Michael Chabon

“That’s all right,” said Arthur, “really. Don’t bother.”

Phlox and I started off, at first without discussion or destination. It was twilight, and the Cathedral of Learning, pile and battlements, threw great beams of light into the air, and looked like the 20th Century-Fox emblem. I took Phlox’s hand, but she let her fingers slip and we walked with a breeze between us.

“Did he tell you we were having dinner tonight?”

“Why did you lie to me?”

She put her fingers around my hand, lifted it, and then threw it from her like an empty bottle.

“Why?”

“How did you know?”

“I knew,” she said. “That’s all. I knew.”

“Arthur told you.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” She ran ahead a few steps and then turned on me, her hair sweeping out around her head. We had come to the Schenley Park bridge, which hummed with the cars that crossed it. The two stacks of the Cloud Factory were ink against the inky sky. “I didn’t need Arthur to tell me. I knew when I got those roses.”

“I bought the roses—”

“Forget it,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ll just lie. You poor dumb liar.” She turned.

“—before I knew I was having dinner with Arthur tonight.” Each time I mentioned Arthur’s name I heard him saying, “Don’t bother,” and felt dizzy; it was like peering over a cliff, and now, as Phlox walked off, the ground on the other side of me split and began to give way. I thought, I fancied, that in a moment I would be standing on nothing at all, and for the first time in my life, I needed the wings none of us has. When Phlox, who had vanished into the darkness along the bridge, reached the other side, she reappeared briefly in the streetlight, skirt and scarf and two white legs, and then the park closed around her.

19

THE BIG P

“BECHSTEIN.” BLACKNESS. “BECHESTEIN.” LIGHT. “Bechstein.”

“Hey. What. Oh.”

Filling my front doorway, in a welter of bloody twilight, was the huge silhouette of a man, hands on his hips. He raised one black arm and the red rays shifted around it like the blades of a fan.

“Jesus.” I blinked and sat up on one elbow. “Good thing this isn’t a Sergio Leone movie.”

“Bang.”

“I guess I fell asleep. Time is it?”

“Night is falling,” said Cleveland. He came and sat on the arm of the couch, down by my feet; the top of a paperback protruded from his jacket pocket, and he held a white envelope. “Look at you—you’re all sweaty,” he said. With a vast, rattling sigh, he leaned back, against the wall, and patted his fat gut. “What do you have to eat?”

I twisted around, sat full up. Arthur’s laugh pealed in my ear for an instant, and I realized I’d been dreaming of him.

“I can probably manage some form of cheese sandwich,” I said. I tried to stand, tottered slightly, caught myself; I was sore all over. “I may have a few olives.”

“Great. Olives.” He lit a cigarette. “You sick?”

“I don’t think so. No.” Hannah, the little girl next door, was practicing “Fur Elise” again. There had been piano music in my lustful dream. “I’ll get you a sandwich. Um, what have you been up to?”

I went into the kitchen and took out the necessary jars and packages. It felt nice inside the refrigerator.

“Oh, just a million and one things. Poon things, I’m afraid. This was on the doorstep, Bechstein,” Cleveland said, clunking into the kitchen behind me. He handed me the envelope I’d noted, on which was printed only my name, in Phlox’s schoolish handwriting, without stamp or address. It was a business envelope. My heart made a sudden violent motion—leapt, sank. It’s the same feeling.

“Oh, it’s from Phlox,” I said. “Well. Hmm.”

“Hmm.”

“Well.”

“Hmm.” He grinned. “Jesus, Bechstein, are you going to read it?”

“Sure, yes—I mean, why not? Would you mind…?” I said, gesturing toward the unassembled sandwich.

“Of course. Let’s see. Ah, bread, fine, perfect. Just the heels? Fine, that’s fine. Love the heels. Bread and cheese, cadmium-orange American cheese—perfect, exactly. You’re a minimalist. Go, go read.” He turned from me and gave his attention to the food.

I stepped out of the kitchen with the envelope, trying not to guess at its contents, then broke it open and unfolded the two-page letter, also handwritten, in dark-purple ink on pale-purple stationery with her monogram—“PLU.”

“The past tense of plaire,” she liked to say; her middle name was Ursula. My eyes skipped across the paper for a moment, before I could restrain them, and the words “sex,” “mother,” and “horrible” peered out at me like miserable inmates through the barbed tangle of her paragraphs. I forced myself to begin at the beginning.

ART,