Distortions by Ann Beattie

door is closed. She is tired of looking at snow. The four stained-glass squares in the top of the door shine brightly. The street light outside illuminates them. Mary is listening to the music, looking at the colors. There aren’t many people. Sam tells Beverly to go home early. Beverly makes another phone call, comes back to the table for last orders. The people in the raincoats are telling some other people that it’s not their dog. There is a large brown-and-white dog in Sam’s; it is wet, confused, stopping to shake itself, then running forward to sniff under a table. Mary recognizes the dog—it belongs to her uncle. But the dog doesn’t recognize Mary. It runs forward to sniff under another table. Beverly goes after the dog, intending to lead it outside. One of the boys watches what’s going on through the space in his hand, then goes after Beverly with his arms out, grabs her from behind, lets her go. Then the boy grabs the dog. Sam is talking to Beverly.
    “I told you,” he says. “It’s Marshall’s dog. Call Marshall.”
    “The boy took it.”
    “Tell Marshall.”
    Beverly shrugs. Sam can be as unreasonable as a drunk. Years ago she was going to get away from all this. She looks up Marshall’s number. She stares at the last name. Then she dials him. The phone rings and rings, no answer. Later, when Marshall does answer the phone, they’ll tell him his dog is dead.
    *
    The boy runs out of the restaurant, into the snow. He hadn’t realized how warm it was in Sam’s. He left his jacket behind. He is shivering. The dog is shivering, trying to jump out of his arms. He sees the streetlight; the light is higher and higher above him. He has fallen. The dog is gone. There is a noise, a thump, the noise he makes falling into the snow, the noise the dog makes running into the car. There is someone else outside Sam’s with him. Miriam. Miriam is just walking in the snow. He smiles at her—he waited all night to see Miriam, and now she’s here, walking in the snow. There are more lights—car headlights as well as the streetlight. Miriam’s car is stopped in the middle of the street. Miriam is kneeling in front of it, then walking back and forth, shaking him, lying there in the snow. It’s noisy—as noisy as it was inside, but it’s all Miriam! She’s calling Beverly, but Beverly’s already there, and she doesn’t have a jacket either. The door opens and closes. More snow blows into Sam’s. There is cold snow all around him.
    “He took it.”
    “Tell Marshall.”
    Beverly shudders. She runs into the restaurant.
    “Forget it,” Sam calls after her. “I’ll call him.”
    “What about the boy?” Miriam whispers to Sam.
    Sam knocks some snow off the heel of his boot.
    “Snow’ll sober him up.”

Downhill

    W alking the dog at 7:30 A.M ., I sit on the wet grass by the side of the road, directly across from the beaver pond and diagonally across from the graveyard. In back of me is a grapevine that I snitch from. The grapes are bitter. The dog lifts a leg on the gravestone, rolls in dead squirrel in the road, comes to my side finally—thank God none of the commuters ran over him—and licks my wrist. The wet wrist feels awful. I rub it along his back, passing it off as a stroke. I do it several times. “Please don’t leave me,” I say to the dog, who cocks his head and settles in the space between my legs on the grass.
    *
    My mother writes Jon this letter:
    “Oh, John, we are so happy that September marks the beginning of your last year in law school. My husband said to me Saturday (we were at the Turkish restaurant we took you and Maria to when she was recuperating—the one you both liked so much) that now when he gets mad he can say, ‘I’ll sue!’ and mean it. It has been uphill for so long, and now it will be downhill.”
    Curiously, that week an old friend of Jon’s sent us a toy—a small bent-kneed skier who, when placed at the top of a slanting board, would glide to the bottom. I