About Schmidt - Louis Begley [46]
My dear Schmidtie, what a story! I want to hear more. Will you stay with us for some early cold turkey?
Actually, I want to kiss you.
I know, but it’s a bad idea. We might not stop there. Besides, the others will be coming home soon.
You are right. It’s just the way I suddenly felt. Like in the song, “New fancies are strange fancies….” Thanks for the cold turkey. I think it would be better if I tried to catch my bus. And what do we do next, Doctor?
We become the best of friends. When will I see you? Will you come to the city to have lunch with me?
On one of those Thursdays? I don’t know. I’ll suggest to Charlotte that she and Jon invite you to the country. You should see the house while I still live in it. I am going to tell you something that must be a secret between us, because I haven’t told Charlotte yet: I am going to give my life estate in the house to her as a wedding gift. That way she and Jon will have it to themselves.
Schmidtie, let’s talk before you tell her that.
Perhaps we will, but my mind is quite made up. Never more made up than now.
A gale from the west was blowing through 57th Street. He walked leaning into it, fists in the pockets of his trousers. Third Avenue was dead. Taxis streaming toward the bridge had all lit their “Off Duty” signs. On Lexington Avenue, he found one and told the driver to go to 41st Street. A dirty-looking bus was waiting. He sat down next to a window, took The Warden out of his pocket, found his place, and began to read. Mr. Harding certainly knew how to make himself liked and how to live under the same roof with his family. Why are some people born with that gift and others not? He must ask Dr. Renata the next time they meet. And that serene celibacy! Then the bus started, and the driver turned off the overhead lights in the aisle. The reading light was too dim to continue. Schmidt turned it off, put the book in his lap, called the attendant and paid the fare so she wouldn’t bother him later, and fell asleep.
He awakened unpleasantly, with a bad taste in his mouth. Something stank; it was the stench that woke him. He opened his eyes and saw that sitting next to him was a man as tall as he but much heavier, dressed in a threadbare tweed suit of the same shade as Schmidt’s, soiled and too tight for his frame. Under it he wore a rough sweater that looked like army surplus, a grimy flannel shirt, and a salmon-pink tie, the knot of which was black with dirt. The man was slumbering with his mouth open. Down the side of his cleft chin ran a rivulet of saliva. That was, Schmidt supposed, because the mouth was toothless, like the mouths of the aged Kurds one had been seeing in newspaper photographs, although this man did not seem old, not much older than he. It was a good English or German face, except for that dreadful mouth, with eyes set deep under strong brows, a cocky nose, tiny well-formed ears, and a tough skull, the kind that, on a rough flight over the Pacific, when the captain walks through the cabin, would put the passengers at ease. The man’s cane rested between his legs. He shifted in his seat and broke wind. It was expelled in ample bursts, followed by a liquid rumbling in the stomach. If one could judge by the delicate smile that floated briefly on the man’s face, rather like a baby’s, after it has been burped, he felt relief. The cloacal odor was unbearable, but different from the stench that had interrupted Schmidt’s sleep and continued to nauseate him. Was the man hiding a piece of carrion in his pocket, had he a suppurating wound on his feet or somewhere under his clothes? It seemed impossible that an accumulation of dirt and sweat alone accounted for such fetor. And why, with the bus almost empty, had the man moved over to sit next to him, instead of spreading