Chilly Scenes of Winter (25 page)

“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.

“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.