The New Yorker Stories

“I’m her husband and you think I wasn’t there? I saw her. They wheeled her out and she said that she didn’t care if she never had a kid—that she couldn’t stand to feel like ice. That was the, you know . . . anesthetic. I held her feet in my hands for an hour. She was asleep and the nurse told me to go home. In the morning, when Dr. High and Mighty shows up, I guess we’ll know something. How come you’re so full of advice?”

“I didn’t give any advice. I said to call her,” Drew says.

Drew holds the bottle against his forehead for a second, then puts it back on the table. “I’m hungry,” he says. “I ought to do everything before I see Charlotte, shouldn’t I? Eat so there’ll be time to talk. Drink and get sober. Do it all beforehand.”

“How come you decided to call Charlotte today?” Chester says.

“My nephew—”

“I mean why call Charlotte? Why call her?”

This time, Drew fiddles with the radio, and a station comes in, faintly. They both listen, surprised. It’s still only October, and the man is talking about the number of shopping days left until Christmas. Drew moves the dial and loses the station. He can’t get it back. He shoves the radio across the table. A penguin tips over. It rests there, with its pointed face on the radio.

“I’ll have another drink and stand her up,” Drew says.

“Oh, I can do it for you,” Chester says, and sets the penguin upright.

“Aren’t you a million laughs,” Drew says. “Charlotte—not the penguin. Charlotte, Charlotte—Charlotte who isn’t going to leave her husband. Does that get her name into the conversation enough?”

“I don’t want to go with you,” Chester says. “I don’t see the point of it.” He rubs his hands across his forehead again. He cups one hand over his eyes and doesn’t say anything else.

Drew puts his hand over his glass. The gesture of a person refusing a refill, but no one’s offering. He looks at his hands.

Chester reaches in his shirt pocket. If the missing laundry receipt isn’t there or in his wallet, where is it? It has to be somewhere, in some pocket. He puts his index finger in the neck of the bottle. He wiggles it. There is a little pile of salt where the penguin tipped over. Chester pushes the salt into a line, pretends to be holding a straw in his fingers, touches the imaginary straw to the inch of salt, closes off one nostril, inhales with the other as he moves the straw up the line. He smiles more widely.

“Be glad you don’t have that problem,” Drew says.

“I am,” Chester says. “I tell you, I’m glad I don’t even remember being gassed when I had my tonsils out when I was a kid. Holly was so cold and sleepy. But not nice sleep—more like she’d been hit.”

“She’s O.K.,” Drew says.

“How do you know?” Chester says. Then he’s surprised by how harsh his voice sounds. He smiles. “Sneaking around to see her, the way you make arrangements to see Charlotte?” he says.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Drew says. “What a sick thing to say.”

“I was kidding.”

“And no matter what I said now, I couldn’t win, could I? If I made out like I’d be crazy to be interested in Holly, you’d be insulted, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Chester says. “You go see Charlotte. I’ll sit here and have a drink. What do you want me for?”

“I told her you were coming,” Drew says. He takes a sip of his drink. “I was thinking about that time we went to Coney Island,” he says.

“You told me,” Chester says. “You mean years ago, right?”

“I told you about shooting the rifle?”

“Coney Island,” Chester sighs. “Have some dogs at Nathan’s, ride that Cyclone or whatever it’s called, pop a few shots and win your girl a prize . . .”

“I told you?”

“Go ahead and tell me,” Chester says.

Chester pours two drinks. After Drew’s drink is poured, Drew puts his hand over the glass again.

“You’ve got about five minutes to tell me, by the way, unless you’re really going to stand her up,” Chester says.

“Maybe she’ll stand me up.”

“She won’t stand you up.”

“O.K.,” Drew says. “Charlotte and I went to Coney Island. Got on those rides that tilt you every which way, and what do you call that thing with the glass sides that goes up the pole so you can look out—”

“I’ve never been to Coney Island,” Chester says.

“I was showing her my style,” Drew says. “The best part was later. This guy in the shooting gallery clips the cardboard card with the star on it to the string, sends it down to the end of the line, and I start blasting. Did it three or four times, and there was always some tiny part of the blue left. The pinpoint of the tip of one triangle. The middle of the target was this blue star. I was such a great shot that I was trying to win by shooting out the star, and the guy finally said to me, “Man, you’re trying to blast that star away. What you do is shoot around it, and the star falls out.” Drew looks at Chester through the circle of his thumb and first finger, drops his hand to the table. “What you’re supposed to do is go around it, like slipping a knife around a cake pan to get the cake out.” Drew takes a sip of his drink. He says, “My father never taught me