Read Online Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie - Free Book Online Page B

discussion of the beauty of women before they went to bed. She called him once and asked him to come pick her up at a gay bar because her car wouldn’t start. He refused. She called again after that to get the number of one of Sam’s girlfriends, and he hung up on her. He even got a Christmas card from her, with the female symbol on it, drawn with a red circle and green cross. “Merry Christmas, forgive and forget,” she wrote on the envelope. Then she called him, but he said he wasn’t feeling well. After Pamela there was a girl named Marsha Steinberg that he still has erotic dreams about. Sam introduced them. He forgets how Sam met her. Probably a castoff, although he never wanted to ask on the chance he’d find out he was right. Sam always parts with women on good terms—so good that they call him to refer them to other men. Marsha Steinberg was very mixed-up when he knew her. She took a lot of amphetamine, although later she gave it up entirely and went to law school. She once did a pencil sketch of him that was surprisingly good—or at least it made him look surprisingly good. She had a brown cashmere sweater that she wore with slacks. The sweater shed all over the slacks. She had a dog that shed more. She was always covered with dog hair. Her own hair was very short. Short black hair, black eyes. He definitely loved her. She’s now practicing law in Colorado. One day they went to the park and she fell asleep on his shoulder. It was a hot, noisy day in the park, and he couldn’t believe that she’d fallen asleep. Policemen kept walking by, and he was terrified that she was dead, and that eventually he would have to call out to one of the passing policemen that the woman next to him was dead. But she woke up. He always loved her for that. Once he went to a hair-cutting shop with her and watched an inch get cut off her hair. “If you were sentimental, you’d scoop it up,” she laughed. He should have done it, but it looked so ugly—those little clumps of black hair on the white floor. He couldn’t touch it. He thinks about calling her sister to get her address in Colorado, but what the hell. What good can it do him if she’s in Colorado? The girl he dated after Marsha was just somebody to pass the time with. She wasn’t very pretty or very smart. He never thinks about her.
    He looks out the window at the thermometer. Twenty-five degrees. He knocks on Susan’s door.
    “Do you want to go out for something to eat?”
    “Sure,” she says. She comes out. She has on the purple sweater. There is a small bump just above her lip.
    “I’m glad you’re not just hanging around waiting for her to call,” Susan says.
    He hadn’t thought to do that. It’s a good idea. He should wait. Eventually Laura will call. Maybe when Jim leaves the house for a minute … and who knows when that minute will be?
    “I’m going to write Sam a note, in case he wonders what happened,” Charles says. “Poor Sam. I hope he doesn’t have pneumonia.”
    “He’s got a good appetite, at least,” Susan says.
    “Yeah. We’ll bring something back.”
    “I’m glad we’re not setting out for dinner with Pete,” Susan says.
    Charles leaves the note on the dresser next to Sam, figures that he’ll never see it, scotch-tapes it to the television screen, over Lauren Bacall’s face. He puts on his jacket again, holds the door open for Susan. It is cold enough to wear his face mask, but his face mask frightens him. It has frightened him ever since he saw a television news program about bank robbers. The bank robbers had on face masks, imprinted with reindeer and diamond shapes. Charles always thinks he’s a bank robber who will be caught when he wears his face mask. He also takes his hands out of his pockets when he passes a policeman. Otherwise—and he knows this is silly—he thinks that the policeman might think that he’s hiding something. Still, his feet move all wrong when he passes a policeman. He weaves and stands too