The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

her bangs. She was like a sweaty, smiling stoker in the hot engine room of an apartment in uproar. When we embraced, my hands slipped down her back and tumbled into her dress at the waist, and she squealed.

'It's crazy here,' I said. 'You smell terrific.'

'I smell like an athlete. I know, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that Annette was going to be entertaining this evening. Let me at least cut the stereo.'

She went out and I opened every simmering pot and poked at the potatoes in the oven, tearing their crisp jackets with the tines of the fork. The meal was four or five months too early, perhaps-some kind of pot roast, a thick sheaf of asparagus, and baked potatoes the size of shoes- but I knew better than to suggest that perhaps a chef's salad or stir-fried vegetables would have been more appropriate. Anyway, it was such a beguiling menu for the end of July, and even though I'd eaten lox and bagels not three hours before, I had this appetite. When Phlox cut the stereo, the white noise that filled the apartment dropped abruptly to the giggling blue-green of the waitresses' conversation.

I bounced around the kitchen, chattering, while she pulled everything together. I steered clear of the subject of Arthur, by embellishing, with a great deal of energy, the story of all the smoke at Boardwalk, and Phlox, deep in food thought, pretty well ignored me. My tale of fire carried us through until just after we sat down to eat in the breeze that came through the windows along the dinner table.

'Oh, yeah, I talked to my father today,' I said without a thought. 'He's coming into town tomorrow. For a whole week. '

'Oh, Art, how exciting! I want to meet him!'

Why, that summer, was I so often the victim of astonishment?

'Sure, maybe. Sure,' I said, unable to chew.

'Well, I can, of course, can't I?'

'Well, it's business, you know; he'll be busy almost all the time. I just don't know. It's hard to say.' I began to recover myself.

'Well, he doesn't work at night, does he? We can have dinner.' She laid down her fork and stared at me.

'We'll have to see.'

'I think you're ashamed of me, Art Bechstein.'

'Oh, Phlox, come on, I'm not ashamed of you.'

'Then why don't you want your father to meet me?'

'It doesn't have anything to do with you. It's just that-'

'Why are you ashamed of me? What don't you like about me?'

'There's nothing. I love you, you're splendid.'

'Then why can't I meet your father?'

Because nobody gets to meet my father!

'I don't want to fight about this.'

'This isn't a fight, Art; this is you being impossibly weird again.' One tear pooled and then spilled.

'Phlox.' I reached across the table and ran my finger down the shining path. 'Don't cry. Please.'

'I've stopped. Okay.' She picked up her fork, sniffed once. 'Forget it.'

'Can you just understand that it has nothing-'

'It's all right. Forget it. '

We worked our jaws in silence.

Tuesday night, the downtown bus was full of kids headed to the Warner for the opening of a new science fiction movie, a mutational romance that later went on to become a sensation. (I saw it twice: once with Phlox and once not with Phlox.) The bus's air-conditioning had failed, and I was uncomfortable in my sport coat and tie; grit and exhaust blew in through the rattling open window.

'The bloom on my cheek has withered and faded,' said Phlox.

I looked at her face, and saw, through her makeup, traces of unmistakable bloom. I said so, and she smiled, pensively.

'Art, is your father one of those silly fathers?'

'Pardon me?'

'Does he drink a lot, talk about money, get angry, tell dirty jokes, and laugh loud?'

She has just described my Uncle Lenny and his close friends Eddie 'Bubba' Martino and Jules 'Gloves' Goldman (a distant relative). 'No, my father is a serious guy,' I said. 'He drinks only at weddings. He isn't vulgar. He hardly ever laughs. He jokes a lot, though. He's funnier than I am.'

'Then how can he be a serious guy?'

'All Jewish comedians are serious guys.'

'What about the Marx Brothers?'

'The Marx Brothers were very serious guys.'

'You're not a serious guy.'

'Well, I'm not funny,' I said. I swallowed. 'I'm nervous.'

She laid her fingers against my sleeve. We were to meet at my father's favorite Italian restaurant. I'd listened for a hint of wariness in his voice when I asked if I might bring Phlox along, but he said 'Of course,' very gamely. Phlox would be the first acquaintance of mine since Claire actually to meet my father-and Claire had met him just twice, the first time bravely and miserably, and the second time miserably. I could hardly recall what eating in a restaurant with my father and a third person was like, but I had vague, sweet memories, from years before, of my father being hugely entertaining at birthday parties in pizza parlors and on miniature golf courses. I might have been even more nervous than I was (I certainly had the capacity), but we ate in this restaurant together so often, my father and I, that I knew it would be a comfort at least to be there, in the old red darkness. An unfamiliar restaurant can be a very disorienting thing.

Phlox and I arrived only two minutes late, and came with a sigh into the cool and the garlic. I spotted my father at the table-halfway back, toward the toilets and the cigarette machine-that we had come, over the years, to think of as our table. The first thing I noticed was that his heavy face was even more pink than usual, almost red, and I remembered his saying that he'd lately begun to reclaim the garden gone wild in my grandmother's backyard. He had on a beautiful beige summer suit, with a salmon tie. I knew that Phlox would find him good- looking. 'Tsk,' I said; he looked so handsome and large.

My father stood for her and took her hand, the gleam in his eye growing more distinct as he pronounced her floral name, which amused him, I could see, as much as it once had me; he admired her dress (the blue-and- white flowered one she'd worn on our first night together) and smiled a delighted, paternal smile; he said something that made her laugh, right off. All this civility meant nothing, of course. He was an extremely civil man. I wouldn't know what he thought of her until tomorrow. We lifted our menus and complained over their gilt tops about the hot weather. My eyes flitted blindly across the cirrate names of pastas; I have never been able to read a menu and talk at the same time. I managed to maneuver my father and Phlox into a conversation about the library, and took advantage of these thirty seconds to select ravioli filled with sausage. My father ordered the same.

He turned to Phlox and made a grave face. 'Is Art polite with you?'

'Hmm. Oh, yes, unfailingly.'

My father lifted his eyebrows, smiled, and turned bright red. 'Ah,' he said.

We ordered, and the waiter expertly spilled a little red wine into each of our glasses, and my father talked, and the food came, and my father talked some more. Over the minestrone and salads, he put me through one long moment of heartbreak, by telling Phlox about a memorable Sunday at Forbes Field with my mother and my infant self-a very old, very pretty story that raised goose bumps along my arms. Phlox didn't take her eyes off him. She asked, short, tactful, and very basic questions about my mother. What was her hair color? Did I look like her? What were her virtues and rewards? Didn't she just love her boy? After each question my father would look at me, puzzled, and I would watch my food. You idiot, I thought, you should have known this would happen.

'She was a very beautiful woman, ' said my father. 'She looked like Jennifer Jones. I don't suppose you know who she is?'

'Jennifer Jones!' said Phlox. 'Of course I know who she is! Portrait of Jenny is my favorite movie in the whole world!' She tossed her head, pretending to have been insulted.

'Indeed? My apologies,' said my father, and he pursed his lips and lifted one eyebrow, pretending to have