by Ann Beattie
Penelope was in Robert’s apartment, sitting on the floor, with the newspaper open between her legs. Her boots were on the floor in front of her. Robert had just fixed the zipper of one of the boots. It was the third time he had repaired the boots, and this time he suggested that she buy a new pair. “Why?” she said. “You fix them fine every time.” In many of their discussions they came close to arguments, but they always stopped short. Penelope simply would not argue. She thought it took too much energy. She had not even argued with Robert’s friend Johnny, whom she had been living with, when he moved out on her, taking twenty dollars of her money. Still, she hated Johnny for it, and sometimes Robert worried that even though he and Penelope didn’t argue, she might be thinking badly of him, too. So he didn’t press it. Who cared whether she bought new boots or not?
Penelope came over to Robert’s apartment almost every evening. He had met her more than a year before, and they had been nearly inseparable ever since. For a while he and Penelope and Johnny and another friend, Cyril, had shared a house in the country, not far from New Haven. They had all been in graduate school then. Now Johnny had gone, and the others were living in New Haven, in different apartments, and they were no longer going to school. Penelope was living with a man named Dan. Robert could not understand this, because Dan and Penelope did not communicate even well enough for her to ask him to fix her boots. She hobbled over to Robert’s apartment instead. And he couldn’t understand it back when she was living with Johnny, because Johnny had continued to see another girl, and had taken Penelope’s money and tried to provoke arguments, even though Penelope wouldn’t argue. Robert could understand Penelope’s moving in with Dan at first, because she hadn’t had enough money to pay her share of the house rent and Dan had an apartment in New Haven, but why had she just stayed there? Once, when he was drunk, Robert had asked her that, and she had sighed and said she wouldn’t argue with him when he’d been drinking. He had not been trying to argue. He had just wanted to know what she was thinking. But she didn’t like to talk about herself, and saying that he was drunk had been a convenient excuse. The closest he ever got to an explanation was when she told him once that it was important not to waste your energy jumping from one thing to another. She had run away from home when she was younger, and when she returned, things were only worse. She had flunked out of Bard and dropped out of Antioch and the University of Connecticut, and now she knew that all colleges were the same—there was no point in trying one after another. She had traded her Ford for a Toyota, and Toyotas were no better than Fords.
She was flipping through the newspaper, stretched out on her side on the floor, her long brown hair blocking his view of her face. He didn’t need to look at her: he knew she was beautiful. It was nice just to have her there. Although he couldn’t understand what went on in her head, he was full of factual information about her. She had grown up in Iowa. She was almost five feet nine inches tall, and she weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds, and when she was younger, when she weighed less, she had been a model in Chicago. Now she was working as a clerk in a boutique in New Haven. She didn’t want to model again, because that was no easier than being a salesperson; it was more tiring, even if it did pay better.
“Thanks for fixing my boots again,” she said, rolling up her pants leg to put one on.
“Why are you leaving?” Robert said. “Dan’s student won’t be out of there yet.”
Dan was a painter who had lost his teaching job in the South. He moved to New Haven and was giving private lessons to students three times a week.
“Marielle’s going to pick me up,” Penelope said. “She wants me to help her paint her bathroom.”
“Why can’t she paint her own bathroom? She could do the whole thing in an hour.”
“I don’t want to help her paint,” Penelope said, sighing. “I’m just doing a favor for a friend.”
“Why don’t you do me a favor and stay?”
“Come on,” she said. “Don’t do that. You’re my best friend.”
“Okay,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t fight over it anyway. He went to the kitchen table and got her coat. “Why don’t you wait till she gets here?”
“She’s meeting me at the drugstore.”
“You sure are nice to some of your friends,” he said.
She ignored him. She did not totally ignore him; she kissed him before she left. And although she did not say that she’d see him the next day, he knew she’d be back.
When Penelope left, Robert went into the kitchen and put some water on to boil. It was his habit since moving to this apartment to have a cup of tea before bed and to look out the window into the brightly lit alley. Interesting things appeared there: Christmas trees, large broken pieces of machinery, and, once, a fireman’s uniform, very nicely laid out—a fireman’s hat and suit. He was an artist—or, rather, he had been an artist until he dropped out of school—and sometimes he found that he still arranged objects and landscapes, looking for a composition. He sat on the kitchen table and drank his tea. He often thought about buying a kitchen chair, but he told himself that he’d move soon and he didn’t want to transport furniture. When he was a child, his parents had moved from apartment to apartment. Their furniture got more and more battered, and his mother had exploded one day, crying that the furniture was worthless and ugly, and threatening to chop it all up with an ax. Since he moved from the country Robert had not yet bought himself a bed frame or curtains or rugs. There were roaches in the apartment, and the idea of the roaches hiding—being able to hide on the underside of curtains, under the rug—disgusted him. He didn’t mind them being there so much when they were out in the open.
The Yale catalog he had gotten months before when he first came to New Haven was still on the kitchen table. He had thought about taking a course in architecture, but he hadn’t. He was not quite sure what to do. He had taken a part-time job working in a picture-framing store so he could pay his rent. Actually, he had no reason for being in New Haven except to be near Penelope. When Robert lived in the house with Johnny and Cyril and Penelope, he had told himself that Penelope would leave Johnny and become his lover, but it never happened. He had tried very hard to get it to happen; they had often stayed up later than any of the others, and they talked—he had never talked so much to anybody in his life—and sometimes they fixed food before going to bed, or took walks in the snow. She tried to teach him to play the recorder, blowing softly so she wouldn’t wake the others. Once in the summer they had stolen corn, and Johnny had asked her about it the next morning. “What if the neighbors find out somebody from this house stole corn?” he said. Robert defended Penelope, saying that he had suggested it. “Great,” Johnny said. “The Bobbsey Twins.” Robert was hurt because what Johnny said was true—there wasn’t anything more between them than there was between the Bobbsey Twins.
Earlier in the week Robert had been sure that Penelope was going to make a break with Dan. He had gone to a party at their apartment, and there had been a strange assortment of guests, almost all of them Dan’s friends—some Yale people, a druggist who had a Marlboro cigarette pack filled with reds that he passed around, and a neighbor woman and her six-year-old son, whom the druggist teased. The druggist showed the little boy the cigarette pack full of pills, saying, “Now, how would a person light a cigarette like this? Which end is the filter?” The boy’s mother wouldn’t protect him, so Penelope took him away, into the bedroom, where she let him empty Dan’s piggy bank and count the pennies. Marielle was also there, with her hair neatly braided into tight corn-rows and wearing glasses with lenses that darkened to blue. Cyril came late, pretty loaded. “Better late than never” he said, once to Robert and many times to Penelope. Then Robert and Cyril huddled together in a corner, saying how dreary the party was, while the druggist put pills on his tongue and rolled them sensually across the roof of his mouth. At midnight Dan got angry and tried to kick them all out—Robert and Cyril first, because they were sitting closest to him—and th
at made Penelope angry because she had only three friends at the party, and the noisy ones, the drunk or stoned ones, were all Dan’s friends. Instead of arguing, though, she cried. Robert and Cyril left finally and went to Cyril’s and had a beer, and then Robert went back to Dan’s apartment, trying to get up the courage to go in and insist that Penelope leave with him. He walked up the two flights of stairs to their door. It was quiet inside. He didn’t have the nerve to knock. He went downstairs and out of the building, hating himself. He walked home in the cold, and realized that he must have been a little drunk, because the fresh air really cleared his head.
Robert flipped through the Yale catalog, thinking that maybe going back to school was the solution. Maybe all the hysterical letters his mother and father wrote were right, and he needed some order in his life. Maybe he’d meet some other girls in classes. He did not want to meet other girls. He had dated two girls since moving to New Haven, and they had bored him and he had spent more money on them than they were worth.
The phone rang; he was glad, because he was just about to get very depressed.
It was Penelope, sounding very far away, very knocked out. She had left Marielle’s because Marielle’s boyfriend was there, and he insisted that they all get stoned and listen to Trout Mask Replica and not paint the bathroom, so she left and decided to walk home, but then she realized she didn’t want to go there, and she thought she’d call and ask if she could stay with him instead. And the strangest thing. When she closed the door of the phone booth just now, a little boy had appeared and tapped on the glass, fanning out a half circle of joints. “Ten dollars,” the boy said to her. “Bargain City.” Imagine that. There was a long silence while Robert imagined it. It was interrupted by Penelope, crying.
“What’s the matter, Penelope?” he said. “Of course you can come over here. Get out of the phone booth and come over.”
She told him that she had bought the grass, and that it was powerful stuff. It was really the wrong thing to do to smoke it, but she lost her nerve in the phone booth and didn’t know whether to call or not, so she smoked a joint—very quickly, in case any cops drove by. She smoked it too quickly.
“Where are you?” he said.
“I’m near Park Street,” she said.
“What do you mean? Is the phone booth on Park Street?”
“Near it,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll tell you what. You walk down to McHenry’s and I’ll get down there, okay?”
“You don’t live very close,” she said.
“I can walk there in a hurry. I can get a cab. You just take your time and wander down there. Sit in a booth if you can. Okay?”
“Is it true what Cyril told me at Dan’s party?” she said. “That you’re secretly in love with me?”
He frowned and looked sideways at the phone, as if the phone itself had betrayed him. He saw that his fingers were white from pressing so hard against the receiver.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Where I grew up, the cop cars had red lights. These green things cut right through you. I think that’s why I hate this city—damn green lights.”
“Is there a cop car?” he said.
“I saw one when you were talking,” she said.
“Penelope. Have you got it straight about walking to McHenry’s? Can you do that?”
“I’ve got some money,” she said. “We can go to New York and get a steak dinner.”
“Christ,” he said. “Stay in the phone booth. Where is the phone booth?”
“I told you I’d go to McHenry’s. I will. I’ll wait there.”
“Okay. Fine. I’m going to hang up now. Remember to sit in a booth. If there isn’t one, stand by the bar. Order something. By the time you’ve finished it, I’ll be there.”
“Robert,” she said.
“What?”
“Do you remember pushing me in the swing?”
He remembered. It was when they were all living in the country. She had been stoned that day, too. All of them—stoned as fools. Cyril was running around in Penelope’s long white bathrobe, holding a handful of tulips. Then he got afraid they’d wilt, so he went into the kitchen and got a jar and put them in that and ran around again. Johnny had taken a few Seconals and was lying on the ground, saying that he was in a hammock, and cackling. Robert had thought that he and Penelope were the only ones straight. Her laughter sounded beautiful, even though later he realized it was wild, crazy laughter. It was the first really warm day, the first day when they were sure that winter was over. Everyone was delighted with everyone else. He remembered very well pushing her in the swing.
“Wait,” he said. “I want to get down there. Can we talk about this when I get there? Will you walk to the bar?”
“I’m not really that stoned,” she said, her voice changing suddenly. “I think it’s that I’m sick.”
“What do you mean? How do you feel?”
“I feel too light. Like I’m going to be sick.”
“Look,” he said. “Cyril lives right near Park. What if you give me the number of the phone booth, and I call Cyril and get him down there, and I’ll call back and talk to you until he comes. Will you do that? What’s the phone number?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t talk anymore right now,” she said. “I want to get some air.” She hung up.
He needed air too. He felt panicked, the way he had the day she was in the swing, when she said, “I’m going to jump!” and he knew it was going much too fast, much too high—the swing flying out over a hill that rolled steeply down to a muddy bank by the creek. He had had the sense to stop pushing, but he only stood there, waiting, shivering in the breeze the swing made.
He went out quickly. Park Street—somewhere near there. Okay, he would find her. He knew he would not. There was a cab. He was in the cab. He rolled down the window to get some air, hoping the driver would figure he was drunk.
“What place you looking for again?” the driver said.
“I’m looking for a person, actually. If you’d go slowly…”
The cabdriver drove down the street at ordinary speed, and stopped at a light. A family crossed in front of the cab: a young black couple, the father with a child on his shoulders. The child was wearing a Porky Pig mask.
The light changed and the car started forward. “Goddamn,” the driver said. “I knew it.”
Steam had begun to rise from under the hood. It was a broken water hose. The cab moved into the next lane and stopped. Robert stuffed two one-dollar bills into the driver’s hand and bolted from the cab.
“Piece of junk!” he heard the driver holler, and there was the sound of metal being kicked. Robert looked over his shoulder and saw the cabdriver kicking the grille. Steam was pouring out in a huge cloud. The driver kicked the cab again.
He walked. It seemed to him as if he were walking in slow motion, but soon he was panting. He passed several telephone booths, but all of them were empty. He felt guilty about not helping the cabdriver, and he walked all the way to McHenry’s. He thought—and was immediately struck with the irrationality of it—that New Haven was really quite a nice town, architecturally.
—
Penelope was not at McHenry’s. “Am I a black dude?” a black man said to him as Robert wedged his way through the crowd at the bar. “I’m gonna ask you straight, look at me and tell me: Ain’t I a black dude?” The black man laughed with real joy. He did not seem to be drunk. Robert smiled at the man and headed toward the back of the bar. Maybe she was in the bathroom. He stood around, looking all over the bar, hoping she’d come out of the bathroom. Time passed. “If I was drunk,” the black man said as Robert walked toward the front door, “I might try to put some rap on you, like I’m the king of Siam. I’m not saying nothing like that. I’m asking you straight: Ain’t I a black dude, though?”
“You sure are,” he said and edged away.
He went out and walked to a phone booth and dialed D
an’s number. “Dan,” he said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but Penelope got a little loaded tonight and I went out to look for her and I’ve lost track of her.”
“Is that right?” Dan said. “She told me she was going to sleep over at Marielle’s.”
“I guess she was. It’s a long story, but she left there and she got pretty wrecked, Dan. I was worried about her, so—”
“Listen,” Dan said. “Can I call you back in fifteen minutes?”
“What do you mean? I’m at a phone booth.”
“Well, doesn’t it have a number? I’ll be right back with you.”
“She’s wandering around New Haven in awful shape, Dan. You’d better get down here and—”
Dan was talking to someone, his hand covering the mouthpiece.
“To tell you the truth,” Dan said, “I can’t talk right now. In fifteen minutes I can talk, but a friend is here.”
“What are you talking about?” Robert said. “Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying? If you’ve got some woman there, tell her to go to the toilet for a minute, for Christ’s sake.”
“That doesn’t cut the mustard anymore,” Dan said. “You can’t shuffle women off like they’re cats and dogs.”
Robert slammed down the phone and went back to McHenry’s. She was still not there. He left, and out on the corner the black man from the bar walked up to him and offered to sell him cocaine. He politely refused, saying he had no money. The man nodded and walked down the street. Robert watched him for a minute, then looked away. For just a few seconds he had been interested in the way the man moved, what he looked like walking down the street. When he had lived at the house with Penelope, Robert had watched her, too; he had done endless drawings of her, sketched her on napkins, on the corner of the newspaper. But paintings—when he tried to do anything formal, he hadn’t been able to go through with it. Cyril told him it was because he was afraid of capturing her. At first he thought Cyril’s remark was stupid, but now—standing tired and cold on the street corner—he had to admit that he’d always been a little afraid of her, too. What would he have done tonight if he’d found her? Why had her phone call upset him so much—because she was stoned? He thought about Penelope—about putting his head down on her shoulder, somewhere where it was warm. He began to walk home. It was a long walk, and he was very tired. He stopped and looked in a bookstore window, then walked past a dry cleaner’s. The last time he’d looked, it had been a coffee shop. At a red light he heard Bob Dylan on a car radio, making an analogy between time and a jet plane.