Page 52 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

Awet December morning. Mist in the pine trees, the river beside the winding road a bold black mir- ror between white shores. Peter Baker drives past glazed summer chairs, and tables where umbrellas stand, folded, frosted, like daggers aimed at the pale sky. Daybreak is revealing yards with the strewn remnants of childhood: buckets with plastic shovels,
a baseball pitch-set with a leg missing, bikes collected near a door—a jumble of spokes and chains and welded joints, thrown in abandon, cast off, frozen.
Baker glances at his watch: 6:17. His sedan glides over the newly paved road. Past a hunting lodge now, a motel, a sign saying Sleep Beneath the Pines. All of New Hampshire seems asleep. On the motel office door, weak Christmas lights shine through the morning.
There was nothing in Baker’s pantry at home, and little in the refrigerator, so he is heading to the Mc- Donald’s out on Route 202/9, the next town over, for breakfast. He is unmarried, just days away from turn- ing fifty, childless; he is a consulting engineer who has had his own business for some ten years now.
He watches the river curve into the snowy distance and he remembers, last night—faces surrounding him: Baker’s fingers go cold on the steering wheel. He tightens his grip.
~
There was a Christmas party at the newly-renovated Continental-Manchester, put on by Combined Resin and Dye, a client. Peter Baker attended alone. The hotel was magnificent: a crowded ballroom, golden chandeliers hovering, the ceiling arched high above. Women were dressed in the subdued colors of winter, men in black; fluted glasses rose and joined. Christ- mas trees sparkled, their lights reflected in the large windows, their festivity very nearly masking the blue- gray press of winter outside.
Baker’d had one Schnapps, then two. He’d felt a little reckless. He’d listened to conversations of colleagues around him, Joe will be in college in a year, can you believe it? Sixty thousand for tuition. Sixty goddamned thousand. We’ve decided we’re too fucking old for this. He’d looked for opportunities to join in the banter: he’d joked about his upcoming milestone of a birth- day with Don Hebert, a Combined chemical engineer, and a group of others. Don’s wife Louisa, a professor, drunk, leaned in and asked—in a tone of academic inquiry—why had Baker never married? Was he
afraid of commitment? Of women? Why hadn’t he ever wanted a family? I’m still viable, Baker replied, jocular. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a harem and more chil- dren than all of you. The gathering laughed. He’d said it to defy his inquisitor, for everyone knew that when Louisa drank, she eventually arrived at the conclusion that all men were simply misogynists; Baker was try- ing to pre-empt that conversation. But now Dr. Louisa Moore-Hebert bore down on him like a pit-bull. Our poor Baker, she said. Always observing the lives of oth- ers, still dreaming about fucking some NFL cheerleader. No wife, no children to show. It’s mighty late in the game, Mr. Viable.
Shut up, for Christ’s sake, her husband whispered, fiercely. But the damage was done: talking seemed to stop around Baker, female faces drew down in astonishment, men turned their eyes to the floor. Don Hebert spirited his wife away, the two of them quarreling. Baker tried not to show his wounding: he shrugged and grinned and said he’d probably had it coming, bringing up a harem with a professor of women’s studies. Harry Roy, a Combined draftsman (Roy had coordinated with Baker on an important Kevlar-winch project recently, for a firm in Stock- holm) brought out another Schnapps and said, Well Happy Birthday anyway, you old bastard, you old son of a bitch. The others smiled and laughed with relief, pity still in their eyes, and raised their glasses. Some clapped Baker on the back.
Soon enough, he’d gone out into the cold night, carry- ing his drink, to be alone with his humiliation. He’d sat on a new set of cement steps, feeling dizzy. Sipped at his Schnapps, shivered, looking out at Manches- ter; the cold air cleared his head a little. Bright car lights made a straight line down the main highway, the Continental towered above, and there was new, frantic construction just one block over—work
lamps glancing through fences, construction vehicles shifting, grunting, accelerating. The world moved by Baker, expanding relentlessly in all directions.
~
He hadn’t slept much, lost in the words of the profes- sor. There are things you hide within yourself— things that, spoken aloud, become real and then you must deal with them. It’s mighty late in the game,
Dr. Louisa Moore-Hebert had said, with her terrible, drunken certainty. Baker tossed in the sheets and blankets. He seemed to be confronting, in his night,
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