Lorrie Moore - Like Life

THE AFTERNOON DARKENED. Two Rosies shuffled by, ignoring her, but slowing down, winded. They, too, decided to sit on the low wall of the fence, but chose to do so at some distance. She had already slid into the underclass of the sick, she knew, but they didn’t recognize her yet. “Are you OK?” she heard one Rosie say to the other, putting her box of flowers down on the sidewalk.

“I’m OK,” said her friend.

“You look worse.”

“Maybe,” she sighed. “The thing is you never know why you’re any particular place. You get up, you move. You keep thinking there’s some other way than this.”

“Look at her ,” snorted the friend, motioning toward Mamie.

“What?” said the other, and then they fell silent.

A fire truck clanged by. Sirens wailed in outrage. After some time Mamie got up, slow as an arthritic, clutching only her purse — her jar still in it — leaving the records behind. She began to walk, stumbling on a raised crack in the pavement. And she noticed something: The house with the bird feeder didn’t have a cupola at all. It didn’t even have a bird feeder. It simply had a sign that said RESTAURANT, and there was a pigeon on it.

She walked by the Rosies and gave them a dollar for an iris. “My,” said the one handing it to her.

At the apartment, the lights were on and the padlock hung open like a hook. She stood for a moment, then kicked at the door with her foot, banging the inside knob against the wall. There was no other sound, and she hesitated there in the doorway, a form of desire, a hovering thing that cannot enter a room. But slowly she took a step, the heel of her hand pressed to the doorjamb to steady her.

He was there, hair dry, wearing different clothes. His arms were raised over his head, the stray torn like a mast in his hands on top. He was moving slowly around the place, as if in a deep Oriental exercise or a dance, the cat investigating the bookshelves.

“It’s you,” Mamie said, frozen by the open door.

The pumpkin stench of the bathroom wafted toward her. The uriney cold rushed in from behind, carrying with it the flap of helicopters. He turned to see her, brought the cat down to his chest. “Hi.” He was chewing on a difficult bit of candy, pieces of it stuck in his teeth. He pointed to his cheek, grimacing. “Jujubes,” he said. “They play with your mind.”

The television burst on: people chanting together, like an anthem for cola. We are the Undying. We are …

He turned away and lifted the cat up high again, close to the golden moldings of the ceiling. “Cats love this,” he said. His arms were long and tireless. In the reach, his shirt had come untucked, and the soft bare skin of his waist flashed like a smile. “Where have you been?”

There was only this world, this looted, ventriloquized earth. If one were to look for a place to die, mightn’t it be here? — like some old lesson of knowing your kind and returning. She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love. She tucked the flower in her blouse. Life or death. Something or nothing. You want something or nothing ?

She stepped toward him with a heart she’d someday tear the terror from.

Here. But not now.