The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [53]
“May I help you?” I ask him, to fill the time.
He shakes his head. From where I’m standing, I can smell the whiskey on his breath. I can even tell that it’s cheap whiskey, a Canadian blend, the worst of all possible whiskies. The next time I look over in his direction, he’s vanished.
When I tell Chloé about him, and I describe him to her, all she says is, “Yuck. It’s the Bat. Señor Creep-o-rama.” Then she looks at her watch. “Where’s Oscar? He should be here by now? Where’s Oscar, Mr. S?”
I tell her I don’t know. But right at one o’clock, on the dot, Oscar swaggers into Jitters. After soul-kissing him, Chloé tells Oscar about the Bat’s mysterious apparitional appearance. All Oscar says is, “Dumb old man.” Then he puts his apron on.
But I am not really thinking about them because I am thinking about Diana, having already obtained her phone number. I took courage because she hadn’t been demeaned as yet with someone else’s engagement or wedding ring, I had taken care to notice. Before the lights came back on in the mall, I was thinking of eat-ing supper with this woman, Diana, whose blue eyes and stay-puttedness in the midst of storm and wrack had banished from my mind all thought of eulogies and votive candles and little white crosses accompanied by plastic flowers that poked up through the dirt and unfolded their zombie blossoms on a cheerless Monday morning.
MIDDLES
TEN
“LISTEN, UH, what did you say your name was?” Diana asks.
“Charlie.”
“Listen, Charlie. I mean, I suppose this is all very interesting and everything, but it gives me the willies. First of all my story is not a story. Second of all, it’s not yours. It’s mine, isn’t it? I thought my life was mine and not yours. Third of all, I . . . I just lost my train of thought. Oh, I know: it’s all private. My life is not in the public domain. All right? Please don’t write about me.”
“Oh, I won’t. Not exactly. But I’ll invent a replica of you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t really have time to argue. I’m a busy woman. I’m an osteopath, you know.”
“Oh, that’s fascinating,” I say without irony, because I mean it. “An osteopath? What do osteopaths do? Do you mind my asking? I’ve always been confused about osteopaths.”
“No, sorry, I don’t have time to explain. You can look it up.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll make you into a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? How can you do that? Incidentally, what did you say this project of yours is called?”
“The Feast of Love.”
“Ah-huh. Just like Bradley’s painting. I got that, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Just like Bradley’s painting.”
“It’s the best thing he ever did,” she says.
“There you go,” I tell her. “See, you have opinions to contribute, too.”
“That wasn’t an opinion,” she says. “I didn’t say anything. And I’m not going to say anything, believe me.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “But you’ll wish you had talked to me.”
“What does that mean?” she asks. “Are you threatening me? I should give you a piece of advice. As a favor. Free. Here it is. Don’t threaten me.” Her voice somehow manages to rise and to stay calm simultaneously. “Don’t threaten people, especially lawyers. Don’t threaten your own characters. It’s for your own good. You’ll wind up in a mess of litigation and . . . subplots.” She pauses. Then she seems to laugh. At least I think it’s a laugh. “You’re probably an intelligent man. Let’s not beat this shit to death. You get the point.”
ELEVEN
THE POINT WAS, I didn’t need a lover. I already had one of those, a married man who sometimes came over and who brought bunches of beautiful cut flowers, or soup he had made at home the night before.
He’d sneak the soup, carrot-leek being my favorite, out of his house in Tupperware containers, pretending he would serve it to himself for lunch. How he snuck the containers back was not my concern. He favored white shirts with French cuffs, lightly starched, though he sometimes wore a leather jacket and sunglasses to my place for his beauty’s sake. The last time he tried that I said, “You look like one of the Village People, sweetie,” kidding him, and he never wore