Lorrie Moore - Birds of America

“My father takes naps a lot when I visit,” she said to Tommy.

“Naps?”

“I embarrass him. He thinks I’m a whore hippie. A hippie whore.”

“That’s ridiculous. As I said in One Man’s Opinion , you’re the most sexually conservative person I know.”

“Yeah, well.”

Her mother always greeted her warmly, puddle-eyed. These days, she was reading thin paperback books by a man named Robert Valleys, a man who said that after observing all the suffering in the world — war, starvation, greed — he had discovered the cure: hugs.

Hugs, hugs, hugs, hugs, hugs.

Her mother believed him. She squeezed so long and hard that Sidra, like an infant or a lover, became lost in the feel and smell of her — her sweet, dry skin, the gray peach fuzz on her neck. “I’m so glad you left that den of iniquity,” her mother said softly.

But Sidra still got calls from the den. At night, sometimes, the director phoned from a phone booth, desiring to be forgiven as well as to direct. “I think of all the things you might be thinking, and I say, ‘Oh, Christ.’ I mean, do you think the things I sometimes think you do?”

“Of course,” said Sidra. “Of course I think those things.”

“ Of course! Of course is a term that has no place in this conversation!”

When Tommy phoned, she often felt a pleasure so sudden and flooding, it startled her.

“God, I’m so glad it’s you!”

“You have no right to abandon American filmmaking this way!” he would say affectionately, and she would laugh loudly, for minutes without stopping. She was starting to have two speeds: Coma and Hysteria. Two meals: breakfast and popcorn. Two friends: Charlotte Peveril and Tommy. She could hear the clink of his bourbon glass. “You are too gifted a person to be living in a state that borders on North Dakota.”

“Iowa.”

“Holy bejesus, it’s worse than I thought. I’ll bet they say that there. I’ll bet they say ‘Bejesus.’ ”

“I live downtown. They don’t say that here.”

“Are you anywhere near Champaign-Urbana?”

“No.”

“I went there once. I thought from its name that it would be a different kind of place. I kept saying to myself, ‘Champagne, ur bah na, champagne , ur bah na! Champagne! Urbana!’ ” He sighed. “It was just this thing in the middle of a field. I went to a Chinese restaurant there and ordered my entire dinner with extra MSG.”

“I’m in Chicago. It’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad. There are no movie people there. Sidra, what about your acting talent ?”

“I have no acting talent.”

“Hello?”

“You heard me.”

“I’m not sure. For a minute there, I thought maybe you had that dizziness thing again, that inner-ear imbalance.”

“Talent. I don’t have talent . I have willingness. What talent ?” As a kid, she had always told the raunchiest jokes. As an adult, she could rip open a bone and speak out of it. Simple, clear. There was never anything to stop her. Why was there never anything to stop her? “I can stretch out the neck of a sweater to point at a freckle on my shoulder. Anyone who didn’t get enough attention in nursery school can do that. Talent is something else.”

“Excuse me, okay? I’m only a screenwriter. But someone’s got you thinking you went from serious actress to aging bimbo. That’s ridiculous. You just have to weather things a little out here. Besides. I think willing yourself to do a thing is brave, and the very essence of talent.”

Sidra looked at her hands, already chapped and honeycombed with bad weather, bad soap, bad life. She needed to listen to the crickets tape. “But I don’t will myself,” she said. “I’m just already willing.”

She began to go to blues bars at night. Sometimes she called Charlotte Peveril, her one friend left from high school.

“Siddy, how are you?” In Chicago, Sidra was thought of as a hillbilly name. But in L.A., people had thought it was beautiful and assumed she’d made it up.

“I’m fine. Let’s go get drunk and listen to music.”

Sometimes she just went by herself.

“Don’t I know you from the movies?” a man might ask at one of the breaks, smiling, leering in a twinkly way.

“Maybe,” she’d say, and he would look suddenly panicked and back away.

One night, a handsome man in a poncho, a bad poncho — though was there such a thing as a good poncho? asked Charlotte — sat down next to her with an extra glass of beer. “You look like you should be in the movies,” he said. Sidra nodded wearily. “But I don’t go to the movies. So if you were in the movies, I would never have gotten to set my eyes on you.”

She turned her gaze from his poncho to her sherry, then back. Perhaps he had spent some time in Mexico or Peru. “What do you do?”

“I’m an auto mechanic.” He looked at her carefully. “My name’s Walter. Walt.” He pushed the second beer her way. “The drinks here are okay as long as you don’t ask them to mix anything. Just don’t ask them to mix anything!”

She picked it up and took a sip. There was something about him she liked: something earthy beneath the act. In L.A., beneath the act you got nougat or Styrofoam. Or glass. Sidra’s mouth was lined with sherry. Walt’s lips shone with beer. “What’s the last movie you saw?” she asked him.

“The last movie I saw. Let’s see.” He was thinking, but she could tell he wasn’t good at it. She watched with curiosity the folded-in mouth, the tilted head: at last, a guy who didn’t go to the movies. His eyes rolled back like the casters on a clerk’s chair, searching. “You know what I saw?”

“No. What?” She was getting drunk.

“It was this cartoon movie.” Animation. She felt relieved. At least it wasn’t one of those bad art films starring what’s-her-name. “A man is asleep, having a dream about a beautiful little country full of little people.” Walt sat back, looked around the room, as if that were all.

“And?” She was going to have to push and pull with this guy.

“ ‘And?’ ” he repeated. He leaned forward again. “And one day the people realize that they are only creatures in this man’s dream. Dream people! And if the man wakes up, they will no longer exist!”

Now she hoped he wouldn’t go on. She had changed her mind a little.

“So they all get together at a town meeting and devise a plan,” he continued. Perhaps the band would be back soon. “They will burst into the man’s bedroom and bring him back to a padded, insulated room in the town — the town of his own dream — and there they will keep watch over him to make sure he stays asleep. And they do just that. Forever and ever, everyone guarding him carefully, but apprehensively, making sure he never wakes up.” He smiled. “I forget what the name of it was.”

“And he never wakes up.”

“Nope.” He grinned at her. She liked him. She could tell he could tell. He took a sip of his beer. He looked around the bar, then back at her. “Is this a great country or what?” he said.

She smiled at him, with longing. “Where do you live,” she asked, “and how do I get there?”

“I met a man,” she told Tommy on the phone. “His name is Walter.”

“A forced relationship. You’re in a state of stress — you’re in a syndrome , I can tell. You’re going to force this romance. What does he do?”

“Something with cars.” She sighed. “I want to sleep with someone. When I’m sleeping with someone, I’m less obsessed with the mail.”

“But perhaps you should just be alone, be by yourself for a while.”

“Like you’ve ever been alone,” said Sidra. “I mean, have you ever been alone?”