Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [101]
“May I stay here?”
“For an hour,” she said, “and then you should go back to your hotel. I don’t think you should stay. You don’t live here.”
“May I take you to dinner tonight?” he asked, trying not to watch her as he watched her. “What can we do tonight?”
“There’s that ‘we’ again. Well, maybe. You can teach me a few words of Swedish. Why don’t you hang around at your hotel and maybe I’ll come by around six and get you, but don’t call me if I don’t come by, because if I don’t, I don’t.”
“I can’t call you,” he said. “I don’t know your last name.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Well, listen. I’ll probably come at six.” She looked at him lying in the bed. “I don’t believe this,” she said.
“What?”
“You think you’re in love, don’t you?”
“No,” he said. “Not exactly.” He waited. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“I get the point,” she said. “Well, you’d better get used to it. Welcome to our town. We’re not always good at love but we are good at that.” She bent to kiss him and then was gone. Happiness and agony simultaneously reached down and pressed against his chest. They, too, were like colors, but when you mixed the two together, you got something greenish-pink, excruciating.
He stood up, put on his trousers, and began looking into her dresser drawers. He expected to find trinkets and whatnot, but all she had were folded clothes, and, in the corner of the top drawer, a small turquoise heart for a charm bracelet. He put it into his pocket.
In the bathroom, he examined the labels on her medicines and facial creams before washing his face. He wanted evidence but didn’t know for what. He looked, to himself, like a slightly different version of what he had once been. In the mirror his face had a puffy look and a passive expression, as if he had been assaulted during the night.
After he had dressed and entered the living room, he saw Lauren’s grandmother sitting at a small dining-room table. She was eating a piece of toast and looking out of the window toward the river. The apartment, in daylight, had an aggressively scrubbed and mopped look. On the kitchen counter a small black-and-white television was blaring, but the old woman wasn’t watching it. Her black hair was streaked with gray, and she wore a ragged pink bathrobe decorated with pictures of orchids. She was very frail. Her skin was as dark as her granddaughter’s. Looking at her, Anders was once again unable to guess what race she was. She might be Arabic, or a Native American, or Hispanic, or black. Because he couldn’t tell, he didn’t care.
Without even looking at him, she motioned at him to sit down.
“Want anything?” she asked. She had a high, distant voice, as if it had come into the room over wires. “There are bananas over there.” She made no gesture. “And grapefruit, I think, in the refrigerator.”
“That’s all right.” He sat down on the other side of the table and folded his hands together, studying his fingers. The sound of traffic came up from the street outside.
“You’re from somewhere,” she said. “Scandinavia?”
“Yes,” he said. “How can you tell?” Talking had become a terrible effort.
“Vowels,” she said. “You sound like one of those Finns up north of here. When will you go back? To your country?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps a few days. Perhaps not. My name is Anders.” He held out his hand.
“Nice to meet you.” She touched but did not shake his hand. “Why don’t you know when you’re going back?” She turned to look at him at last. It was a face on which curiosity still registered. She observed him as if he were an example of a certain kind of human being in whom she still had an interest.
“I don’t know … I am not sure. Last night, I …”
“You don’t finish your sentences,” the old woman said.
“I am trying to. I don’t want to leave your granddaughter,” he said. “She is”—he tried to think of the right adjective—“amazing to me.”
“Yes, she is.” The old woman peered at him. “You don’t think you’re in love, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t be. She won’t ever be married, so there’s no point in being in love with