Read Online The Night In Question by Tobias Wolff - Free Book Online
Authors: Tobias Wolff
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it.”
“You aren’t married to Mike.”
“Who said?”
“You would’ve said if you were.”
“So? What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference.”
“You’re crazy.”
“All I need is a few minutes to talk things over.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Just a few minutes, Kathleen. That’s all I’m asking. Then I’ll leave, if you still want me to.”
“Mike’s here,” she said. She was silent. Then, just before she hung up, she said, “Don’t you ever call me at work again.”
Wiley liked the sound of that; it meant she assumed a future for them.
Before going out he looked himself over in the mirror. He wasn’t pretty, but he could still talk. All he had to do was get her to listen. He’d keep saying her name.
Kathleen
. Say it in that moony broguish way she liked. Said that way, almost sung, her name had power over her; he had seen it last night, the willing girl blooming on the face of the woman, the girl ready for love. He would hit that note, and once he got her listening there was no telling what might happen, because all he really needed was words, and of words, Wiley knew, there was no end.
Flyboys
M y friend Clark and I decided to build a jet plane. We spent weeks perfecting our design at the draftsman’s table in his bedroom. Sometimes Clark let me put on the green eyeshade and wield the compasses and calipers, but never for long. I drew like a lip-reader reads; watching me was torture for him. When he couldn’t take it anymore he’d bump me aside, leaving me free to fool with his things—the samurai sword, the Webley pistol with the plugged barrel—and wander the house.
Clark’s mom was usually out somewhere. I formed the habit of making myself a sandwich and settling back in the leather chair in the den, where I listened to old records and studied the family photo albums. They were lucky people, Clark’s parents, lucky and unsurprised by their luck. You could see in the pictures that they took it all in stride, the big spreads behind them, the boats and cars, and their relaxed, handsome families who, it was clear, did not get laid off, or come down with migraines, or lock each other out of the house. I pondered each picture as if it were a door I might enter, until something turned in me and I grew irritable. Then I put the albums away, and went back to Clark’s room to inspect his work and demand revisions.
Sure and commanding in everything but this, Clark took most of my ideas to heart, which made a tyrant of me. The more attentive he was, the more I bullied him. His own proposals I laughed off as moronic jokes. Clark cared more for the perfection of the plane than for his own vanity; he thought nothing of crumpling a page he’d spent hours on and starting over because of some brainstorm I’d had. This wasn’t humility, but an assurance that ran to imperturbable depths and rendered him deaf to any appeal when he rejected one of my inspirations. There were times—many times—when I contemplated that squarish head of his as I hefted the samurai sword, and imagined the stroke that would drop it to the floor like a ripe melon.
Clark was stubborn but there was no meanness in him. He wouldn’t turn on you; he was the same one day as the next, earnest and practical. Though the family had money and spent it freely, he wasn’t spoiled or interested in possessions except as instruments of his projects. In the eight or nine months we’d been friends we had shot two horror movies with his dad’s 8-mm. camera, built a catapult that worked so well his parents made us take it apart, and fashioned a monstrous, unsteerable sled out of a bedframe and five wooden skis we found in his neighbor’s trash. We also wrote a radio mystery for a competition one of the local stations put on every year, Clark patiently retyping the script as I improvised more tortuous plot twists and highfalutin dialogue (“My dear Carstairs, it was really most astute of you to notice the mud on
“You aren’t married to Mike.”
“Who said?”
“You would’ve said if you were.”
“So? What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference.”
“You’re crazy.”
“All I need is a few minutes to talk things over.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Just a few minutes, Kathleen. That’s all I’m asking. Then I’ll leave, if you still want me to.”
“Mike’s here,” she said. She was silent. Then, just before she hung up, she said, “Don’t you ever call me at work again.”
Wiley liked the sound of that; it meant she assumed a future for them.
Before going out he looked himself over in the mirror. He wasn’t pretty, but he could still talk. All he had to do was get her to listen. He’d keep saying her name.
Kathleen
. Say it in that moony broguish way she liked. Said that way, almost sung, her name had power over her; he had seen it last night, the willing girl blooming on the face of the woman, the girl ready for love. He would hit that note, and once he got her listening there was no telling what might happen, because all he really needed was words, and of words, Wiley knew, there was no end.
Flyboys
M y friend Clark and I decided to build a jet plane. We spent weeks perfecting our design at the draftsman’s table in his bedroom. Sometimes Clark let me put on the green eyeshade and wield the compasses and calipers, but never for long. I drew like a lip-reader reads; watching me was torture for him. When he couldn’t take it anymore he’d bump me aside, leaving me free to fool with his things—the samurai sword, the Webley pistol with the plugged barrel—and wander the house.
Clark’s mom was usually out somewhere. I formed the habit of making myself a sandwich and settling back in the leather chair in the den, where I listened to old records and studied the family photo albums. They were lucky people, Clark’s parents, lucky and unsurprised by their luck. You could see in the pictures that they took it all in stride, the big spreads behind them, the boats and cars, and their relaxed, handsome families who, it was clear, did not get laid off, or come down with migraines, or lock each other out of the house. I pondered each picture as if it were a door I might enter, until something turned in me and I grew irritable. Then I put the albums away, and went back to Clark’s room to inspect his work and demand revisions.
Sure and commanding in everything but this, Clark took most of my ideas to heart, which made a tyrant of me. The more attentive he was, the more I bullied him. His own proposals I laughed off as moronic jokes. Clark cared more for the perfection of the plane than for his own vanity; he thought nothing of crumpling a page he’d spent hours on and starting over because of some brainstorm I’d had. This wasn’t humility, but an assurance that ran to imperturbable depths and rendered him deaf to any appeal when he rejected one of my inspirations. There were times—many times—when I contemplated that squarish head of his as I hefted the samurai sword, and imagined the stroke that would drop it to the floor like a ripe melon.
Clark was stubborn but there was no meanness in him. He wouldn’t turn on you; he was the same one day as the next, earnest and practical. Though the family had money and spent it freely, he wasn’t spoiled or interested in possessions except as instruments of his projects. In the eight or nine months we’d been friends we had shot two horror movies with his dad’s 8-mm. camera, built a catapult that worked so well his parents made us take it apart, and fashioned a monstrous, unsteerable sled out of a bedframe and five wooden skis we found in his neighbor’s trash. We also wrote a radio mystery for a competition one of the local stations put on every year, Clark patiently retyping the script as I improvised more tortuous plot twists and highfalutin dialogue (“My dear Carstairs, it was really most astute of you to notice the mud on
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