35.

At first he’d been too stiff, sitting in his office scrutinizing the book instead of just reading it as he would any other damned book. He could hear Jaime and Kira out in the kitchen. She knew he was reading it. She went on about her housework pretending it didn’t matter to her, and half Charlie’s reading problem was that he was simultaneously trying to think up what to say after he finished. If he could. What excuse could he give, however, for not finishing it in one mammoth read? “So far, so good.” “Gee, it’s great. What’s for dinner?”

He forgot himself and just read. He started giggling, then laughing out loud uncontrollably as he read his wife’s book. He knew Jaime could hear him, so he didn’t try to restrain it. The stuff was really funny. And touching, though so far from Charlie’s own early life that it seemed to be from another planet. Instead of having to make excuses, he finished it easily by five that evening. He sat at his desk, curiously empty. He had nothing to say to Jaime. He’d been sitting there laughing his ass off for three or four hours. She’d figured out by now that he thought the book was funny. Something his own book was not. And finished. And, as far as Charlie was concerned, literature. Which his book was decidedly not.

The only question before Charlie was how to let Jaime know how much he loved her book without getting into the business of his own. He got to his feet and went to the door, placing his hand on the cold knob. Shitty old iron fixture, rusty and ratty like all the fixtures in this house. He turned the knob, put a big smile on his face and pushed open the door.

Jaime sat feeding Kira. The kitchen smelled of spaghetti sauce, which simmered on the stove. Charlie looked around, conscious of Jaime’s eyes on him. He liked this kitchen. He’d been happy here, they all had. This had been a wonderful part of their lives.

“Your book is everything you hoped,” he said.

“What do you mean?” He heard anxiety in her voice, and it made him feel good. What was that? He’d have to get over that.

“I always said, you’re twice the writer I’ll ever be,” Charlie heard himself saying, damn it. Just what he didn’t want to say, but here was Jaime coming into his arms.

“Is it good?” she begged him.

“Better than good,” he improvised. Was this to be his life? “I need a beer and some dinner,” he added lamely. What was he supposed to do, dance around the room?

But dinner put things into perspective. As good as her book was, it at least had a chance of getting published, could even make money. It if got through the agent barrier, the editor barrier, the publisher barrier, the critical barrier, then at last the public barrier. Wasn’t that the point? To make one’s living as a writer? And now his wife had proved, at least to him, that she was going to do exactly that. Never mind his feelings about his own book. Work In Progress. He was after a lot. He wanted to get it all in. Etc. He could not get away from the absurd feeling that if Jaime had been sent to Korea, captured, left to rot in a prison camp and then stuck in an army TB ward for over a year, she’d have come out of it with a great novel.

“Well, you gonna send it to Mills?” he asked her the next morning.

“Why don’t we go to New York? We could fly there, take a room at the Algonquin Hotel, and walk around introducing ourselves to agents.”

“I have to teach,” Charlie heard himself saying. “But you could go.” It would be fun for her to see New York. He remembered Frankie Pippello from Kim Song. He wondered what Frankie was doing. He could look him up.

“It wouldn’t be any fun without you,” she said, pretending to pout.

“It’s so impractical.”

“Expensive and foolish. I crave doing it.”

Charlie had to remember that Jaime was a beautiful twenty-one-year-old girl, which wouldn’t hurt. Not that she needed it, but maybe she did, maybe everybody did. It was a tough game, just ask anybody they knew. Ask Dick Dubonet, fighting his lonely war against Playboy. There were things to be said in favor of not being published, Charlie realized.

“Let’s do it,” he said. “Fuck ’em.”

She laughed. “Let’s think about it.”

Just before Charlie left for work the phone rang. “It’s for you,” Jaime said to him. She handed him the phone and then walked out onto the back porch where Kira played in her pen.

“Hello?” he said.

“Charlie,” said Linda. “I hate to interrupt your writing—”

“I’m just on my way to the air base,” he said. “I teach typing today.”

“Oh, I was hoping you’d be downtown . . .”

“What’s up?”

“I just feel like talking to you, is all. Nothing important.”

“I can be late,” Charlie said. “I’ll call the base.”

He got dressed for work. They were casual at the air base, so he wore comfortable clothes, jeans, boots, old dress shirt. It was a nice day for a change, sunny and cool. He stepped out on the back porch to kiss Jaime and the baby good-bye, but they weren’t there. He could see Jaime, holding Kira, out among the trees. “Bye!” he yelled, and Jaime waved. He went back into the house and into his office. He didn’t need his briefcase today. He looked around. His manuscript, neat in its cardboard boxes. He picked them up. Heavy. He carried them out the front door and down the graveled drive. He set the two cartons next to the trash cans beside the mailbox and went back and got into his car, started it, and drove off.

He met Linda at the corner of SW Fifth and Alder. She was dressed for work in a black suit with a red blouse open at the throat. She smiled up at him. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

She led him into a little café and they sat at the counter. They were the only people in the place apart from the old man in a dirty apron behind the counter. They ordered coffee and sat quietly waiting until the old man brought it and went back to his corner. Then Linda said, without looking up, “I’m leaving Dick.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going sailing.” She turned to him. “I’m tired of Portland.”

“When do you leave?”

“In a few days. The boat’s in Astoria.”

“Where you headed?”

She smiled. “Greater Polynesia. Around the world. I don’t know. Hawaii first.”

“Sounds great,” Charlie said.

“I just wanted you to know. I always thought there was something between us, you know?”

“Yeah,” Charlie admitted. “Does Dick know you’re leaving?”

“He should, but he doesn’t. It’s just that I’m up to here.” She held her hand to her neck. “I could leave today, in fact.” She sipped her coffee. “You’re my only regret.”

“Where’s Astoria?” he asked. She told him and he said, “Let’s go.”

She looked at him. “I’ll cut class,” he said.

They got into his green Volkswagen. “Are you sure about this?” she asked him.

He looked at her blankly. He felt nothing. Had felt nothing all day. Whatever held him together all these years had dissolved, at least for now, and he felt pleasantly empty.

“I’ve always wanted to fuck you,” he said to Linda. He started the car.

“Now’s your chance.” They drove west, out of Portland.