“We had a tiny kitchen too,” Carl said.
“I’m going out to see what I can find,” Jack said.
“I'll come with you,” Mary said.
Carl watched them walk to the kitchen. He settled back against the cushion and watched them walk. Then he leaned forward very slowly. He squinted. He saw
Jack reach up to a shelf in the cupboard. He saw Mary move against Jack from behind and put her arms around his waist.
“Are you guys serious?” Helen said.
“Very serious,” Carl said.
“About Alaska,” Helen said.
He stared at her.
“I thought you said something,” Helen said.
Jack and Mary came back. Jack carried a large bag of M and M’s and a bottle of cream soda. Mary sucked on an orange Popsicle.
“Anybody want a sandwich?” Helen said. “We have sandwich stuff.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Mary said. “You start with the desserts first and then you move on to the main course.”
“It’s funny,” Carl said.
“Are you being sarcastic, honey?” Mary said.
“Who wants cream soda?” Jack said. “A round of cream soda coming up.”
Carl held his glass out and Jack poured it full. Carl set the glass on the coffee table, but the coffee table smacked it off and the soda poured onto his shoe.
“Goddamn it,” Carl said. “How do you like that? I spilled it on my shoe.”
“Helen, do we have a towel? Get Carl a towel,” Jack said.
“Those were new shoes,” Mary said. “He just got them.”
“They look comfortable,” Helen said a long time later and handed Carl a towel.
“That’s what I told him,” Mary said.
Carl took the shoe off and rubbed the leather with the towel.
“It’s done for,” he said. “That cream soda will never come out.”
Mary and Jack and Helen laughed.
“That reminds me, I read something in the paper,” Helen said. She pushed on the tip of her nose with a finger and narrowed her eyes. “I can’t remember what it was now,” she said.
Carl worked the shoe back on. He put both feet under the lamp and looked at the shoes together.
“What did you read?” Jack said.
“What?” Helen said.
“You said you read something in the paper,” Jack said.
Helen laughed. “I was just thinking about Alaska, and I remembered them finding a prehistoric man in a block of ice. Something reminded me.”
“That wasn’t in Alaska,” Jack said.
“Maybe it wasn’t, but it reminded me of it,” Helen said.
“What about Alaska, you guys?” Jack said.
“There’s nothing in Alaska,” Carl said.
“He’s on a bummer,” Mary said.
“What’ll you guys do in Alaska?” Jack said.
“There’s nothing to do in Alaska,” Carl said. He put his feet under the coffee table. Then he moved them out under the light once more. “Who wants a new pair of shoes?” Carl said.
“What’s that noise?” Helen said.
They listened. Something scratched at the door.
“It sounds like Cindy,” Jack said. “I’d better let her in.”
“While you’re up, get me a Popsicle,” Helen said. She put her head back and laughed.
“I’ll have another one too, honey,” Mary said. “What did I say? I mean Jack,” Mary said. “Excuse me. I thought I was talking to Carl.”
“Popsicles all around,” Jack said. “You want a Popsicle, Carl?”
“What?”
“You want an orange Popsicle?”
“An orange one,” Carl said.
“Four Popsicles coming up,” Jack said.
In a while he came back with the Popsicles and handed them around. He sat down and they heard the scratching again.
“I knew I was forgetting something,” Jack said. He got up and opened the front door.
“Good Christ,” he said, “if this isn’t something. I guess Cindy went out for dinner tonight. Hey, you guys, look at this.”
The cat carried a mouse into the living room, stopped to look at them, then carried the mouse down the hall.
“Did you see what I just saw?” Mary said. “Talk about a bummer.”
Jack turned the hall light on. The cat carried the mouse out of the hall and into the bathroom.
“She’s eating this mouse,” Jack said.
“I don’t think I want her eating a mouse in my bathroom,” Helen said. “Make her get out of there. Some of the children’s things are in there.” “She’s not going to get out of here,” Jack said.
“What about the mouse?” Mary said.
“What the hell,” Jack said. “Cindy’s got to learn to hunt if we’re going to Alaska.”
“Alaska?’ Helen said. “What’s all this about Alaska?”
“Don’t ask me,” Jack said. He stood near the bathroom door and watched the cat. “Mary and Carl said they’re going to Alaska. Cindy’s got to learn to hunt.”
Mary put her chin in her hands and stared into the hall.
“She’s eating the mouse/’ Jack said.
Helen finished the last of the corn chips. “I told him I didn’t want Cindy eating a mouse in the bathroom. Jack?” Helen said.
“What?”
“Make her get out of the bathroom, I said/1 Helen said.
“For Christ’s sake,” Jack said,
“Look,” Mary said. '‘Ugh,” Mary said. “The goddamn cat is coming in here/’ Mary said.
“What’s she doing?” Carl said.
The cat dragged the mouse under the coffee table. She lay down under the table and licked the mouse. She held the mouse in her paws and licked slowly, from head to tail.
“The cat’s high,” Jack said.
“It gives you the shivers,” Mary said.
“It's just nature.” Jack said.
“Look at her eyes,” Mary said. “Look at the way she looks at us. She's high, all right.”
Jack came over to the sofa and sat beside Mary. Mary inched toward Carl to give Jack room. She rested her hand on Carl’s knee.
They watched the cat eat the mouse.
"Don’t you ever feed that cat?” Mary said to Helen.
Helen laughed.
“You guys ready for another smoke?” Jack said.
“We have to go,” Carl said.
“What’s your hurry?” Jack said.
“Stay a little longer,” Helen said. “You don't have to go yet.”
Carl stared at Mary, who was staring at Jack. Jack stared at something on the rug near his feet.
Helen picked through the M and M’s in her hand.
“I like the green ones best,” Helen said.
“I have to work in the morning,” Carl said.
“What a bummer he’s on,” Mary said. “You want to hear a bummer, folks? There's a bummer.”
“Are you coming?” Carl said.
“Anybody want a glass of milk?” Jack said. “We’ve got some milk out there.”
“I’m too full of cream soda,” Mary said.
“There’s no more cream soda,” Jack said.
Helen laughed. She closed her eyes and then opened them and then laughed again.
“We have to go home,” Carl said. In a while he stood up and said, “Did we have coats? I don’t think we had coats.”
“What? I don’t think we had coats,” Mary said. She stayed seated.
“We’d better go,’’ Carl said.
“They have to go,” Helen said.
Carl put his hands under Mary’s shoulders and pulled her up.
“Goodbye, you guys,” Mary said. She embraced Carl. “I’m so full I can hardly move,” Mary said.
Helen laughed.
“Helen’s always finding something to laugh at,” Jack said, and Jack grinned. “What are you laughing at, Helen?”
“I don’t know. Something Mary
said,” Helen said.
“What did I say?” Mary said.
“I can’t remember,” Helen said.
“We have to go,” Carl said.
“So long,” Jack said. “Take it easy.”
Mary tried to laugh.
“Let’s go,” Carl said.
“Night, everybody,” Jack said. “Night, Carl,” Carl heard Jack say very, very slowly.
Outside, Mary held Carl’s arm and walked with her head down. They moved slowly on the sidewalk. He listened to the scuffing sounds her shoes made. He heard the sharp and separate sound of a dog barking and above that a murmuring of very distant traffic.
She raised her head. “When we get home, Carl, I want to be fucked, talked to, diverted. Divert me, Carl. I need to be diverted tonight.” She tightened her hold on his arm.
He could feel the dampness in that shoe. He unlocked the door and flipped the light.
“Come to bed/’ she said.
“I’m coming,” he said.
He went to the kitchen and drank two glasses of water. He turned off the living-room light and felt his way along the wall into the bedroom.
“Carl!” she yelled. “Carl!”
“Jesus Christ, it’s me!” he said. “I’m trying to get the light on.”
He found the lamp, and she sat up in bed. Her eyes were bright. He pulled the stem on the alarm and began taking off his clothes. His knees trembled.
“Is there anything else to smoke?” she said.
“We don’t have anything,” he said.
“Then fix me a drink. We have something to drink. Don’t tell me we don’t have something to drink,” she said.
“Just some beer.”
They stared at each other.
“I’ll have a beer,” she said.
“You really want a beer?”
She nodded slowly and chewed her lip.
He came back with the beer. She was sitting with his pillow on her lap. He gave her the can of beer and then crawled into bed and pulled the covers up.
“I forgot to take my pill,” she said.
“What?”
“I forgot my pill.”
He got out of bed and brought her the pill. She opened her eyes and he dropped the pill onto her outstretched tongue. She swallowed some beer with the pill and he got back in bed.
“Take this. I can’t keep my eyes open,” she said.
He set the can on the floor and then stayed on his side and stared into the dark hallway. She put her arm over his ribs and her fingers crept across his chest.
“What’s in Alaska?” she said.
He turned on his stomach and eased all the way to his side of the bed. In a moment she was snoring.
Just as he started to turn off the lamp, he thought he saw something in the hall. He kept staring and thought he saw it again, a pair of small eyes. His heart turned. He blinked and kept staring. He leaned over to look for something to throw. He picked up one of his shoes. He sat up straight and held the shoe with both hands. He heard her snoring and set his teeth. He waited. He waited for it to move once more, to make the slightest noise.
NIGHT SCHOOL
My marriage had just fallen apart. I couldn’t find a job. I had another girl. But she wasn’t in town. So I was at a bar having a glass of beer, and two women were sitting a few stools down, and one of them began to talk to me.
“You have a car?”
“I do, but it’s not here,” I said.
My wife had the car. I was staying at my parents’ place. I used their car sometimes. But tonight I was walking.
The other woman looked at me. They were both about forty, maybe older.
“What’d you ask him?” the other woman said to the first woman.
“I said did he have a car.”
“So do you have a car?” the second woman said to me.
“I was telling her. I have a car. But I don’t have it with me,” I said.
“That doesn’t do us much good, does it?” she said.
The first woman laughed. “We had a brainstorm and we need a car to go through with it. Too bad.” She turned to the bartender and asked for two more beers.
I’d been nursing my beer along, and now I drank it off and thought they might buy me a round. They didn’t.
“What do you do?” the first woman asked me.
“Right now, nothing,” I said. “Sometimes, when I can, I go to school.” “He goes to school,” she said to the other woman. “He’s a student. Where do you go to school?”
“Around,” I said.
“I told you,” the woman said. “Doesn’t he look like a student?”
“What are they teaching you?” the second woman said.
“Everything,” I said.
“I mean,” she said, “what do you plan to do? What’s your big goal in life? Everybody has a big goal in life.”
I raised my empty glass to the bartender. He took it and drew me another beer. I counted out some change, which left me with thirty cents from the two dollars I’d started out with a couple of hours ago. She was waiting.
“Teach. Teach school,” I said.
“He wants to be a teacher,” she said.
I sipped my beer. Someone put a coin in the jukebox and a song that my wife liked began to play. I looked around. Two men near the front were at the shuffleboard. The door was open and it was dark outside.
“We’re students too, you know,” the first woman said. “We go to school.”
“We take a night class,” the other one said. “We take this reading class on Monday nights.”
The first woman said, “Why don’t you move down here, teacher, so we don’t have to yell?”
I picked up my beer and my cigarets and moved down two stools.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now, did you say you were a student?”
“Sometimes, yes, but not now,” I said.
“Where?”
“State College.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I remember now.” She looked at the other woman. “You ever hear of a teacher over there name of Patterson? He teaches adult-education classes. He teaches this class we take on Monday nights. You remind me a lot of Patterson.”
They looked at each other and laughed.
“Don’t bother about us,” the first woman said. “It’s a private joke. Shall we tell him what we thought about doing, Edith? Shall we?”
Edith didn’t answer. She took a drink of beer and she narrowed her eyes as she looked at herself, at the three of us, in the mirror behind the bar.
“We were thinking,” the first woman went on, “if we had a car tonight we’d go over and see him. Patterson. Right, Edith?”
Edith laughed to herself. She finished her beer and asked for a round, one for me included. She paid for the beers with a five-dollar bill.
“Patterson likes to take a drink,” Edith said.
“You can say that again,” the other woman said. She turned to me. “We talked about it in class one night. Patterson says he always has wine with his meals and a highball or two before dinner.”
“What class is this?” I said.
“This reading class Patterson teaches. Patterson likes to talk about different things.”
“We’re learning to read,” Edith said. “Can you believe it?”
“I’d like to read Hemingway and things like that,” the other woman said. “But Patterson has us reading stories like in Reader's Digest.”
“We take a test every Monday night/’ Edith said. “But Patterson's okay. He wouldn't care if we came over for a highball. Wouldn’t be much he could do, anyway. We have something on him. On Patterson,” she said.
“We’re on the loose tonight,” the other woman said. “But Edith's car is in the garage.”
“If you had a car now, we’d go over and see him,” Edith said. She looked at me. “You could tell Patterson you wanted to be a teacher. You’d have something in common.”
I finished my beer. I hadn't
eaten anything all day except some peanuts. It was hard to keep listening and talking.
“Let’s have three more, please, Jerry/’ the first woman said to the bartender.
“Thank you/' I said.
“You'd get along with Patterson,” Edith said.
“So call him.” I said. I thought it was just talk.
“I wouldn't do that,” she said. “He could make an excuse. We just show up on his porch, he'll have to let us in.” She sipped her beer.
“So let’s go!” the first woman said. “What’re we waiting for? Where'd you say the car is?”
“There's a car a few blocks from here,” I said. “But I don't know/'
“Do you want to go or don't you?” Edith said.
‘‘He said he does,” the first woman said. “We'll get a six-pack to take with us.”
“I only have thirty cents/' I said.
“Who needs your goddamn money?” Edith said. "We need your goddamn car. Jerry, let’s have three more. And a six-pack to go.”
“Here’s to Patterson,” the first woman said when the beer came. “To Patterson and his highballs.”
“He’ll drop his cookies,” Edith said.
“Drink up,” the first woman said.
On the sidewalk we headed south, away from town. I walked between the two women. It was about ten o’clock.
“I could drink one of those beers now,” I said.
“Help yourself,” Edith said.
She opened the sack and I reached in and tore a can loose.
“We think he’s home,” Edith said.
“Patterson,” the other woman said. “We don’t know for sure. But we think so.”
“How much farther?” Edith said.
I stopped, raised the beer, and drained half the can. “The next block,” I said. “I’m staying with my parents. It’s their place.”
“I guess there’s nothing wrong with it,” Edith said. “But I’d say you’re kind of old for that.”
“That’s not polite, Edith,” the other woman said.
“Well, that’s the way I am,” Edith said. “He’ll have to get used to it, that’s all. That’s the way I am.”
“That’s the way she is,” the other woman said.
I finished the beer and tossed the can into some weeds.
“Now how far?” Edith said.