“What?”
“Nothing. Is there something I can do for you, Rector?”
“I came over to see if Fanny would like to go see Sinatra at the Paramount with Gladys.”
“Fanny’s gone.”
“Oh? You expect her back soon?”
“She won’t be back at all.”
“Oh, come off, Charlie. Don’t talk nonsense.”
“It’s true. Fanny’s gone for good.”
Well, anyhow, it was pretty apparent now why old Charlie was out in left field. He and Fanny had had another fight, probably over Fanny’s liberality relative to other men, and Fanny had left Charlie as a result, but in Rector’s opinion it was probably only temporary. Hell, Gladys had left Rector at least half a dozen times, and it had always turned out to be temporary. It was foolish for a fellow to become excessively disturbed by such events. It was rather embarrassing to Rector, though, standing there with nothing sensible to say to Charlie, and he decided that the best procedure would be to say nothing at all, sensible or otherwise, except whatever was necessary in making his departure.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll go back and tell Gladys that she’ll have to go see Sinatra alone.”
He went back to his house and into the bedroom, where Gladys was giving her hair a few strokes with a brush after having pulled her dress over her head.
“Now I know what’s eating old Charlie,” he said.
“What’s eating him?” Gladys said.
“He had a fight with Fanny, and Fanny’s left him.”
“What did they fight about?”
“Charlie didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
“She’ll be back. Just wait and see.”
“That’s what I think myself, but I doubt if she’ll be back in time to go to the movies with you, and so you’d better go on by yourself.”
“I’m going,” she said. “See that you do the dishes.”
She went out and drove away in the car, and Rector did the dishes in the kitchen, leaving them to dry in a rack by the sink. By that time, he only had about half an hour of daylight left, and he’d have to get on that front yard right away, he thought, if he wanted to get it done. He pushed the mower from the back yard to the front and began mowing, and all the time he was doing it, walking up and down the yard from street to house behind the mower, he kept thinking about what Charlie had said about listening to sounds and smelling smells. It was a curious thing for a fellow to say, let alone to do, but Charlie was a curious fellow, when you came to consider him, and he was somewhat inclined toward doing and saying things that might seem curious to other people. As a matter of fact, however, there actually were a hell of a lot of sounds to listen to that a fellow didn’t ordinarily hear, and a lot of smells that he didn’t ordinarily smell. At the moment, Rector couldn’t hear anything but the roar of the little engine on the mower, or smell anything but the exhaust of the same, but he remembered having had, sometimes in the past, such aural and nasal awareness. But not, he realized with a mild sensation of diminishment, since he was a boy.
Darkness gathered thickly at the close of the long dusk, and Rector, having finished the front yard, pushed the mower around to the garage and went on into the kitchen and plugged a can of cold beer. Carrying the can, he went out through the house the front way and sat down on the front steps and drank the beer slowly and watched lightning bugs. He wondered if Charlie was still on the front steps next door, listening and smelling, and after a while he walked out a few steps into the yard and peered over that way through the darkness, and Charlie was.
“Hey, Charlie,” Rector called.
No answer. No shifting of the shadow on the Treadwell steps.
“Hey, there, Charlie,” Rector called again.
This time, after a moment, the shadow shifted.
“Is that you, Rector?” Charlie said.
“Yes, it is,” Rector said. “You like to have a cold beer?”
“No, thanks,” Charlie said.
Rector felt sorry for old Charlie. It was easy enough to feel sad and lonely in a summer dusk with no good reason whatever, and it would surely be easier and worse if you’d had your wife go off and leave you besides. Especially a dish like Fanny, who wouldn’t be easy to replace, especially by a nondescript little guy like Charlie. So feeling sorry for Charlie and carrying what was left of his beer in the can, Rector walked across and sat down on the Treadwell steps to be neighborly.
“You hearing and smelling a lot of different things, Charlie?” Rector asked.
“Quite a few,” Charlie said, “but not as many as I used to smell and hear when I was a kid.”
“It’s a fact that you lose the knack,” Rector said. “Since talking to you earlier, I’ve been smelling and listening myself, but I’m not so good it any more, either.”
They were silent for a few minutes, during which time Rector drank the last of his beer and set the empty can beside his feet.
“What got you to smelling and listening all of a sudden?” he said.
“Well,” Charlie said, “Fanny and I had this fight over someone, and I killed her, and afterward I got to thinking about all the smells and sounds I used to know and hadn’t really known for a long time since, and I thought I’d just sit out here and try to know them again while there was still a little time left.”
“What did you say about Fanny?”
“I said we had this fight, and I killed her. I lost my head and began choking her and didn’t quit soon enough. I didn’t really intend to kill her, but I did, and she’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s up there in our bedroom where we had the fight”
“Well. Well, God Almighty.”
It occurred to Rector later that
