The Best American Short Stories 2014 (6 page)

He'd had a triple bypass two years before. He had diabetes. He'd told me on the phone that he might have to go on dialysis.

“Is this the part of the walk where you tell me how your relationship is with that fellow I don't consider my equal?”

“Did I bring him up?” I said.

“No, I did. So is he still not my equal?”

“I feel disloyal talking about him. He lost his job. He hasn't been in a very good mood.”

“Take him dancing,” he said. “Or read him my most optimistic poem: ‘Le petit rondeau, le petit rondeau.' That one was a real triumph. He'll want to know what ‘rondeau' means, so tell him it's the dance that's supplanted the Macarena.”

“I wish you liked each other,” I said, “but realistically speaking, he has three siblings and the only one he talks to is his sister.”

“I could wear a wig. Everybody's getting chemo now, so they're making very convincing hair.”

We turned the corner. Snow was falling fast, and people hurried along. He wasn't wearing a hat or a scarf. What had I been thinking? In solidarity, I left my little knitted beret folded in my coat pocket.

“Let's go there,” he said, pointing to a Mexican restaurant. “Who wants all those truffles and frills? A cold Dos Equis on a cold day, a beef burrito. That'll be fine.”

I could tell that walking was an effort. Also, I'd realized his shoes were surprisingly heavy as I put them on.

We went into the Mexican restaurant. Two doctors in scrubs were eating at one of the two front tables. An old lady and a young woman sat at another. We were shown to the backroom, where a table of businessmen were laughing. I took off my coat and asked Franklin if he needed help with his. “My leg won't bend,” he said. “That's happened before. It locks. I can sit down, but I'm going to need an arm.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

The waiter reached around us and put menus on the table and rushed away. I pulled out a chair. How was I going to get it near the table again, though? I was just about to push it a little closer to the table when Franklin made a hopping motion with one foot and stabilized himself by grabbing the edge of the table and bending at the waist. Before I knew it, he was sitting in the chair, wincing, one leg bent, the other extended. “Go get those doctor fellows and tell 'em I swalled Viagra, and my leg's completely rigid,” he said. “Tell 'em it's been this way for at least ten hours.”

I dropped a glove, and when I bent to pick it up I also tried to move the chair in closer to the table. I couldn't budge it. And the waiter looked smaller than I was.

“Let's see,” Franklin said, picking up one of the menus. “Let's see if there's a simple bean burrito for a simple old guy, and our waiter can bring a brace of beer bottles by their necks and we can have a drink and make a toast to the knee that will bend, to Egil our friend, to a life without end . . . at least, let's hope it's not rigor mortis setting in at a Mexican restaurant.”

“Three Dos Equis, and you can serve one to my friend,” Franklin said to the waiter. “Excuse me for sitting out in the middle of the room, but I like to be at the center of the action.”

“You want me to maybe help you in a little closer to the table?” the waiter said, coming close to Franklin's side.

“Well, I don't know,” Franklin said doubtfully, but he slid forward a bit on the chair, and with one quick movement, he rose slightly, the waiter pushed the chair under him, and he was suddenly seated a normal distance from the table.

“Gracias, mi amigo,”
Franklin said.

“No problem,” the waiter said. He turned to me. “You're going to have a Dos Equis?”

I spread my hands helplessly and smiled.

At that exact moment, my ex-husband and a very attractive woman walked into the backroom, following a different waiter. He stopped and we stared at each other in disbelief. He and I had met at Penn, but for a long time now I'd lived in Charlottesville. Last time I'd heard, he was living in Santa Fe. He said something hurriedly to the pretty woman and, instead of sitting, pointed to a different table, in the corner. The waiter complied with the request, but only the woman walked away. My ex-husband came to our table.

“What a surprise,” Gordy said. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you,” I echoed.

“I'd rise, but I took Viagra and now I can't get my leg to move,” Franklin said. He had settled on this as the joke of the day.

“Professor Chadwick?” Gordy said. “Franklin Chadwick, right? Gordon Miller. I was president of Latin Club.”

“That's right!” Franklin said. “And back then, we were both in love with the same girl!”

Gordy blushed and took a step back. “That's right. Good to see you. Sorry to interrupt.” He was not wearing a wedding ring. He turned and strode back toward the faraway table.

“Why did you say that?” I asked. “You were never in love with me. You were always flirting with Louisa Kepper. You paid her to cut your grass so you could stare at her in shorts and work boots. She knew it too.”

“I wasn't in love with you, but now it seems like I should have been, because where are they now? Who keeps in touch? I never hear, even when a poem is published. It was just a job, apparently. Like a bean burrito's a bean burrito.”

“Here you go, three beers. Should I pour for you?” the waiter asked.

“I'll take mine in the bottle,” Franklin said, reaching up. The waiter handed him the bottle.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. The waiter poured two-thirds of a glass of beer and set the bottle beside my glass. “Lunch is coming,” he said.

“I'll tell you what I'd like: a shot of tequila on the side.”

“We only have a beer and wine license. I'm sorry,” the waiter said.

“Then let me have a glass of red wine on the side,” Franklin said.

“OK,” the waiter said.

“Take it easy with the drinking. I've got to get you back in one piece,” I said. “Also, I don't want to feel like an enabler. I want us to have a good time, but we can do that sober.”

“‘Enabler'? Don't use phoney words like that. They're ugly, Maude.”

I was startled when he used my name. I'd been “Champ” in his poetry seminar. We were all “Champ.” The biggest champ had now published six books. I had published one, though it had won the Yale Series. We didn't talk about the fact that I'd stopped writing poetry.

“I hope you understand that he and I”—he tilted his head in the direction of my ex-husband—“had a man-to-man on the telephone, and I told him where we'd be eating today.”

“I wonder what he
is
doing here. I thought he lived in Santa Fe.”

“Probably got tired of all the sun, and the turquoise and coyotes. Decided to trade it in for snow, and a gray business suit and squirrels.”

“Did you see if she had a wedding ring on?” I asked.

“Didn't notice. When I'm with one pretty girl, what do I care about another? Though there's that great story by Irwin Shaw, ‘The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.' I don't suppose anyone even mentions Irwin Shaw anymore. They might, if only he'd thought to call his story ‘The Amazingly Gorgeous Femme Fatales Provoke Envy and Lust as Men Go Mad.'” He turned to the waiter, who'd appeared with the bean burrito and the chicken enchilada I'd ordered.

“Sir, will you find occasion to drop by that table in the corner and see if the lady is wearing a wedding ring?” Franklin said quietly into the waiter's ear.

“No problem,” the waiter said. He put down the plates. He lifted two little dishes of sauce from the tray and put them on the table. “No joke, my brother José is the cook. I hope you like it. I'm getting your wine now.”

The first bite of enchilada was delicious. I asked Franklin if he'd like to taste it. He shook his head no. He waited until the waiter returned with the glass of wine, then took a big sip before lifting his burrito, or trying to. It was too big. He had to pick up a fork. He didn't use the knife to cut it, just the fork. I'd studied him for so long, almost nothing surprised me anymore, however small the gesture. I had a fleeting thought that perhaps part of the reason I'd stopped writing was that I studied him, instead. But now I was also noticing little lapses, which made everything different for both of us. I liked the conversational quirks, not the variations or the repetitions. Two months ago, when I'd visited, bringing fried chicken and a bottle of his favorite white wine, Sancerre (expensive stuff), he'd told me about the receptionist, though that time he'd told me she'd had the surgery in Denmark.

The waiter came back and made his report: “Not what I'd call a wedding ring. It's a dark stone, I think maybe amethyst, but I don't think it's a wedding ring, and she has gold rings on two other fingers, also.”

“We assume, then, she's just wearing rings.”

The waiter nodded. “You want another glass of wine, just let me know.”

“He and I had a man-to-man last night and he promised to keep me supplied,” he said. “I told you the guy with the Messerschmitt gets drug deliveries? Thugs that arrive together, like butch nuns on testosterone. Two, three in the morning. Black guys, dealers. They're all How-ya-doin'-man best friends with the receptionist. That's the night guy. Hispanic. Had a breakdown, lives with his brother. Used to work at Luxor in Vegas.”

“Take a bite of your burrito,” I said, and instantly felt like a mother talking to her child. The expression on his face told me he thought I was worse than that. He said nothing and finished his wine. There was a conspicuous silence.

“Everything good?” the waiter said. He'd just seated a table of three men, one of them choosing to keep on his wet coat. He sat at the table, red-nosed, looking miserable.

Leaning forward to look, I'd dropped my napkin. As I bent to pick it up, the waiter appeared, unfurling a fresh one like a magician who'd come out of nowhere. I half expected a white bird to fly up. But my mind was racing: there'd been a stain on Franklin's sock. Had he stepped in something on the way to the restaurant, or was it, as I feared, blood? I waited until the nice waiter wasn't looking and pushed back the tablecloth enough to peek. The stain was bright red, on the foot with the unfastened Velcro.

“Franklin, your foot,” I said. “Does it hurt? I think your foot is bleeding.”

“My feet don't feel. That's the problem,” he said.

I pushed back my chair and inspected the foot more carefully. Yes, a large area of the white sock was bloody. I was really frightened.

“Eat your lunch,” he said. “And I'll eat mine. Don't worry.”

“It might . . . it could be a problem. Has this ever happened before?”

He didn't answer. He was now using both his fork and knife to cut his burrito.

“Maybe I could run to CVS and find some bandages. That's what I'll do.”

But I didn't move. I'd seen a drugstore walking to the restaurant, but where? I could ask the waiter. I'd ask the waiter and hope he didn't know why I was asking. He might want to be too helpful, he might insist on walking us to a cab, I might not get to eat my lunch, though the thought of taking another bite revolted me now. I'd wanted to say something meaningful, have what people think of as
a lovely lunch
. Were we going to end up at the hospital? Wasn't that what we were going to have to do? There was a fair amount of blood. I got up, sure that I had to do something, but what? Wouldn't it be sensible to call his doctor?

“Everything OK?” the waiter said. I found that I was standing in the center of the room, looking over my shoulder toward the table where Franklin was eating his lunch.

“Fine, thank you. Is there a drugstore nearby?”

“Right across the street,” he said. “Half a block down.”

“Good. OK, I'm going to run to the drugstore,” I said, “but maybe you shouldn't bring him anything else to drink until”—and then I fainted. When my eyes opened, my ex-husband was holding my hand, and the pretty woman was gazing over his shoulder, as the waiter fanned me with a menu. The man in the wet wool coat was saying my name—everyone must have heard it when Franklin yelped in surprise, though he couldn't rise, he saw it with his eyes, my toppling was unwise . . .

“Hey, Maude, hey hey, Maude,” Wet Coat was saying. “OK, Maude, you with us? Maude, Maude? You're OK, open your eyes if you can. Can you hear me, Maude?”

Franklin, somehow, was standing. He shimmered in my peripheral vision. There was blood on the rug. I saw it but couldn't speak. I had a headache and the thrumming made a pain rhyme: He couldn't rise / He saw it with his eyes. And it was so odd, so truly odd that my ex-husband was holding my hand again, after one hundred years away, in the castle of Luxor. It all ran together. I was conscious, but I couldn't move.

“We had sex under the table, which you were kind enough to pretend not to observe, and she's got her period,” Franklin said. I heard him say it distinctly, as if he was spitting out the words. And I saw that the waiter was for the first time flummoxed. He looked at me as if I could give him a clue, but damn it, all I was managing to whisper was “OK,” and I wasn't getting off the floor.

“The color's coming back to your face,” my ex-husband said. “What happened? Do you know?”

“Too much sun and turquoise,” I said, and though at first he looked very puzzled, he got my drift, until he lightened his grip on my wrist, then began lightly knocking his thumb against it, as if sending Morse code:
tap, tap-tap, tap
. He and the pretty woman stayed with me even after I could stand, after the waiter took me into his brother's office and helped them get me into an armchair. For some reason, the cook gave me his business card and asked for mine. My ex-husband got one out of a little envelope in my wallet and handed it to him, obviously thinking it was as strange a request as I did. “She didn't have nothing to drink, one sip of beer,” the waiter said, defending me. “She saw blood, I don't know, sometimes the ladies faint at the sight of blood.”