“I—” She hardly knew what to say.
“No, look—I’m sorry. I must sound insane. I’m just laying all this on you because I have this idea that you understand. I’m having a horrible time being with people right now. I feel like I’m okay, then I hear myself talking. You know, seeing you fall apart that night, it was just how I’d been feeling, inside. Just ripped open, raw, you know.”
She cringed at the words “fall apart.” She hadn’t fallen apart. She’d just cried a little bit. Okay, she’d cried a lot. But for heaven’s sake, since when was crying the same as falling apart? She felt very annoyed with him. And he was separated! She’d done that in front of someone soon to be single! Of course, she wasn’t in the market for another relationship, not yet. But she might as well cross this one right off the list. Already there were two strikes against him: “too handsome,” and “seen me in my bathrobe.” No, three: “lonely and predatory.”
They were at her building. “The mornings are the worst, aren’t they?” he went on, ignoring her silence. “I’m still not used to it. You should come by in the morning, if you want. It’s just us lonelyhearts, at that hour.”
“Oh, I quite like being alone, now,” she lied, brightly.
He was looking up at her building. “Do you have one of the balcony apartments?” he said.
“No,” she said. “I’m on the top floor.”
“I bet it’s a great view.”
It sounded like a line. She didn’t say anything.
Still, he didn’t move to go.
“I better go in,” she said. “I hope you feel better.” That didn’t seem right, but the conversation was well beyond her now. She felt tired and overexposed, hurrying up her steps to get away from him.
SHE TRIED TO WATCH THE MOVIE PHAN HAD GIVEN HER. It seemed promising in the store, but paled in comparison with The Godfather, once she started watching. She found herself missing James Caan and Al Pacino and Diane Keaton. She turned it off and went to take a shower.
She used a new shampoo she’d just bought. It was something of a splurge, but it had a wonderful coconut smell that reminded her of the beach. While she was in the shower she left the radio on to Prairie Home Companion, so as to have a little company. She wrapped her hair in a towel and put on her pajamas and slippers, then sat down and ate leftover Chinese food from the night before, listening to the end of the program. While she ate, she contemplated what it would be like to sleep with Garrison Keillor. The chopsticks made a harsh scraping noise against the paper container, making her teeth itch.
Maybe she should have invited John Owen up. It would be nice to have some company. But, lord, had he made her nervous. He was like a raw, gaping wound, and she had only just started to scab over, herself. No, it was a bad idea. Best to keep her distance from such need.
She finished eating and threw away the containers and washed the chopsticks and put them in the drainboard next to the sink. She found the Churchill biography she’d borrowed from the library, and took it to the other room to read while waiting for Patsy.
A few minutes later, she put the book down. Patsy’s things were spread out all over the room—her green knapsack, her few clothes, the hairy yak boots she’d arrived in, makeup and books. Patsy had not been impressed with Pru’s paint job. “What is that?” she’d said, so close to the wall that her nose was almost touching it. “Just plain white?”
“It’s lavender!”
“No, Pru, lavender is a color,” Patsy had said.
Pru went to work piling Patsy’s things neatly in the corner that used to hold the TV. She looked at the titles of Patsy’s books— MORE Zen Koans; Kabbalah, Re-Mystified; and, with many of its pages dog-eared, Your Two-Year-Old. Pru smiled and stacked the books next to the pile of things she had made. She should see more of Annali, she thought. Soon she would be in school, then a teenager, and Pru knew so very little about her, really. On one of her visits home, Annali was just a little peanut in a striped receiving blanket. Then, the next time, she was starting to walk, stumbling around in her lurching gait, her hat-lovey clutched in one hand. Then she was actually speaking, saying “Hello, Aunt Pwoody” into the phone, and it seemed Pru had missed out on everything she meant to do.
She picked up Your Two-Year-Old and read for a while, running her fingers through her damp hair to dry it. Two-year-olds sounded rather scary. The author used words like “impulsive” and “accidents” and “moody.” When she could barely keep her eyes open any longer, she put the book down. She sat up and yawned and stretched, and looked at the clock over the little stove in the kitchen. It was almost one, and Patsy still wasn’t home. The apartment was perfectly still, and clean, and neat. There was nothing else to do, then, but go to bed.
In her sleep she kept rearranging Patsy’s things in her apartment. The knapsack here, the boots there. Over and over, like a Rubik’s Cube, she moved her things around in her mind. Finally she woke up just in time to see the sun beginning to come up, and she watched out her bedroom window as the black sky became
