.

  The riverfront lights of newly restored downtown Memphis woke me for a second, and I looked at my watch. Almost three in the morning. The dark car was lit by lonely streetlights outside freshly built condos and restaurants. The train slowly inched forward.

  I had traveled some during the night. Now I was lost inside her hair. I smelled her shampoo. I moved my hand gingerly and found her face, her cheek. I stroked her skin, then I leaned forward and kissed her softly on the forehead. Kate smiled and her eyes opened and we sat without moving, not knowing what on earth to do next.

  I touched her hair, terrified of squandering the moment, and she put her head on my shoulder and I kissed the top of her head again and she spoke softly.

  “I think they called this ‘bundling’ in a Bette Davis film I once watched. She plays a spinster, who was once fat and unlovely, in love with a married man she can never have. He was the same man who played Lazlo in Casablanca. I don’t remember his name, but Ingrid Bergman called him ‘Veek-tor’ all the time. He always lights two cigarettes for them both to smoke. I don’t remember where they are, or why they’re there, but they’re together and alone, and it’s dark, and they can’t get back to wherever they’re supposed to be, so they bundle together, beside a fire, and nothing else happens all night, and she tells him that ‘bundling’ is an honorable thing to do, or something like that. It’s all very romantic in a repressed kind of way. Have you seen the film?”