Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [162]
“No,” Nicholas admitted. “I don’t.”
“From the sky,” she said, pointing upward. She was an old tease. “I paint with sky.” She finished inscribing the sentence on the side of the bottle and gave it a hard professional look. FEAR AND LOVE HIS LOINS, the bottle instructed. It was perfect: wacky lovelorn profundity written in beautiful blue lettering. The Adult might want this one. Finally Granny W. sat back and looked directly at Nicholas. “You can’t have this,” she said. “The paint’s all wet.”
“I can wait,” he said. “I can just sit here patiently.”
“Only if I let you,” she said. She put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. “You’ll have to learn about patience, Nicholas. Everybody has to learn about that. I was beautiful and short-tempered, once, if you can imagine it. You take this backyard here. I’ve always lived here. I was birthed here. I died here and then I came back, and that’s why I’m so patient. Do you ever sit quietly? Do you ever contemplate the mountains?” she asked, nodding in their direction. “They say that He lives in the hills.”
“There aren’t any mountains where I live,” he told her. “As you know.”
“I expect you’re right. Too bad,” she said, smiling. “You do realize,” she said, after a lengthy pause, “what a pleasure it is for me to see you? I like to sit here and stare at you. Do you mind that?” She rubbed her forehead as if she were embarrassed. “You make me girlish.”
“No, I don’t mind.” Vanity constituted his central spiritual problem. He was ball-and-chained to his good looks. “You know I love you, Granny,” he told her. “You know I love what you do. By the way, is the kitchen TV set for sale?”
“The TV? No. The only show I watch is those words,” she said, shaking her head and clearing her throat with a bleating sound. She gave off a perfume of turpentine. “So many are giving their hearts over to foolishness that I thought I’d better remind myself not to do the same. It’s a little sermon I give myself, up here. A few words are all I need. What do you need, Nicholas?”
“A correction. And doors,” Nicholas said, without thinking.
“Beautiful Nicholas,” she said, smiling at him. “Stuck forever in the foyer, stuck in the mudroom.” Then she gestured at the wine bottle with the message about loins and love and fear on it. She named a price, Nicholas made a counteroffer, which Granny accepted, and which Nicholas had conveniently brought along in cash. This was their routine. She always sermonized in his direction, often about his appearance or his lifestyle, until she named her price. Then she was all business. When the wine bottle’s paint was dry, he wrapped it up in newspapers, inquired again about the TV set, received a firm response, said good-bye, and went off to his next appointment.
In Seattle, on the connecting flight back, his plane was stuck on the ground at the gate. Several Arab-American men had boarded and had been seated at different scattered locations. An alarmed passenger, hearing the men speaking Arabic in the waiting area, had alerted the flight attendant; the flight attendant had alerted the gate agent; and the gate agent had called the FBI and the Seattle Bomb Squad. Nicholas, up in first class, finished his first scotch and asked for a second. A voice came on the public-address system: “Please do not pat the bomb dog. This is a working dog. Please do not pat the bomb dog.” A big grinning yellow Labrador wearing a police department scarf, obviously happy with his job and his authority, padded up the aisle, then back and forth in the plane, sniffing in a show-offy way for bomb materials. He passed right by Nicholas without noticing him. Dogs did not seem to care for him anymore.
In due course, the Arab-American men were escorted off the airplane to some dim destination. The Airbus door was shut and latched, and the flight took off. The flight attendant, sitting in her forward jump seat, stared at Nicholas and licked her lips as he read his magazine. He had