Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [132]
“Why, look who it is,” said Crabtree. “Our Lady of the Flowers himself”
“I’m hosed,” James said, not entirely regretfully, as we came in.
“Kicked out?” I said.
He nodded. “Yes, I think so. I’m not completely sure. They’ve been in there for a while.” He lowered his voice. “Actually, I think they were having a fight or something.”
“Jesus,” said Crabtree, working a last anticipatory kink out of his neck.
We listened; there was a man’s voice, an unintelligible but reasoned murmur. I didn’t hear Sara.
“They aren’t fighting now,” I said.
“Here goes,” said Crabtree. He knocked.
“They stopped fighting when Fred and Amanda showed up,” said James.
Crabtree’s hand froze in midknock.
“Are they in there, too?”
“Yup,” said James. “I told you, I’m hosed.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“They brought the dog with them.”
“We’re hosed,” I told Crabtree.
“Maybe you are.”
“I don’t look stoned?” My heart began to pound. The classic aim of a pothead is always to look perfectly straight—and if possible operate complicated machinery—while immense shrieking nebulae are coming asunder in his brain. To fail at this—to be found out—carries a mysterious burden of anxiety and shame. “How are my eyes?”
“You look like you’ve been gassed,” he snapped. In my sudden paranoia I was no longer certain he was so glad to have me along. “Just get my back, all right? Let me do the talking.”
“Oh, of course,” I said.
Sara opened the door. To her credit both as an administrator and as the lover of an irregular man, she did not look particularly surprised to see either of us.
“Come in,” she said, rolling her tired eyes. Then she saw the jacket. That surprised her. “You got it? Walter, they got it!”
Walter Gaskell unfolded himself from his chair and hurried toward us. For a moment I thought that he had aimed himself at my head, and I took a step backward, but he didn’t even look at me. He went straight for the black satin prize. Crabtree stood erect, the jacket draped across one arm, presenting it for Walter’s inspection with pride and a refined air of concern, like a sommelier with a bottle of very old claret. Walter took it from him with equal delicacy and then looked it over carefully for signs of damage.
“It seems to be all right,” he announced.
“Oh, thank heavens. Well, James Leer! You are very lucky!” said Mrs. Leer, appending, with her eyes, “to be alive.” She and her husband had risen from their chairs when we came in, and now Mr. Leer wrapped his bony arm around her in a way that was at once reassuring and triumphant, as if to say, There, I told you everything would work out fine. I imagined that he was always telling her something like this, in the vain hope that such lessons in grace had a cumulative force and that one day she would see that, for the most part, everything did. It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world. She was dressed for a funeral in a belted black dress, black stockings, and a pair of black pumps, and her pale hair sat atop her head as motionless as a nurse’s hat. Fred had evidently been dragged into town from the golf links. He was fond,