"Professor," Harry says ironically (he is a professor, Bishop is not).
Putting slices of duck in bean water while Christie watches "The Adventures of Robin Hood," with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, on the kitchen TV. At the same time Hank Williams Jr. is singing on the FM.
"I fixed the damned dishwasher. Took me two days."
"We just ate," Harry says. "You cant be hungry. You cant possibly be hungry."
Earlier hed taken her to a doctor, who found nothing. "Youve got a bellyache," the doctor said, "stick with fluids and call me if it doesnt go away." Katie is beautiful, tall with dark hair.
"Did it help?"
"This is Christie," Malcolm says. "Weve just given her lunch. Weve just eaten all the dim sum in the world."
"And that plug I live with."
"Well maybe he knows where the big bucks are."
"Actually I cant stand artists," she says.
Bishop in the crowd, thirty dollars in his pocket in case he has to buy a pal a drink.
Standing behind Malcolm is a beautiful young woman.
"I dont care but why under my windows?"
Hes been picking up old ladies whove been falling down in front of him, these last few days. One sitting in the middle of an intersection waving her arms while dangerous Checkers curved around her. The old ladies invariably display a superb fighting spirit. "Thank you, young man!"
"Yes," she says, "I am."
"Very good," she says. "I mean Im surprised. Really."
At some point during each summer shell say: "Why did you and my mother split up?"
"Well."
Theres a radio playing somewhere in the building, big-band music, he feels rather than hears it. The steady, friendly air-conditioner hustling in the next room.
Bishop can understand this. He nods seriously.
Harrys got not much hair and has lost weight since he split with Tom. Malcolm is the single most cheerful individual Bishop has ever met.
"How long does this take?" Christie asks. "Im not rushing you, Im just curious."
"Like who in particular?"
Harrys university has just hired a new president whos thirty-two. Harry cant get over it.
Maybe she smokes!
"Heres sixty seconds on fenders," says the radio.
"Thirty-two! I mean I dont think the boards got both oars in the water."
Not yet! Very happily, Bishop pours more wine.
"Do you want to try a glass of milk?"
"Look, kid, gimme a break." He blots his forehead with his arm. "You want some cambric tea?"
Well, he doesnt give her many presents.
Why do I live this way? Best I can do.
His ex-wife is otherwise very sensible, and thrifty, too.
Bishop goes into the kitchen and turns on the light. He wonders what a drink would do to him, or for him -- put him to sleep? He decides against it. He turns on the tiny kitchen TV and spends a few minutes watching some kind of Japanese monster movie. The poorly designed monster is picking up handfuls of people and, rather thoughtfully, eating them. Bishop thinks about Tokyo. He was once in bed with a Japanese girl during a mild earthquake, and hes never forgotten the feeling of the floor falling out from underneath him, or the womans terror. He suddenly remembers her name, Michiko. "You no butterfly on me?" she had asked, when they met. He was astonished to learn that "butterfly" meant, in the patois of the time, "abandon." She cooked their meals over a charcoal brazier and they slept in a niche in the wall closed off from the rest of her room by sliding paper doors. Bishop worked on the copy desk at Stars & Stripes. One day a wire photo came in showing the heads of the four (then) womens services posing for a group portrait. Bishop slugged the caption LEADING LADIES. The elderly master sergeant who was serving as city editor brought the photo back to Bishops desk. "We cant do this," he said. "Aint it a shame?"
"Yeah," she says, shaking the ice in her glass. "Im reacting like a bozo."
When they walk together on the street she takes his arm, holding on tightly (because, he figures, she spends so much of her time away, away). Very often people give them peculiar looks.
"And that other one who cuts off parts of himself, whittles on himself, that fries my ass."
She gets up and walks over to the counter and takes a Lark from his pack.
Hes given her Pepto-Bismol, if she wakes again hell try Tylenol. He wraps himself in the sheet, pulls his t-shirt away from his damp chest.
"Youve given up."
"You could find somebody. Youre handsome for your age."
"Moderate amount of fun. Some fun. Not much fun. What can I say?"
Its five-thirty. Faint light in the big windows.
"I dont want any milk," she says, turning to lie on her front. "Sit with me."
He remembers a dream in which he dreamed that his nose was as dark and red as a Bing cherry. As would be appropriate.
Walking down West Broadway on a Saturday afternoon. Barking art caged in the high white galleries, dont go inside or itll get you, leap into your lap and cover your face with kisses. Some goes to the other extreme, snarls and shows its brilliant teeth. O art I wont hurt you if you dont hurt me. Citizens parading, plump-faced and bone-faced, lightly clad. A young black boy toting a Board of Education trombone case. A fellow with oddly-cut hair the color of marigolds and a roll of roofing felt over his shoulder.
"Talk to me."
"Oh very good. Thats very neat. I thank you."
Bishop, chopping parsley, is taking quick glances at her to see what she looks like with a glass of wine in her hand. Some people look good with white wine, some dont.
Now hes sweating, little chills at intervals. He gets a sheet from the bedroom and sits in the kitchen with the sheet draped around him, guru-style. He can hear Katie turning restlessly on the couch.
"Im sorry."
"Redford is the one I like," she says.
"Not so," he says. "Katie, go to sleep now. Think of a great big pile of Gucci handbags."
"Book about how to fix home appliances. The dishwasher was broken. Then he bought me a screwdriver. This really nice screwdriver."
Very happily, Bishop begins to talk. He tells her that the night before he had smelled smoke, had gotten up and checked the apartment, knowing that a pier was on fire over by the river and suspecting it was that. He had turned on the TV to get the all-news channel and while dialing had encountered the opening credits of a Richard Widmark cop film called "Brocks Last Case" which he had then sat down and watched, his faithful Scotch at his side, until five oclock in the morning. Richard Widmark was one of his favorite actors in the whole world, he told her, because of the way in which Richard Widmark was able to convey, what was the word, resilience. You could knock Richard Widmark down, he said, you could even knock Richard Widmark down repeatedly, but you had better bear in mind while knocking Richard Widmark down that Richard Widmark was pretty damn sure going to bounce back up and batter your conk --
"Another hour."
"No," Christie says, "not yet."
Out on the street again, he is bumped into by a man, then another man, then a woman. And heres Harry in lemon pants with his Britisher friend, Malcolm.
"Then you get Mo-net and Ma-net, thats a little tricky, Mo-net was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma-net was the one did Bareass On the Grass and shit, his colors were browns and greens. Then you get Bonnard, he did all the interiors and shit, amazing light, and then you get Van Guk, hes the one with the ear and shit, and Say-zanne, hes the one with the apples and shit, you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures, you get my man Mondrian, hes the one with the rectangles and shit, his colors were red yellow and blue, you get Moholy-Nagy, he did all the plastic thingummies and shit, you get Mar-cel Du-champ, hes the devil in human form. . ."
Looking out of the windows in the early morning he can sometimes see the two old ladies who live in the apartment whose garden backs up to his building having breakfast by candlelight. He can never figure out whether they are terminally romantic or whether, rather, theyre trying to save electricity.
He throws handfuls of sliced onions into the water, then a can of tomato paste.
This is and is not true.
"The thing I like about Redford is," she says, and for ten minutes she tells him about Robert Redford.
Shes telling him something about her windows.
"Daddy," she says, not looking at him.
"Harry, Malcolm."
Hes opened a bottle of Robert Mondavi table red.
He admires the way she organizes her life -- that is, the way she gets done what she wants done. A little wangling, a little nagging, a little lets-go-take-a-look and Bishop has sprung for a new pair of boots, handsome ankle-height black diablo numbers that shell wear with black ski pants. . .
"I like a place where I can take my shoes off," she says, as Errol Flynn throws a whole dead deer on the banquet table.
He gives her his Art History lecture.
"Who am I going to live with?"
"No, really." She tears off a fistful of French bread. "Men are quite odd. I saw this guy at the farmers market on Union Square on Saturday? He was standing in front of a table full of greens and radishes and corn and this and that, behind a bunch of other people, and he was staring at this farmer-girl who was wearing cut-offs and a tank top and every time she leaned over to grab a cabbage or whatnot he was getting a shot of her breasts, which were, to be fair, quite pretty -- I mean how much fun can that be?"
She sighs and turns her head away.
"What about him?"
"Do you live with anybody?" Christie asks.
"You dont try."
"You could lose some weight."
Shes wearing a purple shirt and is deeply tanned with black hair -- looks like an Indian, in fact, the one who sells Mazola on TV.
"Yes?"
"Then Ill have a little vodka. Straight. Ice. If you dont mind."
Bloody artists.
He switches channels and gets Dolly Parton singing, by coincidence, "House of the Rising Sun."
Bishop sits again on the edge of the couch. How large she is!
"Thats the ox-tail soup mix." Why is he serving her cassoulet in summer? Its hot.
Bishop goes back into the kitchen and makes himself a drink.
Bishops daughter is ill, stomach pains. Shes sleeping on the couch.
"Well," he says to Christie, "are you hungry?"
A groan, heartfelt but muted, from the other room. Shes awake.
He dishes up the cassoulet and fetches hot bread from the oven.
Bishop is immediately seized by a desire to cook for Christie -- either his Eight-Bean Soup or his Crash Cassoulet.
"Would you like to go to bed now?"
As who is not? "What kind of an artist?"
He tastes the cassoulet with a long spoon. More salt.
Christies in Seattle, and plans to stay.
Still wearing the yellow sheet, he gets up and goes into the other room.
"A little."
Could he bear a Scotch? He thinks not.
"A painter. Hes in Seattle. He needs rain."
He gets up and goes in to look at her. The red-and-white cotton robe shes wearing is, tucked up under her knees. "I just threw up again," she says.
In the afternoon theyd gone, groaning, to a horror movie about wolves taking over the city. At vivid moments she jumped against him, pressing her breasts into his back. He moved away.
But there had to be. Bishop chops steadfastly with his Three Sheep brand Chinese chopper, made in gray Fusan.
"Tastes like real cassoulet," she says.
"Why do you live like this? By yourself?"
Its three oclock in the morning.
Bishop loves women who drink.
"How much do you weigh?"
"It was your fault," he answers. "Yours. You made too much noise, as a kid, I couldnt work." His ex-wife had once told Katie this as an explanation for the divorce, and hell repeat it until its untruth is marble, a monument.
"Daddy?"
"My daughter is here sometimes. Summers and Christmas." A little tarragon into the bean water. "How about you?"
Into a gallery because it must be done. The artists hung twenty EVERLAST heavy bags in rows of four, youre invited to have a bash. People are giving the bags every kind of trouble. Bishop, unable to resist, bangs one with his fabled left, and hurts his hand.
"She doesnt do that any more. And the chewing gum was not poorly placed."
It appears that she is also mighty fond of Clint Eastwood.
"Hes an artist."
Theres some leftover duck in the refrigerator he can use for the cassoulet.
Bishop too is ill, chills and sweating, a flu. He cant sleep. In bed, he listens to the occasional groans from two rooms away. Katie is fifteen and spends the summer with him every year.
"Theres this guy."
"He gave me a book once."
"What was it?"
He once asked her what something (a box? a chair?) was made of and she told him it was made out of tree.
"Maybe could have had more tomato."
Shes asleep.
"Its supposed to."
Not enough.
Outside on the street, someone kicks on a motorcycle and revs it unforgivingly. His bedroom is badly placed.
Hes forty-nine. Writing a history of 19th Century American painting, about which he knows a thing or two.
Bishop has the sense that the conversation has strayed, like a bad cow, from the proper path.
"One eighty-five."
"Hungry, hungry, hungry," she says, taking Bishops arm, which is, can you believe it, sticking out.
"Old Clint Eastwood," he says, shaking his head admiringly. "Were ready."
He sits on the edge of the couch and rubs her back. "Think of something terrific," he says. "Lets get your mind off your stomach. Think about fishing. Think about the time you threw the hotel keys out of the window." Once, in Paris, she had done just that, from a sixth-floor window, and Bishop had had visions of some Frenchman walking down the Quai des Grands-Augustins with a set of heavy iron hotel keys buried in his brain. Hed found the keys in a potted plant outside the hotel door.
"I cant sleep."
Harry is still talking about the new president. "I mean he did his dissertation on bathing trends."
He makes a mental note to buy some Mazola -- a case, maybe.
"Like that woman who puts chewing gum on her stomach --"
