Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

cough didn’t get any better, I went back and asked for it again. He gave me some blue pills. That pissed me off, so I said, ‘Isn’t heroin good for coughing? Could you prescribe some of that?’ Doctors. The hell with doctors.”
    Sam blows on a spoonful of soup, sips it. “Who was on the phone?”
    “Pete. I guess he’s loaded somewhere.”
    “Are you still going to have to go over there for dinner?”
    “It doesn’t look that way,” Charles says.
    “It’s sort of pathetic,” Sam says. “He tries to be nice to you and Susan now, doesn’t he?”
    “Yeah,” Charles says. “He tries to be nice.”
    Charles is sitting at the foot of the bed. Sam leans around him to watch the huddle.
    “You want me to move?”
    “No. Stay where you are.”
    Charles gets up, wanders out into the hallway. Susan’s clothes are thrown over a chair. She is taking a shower. When she gets out, he’ll have to tell her that the shower had symbolic importance. Right after her boyfriend called she went in there. He picks up her sweater. Purple. Janis Joplin wouldn’t have been caught dead in it. Laura wouldn’t either. If Susan were Laura, he could throw off all his clothes, jump into the shower, say, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” He sits down on the clothes-covered chair, thinking that he might be going out of his mind. If she doesn’t call, he probably will. He goes into the living room and opens a drawer where there is a picture of Laura. It has a cheap silver frame around it—the kind that comes with photo-booth pictures. There is a white streak just under her chin. But her face is perfect She has a heart-shaped face. She has large, white teeth that don’t show in the picture. Her mouth is closed. She isn’t smiling. “Why didn’t you smile?” he said when she gave it to him. “I don’t know. Everything’s so complicated. It’s all such a mess.” Susan is right; he should have said how delighted he was to get the picture instead of criticizing her expression. She gave it to him when they were sitting at a drugstore counter, having a cup of coffee. She pulled it out of her wallet without comment. He thought that she was reaching for money, said “No, no.” They never really understood each other. Most people can read signals; they never could. She’d be feeling good, and he’d think she was worried and not talk so she could think it out, when actually she was in a good mood until he stopped talking, and she thought there was something wrong with him . He tries to convince himself that the relationship was always doomed. They didn’t understand each other, they didn’t have a lot in common, she never said she was going to divorce her husband and never changed her mind, even after she said she loved him too.… It isn’t working; he keeps picturing her on the carousel, sitting on a blue and gold horse, her hands tight around the brass pole, smiling at him. Well, he tells himself, that’s a pretty rotten thing, if that’s the best you can remember. It’s not very significant. But it’s as significant as anything else that’s ever happened to him. He puts the picture back in the drawer. There’s something wrong with putting her picture with unpaid bills. He takes it out and puts it on top of another table, against a vase.
    “Finished,” Sam calls. Charles goes into the bedroom.
    “Sorry to yell,” Sam says. “I didn’t know where to put this.”
    “I’ll take it. Is there anything else you want?”
    “I feel like puking now. No offense.”
    “No,” Charles says. He carries the tray out to the kitchen. The phone rings.
    “Hello?” he says. It is Laura. It has to be Laura.
    “Hello,” Pete says.
    “Leave me alone, goddamn it,” Charles says. “I didn’t put her there either.”
    “That’s not why I called,” Pete says. “I called to say that when I called before I was a little upset. I wanted to ask you something.”
    “What?” Charles says.
    “Do you think she’ll ever