Free Falling in Place by Ann Beattie Page B

fireworks.”
    “I don’t think he lives there anymore. I think he moved to the East Side a couple of months ago.”
    “He wasn’t a good friend of yours?”
    “No. Why?”
    “So how come you went to his party?”
    “I work with him. He invited me. How come you’re so talkative all of a sudden?”
    “I just wanted to know.”
    “I don’t think he’s having a party this year.”
    “No big deal,” John Joel said.
    John sat down again, thinking that John Joel must have started that conversation to get him to stay. Maybe he was afraid of going to see the orthodontist, or maybe he doubted that Nick would show up. John picked up a magazine.
    “I thought you were going,” John Joel said.
    “Do you want me to go?”
    “Sure,” John Joel said.
    John sighed and got up. He tried to open the door, but he had to catch the receptionist’s eye to be buzzed out. She looked at him suspiciously. She looked at him the way his mother would look at him if she knew that he was leaving John Joel alone. She always acted like New York was a huge cage that you walked into, with animals about to leap when you made the first sudden move. She was always jumpy in New York. It was the one thing she had in common with Louise. The most innocent things disturbed Louise: water gushing from a fire hydrant, a woman leaning out a window who was obviously only going to water her plants. Every siren made her turn her head; everyone who stared at her in a subway car was going to follow her off. In the beginning, he had only thought about making her happy by moving them to the suburbs. Now she hated him for being able to cope with the city when she couldn’t. And she hated the suburbs because there weren’t any intelligent people. Tiffy was intelligent. Only Tiffy. The truth was, she liked
normal
intelligent people, and they were hard to find. Even Nick was too strange for her. A cowboy hat and a black date made him, in her mind, no different from an extra in a Fellini movie. Horst, who had had the Fourth of July party the year before, couldn’t have been as normal as he seemed if he slept in his sleeping bag, naked. Which part of that is odd? John had asked her. “Both parts,” she had said. He had hoped that just the sleeping bag would seem odd.
    He went into a coffee shop, feeling guilty for leaving John Joel alone in the doctor’s office. But he hated to treat him like a child,the way Louise did. Maybe letting him handle it on his own would give him self-confidence. He drank a black coffee, pouring a little water into the cup to cool it while two men who worked there argued about what song titles ought to be put in the jukebox. A tall fat man sitting on a stool at the counter kept whispering to them, cupping his hand over a piece of paper. “ ‘Greek selection’ is good enough,” one said, and the other hit him with a dishtowel, saying, “The songs have names. You think all Greek songs are ‘Never on Sunday’?” Finally, both men had towels and were slapping each other’s shoulders. Two women waited by the cash register. “ ‘Oh you can kiss me on a Mon-day, a Mon-day, a Mon-day,’ ” one man sang, and the tall fat man shrugged in disgust. The other man swatted the man who was dancing and singing. “Can I have a bagel and a coffee to go?” one of the women by the cash register said. “ ‘Or you can kiss me on a Tues-day, a Tues-day, a Tues-day, a Tues-day’s very good,’ ” the man sang. He was jumping in the air and clicking his heels together, hands cupped over his head. “ ‘Greek selection,’ ” the other man said. “Just write it down, and that’s that.” The tall man put his head in his hands and let it all go on. One of the women walked out, but the one who had asked for the bagel just gave her order again. John left a dollar, without asking for a check, and went out. The coffee had given him a lift. He looked up at the sky: still overcast, but a few breaks of light. He checked his watch and went