Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark

I walk back out to the car breathing easier. It is easy to fool people into thinking I am like everyone else in encounters like this. If the other person likes to talk, as this woman did, it is easier. All I have to say are a few conventional things and smile and it is done.

Mr. Crenshaw is in our hall again when I get back, three minutes before the end of our official lunchtime. His face twitches when he sees me. I do not know why. He turns around almost at once and walks away. He does not speak to me. Sometimes when people do not speak, they are angry, but I do not know what I have done to make him angry. I have been late twice lately, but neither time was my fault. I did not cause the traffic accident, and I did not cut my own tires.

It is hard to settle down to work.

I am home by 7:00, with my own tires on all four wheels and Danny’s spare in the trunk along with mine. I decide to park next to Danny’s car although I do not know if he is home. It will be easier to move his spare from one car to another if they are close together.

I knock on his door. “Yes?” His voice.

“It is Lou Arrendale,” I say. “I have your spare in my trunk.”

I hear his footsteps coming to the door. “Lou, I told you — you didn’t have to rush. But thanks.” He opens the door. He has the same multi-toned brown/beige/rust carpet on the floor that I have, though I covered mine with something that didn’t make my eyes hurt. He has a large dark-gray video screen; the speakers are blue and do not match as a set. His couch is brown with little dark squares on the brown; the pattern is regular, but it clashes with the carpet. A young woman is sitting on the couch; she has on a yellow, green, and white patterned shirt that clashes with both the carpet and the couch. He glances back at her. “Lyn, I’m going to go move my spare from Lou’s car to mine.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t sound interested; she looks down at the table. I wonder if she is Danny’s girlfriend. I did not know he had a girlfriend. I wonder, not for the first time, why a woman friend is called a girlfriend and not a womanfriend.

Danny says, “Come on in, Lou, while I get my keys.” I do not want to come in, but I do not want to seem unfriendly, either. The clashing colors and patterns make my eyes tired. I step in. Danny says, “Lyn, this is Lou from upstairs — he borrowed my spare yesterday.”

“Hi,” she says, glancing up and then down.

“Hi,” I say. I watch Danny as he walks over to a desk and picks up his keys. The desk is very neat on top, a blotter and a telephone.

We go downstairs and out to the parking lot. I unlock my trunk and Danny swings the spare tire out. He opens his trunk and puts it in, then slams his trunk. It makes a different sound than mine does.

“Thank you for your help,” I say.

“No problemo,” Danny says. “Glad to be of service. And thanks for getting my spare back to me so quickly.”

“You’re welcome,” I say. It does not feel right to say “you’re welcome” when he did more to help me, but I do not know what else to say.

He stands there, looking at me. He does not say anything for a moment; then he says, “Well, be seeing you,” and turns away. Of course he will be seeing me; we live in the same building. I think this means he does not want to walk back inside with me. I do not know why he could not just say that, if that is what he means. I turn to my car and wait until I hear the front door open and close.

If I took the treatment, would I understand this? Is it because of the woman in his apartment? If I had Marjory visiting me, would I not want Danny to walk back inside with me? I do not know. Sometimes it seems obvious why normal people do things and other times I cannot understand it at all.

Finally I go inside and up to my apartment. I put on quieting music, Chopin preludes. I put two cups of water in the small saucepan and open a packet of noodles and vegetables. As the water boils, I watch the bubbles rise. I can see the pattern of the burner below by the location of the first bubbles, but when the water really boils, it forms several cells of fast-bubbling water. I keep thinking there is something important about that, something more than just a rolling boil, but I haven’t figured the whole pattern out yet. I drop the noodles and vegetables in and stir, as the directions say to do. I like to watch the vegetables churn in the boiling water.

And sometimes I am bored by the silly dancing vegetables.

On Fridays I do my laundry, so that I have the weekend free. I have two laundry baskets, one for light and one for dark. I take the sheets off the bed and the pillowcase off the pillow and put them in the light basket. The towels go in the dark basket. My mother used two pale-blue plastic baskets for sorted clothes; she called one dark and one light, and that bothered me. I found a dark-green wicker basket and use it for dark clothes; my basket for light clothes is plain wicker, a sort of honey color. I like the woven pattern of the wicker, and I like the word wicker . The strands go out around the uprights like the wih sound of wicker and then comes the sharp k , like the stick the strands bend around, and the soft er sound as they bend back into the shadow.

I take the exact right change out of my change box, plus one extra coin in case one of them won’t work in the machines. It used to make me angry when a perfectly round coin would not make the machine go. My mother taught me to take an extra coin. She said it is not good to stay angry. Sometimes a coin will work in the soft drink machine when it does not work in the washing machine or dryer, and sometimes one that will not work in the soft drink machine will work in the washing machine. This does not make sense, but it is how the world is.

I put the coins in my pocket, tuck the packet of detergent in the light basket, and set the light basket on top of the dark one. Light should go on top of dark. That balances.

I can just see over them to walk down the hall. I fix the Chopin prelude in my mind and head for the laundry room. As usual on Friday nights, only Miss Kimberly is there. She is old, with fuzzy gray hair, but not as old as Miss Watson. I wonder if she thinks about the life extension treatments or if she is too old. Miss Kimberly is wearing light-green knit slacks and a flowered top. She usually wears this on Fridays when it is warm. I think about what she wears instead of the smell in the laundry room. It is a harsh, sharp smell that I do not like.

“Good evening, Lou,” she says now. She has already done her wash and is putting her things into the left-hand dryer. She always uses the left-hand dryer.

“Good evening, Miss Kimberly,” I say. I do not look at her washing; it is rude to look at women’s washing because it may have underwear in it. Some women do not want men looking at their underwear. Some do and that makes it confusing, but Miss Kimberly is old and I do not think she wants me to see the pink puckery things in among the sheets and towels. I do not want to see them anyway.

“Did you have a good week?” she asks. She always asks this. I do not think she really cares whether I had a good week or not.

“My tires were slashed,” I say.

She stops putting things in the dryer and looks at me. “Someone slashed your tires? Here? Or at work?”

I do not know why that makes a difference. “Here,” I say. “I came out Thursday morning and they were all flat.”

She looks upset. “Right here in this parking lot? I thought it was safe here!”

“It was very inconvenient,” I say. “I was late to work.”

“But… vandals! Here!” Her face makes a shape I have never seen on it before. It is something like fear and something like disgust. Then she looks angry, staring right at me as if I had done something wrong. I look away. “I’ll have to move,” she says.