Free Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge Page B

sitting on the kitchen windowsill?”
    “ I saw the rat,” Marie said. “I told you about it. You wouldn’t come and look.”
    “There were a lot of rats on the Upper West Side back then. Do you remember?” she asked me.
    “No,” I said. “I remember bugs, but no rats.”
    “Ah, bugs,” said Celeste. “Those enormous roaches. I remember when I was taking a bath, and this roach fell into the tub. I’d never seen such an enormous cockroach.”
    “I remember your scream,” Marie said. “I’d never heard such an enormous scream.”
    “Those were difficult times,” Celeste said.
    Celeste Marie, Marie Celeste. My low-flying stars.
    REGENZEIT
     
    I spent the rest of the day on the sofa, reading Progress in Flying Machines . When it got dark I thought about going over to the Regenzeits’. I had promised Kerem I would visit soon, that I would consider myself a part of the family, just like I had been in the old days, but no one was home. They must be working late, I thought, getting Snowbird ready for the winter. I imagined Yesim at her desk, a pencil stuck in her hair. I imagined a brilliant blue day, the ground crackling with golden leaves, Yesim and me sitting on the Regenzeits’ porch, wearing bulky sweaters, holding mugs of hot cider. Then, in my imagination, one of my hands unpeeled itself from the side of the cup and settled on Yesim’s shoulder. In no time my tongue was in her mouth, my hands were in her black hair. In my imagination.
    It was raining in gray sheets when I woke up the next morning, and with the rain came the autumn cold. I didn’t know how to turn on the heat; finally I went to the basement and looked at the furnace. It had gone out, and I couldn’t get it to start. I called the furnace company; they said they’d send someone as soon as they could. Looking out the kitchen window, I determined that Yesim drove a Subaru Outback, and Kerem a Ford Explorer. I went up to the attic bedroom and discovered that the boxes that filled the room were full of questionnaires left over from my grandfather’s lawsuit. Put a check next to every statement you agree with: 1. Morning is the time when I feel best. 2. My weight stays the same all year round. 3. I rarely cry for no reason. 4. I consider myself a “social person.” I sat on the bed and spent a long time thinking about I don’t know what. At five o’clock I called the furnace people again. A woman explained to me that they were waiting for a shipment of heating oil, which had not arrived because of a late-season hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. You want heat, talk to ExxonMobil, she said. I told her that I didn’t think ExxonMobil would take my call. Maybe not, she said, her voice weary and stiff.
    Around six-thirty, I drove to town and bought a six-pack of Genesee Cream Ale and a box of chocolate donuts. Two teenage girls stood outside the gas station, in the shelter by the pumps, wearing more makeup than I would have expected girls at a gas station to wear.
    “Hey, mister,” one of them said as I passed, “will you get us some beer?” She was prettier than she looked at first; I wanted to tell her not to wear so much makeup. I said I’d give each of them a beer if they wanted, but I didn’t feel comfortable buying them more than that.
    The girl said they needed it for a party, it wasn’t like they were going to drink it all. I said no, really, I couldn’t, and the girl sighed and said, “OK, give us each a beer.”
    I wondered whose daughter she was, where she lived, whether she had grown up in Thebes. For a moment I thought of asking if I could go to the party, if only so that I would have something to do on Saturday night. But the thought of being at a party, any party, was unpleasant, and in any case I doubted the girls would agree to take me. I pulled two beers out of the six-pack and handed them to the girls, with a warning not to drink in public. They rolled their eyes and made complicated hand gestures, as if