He stood at the water cooler. Two aspirin weren’t going to help. He thought about going down to Nick’s office, but he didn’t know what to say. He took the aspirin and went anyway.
“What’s the matter?” Nick said when he saw him.
“I had lunch with her teacher. Mary’s summer-school teacher. I held her hand — I mean, I shook her hand — and with my eyes closed, it could have been Nina’s hand. I stood there shaking the hand of Mary’s summer-school teacher, and I wanted to go to bed with her.”
“So?” Nick said. Nick put down the piece of paper he had been studying. It was a graph: stalagmites and stalactites on an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper. “Why do you look so awful?” he said.
“I’ve got a headache. And you know what I think about that? You know the old I’m-too-tired, I’ve-got-a-headache routine?”
Nick opened his top drawer. “If you know so much, Freud, how come you’ve got cancer of the jaw?”
“Jesus Christ. What if this is all some midlife crisis? If I’m just becoming aware I’m losing my youth, and—”
“You were running down how old you were when I came to work here three years ago. Three years ago. You were thirty-seven.”
“You’re only thirty-five now. You want to disbelieve Passages?”
“You’re drunk?”
“I’m not drunk. My head is pounding.”
“You’re talking to me about Passages. Passages. I want to not believe Passages. Correct. You’re in a midlife crisis: correct or incorrect. Okay. This is the stupidest conversation I’ve had all day, and that includes nearly an hour-long conference with Metcalf this morning. This teacher was pretty?”
He sat in the chair across from Nick’s desk. Behind Nick was a Betty Boop clock. Out of her surprised mouth came two black arrows telling the time. Five of three.
“I love it,” Nick said. “In all my youthful innocence, I mean-that you care what the fuck the reason is. You must have gotten along very well with that schoolteacher today.”
John tapped Nick’s paperweight (a picture of Mary Pickford’s house, Pickfair, under glass) against the edge of his desk.
“My head is killing me,” he said. He put down the paperweight. “Thirty-five,” he said. “Did you ever read L’étranger in college?”
“The Stranger, by Albert Camus. I read it,” Nick said. “You can speak English here. You’re among friends.”
Ten
PARKER LIKED to eat as much as John Joel did, but he never had any money, and John Joel got tired of lending him money he knew he’d never see again. He couldn’t very well eat in front of Parker, though, so he ended up buying Parker’s lunch when they were in the city and not stopping for as many snacks as he would ordinarily. Parker hated the hot weather and was always mopping his brow with one of his assortment of Western bandannas. Today it was a wadded-up yellow bandanna to go with the yellow shirt he wore. He let the shirttail hang out of his slacks so that he could lift it every now and then and fan up some breeze. Parker liked to wear cotton shirts instead of T-shirts, and he thought jeans were too hot in the summer. John Joel felt vaguely as if he were with his father. Nobody else his age dressed like Parker. On Fridays Parker took the train into New York to see his shrink on West Fourth Street. Lately John Joel had been taking the train into town with him. There were no hamburgers in Connecticut to compare with New York burgers.
They were on Madison Avenue, where they had gone to pick up a photograph of some relative that Parker’s mother had dropped off to have restored. The man in the store had carefully lifted the tape that sealed the brown package, separated the two pieces of cardboard inside, and revealed to them the enlargement of a picture of a lady in a gray blouse, with buck teeth and a gray-blue flower in her hair — some relative that Parker didn’t know. The original, the man said, was in the envelope. The envelope was taped to one of the pieces of cardboard. The man smiled over the counter at them. “Is there a family resemblance?” he said, cocking his head at Parker. “She’s ugly and I’m fat,” Parker said, fanning his shirt away from his stomach. “What do I owe you?” Parker’s mother had given him a blank check, and he filled in the amount. Earlier in the day he had filled in a check at the railroad station, and then again at the shrink’s. All the cash he had was eight dollars, and since the bus was too hot, that would all go to splitting the cab fare to and from Grand Central.
“She looks like a spitz,” Parker said, the package under his arm.
“A what?”
“That dog. Isn’t it called a spitz?”
A thin black woman with her hair in a bun passed them, pushing a white baby in a stroller. Parker showed her his stomach to shock her, but she didn’t shock. She just kept walking, looking at the wheels of the stroller.
“So when do you get your braces?” Parker said.
“Next week. I don’t know.”
“Then you’re going to have to brush your teeth all the time,” Parker said. “Every time you eat. Otherwise that stuff will get in your braces and putrefy.”
“I don’t care,” John Joel said.
“Putrefy is a good word,” Parker said. “Can we get something to eat?”
“I’m supposed to buy, right?” John Joel said. “Right?”
“Where do you get all your money?” Parker said.
“Mostly from my grandmother. She didn’t use to give us money, but she feels bad that she doesn’t like us. She likes my brother, but he’s a baby. She gives Mary and me money. Not all the time, but maybe every other week or so. She gives Mary more than she gives me.”
“So why does the kid live with her?” Parker said.
John Joel shrugged. “Where do you want to eat? That place?”
“I get sick of hamburgers.”
“That’s what I want, though. So that’s what I’m going to buy you. What did you want?”
“Éclairs.”
“We can get some éclairs. Let’s get a hamburger.”
“Where can we get éclairs?”
“We can even get them at Grand Central. Let’s get a hamburger.”
“Okay,” Parker said.
They went inside. A fan was aimed at the counter, and square glass ashtrays were on top of the napkins so they wouldn’t blow away. There was a sign asking people not to smoke. Parker saw the sign and put his unlighted cigarette back in the pack in his shirt pocket. He smoked Salems. He played with the edge of his napkin, waiting for the man behind the counter to take their orders. He took out a cigarette again and tapped it on the counter but didn’t light it.