In the restaurant she had a Swiss cheese sandwich with mushrooms on pita bread, and he ate three onion bagels, two with cream cheese and the last one with butter.
As they ate, she found out things about Spangle she hadn’t known: that he used to cook seven different kinds of spaghetti sauce; that he read and liked Norman O. Brown; that while he was fixing up his house, he watched soap operas on TV; that he had been so terrified of a grass snake he saw slither under his raspberry bushes that he wore thigh-high fishing boots whenever he picked berries. It sounded like a calm and funny existence, and she wondered what had driven him out of the woods. He had been afraid to go on with that life, and she had no idea why. Even Bobby admitted that Spangle was probably not the same person he had known: For one thing, Spangle hadn’t told her about him, and in the old days, all of Spangle’s friends knew all his other friends. Whenever it rained in Vermont, Bobby said, he and Spangle used to joke about the house as Noah’s Ark. The couples moved around a little, but they didn’t move out, except for one or two times when things got too ugly. The first spring in the house, there were four couples living there when Bobby went there alone, and the backyard was a mud pond, and the people with rubber boots carried the people who didn’t have them on their shoulders when they went out for food, or to the movies. Spangle had an answering service so that his mother couldn’t get through. Spangle’s brother Jonathan would come up sometimes on the weekends with stolen turkeys from the supermarket where he worked, and they had regular Thanksgiving feasts all through April and May. The girl who had a lot of her stomach removed had been involved with Jonathan for a while.
They went back to the apartment and she watched his going-to-bed routine: pushups, another shower and two spins of “Forever Young.” He said he would rather sleep on the floor than on the sofa. “God,” Bobby said. “I hope the first agent I see tomorrow is beautiful and single. Did I ruin your night? Did I keep you from doing your work?”
Her work was The Old Man and the Sea, and she had reread it twice recently. She told him honestly that he hadn’t, and went into the bedroom. She closed the door to undress, but opened it again when she was ready to sleep because so little air stirred in the apartment. When she went out to get a glass of ice water to put by the bed, she saw Bobby, earphones on his head, stretched on the floor like Christ crucified. He also reminded her of a pilot shot down. He still had on his denim shorts, and his feet in the orange running shoes were crossed at the ankle, and the music must have been loud, because his eyes stayed closed, and he never heard her come through the room. She tiptoed past him.
He was up before she was in the morning. When she went into the living room, she saw a white bag with donuts open on the table. On a blue index card was written: “Dame Daphne’s Revenge?” He had made coffee. He was in the bathroom, shaving. He had also gotten the paper. She took a donut out of the bag and bit into it, even though eating in the morning would make her sluggish. She was thinking about what she was going to do: She was going to talk about irony to students who, ironically, were too stupid to perceive irony. They were not going to care that Santiago got his great fish. They were just going to read it, and like the stupid tourists looking down at the skeleton and the boat, hardly even wonder about it. The book was perfect to close the course with, because it was a perfect comment on the course. Actually, it was the only novel they had read all the way through, and that was because it was short, and because she had argued with the assistant principal that they would have the wrong idea about literature if they just read bits and pieces. Not too long ago, she had cared enough to argue. Well, it was perfect: She was Santiago, and her students were the tourists. And the shark? What was out there that her students would have to grapple with? Nothing. They were unintelligent because they had easy lives. They were not stalked by anything. Their grappling with complexity was having a debate about what musician was playing on a guitar break. She had heard two of them arguing about that in the hallway the week before. It was probably the first argument she had heard all summer. They capitulated so easily. They all thought alike, so there was no tension. They looked alike. They were attractive, and you could tell that their families had money, but they were no more substantial than the white carcass slung beside Santiago’s boat.
She realized that she was getting carried away with making analogies and bit into the donut. A few crumbs rolled down the front of her white nightgown.
“I’ve never talked to an agent before,” Bobby said. “I wonder what you’re supposed to do when you walk in. I’ve always wondered what people did when they walked into a shrink’s office for the first time.” He had slicked back his hair — he was bald on top, but the hair was long and curly and frizzy on the sides, and now it hung in tiny wet curls. He had on jeans and a white shirt with “Don B.” sewn in red thread above the pocket, and he was wearing the sort of sunglasses people who work in factories wear, with clear plastic cups at the sides so that nothing can get in their eyes.
“Should I cut this name off?” Bobby said. “Do you think it matters? I’ve got a sports jacket in the trunk of the car that I think will cover it.”
“I’d leave it. Writers are supposed to be eccentric anyway.”
“Writers are so reasonable,” he said. “Thomas Wolfe was such a reasonable man. That little book of his Scribner’s put out — I hope I can find it. Where did I put that piece of paper? I put it in my suitcase, didn’t I? No — I put it in my shirt pocket, and I just stuffed my shirt in the green bag. Okay, take it easy, Bobby.” He wiped some drops of water off his shoulders. His hair was so wet it was dripping. “New York makes me nervous. It’s going to be a hot day, too. I hope I don’t sweat. You really saved my life letting me stay here last night. I’ll call you from New York after I’m done, and if you’re not doing anything, I’ll take you to dinner on my way home.”
He sat on the floor, reached up into the bag, and took out a donut. She was flipping through the paper.
“Anything I can bring you from New York?” Bobby said.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “This is impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
“This,” she said.
Her eye had been caught by the name Knapp. It was a short article in the regional news — a girl named Mary Knapp had been shot by her brother. She had just seen Mary the day before, and asked her to stay after school to explain why she was late for class. She had just talked to Mary’s father. He had bought her lunch.
“This is one of my students,” she said, holding the paper out to Bobby. “What am I going to say in class? This is impossible. She was in class yesterday and today she’s shot?”
“Who shot her?” Bobby said. He chewed loudly, excited by the article. “Her brother! What do you know?”
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“I know a man in Lyme who ran over his son backing into his driveway. The kid was a hemophiliac. A two-year-old in Lyme, New Hampshire, with the curse of kings — turned into a blood puddle in front of his father’s eyes. You just can’t believe what happens. I see that guy every time I go jogging. What do you think? His life is ruined. He just runs all day.”