The New Yorker Stories

without me.”

He took her arm again and they stood side by side and looked at some sweaters hanging in the window of Countdown.

“So going to Virginia wasn’t the answer for them,” she said. “Remember when Sammy and Stephanie left town, and we told each other what a stupid idea it was—that it would never work out? Do you think we jinxed them?”

They walked down the street again, saying nothing.

“It would kill me if I had to be a good conversationalist with you,” she said at last. “You’re the only person I can rattle on with.” She stopped and leaned into him. “I had a rotten time in Bermuda,” she said. “Nobody should go to a beach but a sand flea.”

“You don’t have to make clever conversation with me,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “It just happened.”

Late in the afternoon of the day that Stephanie had her abortion, Nick called Sammy from a street phone near his apartment. Karen and Stephanie were in the apartment, but he had to get out for a while. Stephanie had seemed pretty cheerful, but perhaps it was just an act for his benefit. With him gone, she might talk to Karen about it. All she had told him was that it felt like she had caught an ice pick in the stomach.

“Sammy?” Nick said into the phone. “How are you? It just dawned on me that I ought to call and let you know that Stephanie is all right.”

“She has called me herself, several times,” Sammy said. “Collect. From your phone. But thank you for your concern, Nick.” He sounded brusque.

“Oh,” Nick said, taken aback. “Just so you know where she is.”

“I could name you as corespondent in the divorce case, you know?”

“What would you do that for?” Nick said.

“I wouldn’t. I just wanted you to know what I could do.”

“Sammy—I don’t get it. I didn’t ask for any of this, you know.”

“Poor Nick. My wife gets pregnant, leaves without a word, calls from New York with a story about how you had a broken hand and were having bad luck with women, so she went to bed with you. Two weeks later I get a phone call from you, all concern, wanting me to know where Stephanie is.”

Nick waited for Sammy to hang up on him.

“You know what happened to you?” Sammy said. “You got eaten up by New York.”

“What kind of dumb thing is that to say?” Nick said. “Are you trying to get even or something?”

“If I wanted to do that, I could tell you that you have bad teeth. Or that Stephanie said you were a lousy lover. What I was trying to do was tell you something important, for a change. Stephanie ran away when I tried to tell it to her, you’ll probably hang up on me when I say the same thing to you: you can be happy. For instance, you can get out of New York and get away from Karen. Stephanie could have settled down with a baby.”

“This doesn’t sound like you, Sammy, to give advice.”

He waited for Sammy’s answer.

“You think I ought to leave New York?” Nick said.

“Both. Karen and New York. Do you know that your normal expression shows pain? Do you know how much Scotch you drank the weekend you visited?”

Nick stared through the grimy plastic window of the phone booth.

“What you just said about my hanging up on you,” Nick said. “I was thinking that you were going to hang up on me. When I talk to people, they hang up on me. The conversation just ends that way.”

“Why haven’t you figured out that you don’t know the right kind of people?”

“They’re the only people I know.”

“Does that seem like any reason for tolerating that sort of rudeness?”

“I guess not.”

“Another thing,” Sammy went on. “Have you figured out that I’m saying these things to you because when you called I was already drunk? I’m telling you all this because I think you’re so numbed out by your lousy life that you probably don’t even know I’m not in my right mind.”

The operator came on, demanding more money. Nick clattered quarters into the phone. He realized that he was not going to hang up on Sammy, and Sammy was not going to hang up on him. He would have to think of something else to say.

“Give yourself a break,” Sammy said. “Boot them out. Stephanie included. She’ll see the light eventually and come back to the farm.”

“Should I tell her you’ll be there? I don’t know if—”

“I told her I’d be here when she called. All the times she called. I just told her that I had no idea of coming to get her. I’ll tell you another thing. I’ll bet—I’ll bet—that when she first turned up there she called you from the airport, and she wanted you to come for her, didn’t she?”

“Sammy,” Nick said, staring around him, wild to get off the phone. “I want to thank you for saying what you think. I’m going to hang up now.”

“Forget it,” Sammy said. “I’m not in my right mind. Goodbye.”