Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [51]
“Right. I do. That’s why I don’t understand people sleeping on the ground. Who wants that when you can shower in a bathroom and sleep in a bed and look out from the eleventh floor? Not me.”
“Insomnia,” Mr. Bradbury said. “How interesting. Ever tried pills?”
“You have insomnia?” she asked. “Try bananas. Or turkey. They have an enzyme, tryptophan, and that’s what you need. Unless you’re hardcore, like me. I have to run, eat bananas, skip coffee, but it usually doesn’t make any difference.”
“We jog together,” Eric said.
They were cuddling there, Darlene and Eric, Mr. Bradbury decided, to test his powers of detachment. Before this was over he would be a Zen saint. He thought longingly of the vodka bottle in the kitchen cupboard, whose cap he had not, not, removed once today: his hands were folded in his lap, as he watched Darlene place her hand on Eric’s leg. The truth, he thought, raising one hand to scratch his ear, is an insufferable test of a man’s resources. Tilting his head imperceptibly, he glanced for relief at the Lichtenstein above the sofa. “Bananas?” he said.
“Eric says you wrote those Colonel Crisp commercials.” Her voice was egging him on into the kitchen: glass, ice cubes, and the tender care of the liquor.
“Yes.” He would not stand it. He could not stand it, and began to get up.
Darlene twisted around, so that Eric’s hand fell off her shoulders onto the sofa, to look at the wall behind her. “What’s that?” she asked.
“That? Oh, that’s a Lichtenstein.” He sat down again.
“Is it valuable?”
“Yes. I suppose so. Yes.”
She was looking at it closely, probably, Mr. Bradbury thought, counting the dots in the woman’s face. “Do you write radio commercials, too?”
“Oh, yes. I once wrote a spot for a lightbulb company with a Janáek fanfare in the background. That made them sit up.”
“Jesus!” Eric stood suddenly. “I can’t stand this!” He went down the hallway, and they both heard a door slam. Just then Elena came into the living room to announce that lunch was ready.
“It’s a hard life up here on the eleventh floor,” Mr. Bradbury mused. “Maybe he went to get a banana.” He waited. “Or some white meat.”
“I’ll get him,” Darlene said, rising. “His moods’ve never bothered me. Did you know,” she began, then stopped. She apparently decided to plunge ahead, because she said, “He talks a lot about his mother.”
“Not to me. She died of cancer, you know.”
“Yeah. He said so. He remembers all of it. He likes you, Mr. Bradbury. Don’t get him wrong. He’s crazy about you. I shouldn’t say this.”
“Oh, please say it. Crazy about me?”
“Oh sure. Didn’t you know?” She looked surprised.
Mortified and pleased, he watched her disappear down the hall.
After lunch, whose terrain was crossed by Mr. Bradbury’s painfully constructed comic anecdotes about daily work in an advertising agency, he suggested that they all go out for a walk in the park. Eric and Darlene agreed with an odd fervor. After bundling themselves up, they took the elevator down, Darlene checking her face, making moues, in the elevator’s polished mirror.
Outside the temperature was ten degrees above zero, with no wind, and a sunny sky. When they reached the park, Darlene ran out ahead of them onto the pond, where the park authorities had cleared a rink for skating. A loudspeaker was playing Waldteufel.
“Don’t lecture me,” Eric said. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing.”
“Who, me?” Darlene was now out of earshot. “That’s for suckers. Can you tell me yet how long you’re staying?”
“Why do you keep asking? A few days. Then we’re going north again. I’m going to be up there for the rest of the winter and then re-enroll next fall and graduate in the spring.”
“I don’t suppose she’s going with you.”
“I don’t know.” He waited. “She’s interested in our money. The money.”
“A good woman’s failing. I kind of like her,” Mr. Bradbury said. “Diamond in the rough and all that. At first I thought she was queen of the roller derby. Didn’t know if she was playing with a full deck.”
“I almost proposed to her,” Eric said. “Almost.”
“Oh Christ.” His