About Schmidt - Louis Begley [66]
You were great. There’s no one else I can talk to about her.
Ah, the girl.
I don’t think I got across how wonderful she is. I could be doing anything at all—shaving, crossing the street—and suddenly I think of her. It’s as though I had a second heart. One for everything in my life that’s known, that’s as it should be, and one for her.
You did get it across. I understood that.
I have a letter from her—the first one! She timed it so I would get it this morning. There’s no risk; she knows I always get the newspaper and the mail myself. It’s terrific—short and funny. I feel like jumping up and down. She wrote it to make me feel good! Why shouldn’t I let her?
No reason. I envy you. Just be careful about Elaine.
I am, even about how I use the telephone. She’s out shopping, for party favors. What about the island?
I’ll call you later.
And that man?
I’ll call about that too.
Do. This afternoon. I told Elaine about him. She said I should have brought you back home with me, and made you sleep here.
Please thank her, she’s a love. Of course, so is the girl!
Complacencies of a meaningless Sunday. Schmidt drives to town. On the main street, in the sharp light, a dark crowd enters the Catholic church. Their cars have filled the parking spaces along the sidewalk, but there is room in the lot behind the hardware store. The candy store owner saves The New York Times for Schmidt. Although, contrary to his custom, Schmidt is unwashed and unshaved, like the numerous Jewish and somewhat less numerous Gentile males who also get their paper and drink coffee at the counter of that establishment, he decides to take breakfast in a booth. Pancakes, bacon, and syrup, in place of the week-old English muffin waiting in his fridge. At once, he feels he has eaten too much. Analysis of the Willy Smith trial in the “Week in Review”: Will the jury acquit him? Gil probably knows the oaf; surely he knows the senatorial uncle. Another aging satyr in search of young love.
After breakfast, Schmidt visits each of the town’s three parking lots, leans against the fender of a car that strikes his fancy, and, thus exposed, waits.
Nothing.
Perhaps on Sunday the man too sleeps late. Perhaps he is at mass.
When Blue Felt Slippers answers the telephone at Gil’s house, the party is in full swing. Schmidt insists, and spells his name; eventually, Mr. Blackman comes to the telephone. Yes, he wants very much to go to the island, the sooner the better. No, he hasn’t called the police. He has thrown down his gauntlet to the man and has felt no fear. Gil and Elaine mustn’t worry.
IX
IT’S VERY HOT, but the air is so clear that Schmidt can see the trees on the distant bank of the river as clearly as if he were looking through binoculars. In fact, he has forgotten to bring them, which is stupid, because the birds are as amazing and varied as Gil—or was it Elaine?—had told him. Instead, from time to time, he borrows the guide’s, feels squeamish about putting them against his eyes, but doesn’t want to offend that observant and sensitive man by wiping them first. He has told the guide and the Indian boy to take the morning off; he will move a chair to the landing and read in the sun. It might be nice to get some color in his face before he goes home. They spend so much time on jungle paths, and, when they go out in the boat, drifting near the riverbank, in the shade of the trees, that he is almost as pale as when he first arrived.
In fact, the book—Nostromo, since he decided that if he were going to South America he might as well test his theory that Conrad had fixed in it completely and forever the essence of that continent—lies in his lap open to the