"Will you stop the car?" Janine/Anya says.

"We're almost home," Coleman tells her. "Cut it out, I mean it."

"You can let me off anywhere," Lucky says.

Silence. Coleman's head is throbbing. When they reach the house, he walks around the car and opens their door.

"That was dicey," says Lucky.

The pest control truck is gone. Peg comes out and stands on the porch, arms folded in the slight chill that has come with the waning afternoon. "I thought something might've happened," she says.

Janine/Anya hugs her mother and then walks into the house, half turning to say, "The a.s.shole there is somebody named Lucky."

Lucky offers his little white hand. "Forgive the confusion," he says. "'If I could use your phone to call a cab."

"I don't understand," Peg says. "Are you two-together?"

"Well, we were." He shakes his head, looking down.

"Janine, come out here," says Peg.

Janine/Anya comes to the door. "My name is not Janine anymore, G.o.d d.a.m.n it."

"Hey, who do you think you're talking to?" Coleman says.

"We got in an argument on the plane," Lucky says. "It's stupid."

"No, I learned something about you," Janine/Anya says. "I learned that you have to have your own way in everything and that you think the truth happens always to coincide with whatever the h.e.l.l you happen to be thinking at the time."

"Oh, and you're the only one who knows any truth, is that it?"

"Both of you shut up," Coleman says. "Jesus Christ."

For what seems an excruciatingly long moment, no one says anything.

"You want to use the phone?" he says to Lucky.

Janine/Anya storms back into the house, followed by her mother.

"I don't really have any money," Lucky says.

He and Coleman carry the bags into the house. It takes four trips. Peg and Janine/Anya remain upstairs for a long time. The two men sit in the living room, with all the luggage and the bags and boxes between them on the floor. They can hear the low murmur of the women contending with each other. Janine/Anya sobs, and curses.

Finally, Coleman says, "What happened?"

The other man is startled, and has to take a moment to breathe. "I don't even know. She's tense. She didn't want to come home."

Coleman is silent.

"I mean she didn't want to give up."

"Are you involved?"

The other man doesn't answer.

"I guess it's none of my business."

"No."

Coleman feels the blood rising in him. "Although this is my house, and I'm not gonna tolerate this kind of thing."

"We're married, sir. That's my wife up there."

He comes to his feet, but then sinks back down in the chair.

"And I'm this close to taking a taxicab out of here."

Peg comes downstairs, walks through the kitchen, and pours a gla.s.s of water. She brings it into the room and offers it to Lucky.

"No, thanks," he says.

"Take it," she says, with some force. "And cool off." Then she turns to Coleman, with the slightest motion of unsteadiness, as though she had suffered a sudden vertigo, and says, "I guess you've been told, too."

He nods.

She sighs. "The poor kid sprayed the foam as far as it would go. And then we found another entrance, under the side porch. He thinks it's the same nest and he's going to need some more foam and some other kind of equipment because of where it is. And he thinks the thing extends around in the wall to the opening we saw."

"So the room is out," Coleman says.

"I'll sleep on the floor," says Lucky.

"I wish somebody'd told me," Peg says. "It would've been nice if somebody had told me about it."

"Maybe I can move some things out of the workroom," Coleman says.

"I could go look for a motel or something," says Lucky.

"What's your name, anyway, son?"

"Lucky."

"Tell me your name, will you? First, middle, and last, okay?"

"Woodrow Warren Copley. But I don't think it matters because I'm leaving."

"You need a lift somewhere?" Coleman asks him.

"No," says Peg. "He's not going anywhere. Janine's going to have his baby."

Coleman stares at him. There is nothing he can think to say or do. His vision seems to be leaching out, light seeping from the pupils of his eyes. He thinks he might keel over out of the chair, and he holds on to the arms. "Okay," he says. "Now suppose you tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on here."

"She just did," says Lucky, indicating Peg with a gesture.

"I want to hear it from you, boy."

"I'm not a boy. I'm twenty-nine years old."

"You look like you're about fifteen. And I don't mean it as a compliment either."

"Everett, that's enough," says Peg. "They're having an argument. Stay out of it."

He looks at his wife. The disbelief and unhappiness in her face makes him wince. "Jesus Christ," he says. "Jesus Christ."

Peg turns to Lucky. "I'm involved enough, though, to know that you brought our situation into the argument. Tell me, young man, what did you think that would do? Was it just to win? Was that it? Just to hurt your new wife and win your point?"

"What're you talking about?" Coleman says.

"I shouldn't have mentioned the-the charges," says Lucky. "She shouldn't've told you I mentioned it."

"I got it out of her," Peg says.

He gazes off, frowning, looking like a pouting boy. With that feminine motion he pushes the hair back over his shoulder. "We were-we were arguing about appearances. That was one of the things we were arguing about. We argue about absolutely everything."

Coleman stands. "Get out of here."

"No," says his wife. "That's not going to happen."

"If I decide to leave," Lucky mutters, "nothing will stop me."

Coleman hauls himself outside with a series of lurching strides, weak in the legs and fighting the sensation that he's about to collapse. He goes out onto the lawn, in the chilly sun, fists clenched, heart drumming. His own momentum seems part of a single staggering motion, and he's faintly surprised to find himself at the side of the house, peering in to where the foam drips down the wall. Across the way, Wilkins is shouting at his son again. The boy is attempting to lift a loaded wheelbarrow.

"Come on, try. You're not even trying."

Coleman turns, stares. Wilkins cuffs the boy on the back of the head, and stands there shouting at him. "When're you gonna stop being a baby!" The boy is crying. And for Coleman, now, suddenly something breaks inside, a shattering, deep. He starts across the wide s.p.a.ce between the two lawns. He's halfway across the gravel lane before Wilkins turns from the boy. Wilkins seems curious, and not unfriendly, until he discerns the expression on Coleman's face. Then he draws himself inward slightly, stepping back. The boy looks frightened, white-faced, mouth agape, crying. Coleman hears his wife calling his name from the house behind him.

"What is it?" says Wilkins, raising one hand to protect himself.

Coleman strikes across the raised arm, hits the other man a glancing blow, but then steps in and connects with a straight left hand, feeling the bones of that fist crack on the jaw, and Wilkins goes down. Wilkins is writhing, dumbstruck, at Coleman's feet, then lies still, half-conscious, on the fresh-cut gra.s.s. There is the shouting coming from somewhere, and a small flailing force, clamoring at his middle. He takes hold of swinging arms and realizes it's the boy, trying to hit him, crying and swinging with everything he has, all the strength of his ten-year-old body.

"Stop," Coleman tells him. "Wait. Stop it, now. Quit-quit it." He grabs hold, and the boy simply glares at him, tears streaming from his eyes.

"Everett," Peg calls from the yard, standing at the edge of it, arms folded, her face twisted with fright. "Everett, please." A few feet behind her, holding tight to each other, his daughter and new son-in-law are approaching.

He lets the boy go, watches him kneel to help his father, crying, laying his head down on his father's chest, sobbing. Wilkins lifts one hand and gingerly places it on the back of the boy's head, a caress.

"Everett," Peg says, crying. "Please."

And now Wilkins's wife shouts from their porch, "I've called the police. Do you hear me, Everett Coleman? I've called the police. The police are on their way."

Coleman walks across to his own yard and on, toward the house. Wilkins is being helped up, wife on one side, the boy on the other. Peg, still crying, watches them, standing at the edge of the gravel lane. Janine/Anya and Lucky are a few feet behind her, arm in arm, looking like two people huddled against a cold wind. Peg turns and looks at him, and then the others do, too.

"I'm waiting here," he shouts, almost choking on the words. "Just let them come."

"G.o.d," Peg says.

"I'm waiting," he calls to her, to them. To all of them.

Ann Beattie.

THE WORKING GIRL.

This is a story about Jeanette, who is a working girl. She sometimes thinks of herself as a traveler, a seductress, a secret gourmet. She takes a one-week vacation in the summer to see her sister in Michigan, buys lace-edged silk underpants from a mail-order catalogue, and has improvised a way, in America, to make creme fraiche, which is useful on so many occasions.

Is this another story in which the author knows the main character all too well?

Let's suppose, for a moment, that the storyteller is actually mystified by Jeanette, and only seems to stand in judgment because words come easily. Let's imagine that in real life there is, or once was, a person named Jeanette, and that from a conversation the storyteller had with her, it could be surmised that Jeanette has a notion of freedom, though the guilty quiver of the mouth when she says "Lake Michigan" is something of a giveaway about how she really feels. If the storyteller is a woman, Jeanette might readily confide that she is a seductress, but if the author is a man, Jeanette will probably keep quiet on that count. Creme fraiche is creme fraiche, and not worth thinking about. But back to the original supposition: Let's say that the storyteller is a woman, and that Jeanette discusses the pros and cons of the working life, calling a spade a spade, and greenbacks greenbacks, and if Jeanette is herself a good storyteller, Lake Michigan sounds exciting, and if she isn't, it doesn't. Let's say that Jeanette talks about the romance in her life, and that the storyteller finds it credible. Even interesting. That there are details: Jeanette's lover makes a photocopy of his hand and drops the piece of paper in her in-box; Jeanette makes a copy of her hand and has her trusted friend Charlie hang it in the men's room, where it is allowed to stay until Jeanette's lover sees it, because it means nothing to anyone else. If the storyteller is lucky, they will exchange presents small enough to be put in a breast pocket or the pocket of a skirt. Also a mini French-English/English-French dictionary (France is the place they hope to visit); a finger puppet; an ad that is published in the "personals" column, announcing, by his initials, whom he loves (her), laminated in plastic and made useful as well as romantic by its conversion into a keyring. Let's hope, for the sake of a good story, they are wriggling together in the elevator, sneaking kisses as the bubbles rise in the watercooler, and she is tying his shoelaces together at night, to delay his departure in the morning.

Where is the wife?

In North Dakota or Memphis or Paris, let's say. Let's say she's out of the picture even if she isn't out of the picture.

No no no. Too expedient. The wife has to be there: a presence, even if she's gone off somewhere. There has to be a wife, and she has to be either determined and brave, vile and addicted, or so ordinary that with a mere sentence of description, the reader instantly knows that she is a prototypical wife.

There is a wife. She is a pretty, dark-haired girl who married young, and who won a trip to Paris and is therefore out of town.

Nonsense. Paris?

She won a beauty contest.

But she can't be beautiful. She has to be ordinary.

It suddenly becomes apparent that she is extraordinary. She's quite beautiful, and she's in Paris, and although there's no reason to bring this up, the people who sponsored the contest do not know that she's married.

If this is what the wife is like, she'll be more interesting than the subject of the story.

Not if the working girl is believable, and the wife's exit has been made credible.

But we know how that story will end.

How will it end?

It will end badly-which means predictably-because either the beautiful wife will triumph, and then it will be just another such story, or the wife will turn out to be not so interesting after all, and by default the working girl will triumph.