Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [28]
“I’m drunk,” he says.
“How drunk?”
“How drunk what?”
“I mean, how drunk are you?”
“I don’t know.” He stands up in the bedroom, holding on to the telephone. “I was just having some soup when you called. Celery soup. And there’s a Charlie Chan movie on. Something about death and athletics.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Harrelson can hear a cash register clacking in the background of the filling station Meredith is calling from. “Listen,” she says. “I’d call a cab, except I didn’t bring enough money.”
“I will come,” Harrelson says.
“Don’t come if you’re too drunk,” Meredith says. “Can you stand?”
“Yes, I can stand. And,” he adds, “I can sit.”
“Jesus. You are drunk. How soon can you be here?”
“The Mobil station?” He thinks. He cannot remember where it is. He makes a guess. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“It is hard to be sure,” Harrelson says, “of anything in this life.”
“If you come to get me, promise you won’t say anything like that again. Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Now listen,” she says. “It’s snowing out. You’re not sober. You’re going to have to be careful. Put on your seat belt. Avoid other cars.”
“Okay, okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be there in no time.” For some reason he repeats the words “no time” before he hangs up.
He remembers to turn off the range and the television set and the lights, but he forgets to put on overshoes and gloves. When he is walking down the front steps, his feet rush out from under him, and he falls on the middle step. He is unhurt. His hands are in the snow, and when he lifts them up, he is pleased to see an outline of his hands on the step. He can feel the snow falling on his hair. He sticks his tongue out. Snow lands on his tongue’s tip like airborne pieces of candy. Now he looks out at the street and sees his car, an ancient Buick, covered with snow, and snow falling in a peaceful rush underneath the streetlight, and more snow accumulating in the street, as if Meredith had thought this through and had wanted a few more difficulties than were absolutely necessary to test his loyalty. Harrelson feels a small quantity of snow working its way into his shoes. “Mr. Nice Guy,” he says, still sitting on the step. He puts his hands down in the snow next to the handprints he has already made. He would like to make a snow angel in the front yard, but Meredith is waiting. He stands up, holding on to the buttons of his coat, and walks with great precision and daring to his car.
As he tries to find his car keys, scattered in his pocket, he holds his head up and looks with an expression of vague speculation at his car and the street. There is certainly a great deal of snow all over everything. Some sort of muffled siren howls gently in the distance. Up the street an unclearly outlined figure is shoveling his sidewalk. Harrelson thinks of Meredith waiting for him in the sinister gas station and renews his efforts to find his car keys. He grasps a number of keys, pulls them out, and watches with neutralized dismay as several of them plop into the snow, leaving slots behind that, Charlie Chan–like, Harrelson uses for pursuit and detection. With all the cold, snowy keys gathered up in his hands, he selects the one that unlocks the car door, deposits the rest in his pocket, and gets in.
He says a prayer, turns the key in the ignition, and the engine starts after a few cranks. As it warms up, exhaust fumes begin seeping up from the floor. Harrelson reaches for a fugitive cigarette on the dashboard, left there by some random hitchhiker—he adores hitchhikers and picks them up at every opportunity—and lights up before getting out to clear the windshield. With his bare hands he sweeps the front and side windows, leaving a bit of ice on the glass for the defroster to take care of. When he is back inside the car, he looks in the rearview mirror and observes that he has not cleared the back window. He shrugs