Anne-Marie Kinney - Radio Iris

“I’m at 1404 Kenmore— Kenmore and Lexington?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No? No, I’m not kidding.”

“That’s a good six miles from here. I didn’t even put up flyers that far out.”

“Oh, well he’s okay. He’s fine.”

“Hang on— I’ll be right there.”

Iris hangs up and looks at Federico sitting in front of her, wagging his tail across the kitchen floor, both bowls depleted behind him in a torrent of gnashes and licks. She thinks he looks proud.

“Oh god,” she yawns. She steps into the bathroom and turns on the light. Her face is a mess of red indents from the carpet. She stares into the mirror and gives her cheeks a few light slaps while opening and shutting her eyes to wake up. The dog licks her elbow and she lets him do it. She brushes her hair and feels lopsided, one arm dry, the other coated in Federico’s sticky slobber and the musky fog of his breath.

About thirty minutes later, the kitchen phone rings and it is Federico’s owner downstairs. Iris buzzes her in.

She opens the door to a tall older woman with ruddy skin and frizzy gray hair pulled into a long ponytail. Despite the warm weather, she wears a yellow raincoat. She must be outdoorsy, Iris thinks. Federico runs to the door and the woman sinks to her knees and embraces him while he buries his snout between her neck and shoulder.

“Rico! Rico, it’s you!”

“How long has he been missing?” Iris asks.

The woman looks up at her, arms still wrapped around the dog. “It’s been over three weeks.”

“Jesus.”

“He seems to have done well for himself,” the woman says, feeling his sides. She pulls a leash and harness out of the zippered pocket of her raincoat and pushes it gently over the dog’s head. He instinctively steps through the leg openings. “Lord knows how,” she sighs, rising to her feet. Her smile looks as though it might crack her skin.

“Listen,” the woman says, still in the hallway, Federico now at her side. Iris wonders if she should invite her in, but it seems too late for that. “I can’t thank you enough for calling. We figured we’d probably never see him again.”

It hits Iris then that she will never see him again. Nor will she ever see this woman again. How many others fall into this category, she wonders. How many faces of strangers are stored in her memory— how many faces she’ll never have the opportunity to recall? There is so much slippage, so many faces, voices, thoughts stored within but inaccessible, lost in the folds. She wants to tell the woman that she almost didn’t call. That maybe she would have kept him with her always. He would sit under her desk at work, his tail jutting out to trip her boss. She would lay out laundry on his back, feed him hamburgers. But it wouldn’t be true. None of that ever occurred to her. She watches the woman’s hands worrying the leash.

“Well, thanks again, really. God bless.” She turns down the hall, Federico trotting beside her.

“Wait!” Iris shouts, too loud.

The woman and the dog both turn.

“How did he get out?”

“Oh. He dug his way out. I found the tunnel going right under the fence when I got home.”

“Okay,” Iris nods, not sure why she asked. She watches the dog’s face. Come back, she thinks. You can stay forever if you just come back. He stares back at her, mouth wide, then buries his face into his owner’s jacket.

“Don’t know why he bothered,” the woman continues. “He could’ve jumped clean over it if he’d wanted to, tall as he is. Some kind of instinct, I guess.”

“I was just curious,” she says, still looking at him and not her.

“Well, goodnight,” she says, “we’d better go home. Right, Rico?”

“Yeah, goodnight,” Iris says, leaning against the door. As she closes it behind her, she hears the woman murmuring softly to the dog, but she can’t make out the words.

She attempts to clean up her face with tissue and more makeup. The apartment feels exceedingly quiet, every sound muffled by carpet and insulated walls. Nothing she does makes any sound. She stamps her foot on the bathroom floor to interrupt the quiet, but it is a pitiful scuff against the vast silence within these walls. “Fuck,” she says, restless. The clock on her cell phone reads 8:50 and Mallory lives a good twenty minutes away. As late as she is, she can’t seem to hurry. She tries, but the simple mechanics of movement seem to require so many steps. Everything requires a separate motion, bending to adjust a shoe, picking up a purse, running fingers down strands of hair, catching them in tangles. She is maddeningly aware of all of it. And then, she stops. She drops her purse on the bathroom floor, leaves her reflection hanging in the mirror, and goes back out to the living room, where she tries to call Mallory, but no one picks up.

She opens the wine and pours herself a tall mug, standing at the counter. She is trying to clean up the mess of Federico’s bowls with her toes, collecting the stray bits of cereal when the expected call from Mallory comes, and Iris leans on the counter and picks up, bracing herself.

“Uh, hi,” Mallory says, “what time is it where you are?”

“I’m really sorry. There was this dog, and…”

“Right,” she interrupts curtly, startling Iris.

“I know. I really am sorry…”

“Well come now then.”

“I just, I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus H.,” Mallory whispers, “this poor guy drives all the way over here— ”

“What guy?”

“Ugh, he’s a co-worker of Nathan’s— Alan, very cute, tall…”

“Mallory, I’m not a good project for you. You ought to know that by now.” Iris sips her cheap wine and feels its granules clinging to her top row of teeth.

“Oh, for crying out loud. It’s dinner. It’s drinks. It’s conversation, nothing easier in the world.”

“I know. I know that. But, just stop trying so hard.”

“I’ll stop trying once you start trying at all,” Mallory almost hisses now, quietly. Iris hears the whoosh of a sliding glass door. “I’m sick to death of explaining you to people.”

“So don’t.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t.”

Neither says anything for a few moments and Iris wonders if this is a fight, and what she’s supposed to say now.

“I said I was sorry,” she tries.

“Yeah. Look, I don’t care what you do, it’s just— we’re going to be old someday and I’m afraid you’ll wind up some lonely old bat.”

“Because it would reflect poorly on you?”

She hears the click of Mallory’s cigarette lighter.

“No. Maybe.”

“Why don’t you give up, then?”

“Maybe I should have asked myself that very question a long time ago.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Oh, chill out, forget I said anything. Just come have one drink? Just one?”

“I can’t. I’ll… I’ll talk to you later or something.” Iris hangs up, afraid of what she might say to push Mallory over the edge into writing her off completely.

She pulls the phone away from her ear, and Mallory says, “Oh for fuck’s— ” before Iris hits the button, cutting her off.

She drinks alone, standing on her balcony. More new graffiti has sprung up on the opposite wall: a jagged row of pointy stars of varying sizes that stretches along the whole side of the building, like a child’s drawing of the night sky. She looks up to compare, but the stars above are few and patternless.

A second mug of wine makes her drowsy, and she all but sleepwalks to her bed, managing only to remove her shoes and jeans before crawling under the covers, and she’s out.

For several hours, Iris is a slab of meat on the bed, her consciousness totally absent. Iris has left the building. She might as well be dead if not for the invisible fog of her breath and the small spot of drool on her pillow. But in the earliest morning, when the sun is daring itself to come up again, the lights inside of her fade back in.