The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  Christa jabbed a button on the dash, silencing Prince's oscine falsetto. "Get in, get in," she said. "I made a reservation, and I don't want to be late."

  It was colder inside the car than on the street. My leather jacket crackled as though it might shatter. As the car fishtailed away from the curb, I looked out my window just in time for a last glimpse of my house, lights still burning within, Beethoven stilled, books and papers spread across the floors. What in the hell was I doing out in the cold and snow, in search of pad thai? The Cabriolet slid around a corner, and a neighbor's unkempt arborvitae obscured my view of the house.

  Behind me Tory was still arranging his long limbs. He held the back of my seat for leverage, and jerked it every time he moved.

  Christa's earrings were Calderesque shapes in primary colors, dangling on spidery black curves of metal. I fingered a red blob hanging from her right ear. "Are these new?"

  "Had them forever. Never wear them." Without stopping, signaling, or looking for oncoming traffic, she turned right onto University Avenue. Tory balanced himself by pushing against my seat.

  Christa shoved her pink wool cap up and back, so that it sat on the crown of her head. With lavender-painted nails she pricked up the hair above her forehead.

  "You actually voted?"

  She folded down the lapel of her jacket to reveal a sticker above her left breast: "I Voted!"

  Signaling for the first time that I could remember, Christa turned left onto Snelling. She barreled through the next red light, tailgating a salt truck. She swung the car onto the I-94 on-ramp. The highway was wet but, happily, clear of snow. Christa stomped on the accelerator and crossed to the far left lane. My right foot pumped an imaginary brake pedal.

  The Mississippi River overpass was slick. To compensate, Christa lifted her foot off the accelerator for half a second.

  "We both voted," Tory said.

  "I fear we canceled each other out, however," Christa said, looking at me.

  I glanced at Tory. He was staring at the Minneapolis skyline, his face awash in pink mercury light.

  "If only I'd known," I said, "I could have lent him that Stinson book."

  Tory leaned forward, between the seats. He said, "Christa was telling me about that. I don't care about all that shit. I just know Clinton's itching to raise taxes. For me it's all about the money. The right-wingers can talk all they want about family values. The social stuff is what it is. People who want to fuck are going to fuck."

  "If Bush wins I'll send you a post card from the concentration camp," I said.

  Tory snorted. "Never happen, man. Actually, I'd imagine for guys like you it'd be more fun when things are tightened up."

  "Tightened up?" If he was prescribing Kegel exercises, it was one hell of a non sequitur.

  "Sex is more fun on the sly, when it's a little sleazy."

  Christa giggled. She'd never giggled before, that I could remember, but this was manifestly a giggle. She looked at Tory, then at me. He sank into the back seat. To me, Christa said in a stage whisper, "I'll tell you later."

  I wanted a change of subject, very badly. "Do you ever get a word stuck in your head?" I said. "Just some random word?"

  "What's the word?" Tory asked.

  "Diflucan," I said. "On and on and on. Diflucan, Diflucan, Diflucan."

  Christa said, "Edible underwear."

  Tory's turn to giggle, now.

  "You have edible underwear stuck in your head?" I said.

  "That's what I was laughing about," she told me. "We were buying some yesterday and ended up-you know-putting them on before we even got out of the store."

  "Both of you? Are the sizes pretty true, then, in the edible panties game? What about spoilage? Do you have to keep them refrigerated, and if so is it part of the thrill to put them on cold?"

  An MTC bus sped by us on the right, and Christa edged our speed upward, keeping resolutely in its blind spot. "Weigh 'nough," she said.

  Clouds obscured the top of the IDS building. Soon, the bus obscured the rest of it, and the whole of the skyline besides. A second later it peeled away from us and exited onto Eleventh.

  "'Weigh 'nough'?" Tory said. He enunciated the two syllables charily, as a spelling bee contestant might sound out some phonetic trap of a word. "What does that mean?"

  "What about mold, or yeast? Couldn't you get a nasty infection of some kind?"

  "Well," Tory said, "that's why there's Diflucan."

  I had to award him points for timing and aptness of thought. Over my shoulder, I smiled at him. He nodded and winked. I subtracted points for winking.

  "Weigh 'nough," Christa said to me. For Tory's benefit she added, "Rowers' talk for 'stop.'"

  I obeyed her command, at least until she could navigate the snarled Hennepin Avenue exit. Lanes crossed and merged willy-nilly, and Christa-already distracted by her own cuticles-didn't need further interference from me. She stopped for the light at Lowry Hill.

  Tory leaned forward between the seats. "Why not just say 'stop'?"

  "Centuries of tradition? Who knows?" I said. "'Let it run' means the same thing-'stop'-though it always sounded to me like something that would mean the opposite."

  Music rumbled from the car next to us. I opened my window a quarter of an inch to hear it. "Super Trouper." Two middle-aged men with earrings and graying goatees sang along. They bobbed their heads and did Motown hand motions. I felt the car shake, and turned to see Tory following along with the hand jive. A look passed between Tory and the two men, and they all waved at each other as the light changed and we sped away from them.

  Christa stopped, her fingers pattering on the steering wheel, while she waited for our lane to merge around a parked car.

  "Or sometimes it's a jingle."

  "What?" she asked, squinting at me.

  "Stuck in my head. Sometimes I get a commercial jingle stuck in my head."

  Tory chanted, "Brush your breath, brush your breath, brush your breath???"

  "What?" Christa said again. She cleared the parked car and lurched into the outside lane. The Cabriolet slid sideways. The rear tire on my side scraped the curb.

  "Have you driven a Ford," I sang, "lately?"

  * * *

  Larn Thong was the kind of restaurant where the servers wear starched white jackets, and the walls are bathed in the golden light of wall sconces, and the tabletops are spotless beveled glass. And yet the incongruities, the tiny failings of the place, were what I noticed-the kitschy paper lanterns, the dust on the ivory carvings, the bent forks and insubstantial knives, the flimsy water glasses, each bearing a palimpsest of scratches and nicks where it had jostled its peers during thousands of trips through the dishwasher.

  Reservations, as it happened, had been unnecessary. The restaurant was nearly empty. A waiter, a tall, cadaverous man, an Asian Ichabod Crane, showed us to a table near the window. He passed around menus in inch-thick red vinyl binders. In college I'd read academic journals less arcane and elaborate than Larn Thong's menus.

  Somehow I ended up sitting across from Tory. He was looking at me, a little too knowingly, I thought, as if he knew-or thought he knew-everything about my political views, my sex life, my taste in music. As if he knew, even, that I hated that damned letterman jacket. I couldn't meet his eyes. I stared off at a portrait in oils of the king of Thailand; it hung in a carved gilt frame, the centerpiece of a tiny shrine near the kitchen.

  When the waiter came with water, I ordered a Singha. Christa raised an eyebrow.

  "I thought you weren't drinking any more after-."

  After Tom, she meant. She shot Tory a sideways look. A rather fraught look, to use McNamara's word. It seemed as if she intended to show me that Tory didn't know what she meant, while also trying to convey to Tory that he did know what she meant, and while also warning him not to let on how much he knew.

  "One beer won't kill me."

  Christa looked at me now, her eyes filled with warning and worry.

  I cleared m
y throat. "Pardon my unfortunate choice of words." I opened my menu. "So. Tory. What's good here?"

  For a time we barely spoke, except to place our orders. Christa said something to Tory about Martin driving her crazy. Tory claimed that, if we compared bosses, his would prove infinitely more difficult than Martin. We fell silent, fiddling with our silverware. I gulped my beer.

  At last the food came. While a server assistant set a tray on a folding rack, the waiter stood by, his back held very straight, his chin tipped toward the ceiling, a white cloth draped over his arm. The waiter served the food, announcing each entree as if it were a guest at an embassy ball. Pad thai. Red curry duck. Pad see ew. Masaman curry with beef. He withdrew with a little bow, and the server assistant spirited away the tray and the rack. We passed around plates of noodles and bowls of rice.

  "I went to the library today," I said. "When you called, I was reading a book about Beethoven's string quartets. I heard his last quartet on the radio yesterday, and-."

  "Der schwer gefasste Entschluss," Tory said.

  I looked at him. "Opus one-thirty-five. F major. But I was actually reading about the Great Fugue."

  "Ja," Tory said. "Der grosse Fuge."

  "What the hell are you two talking about?" Christa said.

  Tory said, "If you like the F major, you should definitely check out the C-sharp minor. It's possibly Beethoven's greatest work-even if you count the symphonies. And even though it's in C-sharp minor, it's got the C minor mood in spades. The sixteenth is lightweight by comparison. Which recording, by the way?"

  "Guarneri Quartet," I said.

  He rubbed his chin. "'Sixty-nine or 'seventy or something, wasn't it?"

  "Guano Quartet? Minor sharp mood?" Christa said. "What the-?"

  Tory looked at me. I looked down at the pile of noodles and scallions on my plate.

  "Beethoven held the key of C minor in a special kind of esteem," he said. "It was a very spiritual, very meaningful, key for him. The Fifth Symphony is in C minor. The Fifth is my favorite. What about you, Jonah?"

  For some reason, I'd always thought the Fifth Symphony was in C-sharp minor. I didn't dare say so. "I like the Seventh, or maybe the Ninth." He wrinkled his nose. "Were you a music major?" I asked him. I couldn't help glancing at his damned letterman jacket, draped over the back of his chair. The letter itself-an R-Richfield? Robbinsdale?-was blocky, squared off, an athletic letter, surely. My own letter, earned at the expense of four years of Mrs. Martin's tantrums in chorus, was a cursive C.

  "Just an enthusiast." He shrugged, cutting his pad see ew into bite-sized pieces. "The Fifth is so familiar-'A Fifth of Beethoven,' 'Hooked on Classics,' all that. I used to think it was a little embarrassing that I loved it the best. But it's a damned good piece of music." As he ate, he hummed a fragment of the scherzo theme.

  When the waiter passed by again, I ordered another beer.

  * * *

  The waiter brought the check on a little silver tray. Tory scooped it toward him. "I've got this," he said.

  Christa stretched and purred like a contented kitten, not even making a show of resisting his offer. I raised my hand to protest, but Tory waved me off with one hand while reaching for his wallet with the other.

  I finished my beer, my fourth, and glanced at my watch. It was a little after nine-thirty. I wanted badly to get away from Tory, and yet because of the beer I felt loose and reckless, and I didn't want to go home to Beethoven and the hard-won decision, or the C minor mood, or the hopped-up dotted-rhythm turmoil of the Great Fugue.

  "Anyone feel like a cocktail?" I said. Perhaps, over cocktails, I could make use of some of my cocktail party trivia.

  Christa, still stretching, dropped her arms and stared at me. "What is going on with you?" She said it quietly, in the way of a mother chiding a misbehaving child in a crowded place.

  I said, "I'm fine. I just feel like going out and having a little fun."

  Tory tidied a stack of twenty-dollar bills and dropped it onto the silver tray. "I think a little drinkie is a fantastic idea," he said. He leaned over and kissed Christa on the cheek. "I'll drive, if you'd also like a little drinkie-pooh."

  Drinkie-pooh?

  She smiled and kissed him on the lips. "To tell the truth, I could simply murder something fruity. Maybe something with a tiny paper umbrella in it?"

  Tory drove us to a seedy sports bar-a place called Winners-at Lake and Bryant. The building looked as if it had long been neglected. The exterior paint had peeled and blistered. The tin soffit above the front door and the brushed-steel frames around the windows were all crooked and crinkled.

  As he held the door open for me, Tory told me that he lived nearby, that this was "his" bar. That seemed about right, given the felt pennants and-yes, of course-the letterman jackets that decorated the walls. The ceilings loomed in smoky darkness above us, yards or perhaps miles away. The floors were tiled in fussy little white octagons, so old-fashioned they were retro-or would have seemed so, if not for the decades of grime in all those tiny grout lines. The booths, tables, and bar were heavy old wood, much darkened by the innumerable drunken hands that had grasped them over the years.

  There were three television sets above the bar. Hockey, football, and the election. Behind Dan Rather, a map of the United States showed New England, the Midwest, and most of the South in red. The mid-Atlantic states and a column of plains states were blue. The Western states were white.

  Rather's lips moved, but the set was muted. A jukebox played some sort of 'seventies country rock. Not the Eagles. The Band? Lynyrd Skynyrd? I hardly knew.

  While Christa went to find a table, Tory and I stood at the bar. "Which is Clinton and which is Bush?" I asked him.

  "Red is Clinton, since he's a big Commie." He laughed. "What'll you have? They have some decent beers, but the wine list isn't so hot. Mostly stuff from Napa." He grimaced.

  "Well," I said, "the wine of my country is beer."

  "Beer is the wine of my country, I think you mean. I'm going to recommend against a mixed drink, for sure."

  I shrugged. "Better stick with beer."

  "Guinness okay? They have it on draft here, nice and cold."

  Wasn't it supposed to be served warm? I nodded. "Sure. Guinness."

  Tory ordered a Guinness for each of us. For Christa he ordered a frothy concoction in a brown plastic glass shaped like a coconut. A wedge of pineapple and a pink paper umbrella adorned the edge of the glass.

  Christa had found a booth in the back, in the pool room. A young man in a tank top and jeans leaned over the table, lining up a shot. Older men in camouflage trousers and hunting pacs sat on stools along the wall, watching-with significant envy, it seemed. Off to one side, two old phone booths, little closets with folding doors of wood and frosted glass, flanked a pair of doors marked "Linebackers" and "Cheerleaders."

  Christa accepted her drink with a little squeal of delight. She tucked the umbrella behind her ear and appreciatively sucked the pineapple.

  "It looks like Clinton is winning," Tory said. He slid into the booth beside Christa. She scooted closer, and he put his arm around her. "Many, many red states. The whole country is going Commie." He laughed again at his own sour joke.

  I hunched against the wall and stretched my legs across the bench. One of the hunters, standing near the left-hand phone booth, stared at me. He had dark hair-it was difficult to tell in this light whether it was black or dark brown-and Spike's little tuft of whiskers below his lower lip. For a moment I thought he was Spike, but this fellow was thickset, a little jowly-not Spike.

  It was the beer, perhaps. Or maybe the hunter's unexpected passing resemblance. Possibly I just craved an excuse to be away from Tory, even for a few moments. In any case, I was suddenly eager to hear Spike's voice. The receipt with his phone number was still in my wallet. Inside each phone booth, a light glowed, dim and yellow; surely that meant they were in working order.

  I excused myself and crossed to the phone booth on the right-hand si
de. My legs felt a little unsteady. I bumped an empty stool, and it clattered against a wall. The hunter watched me. I pretended not to notice.

  In my wallet I found Spike's number and my calling card. After a couple of rings I heard a series of short beeps, followed by a longer one. What did I want to say, exactly? I hung up, rehearsed, dialed again.

  "This is Jonah-Jonah Murray." I swallowed hard. "Beta. I was just-just thinking of you." Another long beep cut me off.

  As I returned to my seat across from Christa and Tory, I said, "Strange. His answering machine had no outgoing message."

  "Whose answering machine?" Christa said.

  "Spike's. Spike-that guy I met the other day?"

  "No outgoing message?" Tory said.

  I sipped my Guinness. It was intense, bitter, not altogether pleasant. "Just a few short beeps, then a long one. And then it cut me off after about five seconds."

  Christa leaned over the table to smack my shoulder. "It's a pager, you dope." She took a bite of her pineapple. "I told you he was a male prostitute."

  "What time is it?" I said.

  "You're wearing a watch," Christa said. She tapped the crystal of my chrome Seiko. "What the fuck?"

  "I'm afraid you're a lightweight, Jonah," Tory said.

  I rubbed the face of my watch against my shirt, wiping away Christa's fingerprint. It was ten-twenty-five-seven-twenty-five in San Francisco. My mother would be at home, getting ready to go out for dinner before her show. No, it was Election Night. She'd already be on the air. The station aired a special team coverage show on Election Night.

  "I'll be right back," I said. I took a gulp of Guinness. A burly, robust kind of beer. Spike in beer form. It was growing on me.

  I returned to the phone booth. The hunter who'd been watching me had disappeared. I knew the toll-free number by heart. I dialed. Petra, Barbara's producer, answered.

  "It's Jonah," I said. "Is my mother-?"

  "Jonah!" she cried. "So good to hear your voice. When are you coming to see us?" After decades of living and working with native English speakers, she had smoothed her German accent almost to nothing, except for an over-compensating elongation of W's and a tendency to swallow R's.