Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [164]
“Speaking of loins and money,” she said, “when are you next going to be seeing the Adult?” She had a way of changing the topic when Nicholas didn’t expect her to. Even the fact of her pregnancy didn’t have a long conversational shelf life with her. Happiness made her shy.
“In a few days. I’ve called her. I’m taking that wine bottle to her. It strikes the right note. She’ll love it. I’ll drive up on Tuesday.”
“It’s you she loves,” Daphne said, looking at Nicholas tenderly, as the gangster’s wife might look at the gangster. Next to their table, another couple glanced over at them, and Nicholas realized that Daphne had been speaking more loudly than she usually did. “You and that face of yours! It’s mean, actually, what you do to her—making her all … I don’t know, gooey. And then you take her money and go home. It’s not cruel, but it is mean.” She used her bad-girl tone on him. “You’re such a rascal. She just pines and sighs for you. Poor Mrs. Andriessen. Poor Adult.”
“Yeah,” Nicholas said. “Well, that’s life, honey. It’s what people expect of me. It pays various bills.”
“I pay the bills, too,” she said, her voice modulating, and as the curtains continued to blow inward, Nicholas thought of a piece Daphne used to play occasionally on the flute, when she had thought that in order to be hired as a session musician, just out of Juilliard, she’d have to be versatile. She’d sit in the apartment’s bathroom, because she liked the acoustics in there, on the edge of the tub, wearing her flowered pajamas, and this miraculous music would come out, the most beautiful music Nicholas had ever heard up to that point in his life, Debussy’s “Syrinx,” about a girl turned into a reed. “They buy from me, too,” she said, spearing something white on the plate. She smiled at him. “You and me, we just can’t be resisted.”
An hour or so after he had arrived in New Paltz and had shown her the Granny-inscribed wine bottle, the Adult asked Nicholas to do a favor for her. She wanted him to clamber up into her backyard apple tree and cut off one of its dead branches. He gave her a skeptical look. Didn’t she realize that he was an art dealer, not a tree service? He was miffed. And he wasn’t dressed for the job, the sort of chore you’d ask your husband or boyfriend to do. But some complicated subtext had probably attached itself to her request, and he felt a roiling of curiosity. By the time she mentioned the dead branch, they had already had lunch and had talked about the relationship between Granny W.’s work and the famous road signs of Jesse Smith, now on display in several museums, and he wanted to close the deal and get home. Still, there was that gleam in her eye. The Adult had studied Granny W.’s bottle as if she were unsure whether she would purchase it—as if she were waiting for him to do this favor as an act of friendship, or masculine graciousness.
He unbuttoned his white shirt and took off his shoes and socks. The Adult stood on the perfectly mown grass in her running shoes and slacks and blouse, observing him with precise attention. As a boy, he had been an avid tree climber. What had happened to that prehistoric skill, now that he lived in Brooklyn? The proficiency had gone dormant, like all his other childhood aptitudes. Holding on to the handsaw, he made his way up into the tree, and he heard the Adult say, “Be careful.”
The dead branch, scaly and virus-ridden, was located about halfway up. The tree branches felt pleasantly rough on the soles of his bare feet, and when he reached the dead branch, after an easy climb past ripe autumnal apples about to fall, he realized that sawing through the dead wood would be effortless. He glanced down at Mrs. Andriessen, and then up at the sky. He began to work.
He had almost finished when he heard the Adult say, “Nicholas, I really do appreciate what you’re doing, believe me.”
Maybe he was tired, or feverish, but he heard her utter the sentence in blue, royal blue, the color