Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

“She looks kind of milky to me,” Don said.

“Don’t you wish!” exclaimed Debbie. She winked at Heather. “Don gets the biggest kick out of Lu-Lu shedding her skin.”

Don grinned shyly. He took off his billed cap and put it back on again.

“We got her skins hanging up in the lanai,” Debbie said to Heather. “Have you seen them?”

Heather shook her head. They all three got up and lurched toward the lanai, a small screened room looking out over where they had been. Lu-Lu followed behind. There, thumbtacked to the mildewed ceiling, were half a dozen chevron-patterned gray and papery skins rustling and clicking in the breeze.

“In order to do this really right, you’d need a taller room,” Debbie said. “I’ve always wanted a nice tall room and I’ve never gotten one. With a nice tall room they could hang in all their glory.”

“There’s nothing prettier than Lu-Lu right after she molts,” Don said. “She’s so shiny and new!”

Heather went over to Lu-Lu’s old skins. There were Lu-Lu’s big empty mouth and eyes. Heather pushed her face closer and sniffed. The skins smelled salty, she thought. Then she thought they couldn’t possibly smell like anything she could describe.

“They got a prettier sound than those tinny wind chimes,” Don said. “Anybody can buy themselves one of those. What’s the sense of it? They don’t last forever, though.”

“I almost called Lu-Lu Draco, but I’m glad I didn’t,” Debbie said.

“Draco would have been a big mistake all right,” Don agreed.

“You’ll never guess what Don used to be,” Debbie said.

Heather felt sleepy and anxious at the same time. She took several tiny, restless steps.

“He was a pastry chef,” Debbie said.

Heather looked at the Dunes. Never would she have imagined Don Dune to be a pastry chef.

The disclosure seemed to exhaust Debbie. Her good arm paddled through the air toward Don. “I have to go to bed now,” she said.

“My dear,” Don said, crooking his elbow gallantly in her direction.

Heather followed them into their small, brown bedroom. Everything was brown. It seemed cool and peaceful. Lu-Lu remained on the lanai, wrapped around a hassock.

Heather turned back the sheets and the Dunes crawled in, wearing their bathing suits.

“When I was a little girl,” Debbie said, “nothing was more horrible to me than having to go to bed while it was still light.”

Don took off his cap and patted his head. “Even my hair feels drunk,” he said.

“I would like to take Lu-Lu and make a new life for myself,” Heather announced.

The Dunes lay in bed, the dark sheets pulled up to their chins.

“If you go off with Lu-Lu,” Debbie said, “you’ve got to love her good, because Lu-Lu can’t show she loves you back.”

“Snakes ain’t demonstrative as a rule,” Don added. “They’ve got no obvious way of showing attachment.”

“She’ll be able to recognize your footsteps after a while,” Debbie said.

Heather was delighted.

“Will she get into my car, do you think?” Heather asked.

“Lu-Lu’s a good rider,” Debbie said. “A real good rider. I always wanted to drive her into a big uncharted desert, but I never did.”

“We’ll find a desert,” Heather said with enthusiasm.

“Debbie don’t think she’s ever wanted much, but she has,” Don said. He sighed.

“We’d better get started,” Heather said. She smoothed the sheet and tucked it in under the mattress.

“Bless you, honey,” Debbie said drowsily.

“Spoon a little jelly in Lu-Lu’s milk sometimes,” Don said. “She enjoys that.”

Heather left the bedroom and hurried across the yard to her driveway. Her car stalled several times as she coaxed it across the lawn toward the Dunes’ swimming pool. She opened all the doors to the car, and then the doors to the Dunes’ house. She was rushing all around inside herself. Lu-Lu stared fixedly at her from the lanai.

“Come, Lu-Lu!” Heather cried.

Already her own house looked as if it had been left for good. The nightie dangled on the clothesline. Leave it there, she thought. Ugly nightie with its yearnings. She wondered if Lu-Lu would want dirt for their trip. She found Don’s shovel and threw some earth into the backseat of the car. She didn’t know how she was going to coax Lu-Lu in. She sat on the hood of the car and stared at Lu-Lu. Dusk was growing into dark. How do you beckon to something like this, she wondered; something that can change everything, your life.

She was in the airport, waiting for her flight to be called, when a woman came to a phone near her chair. The woman stood there, dialing, and after a while began talking in a flat, aggrieved voice. Gloria couldn’t hear everything by any means, but she did hear her say, “If anything happens to this plane, I hope you’ll be satisfied.” The woman spoke monotonously and without mercy. She was tall and disheveled and looked the very picture of someone who recently had ceased to be cherished. Nevertheless, she was still being mollified on the other end. Gloria heard with astounding clarity the part about the plane being repeated several times. The woman then slammed down the receiver and boarded Gloria’s flight, flinging herself down in a first-class seat. Gloria proceeded to the rear and sat quietly, thinking that every person is on the brink of eternity every moment, that the means of leaving this world are innumerable and often inconceivable. She thought in this manner for a while, then ordered a drink.

The plane pushed through the sky and the drink made her think of how, as a child, she had enjoyed chewing on the collars of her dresses. The first drink of the day did not always bring this to mind, but frequently it did. Then she began thinking of the desert she was leaving behind and how much she liked it. Once she had liked the sea and felt she could not live without it, but now she missed it almost not at all.

The plane continued. Gloria ordered another drink, no longer resigned to believing that the woman was going to blow up the plane. Now she began thinking of her plans. She was going to visit Jean, a friend of hers who was having a hard time — a fourth divorce, after all, but Jean had a lot of energy — yet that was only for a day or two. Jean had a child named Gwendal. Gloria hadn’t seen them for years and probably wouldn’t even recognize Gwendal. Then she would just keep moving around until it happened. She was thinking of buying a dog. She’d had a number of dogs but hadn’t had very good luck with them. This was the thing about pets, of course, you knew that something dreadful was going to befall them, that it was not going to end well. Two of her dogs had been hit by cars, one had been epileptic and another was diagnosed early on as having hip dysplasia. Vets had never done very well by Gloria’s dogs, much as doctors weren’t doing very well by Gloria now. She thought frequently about doctors, though she wasn’t going to see them anymore. Under the circumstances, she probably shouldn’t acquire a dog, but she felt she wanted one. Let the dog get stuck for a change, she thought.

At the airport, Gloria rented a car. She decided to drive just outside Jean’s town and check in to a motel. Jean was a talker. A day with Jean would be enough. A day and a night would be too much. Just outside Jean’s town was a monastery where the monks raised dogs. Maybe she would find her dog there tomorrow. She would go over to the monastery early in the morning and spend the rest of the day with Jean. But that was it. Other than that, there wasn’t much of a plan.

The day was cloudy and there was a great deal of traffic. The land falling back from the highway was green and still. It seemed to her a slightly lugubrious landscape, obelisks and cemeteries, thick drooping forests, the evergreens dying from the top down. Of course there was hardly any place to live these days. A winding old road ran parallel to the highway and Gloria turned off and drove along it until she came to a group of cabins. They were white with little porches but the office was in a structure built to resemble a tepee. There was a dilapidated miniature-golf course and a wooden tower from the top of which you could see into three states. But the tower leaned and the handrail curving optimistically upward was splintered and warped, and only five steps from the ground a rusted chain prevented further ascension. Gloria liked places like this.