by Ann Beattie
He was trying to put it out of his mind that Paula had called to say she wouldn’t be coming to Virginia. She thought it was time both of them started to date other people. He’d noticed that visits to see her friend Princess Stephanie of Monaco always had a negative effect on her. Afterward, Paula spoke as if she’d just learned the meaning of life from some quiz in Glamour.
“My job,” he could remember the woman saying, and he had thought: Oh, tell me about it. Tell me about your all-important job in which there is no chance that you will ever be exposed to smallpox, or that anybody you work with might want your ear or your tongue as a souvenir. Tell me about the comfortable chair you sit in and the temperature-controlled room in which you work, and tell me about your personal sorrows. What would those be? Divorced? Difficult kid? Middle-aged romance gone bust?
That was the only one he hadn’t found out about: the last one. He had tried not to acknowledge her at the coffee shop. He’d tried his best to pretend he didn’t know who she was, hoping, at the very least, that that would bother her, and she’d retaliate by ignoring him. But no such luck. It was as if they still stood in the street, and there was still something she wanted. How happy she must have been to run into him months later at Greenberry’s. It gave her another chance to make him apologize—because it was obvious she was one of those women who wanted an apology that would unfold like an accordion. He’d never heard from the insurance people, but since he’d never paid rent or any other bill, he hadn’t expected to.
Nancy Gregerson was Paula’s opposite: too talkative; wry, when she had no reason to feel superior. He had been surprised at how old she must have been, though; he’d come to think that only Paula looked younger, year after year. He’d forgotten that other people might just have good genes, or that not being fat, like most Americans, could make a person seem younger. He’d been unhappy to see her, and that had made him itch to put his cards on the table, in a perverse way. He had almost been able to taste the words Sierra Leone when she was making her silly assumptions about who he was and what he did. In the buzz of the coffee shop, he had heard their plane setting down, the caffeine he’d ingested giving him a rush that was similar to the way he’d felt running from planes in darkness. People and their questions and their assumptions. He’d never understood asking direct questions, because all you could find out from a reply was one individual answer.
But she had, finally, surprised him. Some time after they encountered each other for the second time, she had called—he supposed she must have kept the ripped-off corner of a piece of paper with his quickly scribbled phone number he’d given her after the accident, because he was not listed in the directory—and just as he was winning at computer solitaire, trying not to think about how many more days or weeks or months he’d have to wait in this pointless town before he was finally called away, which would mean, at least, that when he returned he would be sent to a new town, he’d picked up the phone, seen her name on caller ID, and frowned. He pushed the button and took the call exactly because he’d been trained not to act spontaneously, and ignoring his programming kept him on his toes; without that reflex, he would long ago have been dead.
He had thought she might be calling with some pretext for seeing him again, but instead she was calling to see if he could help her find her son.
They had coffee in the living room of her house in Ivy. When he walked in, the smell of mold contracted his sinuses as if a clothes-pin had been pushed down on the bridge of his nose. It took him back to summer camp, and the moldy mattress. The dog who befriended him—his dog, as he thought of it at the time—whose ruff had the same sharp, sour smell.
He had been correct in assuming she would be more nervous in person than on the phone. There he stood, on a cheap imitation Baluch runner, Nancy Gregerson nervously inviting him in and standing too close, like a skittish animal, so that entering became awkward.
He had almost no idea how other people lived, so he hadn’t tried to envision where he’d be going, though the lack of anything hanging on the walls seemed odd. Hardly an art connoisseur, he put up posters, at least, when he moved into a new place. Starry Night; a Warhol soup can in the bathroom. It was unfortunate that people tended to save their more amusing art for the refrigerator or bathroom, because they spent so much time in both places that they naturally became blind to the house’s best jokes. He saw no picture of the dearly beloved missing son. There might be one on the night table, but he was one hundred percent sure he would not be going into her bedroom.
“I don’t believe in fate,” she said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with some vague feeling that our accident had a purpose.”
Our accident, he registered. “No,” he said.
“Sit down,” she said. She gestured toward what looked like a comfortable chair. He assumed it was her seat, but took it anyway. She offered him something to drink. He asked for coffee. The walls of the living room were beige. A less wincingly colorful rug than the one in the entranceway filled the space between the sofa and the love seat. She had not put out a bowl of nuts, which interested him. She was not moving toward the kitchen to get the coffee, either.
“I still have it in my head that you’re in the CIA,” she said.
“Okay, I’m a spook,” he said. “Does that make you more comfortable?”
“No,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t. Doesn’t matter, I mean. One way or the other. You don’t want hot coffee in this weather, do you?”
“Don’t you have air-conditioning?”
“Central air, but the generator needs to be repaired.”
“Lived here long?” he asked. He did not know how to make small talk. He seemed to alternate between complete silence and screaming instructions into someone’s ear. He realized that gave him an odd demeanor when he tried to exchange pleasantries. His voice sounded mocking.
“I moved in in June,” she said. “I didn’t know the generator was going to stop entirely when you said you’d come over. I can open the windows. That would be better, wouldn’t it?”
“Allow me,” he said, rising and opening a window, which required all his strength. She would never have gotten it open. There was no breeze. He opened another window, through which he could see bees hovering around flowers. He looked into the kitchen. He wanted something to hold in his hand, was the truth; he was a little nervous because he still didn’t feel certain there was no subtext to his visit.
“How much should I make?” she called. “Are you a big coffee drinker?”
“Two cups,” he said.
She disappeared into the kitchen. Outside the window, he saw a bird fly into a tree. In the distance, he heard what he thought must be wind chimes. Paula liked wind chimes, but he didn’t like anything that made noise, including doorbells. Better that someone knock on the door than ring a bell. When he moved somewhere new, he always disconnected the doorbell, which was one of many examples Paula returned to, again and again, as evidence that he was “crazy.” He had spoken to her in New York earlier in the evening. He had assumed that Nancy Gregerson might have had second thoughts, but instead the ringing phone had been Paula, whom he hadn’t spoken to in quite a while. She told him she was never coming back. She also told him—silly girl—that she had decided to have liposuction on her jiggly thighs. Her legs were one of her best features; she absolutely did not need anything done to her legs, but he had listened silently so as not to risk angering her. Before they hung up, she had said again that their relationship was over, which gave him hope. If she’d only said it once, he would have been more inclined to believe her.
Nancy Gregerson came back into the room empty-handed, though he could hear the coffee machine gurgling in the kitchen. He said, “If you got your son back, what would that mean?”
She cocked her head. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If I had Nicky back, I’d know he wasn’t dead.”
He nodded. It was a good-enough answer. He had suspected—feared—that she’d answer by saying something sent
imental and unrealistic: that they’d have a rapprochement, that she’d wean him of drugs—something like that.
“Do you have children?” she said.
He shook his head no.
“A wife?” she said. She added, sounding a little bemused, “Or can’t you answer a question like that, either?”
He said, “I have a girlfriend.”
She moved toward the kitchen, but stopped and turned. “And you were in Vietnam, weren’t you?”
“As a matter of fact,” he said. “I suppose you were protesting. Right?”
“March on Washington,” she said. “You’ve got to admit: it did accomplish something.”
He had no intention of discussing politics with her. He did not have time for politics. Also, he didn’t want her to think that he was going to tell her things about himself. Paula, in fact, did not even know when his birthday was. It secretly pleased him, every year, when they did something inconsequential on his birthday. This year, however, he had not seen her on his birthday at all. Or even known where she was.
“You’re right that I might be able to help you,” he said. “Why don’t we leave it at that?”
“That’s fine with me,” she said. “But I want to ask you: How, exactly, might you help?”
“You called me,” he said.
“I know, but…” She walked away, into the kitchen. He thought about going to help her, but he didn’t want her to like him. It was easier when people didn’t have much feeling for one another. He went to the chair and sat down. Now there was a slight breeze, and he waited.
“The thing is, I don’t have much money,” she said, handing him a mug of coffee.
“I don’t imagine you’d have called me if you didn’t have the money for a plane ticket,” he said.
She sat in a chair covered in unpleasant yellow fabric. “But why would you help me?” she said.
“Let’s forget the help word and think of this as a project,” he said. “Men like to think of things as projects.”
She nodded. They would drink their coffee and he would ask her some questions. He would ask her for paper and a pen and write down what he needed to remember. He thought, too late, of the “theme book” it had amused him to buy.
“How long has he been in London?” he asked.
“How long, or when did he disappear?”
“How long,” he said.
She thought. She said, “A year and seven months.”
He said, “Could you write down his full name and the last address and phone number you have, and his girlfriend’s name and number?”
“I’m not sure there is a girlfriend.”
“I thought you said on the phone that someone wrote you.”
“That was his roommate’s girlfriend. I have some of her letters. I used to send them to the man my ex-husband hired, but there was no point in that. I just read one of them. She’s…if I talked like my son, I’d say, ‘She’s fucked up.’ ” She got up and went to a table, opened a drawer, and took out a package of letters held together with a rubber band. When she handed them to him, he saw that the one on top had not been opened. She handed him another letter, opened, that wasn’t part of the package. “I’m worried the private investigator will be mad we’re meddling,” she said.
“I don’t think we should waste time consulting Miss Manners.”
“No. I suppose not.”
“I’ll buy my ticket and take reimbursement in cash.”
“What if you don’t find him?”
“Did you think there’d be a refund?”
“I’ve never been involved in anything like this before,” she said. “Was that a stupid question?”
“If I don’t find him,” he said, “you’ll have a videotape of the people who were closest to him when he disappeared. With that, you can pretty much write your own story.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. She said, “That doesn’t sound like something I’d like to see.”
He pulled the notecard out of the opened envelope and read it. “You weren’t stupid enough to send money, were you?” he said when he’d finished.
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Yes.”
“Write down the names of any close friends he has, and give me any other information, like where he had a bank account, where he was working. Do you know?”
She frowned. “I guess so,” she said. “In some ways, it seems so long ago. His friends…he had friends I didn’t know. Most of them, I didn’t know. There was a woman who moved to Lexington—”
“Write it down, please,” he said.
She got a notepad and bent forward earnestly, writing like a student taking a test. He drank the rest of his coffee. When she finished, she said, “What will I pay you besides the plane ticket?”
“The truth is,” he said, shifting in the chair, “I’m having trouble coming up with a figure because I don’t really go looking for people’s sons.”
“You do…medical things,” she said. “Are you some sort of doctor?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, not answering her question. “This comes along at a good time, when I need a change. Do you like living in Charlottesville? I can’t say that I see the charm.”
“I lived here with my ex-husband, and we had Nicky, and then I went to the university and got a degree in nursing and got my job. I’ve never moved.”
“I move a lot,” he said. For him, the comment was almost astonishingly confessional.
She nodded. She seemed to understand that he didn’t like questions. He could see the difficulty, of course: she was afraid he’d ask for more money than she had. Yet he didn’t want to risk her liking him by saying that he wouldn’t charge anything. He thought it would be fun to go to London. See a play, eat some Indian food. He had a hunch that it wasn’t going to be difficult to find her son. He already knew the man to call to get things started. He’d have to call the agency to make sure he didn’t have to be sitting at home for the next few days, however. They had told him, almost as if his question must be facetious, that they could easily spare him for what they called “a vacation” from Monday to Friday. He made little effort to imagine how they thought, or what they thought. He sometimes wondered if he’d met anyone he talked to on the phone and hadn’t known it. The same person he talked to—if it was even the same person—might be the person who had installed his telephone, he supposed. It was pretty clear that when they spoke, it was filtered through a voice changer. In a way, they had become a bizarre form of his missing parents. He had never realized that until that minute, and it was so obvious: their disembodied voices were like the voices he heard, sometimes, in his head, except that he had to invent his parents’ voices, while the agency he worked for invented false voices with which to speak. Nancy Gregerson had said nothing all the time he’d sat there, thinking. He said, “Was it a mistake to tell you this isn’t what I do, looking for people’s kids and bringing them back to suburbia? Because it doesn’t inspire confidence?”
“No, I do feel confident,” she said tentatively. “I do think you’ll try your best.”
“It means absolutely nothing to try,” he said, and when she leaned forward in her seat, he realized, with a little pang in his chest that surprised him, that of course she’d expected there would be some homily to complete the sentence.
On the flight across the pond he found himself remembering Operation Eagle Pull, which was the name of a mission you didn’t talk about except by another code name, even though the name of the mission had once been printed accidentally in The New York Times. But that particular Vietnam mission wasn’t to be referred to that way, any more than you were allowed to say “Rumpelstiltzkin.” Any urge to say it, and an automatic bleep went off in your brain and the term vanished as quickly as if you’d said the F word on television. Maybe Madonna had gone on Letterman and been talking about Operation Eagle Pull; maybe she hadn’t been particularly profane that night, at all.
Bleep rhymed with sheep. Which you were supposed to count to go to sleep. He closed his eyes and saw in the red darkness of his eyelids the lights sweeping the ground, felt his eyes tear up the way they did when rope ladders were dropped that might not bear enough weight. Eyes closed, he saw O’Malley’s expression, too: eyes bright with determination.
From a tray held aloft, the steward offered poisonously strong liqueurs the color of velvet: fern green; doll’s eye blue. He could feel their sting, register their warmth trickling into his stomach. The steward had assumed he was making a decision, he had looked so intently at the unnatural colors in the bottles. In the seat next to him, a gray-haired lady in a perfectly fitted suit snored, after having ingested a pill. He took the pill case out of his shirt pocket and wondered if taking an aspirin might ward off the headache he sensed coming on. He swallowed two. In the pill case were also three Viagra. Cute Paula, leaving them here and there like pocket change. Liposuction, indeed. He wondered if she would weaken, or if their relationship might really be over. In any case, she couldn’t reach him now. When he’d told them he was going, he’d lied only in saying that he was being paid big bucks to bring back a friend’s wayward son. Two lies, really: she wasn’t his friend, and he hadn’t discussed money with her. All they’d said was, “Call home, E.T.” Maybe if the agency went out of business, the people he spoke to could become stand-up comics. They did not approve of the amount of time he and Paula spent together. She was on a nut list for writing her congressman so often about the pesticides used on fruit, and her car—they didn’t like it one bit that it was a BMW—had been booted several times because of unpaid parking tickets. They could be nasty in Atlanta. As it had been explained to him, Paula wasn’t their sort—and, by implication, shouldn’t be his—because she wasn’t a respectful person. The congressman had written back, but Paula had kept up her campaign. She was not respectful, he should realize, though they did admit that certain deductions taken on her 1999 taxes did seem to be something her overzealous accountant was responsible for. Their relationship was not the sort of thing that got anyone disinvolved. The word for fired was disinvolved. No: you’d have to do something a lot more unexpected than keep company with a Libertarian ex-hippie on Zoloft, with a love of Botox and the countryside outside San Francisco, to be told to turn in your trench coat.
