The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t seem like the most excited bride-to-be. I mean, you do seem excited, but . . .”
    Cynthia continued to eat.
    “Well?” he asked. “I was just being polite when I said it was none of my business.”
    “Oh, that’s all right. Yes, I’m very happy. I’m going to come back to work after I’m married, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    Mr. Greer was staring at her. She had said something wrong.
    “I’m not sure that we’ll go on a honeymoon. We’re going to buy a house.”
    “Oh? Been looking at some houses?”
    “No. We might look for houses.”
    “You’re very hard to talk to,” Mr. Greer said.
    “I know. I’m not thinking quickly. I make so many mistakes typing.”
    A mistake to have told him that. He didn’t pick it up.
    “February will be a nice time to have off,” he said pleasantly.
    “I picked February because I’m dieting, and by then I’ll have lost weight.”
    “Oh? My wife is always dieting. She’s eating fourteen grapefruit a week on this new diet she’s found.”
    “That’s the grapefruit diet.”
    Mr. Greer laughed.
    “What did I do that was funny?”
    She sees Mr. Greer is embarrassed. A mistake to have embarrassed him.
    “I don’t think right when I haven’t had eight hours’ sleep, and I haven’t even had close to that. And on this diet I’m always hungry.”
    “Are you hungry? Would you like another hot dog?”
    “That would be nice,” she says.
    He orders another hot dog and talks more as she eats.
    “Sometimes I think it’s best to forget all this dieting,” he says. “If so many people are fat, there must be something to it.”
    “But I’ll get fatter and fatter.”
    “And then what?” he says. “What if you did? Does your fiancé like thin women?”
    “He doesn’t care if I lose weight or not. He probably wouldn’t care.”
    “Then you’ve got the perfect man. Eat away.”
    When she finishes that hot dog, he orders another for her.
    “A world full of food, and she eats fourteen grapefruit a week.”
    “Why don’t you tell her not to diet, Mr. Greer?”
    “She won’t listen to me. She reads those magazines, and I can’t do anything.”
    “Charlie hates those magazines, too. Why do men hate magazines?”
    “I don’t hate all magazines. I don’t hate Newsweek .”
    She tells Charlie that her boss took her to lunch. At first he is impressed. Then he seems let down. Probably he is disappointed that his boss didn’t take him to lunch.
    “What did you talk about?” Charlie asks.
    “Me. He told me I could get fat—that it didn’t matter.”
    “What else did he say?”
    “He said his wife is on the grapefruit diet.”
    “You aren’t very talkative. Is everything all right?”
    “He said not to marry you.”
    “What did he mean by that?”
    “He said to go home and eat and eat and eat but not to get married. One of the girls said that before she got married he told her the same thing.”
    “What’s that guy up to? He’s got no right to say that.”
    “She got divorced, too.”
    “What are you trying to tell me?” Charlie says.
    “Nothing. I’m just telling you about the lunch. You asked about it.”
    “Well, I don’t understand all this. I’d like to know what’s behind it.”
    Cynthia does not feel that she has understood, either. She feels sleep coming on, and hopes that she will drop off before long. Her second husband, Lincoln, felt that she was incapable of understanding anything. He had a string of Indian beads that he wore under his shirt, and on their wedding night he removed the beads before they went to bed and held them in front of her face and shook them and said, “What’s this?” It was the inside of her head, Lincoln told her. She understood that she was being insulted. But why had he married her? She had not understood Lincoln, and, like Charlie, she didn’t understand what Mr. Greer was up to. “Memorize,” she heard her English teacher saying. “Anyone can memorize.” Cynthia began to go