Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [89]
“I don’t see it,” I said. “I can’t see the hole. Where did you hear about this car? Did Pop tell you?”
“No,” Ben said. “Other sources.” Ben’s sources, his network of friends and enemies, were always calling him on the telephone to tell him things. He basked in information. Now he gave me a quick glance. “Holy smoke,” he said. “What did you do to your hair?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just combing it.”
“You look like that guy,” he said. “The one in the movies.”
“Which guy?”
“That Harvey guy.”
“Jimmy Stewart?”
“Of course not,” he said. “You know the one I mean. Everybody knows that guy. The Harvey guy.” When I looked blank, he said, “Never mind. Let’s go down to the lake and look at that car. You’d better tell them we’re going.” He gestured toward the other end of the house.
In the kitchen I informed my parents that I was headed somewhere with my brother, and my mother, chopping carrots for one of her stews, looked up at me and my hair. “Be back by five,” she said. “Where did you say you were off to?”
“We’re driving to Navarre,” I said. “Ben has to get his skates sharpened.”
My stepfather’s eyebrows started to go up; he exchanged a glance with my mother—the usual pantomime of skepticism. I turned around and ran out of the kitchen before they could stop me. I put on my boots, overcoat, and gloves, and hurried outside to my brother’s car. He was already inside. The motor roared.
The interior of the car smelled of gum, cigarettes, wet wool, analgesic balm, and aftershave. “What’d you tell them?” my brother asked.
“I said you were going to Navarre to get your skates sharpened.”
He put the car into first gear, then sighed. “Why’d you do that? I have to explain everything to you. Number one: my skates aren’t in the car. What if they ask to see them when we get home? I won’t have them. That’s a problem, isn’t it? Number two: when you lie about being somewhere, you make sure you have a friend who’s there who can say you were there, even if you weren’t. Unfortunately, we don’t have any friends in Navarre.”
“Then we’re safe,” I said. “No one will say we weren’t there.”
He shook his head. Then he took off his glasses and examined them as if my odd ideas were visible right there on the frames. I was just doing my job, being his private fool, but I knew he liked me and liked to have me around. My unworldliness amused him; it gave him a chance to lecture me. But now, tired of wasting words on me, he turned on the radio. Pulling out onto the highway, he steered the car in his customary way. He had explained to me that only very old or very sick people actually grip steering wheels. You didn’t have to hold the wheel to drive a car. Resting your arm over the top of the wheel gave a better appearance. You dangled your hand down, preferably with a cigarette in it, so that the car, the entire car, responded to the mere pressure of your wrist.
“Hey,” I said. “Where are we going? This isn’t the way to the lake.”
“We’re not going there first. We’re going there second.”
“Where are we going first?”
“We’re going to Five Oaks. We’re going to get Stephanie. Then we’ll see the car.”
“How come we’re getting her?”
“Because she wants to see it. She’s never seen a car underneath the ice before. She’ll be impressed.”
“Does she know we’re coming?”
He gave me that look again. “What do they teach you at that school you go to? Of course she knows. We have a date.”
“A date? It’s three o’clock in the afternoon,” I said. “You can’t have a date at three in the afternoon. Besides, I’m along.”
“Don’t argue,” Ben said. “Pay attention.”
By the time we reached Five Oaks, the heater in my brother’s car was blowing out warm air in tentative gusts. If we were going to get Stephanie, his current girlfriend, it was fine with me. I liked her smile—she had an overbite, the same as I did, but she didn’t seem self-conscious about it