Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [37]
“Yeh. Wal, no.” He blinks. “Matter of fact, I don’t have to worry about that. I’m retired.”
“Oh, yes?” Vinnie doesn’t remember his mentioning this on the plane, but no doubt she wasn’t listening. “You retired early,” she adds, since he doesn’t look sixty-five.
“Yeh.” Mumpson shifts about on the pale-green iron chair, which is much too small for his bulk. “That’s what they called it: an early retirement. Wasn’t my idea. I was chucked out, you could say.” He laughs in the too-loud manner of someone joining in a joke of which he is the butt.
“Really.” Vinnie recalls articles she has read about the growing trend toward forced obsolescence among middle-aged executives, and congratulates herself on her university’s tenure system.
“Yeh, chucked on the heap at fifty-seven,” he repeats, in case she hasn’t gotten the pun—after all, she didn’t laugh, he is probably thinking. “Okay, uh—Virginia, what’ll you have?”
“Vinnie,” she corrects automatically, then realizes she has tacitly given Mumpson—Chuck—permission to use her first name. She would prefer Professor Miner, Ms. Miner, or even Miss, but to say so now would be intolerably rude by the informal standards of middle America.
“Chuck” orders coffee; Vinnie tea and apricot tart. Then, wishing to divert him from, if not console him for, his professional misfortunes, she persuades him to try the trifle.
“I’m sure there are advantages in not having to go to work every day,” she remarks brightly after the waitress has left. “For instance, you’ll have time to do many more things now.” What things? she wonders, realizing she has no idea of the probable recreations of someone like Chuck. “Travel, visit your friends, read”—Read? Is this likely?—”play golf, go fishing”—Are there any fish in Oklahoma?—”take up some hobbies—”
“Yeh, that’s what my wife tells me. Problem is, you play golf every day, you get damn sick of it. And I don’t go in much for sports otherwise. Used to really enjoy baseball; but I’m pretty well past that now.”
A person without inner resources who splits infinitives, Vinnie thinks. “It’s too bad your wife can’t be here with you,” she remarks.
“Yeh, wal. Myrna’s in real estate, like I told you, and property is pretty hot now in Tulsa. She’s working her a—” Chuck, in deference to Vinnie’s—or the room’s—air of old-fashioned gentility, displaces the metaphor from below to above—“head off. Raking it in, too.” He makes a loose raking gesture with his broad freckled hand, then lets it fall heavy onto the table.
“Really.”
“Yeh, she’s a real powerhouse. Matter of fact, the way things are going, she’s probably just as glad not to have me hanging round home at loose ends for a while. Can’t really blame her.”
“Mm,” says Vinnie, connecting Chuck’s loose ends in her mind with the dangling rawhide thongs of his tie, which is fastened by a vulgarly large silver-and-turquoise clasp of the sort favored by elderly ranchers and imitation ranchers in the Southwest. She too does not blame Myma for wanting him out of the house. It is also clear to her that after many days alone in what to him is a strange foreign city Chuck is determined to unburden himself to someone; but she is equally determined not to be this someone. Deliberately she steers the conversation toward neutral tourist subjects, the very subjects she had earlier planned to avoid.
In Chuck’s opinion, London isn’t much of a place. He doesn’t mind the weather: “Nah. I like the variety. Back home it’s the same goddamn thing every day. And if you don’t water, the earth dries up hard as rock. When I first got here I couldn’t get over how damn green England is, like one of those travel posters.”
On the other hand, he complains, the beds in his hotel are lumpy and the supply of hot water limited. English food tastes like boiled hay; if you want a half-decent meal, you have to go to some foreign restaurant. The traffic is nuts, everybody driving on the wrong side of the road; and he has a hell of a time understanding the natives, who talk English real funny. Vinnie is about