He pulled into the driveway — imagine her thinking, even for a second, that there would be columns at the base of his driveway — and the car sideswiped bushes weighted down by the rain the day before. Big white flowers brushed against the side of the car. He turned off the ignition and got out and stretched. He looked at the sky. It was still light, but the moon was already out. By the car was John Joel’s tree, the tree where the robin had built its nest. He wished that he had something to concentrate on other than what was coming: that he could be holding the delicate piece of egg, blue like no other blue, and that he could feel its lightness and fragility. The blue egg, in the little dish in Nina’s apartment.
On the way back to pick up Louise, he stopped at a phone. He asked the operator to charge the call to his home phone. “Is there anyone there to verify?” she said. “No,” he said, without any hesitation. A butterfly — late in the day for a butterfly — hovered by the phone for a minute. He looked again at the moon, more visible now that the sky was a little darker. He shook his head at the absurdity of what he was doing: standing at a phone on a country road, as though no one was at home, no one was waiting, as though Nina would pick up the phone in her apartment on Columbus Avenue and suddenly his heart would stop pounding and he would feel the breeze that was blowing. The butterfly flew away. The phone rang ten times, and then he hung up and went back to the car. He sat there for a minute before starting it. Then he put the radio on. The same song from Saturday Night Fever was playing, as though the last twenty minutes — half hour? — had never happened. Things just fall into place. If Mary knew that, from reading the book or from what she knew of life, she could not deserve to flunk any course, let alone English. Of course, if that was what she thought, then there wasn’t much point in her trying to organize her life or in any of the things he had believed about getting ahead, the necessity of getting ahead, when he was her age. Maybe a few years older. He got out of the car and got the operator again, and billed another call to his home phone. He called Nick. Nick picked it up on the first ring. “Goddamn Metcalf,” Nick said. “Called me twice today with the same joke. I keep telling him that I don’t like jokes. He tries to joke with me about not liking jokes. Metcalf.”
“What was Metcalf’s joke?”
“Same old joke,” Nick said. “Jesus Christ. What’s up with you?”
“I tried to call Nina and couldn’t get her. I just wanted to talk to somebody.”
“You should have been around today. The whole city left town. I went with Laurie to the Metropolitan and we sprawled in the grass in Central Park. Nice. Going to Hopper’s tonight. The bad news is that my wife called to say that Martin has to have his tonsils out. I told her to find a more progressive doctor — they don’t yank tonsils the way they used to.” Nick sighed. “I went over there early in the morning and talked to Martin. I asked him if he wanted to come along with us, but he didn’t. He was going roller-skating. A fever almost a hundred, and she lets him go roller-skating.” Nick sighed.
“I’d tell you what I’m in the middle of, but I don’t know myself. I’ll have a good story for you Monday morning. Want to meet me at the Brasserie early for coffee?”
“Sure. Eight?”
“Eight.”
“Nina all right?”
“I guess so. There wasn’t any answer.”
“I almost didn’t answer it. I thought it was Metcalf again. How he stays sober as a judge Monday through Friday, I’ll never know.”
“Valium. That’s not really sober.”
“He doesn’t take that much. Beats me.”
“What was his joke?”
“You know the joke. I’m sure you know it. Stop me, so I don’t have to tell the whole thing: What’s the difference between a Polish woman and a bowling ball?”
“What?” John said.
“Come on. You’ve heard it.”
“I haven’t heard it.”
“Why would anybody laugh at a sexist Polish joke anyway?”
“Okay. Forget it. See you Monday morning.”
“The other thing Metcalf does — Metcalf doesn’t call you on the weekends, does he?”
“No. He doesn’t bother me at work, either.”
“He’s afraid of you. He’s not afraid of me, and he calls me. You know how he starts conversations: ‘Hey, gork—’ Not even hello.”
“Gork?”
“I don’t know. His twin brother’s a neurosurgeon, and he gets these medical acronyms from him. It’s something insulting. I think his brother’s being a famous neurosurgeon fucked him up royal. I was out at his house in Sneden’s Landing last summer when his brother was there, and Metcalf was running around chasing his brother with a bread knife, saying he was going to do a vasectomy.”
When they hung up, John tried Nina again. No answer. He got in the car and drove, fast, to the drugstore. Before he got there, he could see that the lights were out. He pulled into one of the empty places in front of the drugstore and looked around, without getting out of the car. It was getting darker. In half an hour, on the ride home, it would be dark. He didn’t see her. If she had meant to run off, why wouldn’t she have done it when she left the restaurant? He got out of the car and peered into the dark drugstore. He stood with his back to the door, looking to the left and right. A man on a motorcycle pulled into the next space, turned off the ignition and kicked the kickstand down. He had on a helmet, gold and silver flecked, and mirrored sunglasses you could see out of, but not into. “Have change for a quarter?” he asked.
John reached in his pocket. He sorted through a palmful of change, and gave the man two dimes and a nickel.
“Thanks,” the man said. “I was going to buy a Hershey bar, but the drugstore’s closed. Suck-ass motherfucking town.” He walked around the corner.
“Louise!” John hollered. “If you’re here, this is your chance for a ride.”
The man jerked his head around the corner. “What’d you say?” he said.
“I came to pick up my wife,” John said. “You said it about this motherfucking town.” He looked at the motorcycle rider, who looked half interested, half put off. “What’s the difference between a bowling ball and a Polish woman?” John said to him.
The motorcycle rider didn’t miss a beat. “If you were really hungry, you could eat a bowling ball,” he said. He smiled. He was missing a bottom tooth. “Good joke,” the motorcycle rider said, and walked around the side of the drugstore.
John followed him around the corner. The man came to a stop in back of Louise, who was talking on the phone. The man put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and bounced on his toes, as Louise talked on the telephone. The phone booth was against the side of the drugstore. Louise had her hand cupped over the receiver. She was standing with her feet crossed at the ankles, talking quietly. She looked up and saw him.
“I guess you didn’t hear me,” he said, coming up next to her.
“See you tomorrow,” Louise said. “The hero has returned.” Her eyes were red. Her hair was pushed behind her ears, and she looked about twelve years old. Her face was freckled from the sun. She hung up and walked past John without speaking, on her way to the car.
“What was that, a conference call to Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller?”
“Very funny. Feminists as a class are very funny. We all know that.”
“I apologized,” he said. “But you had to get the upper hand, didn’t you?”
“I don’t want to argue,” she said. “What I’d like to do is take a drive out to the water. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll drop you at home.”
He thought about it. It would be nice to see the moon over the water, particularly if she didn’t want to argue.