Saul and Patsy by Charles Baxter Read Free Book Online Page B

number on an old rotary phone, laughing and whispering as she did so.
    He was left alone in the living room. Having nothing else to do, he looked around: high ceilings and elaborate wainscoting, lamps, table, rug, dog, calendar, the usual crucifix on the wall above the TV. There was something about the room that bothered him, and it took a moment before he knew what it was. It felt like a museum of earlier American feelings. Not a single ironic sentence had ever been spoken here. Everything in the room was sincere, everything except himself. In the midst of all this midwestern earnestness, he was the one thing wrong. What was he doing here? What was he doing anywhere? He was accustomed to asking himself such questions.
    Mad Dog’s party now seemed to be months, or years, ago.
    “Mr. Bernstein?”
    Saul turned around and saw the man of the house, who at first glance still seemed to be a boy, standing at the bottom of the stairs. He had his arms crossed, and he wore a sleepy but alert look on his face. He had on boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and Saul recognized, underneath the brown hair and the beard, a student from last year, Emory . . . something. Emory McPhee. That was it. A good-looking, solid kid. He had married this woman, Anne, last year, both of them barely eighteen years old, and moved out to this place. That was it. That was who they were. He had heard that Emory had become a housepainter.
    “Emory,” Saul said. The boy was stocky—he had played varsity football starting in his sophomore year—and he looked at Saul now with sleepy inquisitiveness. “Emory, my wife and I have had an accident, over there, on the other side of your field.”
    “What kind of accident, Mr. Bernstein? Are you okay?”
    “We drove off the road.” Saul waited, his hands in his pockets. Then he said the rest of it. “The car turned over on us. But I think we’re all right.”
    “Wow,” Emory said. “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt. That’s amazing. Good thing it wasn’t worse.”
    “Well, yes, but the car was going slow.” Saul always sounded stupid to himself late at night. The boy’s bland, blue-eyed gaze stayed on him now, not moving, genial but inquisitorial, and Saul thought of all the people who had hated school, never liked even a minute of it except maybe the sports, and maintained a low-level suspicion of teachers for the rest of their lives. They voted down school-bond issues. They didn’t even like to buy pencils.
    “How’d you go off the road?”
    “I fell asleep, Emory. We’d been to a party at Mr. Bettermine’s and I fell asleep at the wheel. Never happened to me before.”
    “Wow,” Emory said again, but slowly this time, with no real surprise or inflection in his voice. He shrugged his shoulders, then bent down as if he were doing calisthenics. Saul knew that his own breath smelled of beer, so there was no point in going into that. “Do you want a cup of coffee? I’d offer you a beer, but we don’t have it.”
Besides, you’ve already had one too
many.
    Saul tried to smile, an effort. “I don’t think so, Emory. Not tonight.” He looked down at the floor, at his socks—he had taken off his muddy shoes—and saw an ashtray filled with cigarette butts. “But I would like a cigarette, if you could spare one.”
    “Sure.” The boy reached down and offered the pack in Saul’s direction. “Didn’t know you smoked. Didn’t know you had any vices at all.” He smiled. “Until now.”
    They exchanged a look. “I’m like everybody else,” Saul said. “Sometimes the right thing just gets loose from me and I don’t do it.” He picked up a book of matches. He would have to watch his sentences: that one hadn’t made any sense. On the outside of the matchbook was an advertisement.
    SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE
    ***see inside***
    Saul put the matchbook into his pocket after lighting up.
    “Were you drunk?” the boy asked suddenly.
    “No, I don’t think so.”
    “Teachers shouldn’t drink,”