The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [127]
John wanted to take Hugo across country, but in the end we decided that, as much as Hugo would enjoy terrorizing so many dogs along the way, it was going to be a hot July and it was better if he stayed home. We discussed this reasonably. No frenzy—nothing like the way we had been swept in at some auctions to bid on things that we didn’t want, just because so many other people were mad for them. A reasonable discussion about Hugo, even if it was at the last minute: Hugo, in the car, already sticking his head out the window to bark goodbye. “It’s too hot for him,” I said. I was standing outside in my nightgown. “It’s almost July. He’ll be a hassle for you if campgrounds won’t take him or if you have to park in the sun.” So Hugo stood beside me, barking his high-pitched goodbye, as John backed out of the driveway. He forgot: his big battery lantern and his can opener. He remembered: his tent, the cooler filled with ice (he couldn’t decide when he left whether he was going to stock up on beer or Coke), a camera, a suitcase, a fiddle, and a banjo. He forgot his driver’s license, too. I never understood why he didn’t keep it in his wallet, but it always seemed to get taken out for some reason and then be lost. Yesterday I found it leaning up against a bottle in the medicine cabinet.
Bobby calls. He fools me with his imitation of a man with an English accent who wants to know if I also have an avocado-colored refrigerator for sale. When I say I don’t, he asks if I know somebody who paints refrigerators.
“Of course not,” I tell him.
“That’s the most decisive thing I’ve heard you say in five years,” Bobby says in his real voice. “How’s it going, Sally?”
“Jesus,” I say. “If you’d answered this phone all morning, you wouldn’t think that was funny. Where are you?”
“New York. Where do you think I am? It’s my lunch hour. Going to Le Relais to get tanked up. A little le pain et le beurre, put down a few Scotches.”
“Le Relais,” I say. “Hmm.”
“Don’t make a bad eye on me,” he says, going into his Muhammad Ali imitation. “Step on my foot and I kick you to the moon. Glad-hand me and I shake you like a loon.” Bobby clears his throat. “I got the company twenty big ones today,” he says. “Twenty Gs.”
“Congratulations. Have a good lunch. Come out for dinner, if you feel like the drive.”
“I don’t have any gas and I can’t face the train.” He coughs again. “I gave up cigarettes,” he says. “Why am I coughing?” He moves away from the phone to cough loudly.
“Are you smoking grass in the office?” I say.
“Not this time,” he gasps. “I’m goddamn dying of something.” A pause. “What did you do yesterday?”
“I was in town. You’d laugh at what I did.”
“You went to the fireworks.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you that part.”
“What’d you do?” he says.
“I met Andy and Tom at the Plaza and drank champagne. They didn’t. I did. Then we went to the fireworks.”
“Sally at the Plaza?” He laughs. “What were they doing in town?”
“Tom was there on business. Andy came to see the fireworks.”
“It rained, didn’t it?”
“Only a little. It was O.K. They were pretty.”
“The fireworks,” Bobby says. “I didn’t make the fireworks.”
“You’re going to miss lunch, Bobby,” I say.
“God,” he says. “I am. Bye.”
I pull a record out from under the big library table, where they’re kept on the wide maghogany board that connects the legs. By coincidence, the record I pull out is the Miles Davis Sextet’s Jazz at the Plaza. At the Palm Court on the Fourth of July, a violinist