Lorrie Moore - Bark - Stories

“Oh, not much really.” An old copy of The Swiss Family Robinson and one of Infinite Jest . “I’m aiming for the kids,” he said. He had put up a sign that said, TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT BOOK-NOOK: HAVE A LOOK. As with a community bicycle, you could take one and never have to bring it back. Dench himself had a community bike from several communities ago. “Now that the bookstore has gone under, and with the hospital so close, I thought people might need something to read.”

In addition to the elegance of the wood, there was something antique and sweet in all this — far be it from her to bring up the topic of electronic downloads.

“Probably there is a German word for the feeling of fondness one gets towards one’s house the more one fixes it up for resale.”

“Hausengeltenschmerz,” said KC.

But he did not laugh. He was thinking. “My wife would have known,” he said.

His wife had been a doctor. He told KC this now as she ate another muffin in his kitchen. It had been a second marriage for his wife and so there was a bit of sunset in it for them both: he had been stuck in his bachelor ways and hadn’t married until he was sixty.

(“Bachelor ways!” Dench would seize on later. “You see what he’s doing?”)

“She was a worldly and brilliant woman, an oncologist devoted to family medicine and public health policy,” said Milt.

There was a long silence as KC watched him reminisce, his face wincing slightly as his mind sifted through the files.

“I never got on with her daughters much. But she herself, well, she was the love of my life, even if she came late to it and left early. She died two years ago. When it came it was a blessing really. I suppose. I suppose that’s what one should say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. But she was brilliant company. My brain’s a chunk of mud next to hers.” He stared at KC. “It’s lonely in this neck of the woods.”

She picked off a moist crumb from the front of her jacket. “But you must have friends here?” she said, and then she put the crumb quickly in her mouth.

“Well, by ‘neck of the woods,’ I mean old age.”

“I sort of knew that, I guess,” she said. “Do you have friends your age?”

“There are no humans alive my age!” He grinned his sepia teeth at her.

“Come on.” Her muffin was gone and she was eyeing the others.

“I may be older than I seem. I don’t know what I seem.”

She would fall for the bait. “Thirty-five,” she said, smiling only a little.

“Ha! Well, that’s the sad thing about growing too old: there’s no one at your funeral.”

She always said thirty-five, even to children. No one minded being thirty-five, especially kindergartners and the elderly. No one at all. She herself would give a toe or two to be thirty-five again. She would give three toes.

He looked at her warmly. “I once studied acting and I’ve kept my voice from getting that quavery thing of old people.”

“You’ll have to teach me.”

“You have a lovely voice. I take note of voices. Despite my deafness and my tinnitus. Which is a nice substitute for crickets, by the way, if you miss them in the winter. Sometimes I’ve got so much whistling going on in my ears I could probably fly around the room if it weren’t for these heavy orthopedic shoes. Were you the singer in your band?”

“How did you know?” She slapped her hand down on the table as if this were a miracle.

“There’s a way you have of wafting in and hitting the sounds of the words rather than the words themselves. I mean to clean off this piano and get you to sing.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I’m very much out of tune. Probably more than the piano. As I said, my career’s a little stalled right now: we need some luck, you know? Without luck the whole thing’s just a thought experiment!”

“We?”

“My musical partner.” She swallowed and chewed though her mouth was empty. He was a partner. He was musical. What was wrong with her? Would she keep Dench a secret from Milt?

Dench would want it. “What can I get for you?” she had asked Dench this morning, and he had stared at her balefully from the bed.

“You have a lot of different nightgowns,” Dench had replied.

“They’re all the dresses I once wore onstage.” And as she had gotten dressed for her walk, he’d said, “Don’t forget the coffee this time. Last time you forgot the coffee.”

“It’s good to have a business partner,” Milt said now. “But it isn’t everything.”

“He’s sort of a genius,” she lied. Did she feel the need to put Dench in competition with Milt’s dead wife?

“So you’ve met some geniuses.” He smiled. “You’re having fun then. A life with geniuses in it: very good.”

She lived with so much mockery this did not bother her at all. She looked deeply into his eyes and found the muck-speckled blue there, the lenses cut out from cataracts. She would see the cut edges in the light.

“Do you think our landlord, Ian, would miss a few of his books?”

“No one misses a few of their books. It’s just the naked truth. Look at the sign down the road,” Dench said.

The out-of-business Borders with its missing d: perhaps Dench had stolen it for himself, stashing it under the bed; she didn’t dare look.

“Old Milt has a little book nook — I thought I’d contribute.”

“I see.”

“I’d only take a few. I can’t donate my own since they all have the most embarrassing underlinings. In ink.” Plus exclamation points that ran down the page like a fence by Christo. Perhaps it was genetic. She had once found in her grandmother’s shelves her mother’s own frighteningly marked-up copy of The House of Mirth . The word whoa appeared on every other page.

“Come here. Lie on top of me.” Dench’s face was a cross between longing and ordering lunch.

“I’ll squash you. I’ve gained five pounds eating muffins with Milt.” He grabbed her hand, but she gently pulled it away. “Give me some time. I’m going to cut out the sweets and have a few toes removed.”

She had put on a necklace, of freshwater pearls so small they were like grains of arborio rice decorating the letters of Decatur . She combed a little rat’s nest into the crown of her hair to perk it up. She dabbed on some scent: fig was the new vanilla! As she went out the door, Dench said, “Win them with your beauty, but catch them off guard with your soul.” Then there was the pregnant pause, the instruments all cutting out at once — until he added, in a chilly tone, “Don’t even bother with my coffee. I mean really: don’t bother.” After that she heard only her own footsteps.

“I brought you a couple books,” she said to Milton. “For your nook.”

“Well, thank you. Haven’t had any takers yet but there’s still room.” He looked at the titles she had brought: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Lady Macbeth in the Gilded Age . “Excellent.”

They once again went inside and ate muffins. Forget coffee: this time she had not even brought the dog.

She began to do this regularly, supplying Milt with more of her landlord’s books. He had taken to looking so happy to see her, his eyes brightening (blue, she had read once, was the true color of the sun) so much she could see what he must have looked like when he was young. He was probably the bachelor that all the old ladies were after. And when he had married there were probably some broken hearts. He had the look of a gentleman, but one who was used to the attention of women, even as the uriny smell of an old man had crept over him. “Here we are: two lonely fools,” he said to KC once. It had the sound of a line he’d said before. Nonetheless, she found herself opening up to him, telling him of her life, and he was sympathetic, nodding, his peeled-back eyes taking on a special shine, and only once or twice did he have to lean forward disconcertingly to murmur, “Say that again?” She didn’t mention Dench anymore. And the part of her that might consider this and know why was overshadowed by the unknowing part, which she knew in advance was the only source of any self-forgiveness. Ignorance ironically arranged for future self-knowledge. Life was never perfect.