Michael Chabon

“Pops, Cleveland wants a job,” I said.

Frankie Breezy stood up and made two partial but probably automatic fists. “Cleveland needs a job,” he said.

“This is very foolish,” my father said.

“I’ll give Cleveland a job,” Mr. Punicki said. He took a pen out of his pocket and wrote on the colored paper folder of my father’s airplane ticket. He tore off a neat corner and handed it to Cleveland.

“I’ll see you at five,” my father said to me, in a near whisper. His forehead was so furrowed with anger that it was as though he had only one long eyebrow, running all the way across. He was very red. “Alone.”

I felt, momentarily but acutely, that I had gone too far, this time, even to bother with another goddamn dinner.

“I can’t, Dad,” I said. “I have things to do. I’m sorry.” I started to cry, then stopped; it was like a yawn. “Come on, Cleveland.”

“And I’ll bet it’ll be a much more fun job too,” said Cleveland softly as we went out through the pretty vestibule. “More suited to my zany tastes and idiosyncrasies.”

We waited a long time for the elevator. It was very quiet in that chill hallway. At last the brass doors slid open. On the way down, Cleveland, directly under the NO SMOKING $500 FINE sign, lit a cigarette, which struck me, for once, as an unnecessarily theatrical thing to do.

I swallowed half a beer without noticing. Cleveland and I were both dazed, though his daze was a kind of nervous reverie, whereas mine was more akin to torpor. When I finally remarked the pale bread flavor of the beer in my mouth, I looked around the bar and did not remember having come in. I was on the last stool by a window and could see out into the bright day and sunny red bricks of Market Square, and I allowed myself to be relaxed momentarily by the warm air that blew down from the lazy fans, and by the tranquil, salt exhalations of dead shellfish that filled the air. Carl Punicki went past the bar, without looking in the window. As he vanished, he ran a hand through his thinning yellow hair and shook his shoulders once. An inch of ash fell from the tip of my trembling cigarette.

“Oh,” said Cleveland. “Art. It just hit me. I’m sorry.”

“Ha,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Really. This is going to damage things with your old man?”

“Yes. I don’t know. No. Things were already damaged.”

“Are you mad at me, Bechstein? Don’t be.” The white eyeglasses gave him an impish look, and he said, flatly, “I’ve got a glorious feeling.” He finished his beer. “Everything’s going my way. The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.”

I laughed and, at last, looked at him. Sometime during that day at the boiling end of July, which broke the all-time record set in 1926 or something like that, my friendship with Cleveland began to take on some of the characteristics of a détente, that uneasy willingness to laugh things off.

“I have to call Phlox,” I said, thinking: I have to call Arthur. I slid from my barstool and went through the old photographs and men to the back of the bar, fingering the coins in my pocket.

“Hello?” said, my God, Phlox.

“Oh, hello!”

Operator, Operator, there’s been some kind of mistake!

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Hello, Phlox. I feel really terrible and I don’t want to talk about this. How are you?”

“Angry.” She tapped. “Where are you?”

“I’m downtown. With Cleveland.”

“Fine. Stay there.”

“How about if I come see you right now?”

“No,” she said, more quietly. “I don’t think so.” Her voice was cold. “Why don’t you call Arthur?”

“Phlox! Fine. I will.”

“No, Art, come over!”

“No, I’ll call Arthur, like you said.” There was a pause. The computer inside the pinball machine to my left simulated the sound of a woman in orgasm. I felt how stupid was the thing I’d just said to her.

“Fine.”

“Oh, Phlox, let me just come over, right now.”

“No,” she said. “I’m too angry to see you right now. I might say things I don’t mean. Come over later.”

Things were happening too quickly for there to be a later.

“I’ll leave right now.”

“Don’t,” she said, and hungup the phone. When I called back, I got a busy signal. So I called Arthur, woke him up from a nap. He said to come right over. I went to tell Cleveland, but he had gone, leaving a note and a couple of crumpled dollar bills. I read the note, stuffed it in my pocket, and went to catch a bus to Shadyside.

Arthur chuckled in sympathy when he saw me, held out his hand generously. I threw my arms around him and clasped him to me. We parted. His face was sunburned and newly wide awake, a tiny flake of sleep in the corner of his blue left eye. He had bought himself a bottle of citron Christian Dior. I was so glad to see him.

“Poor guy,” he said. “You look miserable.”

“I am,” I said. “Hug me again.”

“You must have had an especially disturbing day.”

“I’m disturbed. Arthur, can I…?”

“Please do.”

It wasn’t all that different. He has just eaten a plum, I thought.

He pushed me lightly away, then held on.

“Are you in full possession of your faculties?”

“I can’t be certain; no.”

“Well, it’s about time,” he said. He pinched my earlobe. “Let’s go exhaust all the possibilities.”