Lorrie Moore - Like Life

“Uh, my favorite joke is probably … OK, all right. This guy goes into a doctor’s office and—”

“I think I know this one,” interrupted Earl, eagerly. He wanted to tell it himself. “A guy goes into a doctor’s office, and the doctor tells him he’s got some good news and some bad news — that one, right?”

“I’m not sure,” said Zoë. “This might be a different version.”

“So the guy says, ‘Give me the bad news first,’ and the doctor says, ‘OK. You’ve got three weeks to live.’ And the guy cries, ‘Three weeks to live! Doctor, what is the good news?’ And the doctor says, ‘Did you see that secretary out front? I finally fucked her.’ ”

Zoë frowned.

“That’s not the one you were thinking of?”

“No.” There was accusation in her voice. “Mine was different.”

“Oh,” said Earl. He looked away and then back again. “You teach history, right? What kind of history do you teach?”

“I teach American, mostly — eighteenth and nineteenth century.” In graduate school, at bars, the pickup line was always: “So what’s your century?”

“Occasionally I teach a special theme course,” she added, “say, ‘Humor and Personality in the White House.’ That’s what my book’s on.” She thought of something someone once told her about bowerbirds, how they build elaborate structures before mating.

“Your book’s on humor? ”

“Yeah, and, well, when I teach a theme course like that, I do all the centuries.” So what’s your century?

“All three of them.”

“Pardon?” The breeze glistened her eyes. Traffic revved beneath them. She felt high and puny, like someone lifted into heaven by mistake and then spurned.

“Three. There’s only three.”

“Well, four, really.” She was thinking of Jamestown, and of the Pilgrims coming here with buckles and witch hats to say their prayers.

“I’m a photographer,” said Earl. His face was starting to gleam, his rouge smearing in a sunset beneath his eyes.

“Do you like that?”

“Well, actually I’m starting to feel it’s a little dangerous.”

“Really?”

“Spending all your time in a darkroom with that red light and all those chemicals. There’s links with Parkinson’s, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I suppose I should wear rubber gloves, but I don’t like to. Unless I’m touching it directly, I don’t think of it as real.”

“Hmmm,” said Zoë. Alarm buzzed through her, mildly, like a tea.

“Sometimes, when I have a cut or something, I feel the sting and think, Shit. I wash constantly and just hope. I don’t like rubber over the skin like that.”

“Really.”

“I mean, the physical contact. That’s what you want, or why bother?”

“I guess,” said Zoë. She wished she could think of a joke, something slow and deliberate, with the end in sight. She thought of gorillas, how when they had been kept too long alone in cages, they would smack each other in the head instead of mating.

“Are you … in a relationship?” Earl suddenly blurted.

“Now? As we speak?”

“Well, I mean, I’m sure you have a relationship to your work. ” A smile, a weird one, nestled in his mouth like an egg. She thought of zoos in parks, how when cities were under siege, during world wars, people ate the animals. “But I mean, with a man. ”

“No, I’m not in a relationship with a man. ” She rubbed her chin with her hand and could feel the one bristly hair there. “But my last relationship was with a very sweet man,” she said. She made something up. “From Switzerland. He was a botanist — a weed expert. His name was Jerry. I called him ‘Jare.’ He was so funny. You’d go to the movies with him and all he would notice were the plants. He would never pay attention to the plot. Once, in a jungle movie, he started rattling off all these Latin names, out loud. It was very exciting for him.” She paused, caught her breath. “Eventually he went back to Europe to, uh, study the edelweiss.” She looked at Earl. “Are you involved in a relationship? With a woman ?”

Earl shifted his weight, and the creases in his body stocking changed, splintering outward like something broken. His pubic hair slid over to one hip, like a corsage on a saloon girl. “No,” he said, clearing his throat. The steel wool in his underarms was inching toward his biceps. “I’ve just gotten out of a marriage that was full of bad dialogue, like ‘You want more space ? I’ll give you more space!’ Clonk. Your basic Three Stooges.”

Zoë looked at him sympathetically. “I suppose it’s hard for love to recover after that.”

His eyes lit up. He wanted to talk about love. “But I keep thinking love should be like a tree. You look at trees and they’ve got bumps and scars from tumors, infestations, what have you, but they’re still growing. Despite the bumps and bruises, they’re … straight.”

“Yeah, well,” said Zoë, “where I’m from, they’re all married or gay. Did you see that movie Death by Number ?”

Earl looked at her, a little lost. She was getting away from him. “No,” he said.

One of his breasts had slipped under his arm, tucked there like a baguette. She kept thinking of trees, of gorillas and parks, of people in wartime eating the zebras. She felt a stabbing pain in her abdomen.

“Want some hors d’oeuvres?” Evan came pushing through the sliding door. She was smiling, though her curlers were coming out, hanging bedraggled at the ends of her hair like Christmas decorations, like food put out for the birds. She thrust forward a plate of stuffed mushrooms.

“Are you asking for donations or giving them away,” said Earl, wittily. He liked Evan, and he put his arm around her.

“You know, I’ll be right back,” said Zoë.

“Oh,” said Evan, looking concerned.

“Right back. I promise.”

Zoë hurried inside, across the living room, into the bedroom, to the adjoining bath. It was empty; most of the guests were using the half bath near the kitchen. She flicked on the light and closed the door. The pain had stopped and she didn’t really have to go to the bathroom, but she stayed there anyway, resting. In the mirror above the sink she looked haggard beneath her bonehead, violet grays showing under the skin like a plucked and pocky bird. She leaned closer, raising her chin a little to find the bristly hair. It was there, at the end of the jaw, sharp and dark as a wire. She opened the medicine cabinet, pawed through it until she found some tweezers. She lifted her head again and poked at her face with the metal tips, grasping and pinching and missing. Outside the door she could hear two people talking low. They had come into the bedroom and were discussing something. They were sitting on the bed. One of them giggled in a false way. She stabbed again at her chin, and it started to bleed a little. She pulled the skin tight along the jawbone, gripped the tweezers hard around what she hoped was the hair, and tugged. A tiny square of skin came away with it, but the hair remained, blood bright at the root of it. Zoë clenched her teeth. “Come on,” she whispered. The couple outside in the bedroom were now telling stories, softly, and laughing. There was a bounce and squeak of mattress, and the sound of a chair being moved out of the way. Zoë aimed the tweezers carefully, pinched, then pulled gently away, and this time the hair came, too, with a slight twinge of pain and then a great flood of relief. “Yeah!” breathed Zoë. She grabbed some toilet paper and dabbed at her chin. It came away spotted with blood, and so she tore off some more and pressed hard until it stopped. Then she turned off the light and opened the door, to return to the party. “Excuse me,” she said to the couple in the bedroom. They were the couple from the balcony, and they looked at her, a bit surprised. They had their arms around each other, and they were eating candy bars.