Free Saul and Patsy by Charles Baxter Page A

sure.
    Patsy nudged him in the middle of the night. “I know what it is,” she said.
    “What?”
    “What’s bothering you.”
    He waited. “What? What is it?”
    “You’re like men. You’re a man and you’re like them. You want to be everything. You want to have endless endless potential. But then you grow up. In spite of yourself. And you’re one thing. Your body is, anyway. It’s trapped in
this
life. You have to say goodbye to the dreams of everything.” She waited. “You don’t want to do that one little bit, do you?”
    “Dreams of everything.”
    “Yes.” She rolled over so that she could look at him in the dark. “Don’t pretend that you don’t understand. You want to be a whole roomful of people, Saul. That’s kid stuff.” She let her head drop so that her hair brushed against him.
    “What about you?”
    “What about me? I’m not a problem the way you’re a problem. I don’t want to be anything else,” she said sleepily, beginning to rub his back. “I do want a better job at the bank, I’ll tell you that. But I sure as hell don’t have to be a great person. I just want to do a little of this and a little of that as long as I can make some serious money.” She waited. “You know. To get by. For that trip to Finland.”
    “What’s wrong with ambitions?” he asked. “You could be great at something.”
    Her hand moved into his hair, tickling him. “Being great is too tiring, Saul, and it’s boring. Look at the great ambition people. They’re wrecking the earth, aren’t they. They’re leaving it in bits and scraps. Look at the Lord of Misrule, our current president.” She concentrated on him in the dark. “Saul,” she said.
    “Your diaphragm’s not on.”
    “I know.”
    “But.”
    “So?”
    “Well, what if?”
    “What if? You’d be a father, that’s what if.” She had turned him so that she was right up against him, her breasts pressing him, challenging him.
    “No,” he said. He drew back. “Not yet. Let me figure this out on my own. There’d be no future.”
    “For the baby?”
    “No. For me.” He waited, trying to figure out how to say this. “I’d have to be one person forever. Does that make sense?”
    “From you, it does.” She pulled herself slightly away from him. They rearranged themselves.
    The following Saturday he drove into Five Oaks for a haircut. When his hair was so long that it made the back of his neck itch, he went to Harold, the barber, and had it trimmed back. Saul liked Harold and his pensive mannerisms, even though Harold was a pale Lutheran, and a terrible barber. Harold made up for it with his occasional affability, and he happened to be in the same bowling league with Saul and sometimes played basketball at the same times that Saul did. Many of the men in Five Oaks looked slightly peculiar and asymmetrical, thanks to Harold. The last time Saul had come in, Harold had been deep in a conversation with a woman who was accusing him of things; Saul couldn’t tell exactly what Harold was being accused of, but it sounded like a lover’s quarrel, and Saul liked that. Anyone else’s troubles diminished his own.
    By coincidence, the same woman was back again in the barbershop with her son, whose hair Harold was cutting when Saul passed by the ancient barber pole before he rang the bell over the door as he entered. To pass the time and achieve a moment’s invisibility, he picked up a newspaper from the next chair over and read the morning’s headlines.
    SHOTS FIRED AT HOLBEIN REACTOR Iraqi Terrorists Suspected
    Somebody was always shooting at something. Shielded by his paper, Saul heard the woman whispering instructions to Harold, and Harold’s faint, exasperated “Louise, I can do this.” Saul pretended to read the article. The shots, it turned out, had been harmless. Even though there had been no damage, some sort of investigation was going on. Saul thought Iraqis could do better than this.
    There was more whispering, which Saul