What is your favorite meal? he asks himself.
Lasagna.
What is your favorite day?
Friday.
What is your favorite sport?
Skiing. (He chuckles.)
He begins again, trying to be honest, no tricks, just honesty. It is a game Susan taught him years ago that she said would help him fall asleep. She did not use the word “game,” but that’s what it is.
What is your favorite meal?
Lasagna, Chili.
Just one.
Lasagna.
Who is your best friend? Sam.
What is your favorite country? America.
Who was your favorite President? Kennedy.
Whom do you idolize? Nobody.
What was the best year of your life?
The year I met Laura.
What was the happiest month of your life?
Same.
Hour?
Same.
Then why aren’t you calling?
Fear.
Why are you fearful? Don’t know.
You do know.
Too many reasons to go into.
Go into one of them.
Afraid I’ll be overcome and will sound too desperate, blow the whole thing.
What if you blow the whole thing?
Don’t know.
You do know.
The end.
Sam would ask the same questions, prodding him. He would give the same answers. The game is not relaxing him at all; it’s not divorced from life, it is life. He closes his eyes and tries to count sheep. What do sheep look like? (“And now she says the picture on the piano is her husband.…”) Sheep have curly hair and little ears. In a pasture. Green grass. They bleat. He can’t see them, though.
What do you see?
A fruit stand.
That makes no sense.
I know.
What kind of fruit?
Apples, pears, bananas, peaches, grapes, and lettuce. No, not lettuce. Melon.
Do you want to eat the fruit?
No.
Want to buy it?
No.
Explain. Can’t.
Can.
Can’t.
He is feeling very uncertain. If he doesn’t call now, he will be in a worse state of mind when he does call. The phone rings. It is his boss. He has found his pen. It was on the windowsill, behind the Venetian blind. Charles tells him that it is wonderful that the pen has been found. “I’ll be having a small get-together soon, and will let you and your wife know.” His boss says that that is splendid. Why did he say that to his boss? Because he is making nervous conversation, hoping his boss does not sense that he’s goofing off. He congratulates his boss again. His voice is so insincere that it cracks. His boss chuckles. Spirits are high.
This is just not the right phone to call from. There is nothing pleasant about the phone or the surroundings. He puts on his coat and walks down the corridor to the elevator. He rides to the ground floor, walks past the blind man’s stand, out the doors. He runs across the highway to the shopping center. He goes into the Safeway and gets a brown bag and fills it with fruit He checks his wallet. Fruit could not possibly cost more than thirty-eight dollars. He throws in another pear, a bunch of grapes.
“Weigh this, please,” he says to the teen-age boy standing at the produce scales. The boy’s face falls. He spills it all out, separates the different kinds and puts them on the table the scale sits on. One falls. He picks it up, face red. He writes 89 on the bag and drops the apples in. He weighs the bunch of bananas; 72 appears under the 89. He weighs the single grapefruit. “Wait, these are ten for ninety-nine,” he says. He writes 10 on the bag. The oranges cost 49 and the single pear 16. He adds it up, circles it in red. Charles almost runs to the checkout counter, where he has a long wait. A woman in front of him, her cart full of boxes of disposable diapers, stands reading Family Circle. She has a pug nose and bangs. Her clothes are all different colors. Charles rechecks and finds that he has only thirty-five dollars. Still — the fruit costs so little. Thirty-five. He recounts and sees that he’s right. Finally he gets to the cashier. She has on a pink smock. She is pregnant. She rings up the amount on the cash register. He gives her a ten dollar bill and starts to leave without his change.
“Sir,” she calls.
He doesn’t want the change; he wants to get on with it. But wouldn’t they go after him if he ran? Sweating, he turns back. She counts it out loudly. A woman in line stares at him.
He goes back to the office and walks through the lobby. The blind man is asleep (looks it, at least) in a chair in the comer. Charles takes out one piece of fruit — the pear — and puts it on the blind man’s counter. He walks quietly away. The blind man does not move. Someone will pick up the pear on their way home and the blind man will say, “What have you got?” and they will answer, “A pear,” and the blind man will be completely mystified. He sells no fruit. He will have no idea where it came from. Charles chuckles. He goes to his office and sits in the chair. Reports. He has reports to do. The bag tips over on his desk, the bananas stick out. An apple hits the floor. He retrieves it, sits down and dials Betty’s number. No answer. But at least he knows her last name now. It is Betty Dowell. He will know what buzzer to ring.
But Laura, Laura … he really went out to find a suitable place to call Laura. He has taken care of Betty now — he will drive to her apartment after work and give her the fruit and apologize — and he should just pick up the phone and dial Laura, not make a big thing of it. He does. The phone rings exactly fifteen times.
Charles does as much work as he can between then and five-thirty, then leaves the building and goes to his car in the parking lot. He gets in and puts the key in the ignition. He leans back and closes his eyes. Laura. He sits forward and turns on the ignition. He begins to drive, through the heavy rush-hour traffic, to Betty Dowell’s apartment. It’s oldies time on the radio. “The Name Game” plays. “Laura, Laura, bo bora banana fana fo fora, fee fi mo mora, Laura,” he sings. He takes a banana out — he has a bit of trouble tearing it off the stalk with one hand — and peels it. He bites into it. He went to the store and he forgot to buy food for dinner. Damn! Why don’t housewives all go mad, go completely crazy, run naked down the streets, stampeding, screaming? How could he be right in the grocery store and forget? Wait. How could he be going to call Laura, how could he be going to go over to Laura’s and still eat at home? Oh, shit. He is terribly confused. He finishes the banana and throws the skin out the window. He double parks in front of Betty’s apartment. A driver rolls down his window and curses him. “Think you own this lane, you bastard?” A couple is walking into the apartment building. The woman holds the door open for him. Just like that! He won’t have to stand on the street shouting that he is there. He will surprise her; she will have to let him in, have to accept the fruit. Maybe he should have sent a fruit basket with a big bow. Maybe this looks tacky. But wouldn’t the other have seemed too presumptuous? Muzak plays in the elevator. A note above the controls: “I found a brown glove. Also have cat to give away. Apt. 416.” He has forgotten to look and see what floor Betty lives on. When the elevator stops at three for the couple, he pushes “lobby.” He goes out the door, holding it open with his foot, and peers at the list of tenants in the corner. Dowell, Dowell … 512. He goes back to the elevator and rides to five. He stands in front of apartment 512. He knocks. There is no noise inside. He knocks again. He reaches in his coat pocket for a pen, writes “For Betty from Charles” on the bag of fruit and leaves it leaning against her door. He goes back to the elevator and rides to the lobby, walks across the blue patterned carpet to the door, walks out the door to his car. He drives home. Everything is fine now. She will get the fruit, she will forgive him; he will call Laura, she will forgive him. But what has he done to Laura? What did he ever do that she wouldn’t call him? He has got to find out He drives faster.