Michael Chabon

We headed back toward the library, where Cleveland had parked the Barracuda. I was in a state of perfect ambivalence, worse than ever before. My arm was around Phlox’s waist, chafing against the funny white leather belt she’d used to hitch up her dress, but I kept walking backward, turning to face Cleveland, Arthur, and Jane. I could tell it annoyed Phlox, but I told myself I had recently spent plenty of attention on her, and when Jane dropped Cleveland’s hand and came forward to talk to Phlox, I fell back among the boys. Jane liked Phlox, and said so all the time. Phlox thought that Jane was dull, that she was stupid still to be dragging herself through the mud for Cleveland, and, of course, that she was secretly in love with me.

“You’re gonna get it,” said Arthur, and smiled.

“Good to see you guys.”

“Good to see you too,” said Cleveland. He seemed to be in high spirits; he huffed along the sidewalk, boot heels pounding, gut pulled in. “Listen, Bechstein, when’s your day off?”

“Wednesday,” I said. I looked toward Phlox. She was laughing at some story Jane told with waving brown hands; I watched the pair of butts and the four high-heeled legs. I had promised Wednesday to Phlox.

“Meet me.”

“Where?”

“Here. Oakland. Say by the Cloud Factory.”

“To do what?”

He didn’t say anything. Arthur, who was walking between us, turned to me, a look of mild annoyance on his face. I was surprised to note that apparently Cleveland hadn’t told Arthur about my father. I felt a quick thrill when I saw that there was something between Cleveland and me that Arthur wasn’t a party to, something outside their friendship, and then, just as quickly, I felt sadness and even shame at the nature of that something. It was not what I wanted us to have most in common. But the invitation, of course, was irresistible.

“Okay,” I said, “but can we meet in the morning? I’m supposed to spend the afternoon with Phlox.”

“Fine,” said Cleveland. “Ten o’clock, say.” He inhaled hugely, rattling all the snot in his nose. “Do we have to walk so fast?”

Phlox turned her head, squinting and opening and squinting her eyes in the light of sunset, her look changing from protective to vulnerable and back again.

We had planned on dinner and Ella Fitzgerald, who was playing Point Park that night. Cleveland claimed that they would be airlifting her into Pittsburgh with a sky hook, like Jesus in La Dolce Vita, and someday, he said, they would be doing the same thing with him. In the restaurant, I sat next to Phlox and across from Arthur; Jane was beside Arthur, and Cleveland took up all the space at the head of the table, making it awkward for the waitress, whom he apparently knew, in some connection that made Jane blush frequently. Arthur and Phlox had already started to go at each other in the car, in little ways, unfriendly jokes and a lot of smiling.

They were continuing that afternoon’s show. The three of us, see, had been making an effort to meet for lunch now and then—behind the library, in the park, or on the lawn of Soldiers’ and Sailors’, but on this afternoon my luck had run out, and in the midst of a terribly important argument I had found myself siding with Arthur.

We were discussing Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen. I said that it was the most Roman Catholic record album ever made.

“Look what you’ve got,” I said. “You’ve got Mary dancing like a vision across the porch while the radio plays. You’ve got people trying in vain to breathe the fire they was born in, riding through mansions of glory, and hot-rod angels, virgins and whores—”

“And ‘She’s the One,’ ” said Arthur. “It’s Mariolatry city.”

“Right.”

“ ‘Killer graces and secret places.’ ”

“I hate that,” said Phlox, splitting open a tangerine with two long thumbs. “I hate that thing about ‘secret places that no boy can fill.’ I don’t believe in that. There are no such places.”

“Now, Phlox,” said Arthur. “Surely you must have one or two secret places.”

“She does,” I said. “I know she does.”

“I do not. What good would boys be if they couldn’t fill all the places?”

Arthur and I presented a united front in support of the measureless caverns of a woman, Phlox sternly and with increasing anger defended her total knowability, and something about the situation upset Phlox. I guessed it was partly that the argument was so trivial, and partly that it was two against one, but mostly that the whole thing was so horribly in reverse.

Perhaps I did know all the reasons she could have for being upset with me, and perhaps there would be no mystery to women at all if I would just lift the corner of my own purdah. Anyway, it had been an ugly lunch, and now, over red plates of pasta, things were intensifying rapidly.

“That’s because you’re so insecure,” Arthur was saying. “And besides, you love sitting in that window all day—admit it.”

“I do not,” said Phlox. “I hate it. And you just wish it was you.”

“Okay, okay,” said Cleveland, his mouth full.