Chilly Scenes of Winter Read Online Free PDF

for New Year’s Day dinner,” Charles says.
    “Oh, yeah. I figured I was invited.”
    “Maybe I’ll see you later, if I’m lucky enough to get out of here soon.”
    “Pete there?”
    “Yeah. I’ll have to think of some reason not to go out for a drink with him.”
    “How’s your mother?”
    “I haven’t seen her yet. Tomorrow I’m seeing Laura.”
    “That’s great. Did you call her?”
    “No. Mental telepathy.”
    “Oh. You’ve just got a feeling, huh?”
    “I was kidding. I called her. She was baking bread in her A-frame.”
    “I wish I had something to go with this chili,” Sam says. “Don’t you ever buy groceries? Maybe I could call Laura and she’d run some over.”
    “Hell,” Charles says. “With your luck she probably would. With my luck she’d fall in love with you and be rolling around in my bed when I got back.”
    “I’ll see you,” Sam says.
    “Yeah. Good night, Sam.”
    Charles walks down to his mother’s room. His mother is sitting up in bed. The curtain is pulled around the other woman’s bed. His sister is sitting in a chair beside the bed. Pete is dancing across the floor. He stops, embarrassed.
    “I was demonstrating how to turn,” Pete says.
    “Go ahead,” Charles says.
    “I did. I already did it,” Pete says, slapping Charles’s back.
    “He wants me to go dancing,” Clara says.
    Charles nods.
    “Show some enthusiasm, my boy,” Pete says, slapping his back harder. “Wouldn’t a few twirls fix anybody up?”
    Charles moves over to Susan’s chair. He wants to sit down. He wants to sit down on her lap. He would like to be smaller, and her child instead of her brother, and then he could curl up and shut his eyes, and everyone would think he was being good, instead of being bad. It is wrong not to encourage Pete, who is trying hard to be helpful. He is just a jackass.
    “Do you dance?” Charles’s mother says. It is the first time she has acknowledged his presence.
    “Yes,” Charles lies, smiling at Pete that he is going along.
    “What do you dance?” Clara asks.
    Charles cannot think of the names of any dances. “The hula,” he says.
    Susan laughs. Pete frowns.
    “Aw, he’s just kidding. All young kids dance.”
    “The tango,” Charles says. He has just remembered the name of that movie: Last Tango in Paris . Marlon Brando running around, cornering that Parisian, his dead wife, that young girl, the streets of Paris, all those people doing the tango, that girl running off, the streets of Paris, Laura.…
    “The tango!” Pete laughs. Pete is getting mad. Susan looks down, trying not to show her smile.
    “You don’t tango,” Pete says.
    “I don’t know the name of the dance I do,” Charles says. “I just sort of move around.”
    “Well, you’d know what you were doing if you’d take a few lessons,” Pete says. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Mommy. Then at the convention she could take a twirl or two like the other wives. She doesn’t want to go, because she just sits in the hotel room. We don’t have to have that, do we, Charles?”
    “No,” Charles says. “She should go.”
    Pete smiles approval.
    “Did you hear your boy say you should take a few twirls?” Pete says. Pete does not know how to get off a subject. Susan looks down, disguising a yawn. Clara reaches for the water glass and deliberately drops it.
    “I’m so clumsy,” she says, as Susan picks up the glass. Susan’s stockings are wet. “How could I be a dancer?”
    “We’re going to take a museum tour when you’re on your feet,” Pete says. “We live in a city with a fine museum, and we’re going to tour it.”
    “I don’t know anything about art,” she says.
    “What do you have to know? You can look at a picture and enjoy it, right? What did you know about children until you had them?”
    “I read Doctor Spock.”
    “There! Mommy’s going to read a book about art and then hit those pictures!” Pete says, smiling broadly.
    “If I ever get