Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

Author:Ann Beattie [Beattie, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780307790750
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-05-18T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

He stops on the way to work to get gas. It is a self-service station. On the gas pump is a piece of cardboard: “See cashier for transaction settlement.” Why not “Pay cashier”? He is in a bad mood. He was not going to go to work at all, except that he began to feel much sicker and thought that if he got out of the house he might not think about it. In the house, he had thought about weeping in bed, calling Sam at work to tell him to come right over. He had even thought of calling his mother. That’s when he decided it would be best if he went to work.

When he walked into his office Bill was there, sitting in his chair, going through his desk.

“Thank God I called you!” Bill said, shooting up, as though he’d been caught doing something terrible anyway. “If I hadn’t called, imagine what you would have thought if you’d come in and found me with my hand in the till!”

“Find your pen?”

“I just got here,” Bill says.

“Try the drawer on the right,” Charles says.

“How are you feeling, Charlie? Try my home remedy?”

“Didn’t have any whiskey. I’ll get some on the way home.”

“You don’t look good,” Bill says.

“I feel awfully queasy.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I just didn’t feel like lying around the house.”

“Yeah. It must be rough when you’re sick, not having a wife to take care of you.”

“Yeah. So I figured I’d come in.”

“Well, take it easy.”

“I will.”

Charles sits in a chair against the wall, waiting for Bill to finish.

“Sometimes having a wife can present problems, too. Last night she got herself into a state about my boy not being accepted at Harvard. A very paranoid thing about how they would have taken him if he’d been black. I spent an hour calming her down. Her sister married a colored fellow ten years ago, and you should have heard her then. I told her—you don’t have to see your sister. What does it matter to you? She hasn’t seen her sister in ten years.”

“There’s too much emphasis put on what college you go to,” Charles says.

“That’s what I tell her. And Dartmouth isn’t the small time. She cries because he’s told her it’s very cold there. She thinks he’s suffering in the cold. She talks about him like he’s a stray cat or something.”

“That’s too bad. I hope she starts feeling better about it.”

Bill stands up. “I can’t find it. Thanks for letting me look. If you see it around, let me know.”

“A silver pen?”

“A narrow Cross number. My wife gave it to my son to give me for my birthday. You know.”

Charles looks at the paperwork he has to do. He closes his door and takes out his cassette and earphones and puts on “John Wesley Harding.” He works while he listens. When the tape has finished he clicks it off and stands up and stretches. His head is hot. He walks down the hallway to the library and stands looking at it.

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