Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

She was sitting alone in a bar one evening after work worrying about the money it was costing to board the dog, who had been at the kennel for a week and a half. Louise had her friends, of course, and she saw them practically constantly, but sometimes she liked to be alone. Occasionally, she even took trips by herself, accompanied only by strangers, cruises or camping trips to difficult places where she was invariably lonely and misunderstood. These trips reminded her of last evenings, one of those that occur over and over in one’s life, and she thought of them as good training. She had learned a lot from them. More than enough by now, probably.

In the bar was a long fish tank that served as a wall separating it from the restaurant beyond. Louise had never been in this place before and would not select it again. She didn’t like to look at the fish, one of which was trailing a cloud of mucus behind it. In the restaurant beyond the fish she saw an older man deep in conversation with a party or parties outside her vision. He had moist, closely cut hair and a Band-Aid high up on his temple. A line of blood extended several inches down from the Band-Aid. Louise became engrossed in watching him chatting and smiling and sawing away at his steak or whatever it was. But she looked away for a moment and when she looked back the blood was gone. He must have wiped it off with a napkin, perhaps dipped in his water glass. Someone in the party he was with was fond of him or even possibly more than fond and told him about the blood. That was Louise’s first thought, though it had certainly taken them long enough to mention it.

The next morning she went to the kennel. A girl brought the dog out. It had yellowish wavy fur.

“Is that the right one?” Louise asked. The girl looked at her expressionlessly and cracked her gum. “It’s really not mine,” Louise explained. “It belongs to a friend.”

The dog crouched miserably on the floor in the backseat of Louise’s car. It didn’t even lie down.

“You’re going to get sick down there,” Louise said. The dog was clearly not habituated to riding in cars, and had no sense of the happiness it could bring.

After a week, she had discerned no habits. The dog didn’t seem morose, merely withdrawn. She began calling it Broom with a certain amount of reluctance.

Every other week, there would be a party at one of their houses, though it wasn’t Louise’s turn just yet. Rent was cheap, so they all lived in these big ruined houses. She went over to Jack’s and everyone was already there, drinking gimlets and looking at a rat Jack had caught beneath the sink on one of his glue traps.

“I’m not going to use these things again,” Jack said. “They’re depressing.”

“I use them,” Walter said, “but I never get any rats.”

“You’re not putting them in the right places,” Jack said.

The rat watched them in a sort of theatrical manner.

One of the twins, Wilbur, got up and opened a window. He picked up the trap and sailed it with its rat accompanist into the street to fall amid the passing traffic.

“I usually take it down to the Dumpster,” Jack said.

Wilbur and his twin, Daisy, were the only ones who said they remembered Broom. They said he hadn’t eaten from a bowl but off a Columbia University dinner plate. But in their far-out nods Wilbur and Daisy could picture almost anything. They spent most of their time lovingly shooting each other up. They had not been acknowledged in the note as gift recipients, although of course they didn’t care. They insisted that matters would not have taken such a dreary turn had they been able to introduce Elliot to the great Heroisch, the potent, powerful, large and appealing Heroisch. The twins were so innocent they got on everyone’s nerves. They loved throwing up on junk. A joy develops, they’d say, a real joy. It’s not like throwing up at all.

They all had their big, quietly rotting houses, even the twins. Louise had a solarium in hers that leaked badly. In the rear was an overgrown yard with a birdhouse nailed to each tree. Some trees had more than one. The previous tenants must have been demented, Louise thought. How could they imagine that birds want to live like that?

At Jack’s they drank, but lightly except for Dianne, who was drinking far too much recently. She’d said, “I began to wonder if it was worthwhile to undertake what I was doing at the moment. Pick a moment, any moment. I began to wonder. If I only had today and not tomorrow, would it be worthwhile to undertake what I was doing at the moment? I addressed myself to that very worthwhile question and I had to admit, well, no.”

But no one tried to interfere with Dianne. They were getting over the death of their friend Elliot — each in his or her own way, was the understanding.

“It takes four full seasons to get over a death,” Angus said. “Spring and summer, winter and fall.”

“Fall and winter,” Andrew said.

Everyone was annoyed with Angus because he had taken all the photos out of the flat woven basket where they’d always been kept and arranged them in albums, ordered by years or occasions. This pleased no one. It wasn’t the same. The effect was different. Everything had looked like a gala before. Now none of it did.

They talked about the things Elliot had given them. They could not understand what he had been attempting to say. All his other possessions had been trucked away and stored. A brother was supposed to come for them. He was sick or lived in Turkey or some goddamn place, who cared. In any case, he hadn’t shown up here yet.

Louise didn’t think it was right that she had been given something alive. None of the others had. She made this point frequently but no one had an explanation for it.

The twins had been reading Pablo Neruda and had come across the line Death also goes through the world dressed as a broom, but they weren’t going to tell Louise that. Dressed didn’t seem right anyway, maybe it was the translation. But Neruda was a giant among pygmies, his mind impeccable. They were going to keep their mouths shut.

More than a month passed. Louise was working full-time in the florist’s shop. She liked working there, at the long cutting table, wearing an apricot-colored smock among the unnatural blooms. A woman came in one day just before closing. She wanted to send a dozen roses to a young veterinarian assistant.

“My dog bit her when she tried to lift him for an X-ray,” the woman said. “I’m so embarrassed.”

Louise had never been interested in the reasons people bought flowers. “I don’t like dogs,” Louise said.

“Really?” the woman said. “I don’t know where I’d be without my Buckie.”

“You wouldn’t be in here buying these roses,” Louise said.

Another season insinuated itself. It was Tim’s turn to give a party but things were not going well for him. The lilacs had not survived transplanting. They would never come back. Tim had done his best, but that wasn’t good enough. He had also had an unhappy experience with a pair of swans. He had been following their fortunes ever since he had witnessed them mating in a marsh beside the highway. “They twined their necks like heraldry afterwards,” he said. “Heraldry.” But after weeks of guarding the nest the male disappeared, and a week later the female vanished. Tim had watched them so arduously, and suddenly they were gone. He was sure someone had murdered them. “Remember the lied about the swan?” he asked.

“Leda and the swan?” Angus volunteered.

“The German song,” Tim said impatiently. “The lied,” he said, upset.

It was about a swan who so loved a hunter by the marsh that she became a woman and married him and had three children. Then one night the king of the swans called to her to come back or else he would die, so slowly she turned into a swan again, slowly opened her wide white wings and left her husband and her children…