They went in and chose a tiny table in a corner—a sticky disk on a wobbly plastic pedestal. “You’ll stay, I’ll get,” Persky said.
She sat and panted. Silverware tapped and clicked all around. No one here but old people. It was like the dining room of a convalescent home. Everyone had canes, dowager’s humps, acrylic teeth, shoes cut out for bunions. Everyone wore an open collar showing mottled skin, ferocious clavicles, the wrinkled foundations of wasted breasts. The air-conditioning was on too high; she felt the cooling sweat licking from around her neck down, down her spine into the crevice of her bottom. She was afraid to shift; the chair had a wicker back and a black plastic seat. If she moved even a little, an odor would fly up: urine, salt, old woman’s fatigue. She left off panting and shivered. What do I care? I’m used to everything. Florida, New York, it doesn’t matter. All the same, she took out two hairpins and caught up the hanging strands; she shoved them into the core of her gray knot and pierced them through. She had no mirror, no comb, no pocketbook; not even a handkerchief. All she had was a Kleenex pushed into her sleeve and some coins in the pocket of her dress.
“I came out only for the laundry,” she told Persky—with a groan he set down a loaded tray: two cups of tea, a saucer of lemon slices, a dish of eggplant salad, bread on what looked like a wooden platter but was really plastic, another plastic platter of Danish. “Maybe I didn’t bring enough to pay.”
“Never mind, you got the company of a rich retired taxpayer. I’m a well-off man. When I get my Social Security, I spit on it.”
“What line of business?”
“The same what I see you got one lost. At the waist. Buttons. A shame. That kind’s hard to match, as far as I’m concerned we stopped making them around a dozen years ago. Braided buttons is out of style.”
“Buttons?” Rosa said.
“Buttons, belts, notions, knickknacks, costume jewelry. A factory. I thought my son would take it over but he wanted something different. He’s a philosopher, so he became a loiterer. Too much education makes fools. I hate to say it, but on account of him I had to sell out. And the girls, whatever the big one wanted, the little one also. The big one found a lawyer, that’s what the little one looked for. I got one son-in-law in business for himself, taxes, the other’s a youngster, still on Wall Street.”
“A nice family,” Rosa bit off.
“A loiterer’s not so nice. Drink while it’s hot. Otherwise it won’t reach to your metabolism. You like eggplant salad on top of bread and butter? You got room for it, rest assured. Tell me, you live alone?”
“By myself,” Rosa said, and slid her tongue into the tea. Tears came from the heat.
“My son is over thirty, I still support him.”
“My niece, forty-nine, not married, she supports me.”
“Too old. Otherwise I’d say let’s make a match with my son, let her support him too. The best thing is independence. If you’re able-bodied, it’s a blessing to work.” Persky caressed his chest. “I got a bum heart.”
Rosa murmured, “I had a business, but I broke it up.”
“Bankruptcy?”
“Part with a big hammer,” she said meditatively, “part with a piece of construction metal I picked up from the gutter.”
“You don’t look that strong. Skin and bones.”
“You don’t believe me? In the papers they said an ax, but where would I get an ax?”
“That’s reasonable. Where would you get an ax?” Persky’s finger removed an obstruction from under his lower plate. He examined it: an eggplant seed. On the floor near the cart there was something white, a white cloth. Handkerchief. He picked it up and stuffed it in his pants pocket. Then he said, “What kind of business?”
“Antiques. Old furniture. Junk. I had a specialty in antique mirrors. Whatever I had there, I smashed it. See,” she said, “now you’re sorry you started with me!”
“I ain’t sorry for nothing,” Persky said. “If there’s one thing I know to understand, it’s mental episodes. I got it my whole life with my wife.”
“You’re not a widower?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Where is she?”
“Great Neck, Long Island. A private hospital, it don’t cost me peanuts.” He said, “She’s in a mental condition.”
“Serious?”
“It used to be once in a while, now it’s a regular thing. She’s mixed up that she’s somebody else. Television stars. Movie actresses. Different people. Lately my cousin, Betty Bacall. It went to her head.”
“Tragic,” Rosa said.
“You see? I unloaded on you, now you got to unload on me.”
“Whatever I would say, you would be deaf.”
“How come you smashed up your business?”
“It was a store. I didn’t like who came in it.”
“Spanish? Colored?”
“What do I care who came? Whoever came, they were like deaf people. Whatever you explained to them, they didn’t understand.” Rosa stood up to claim her cart. “It’s very fine of you to treat me to the Danish, Mr. Persky. I enjoyed it. Now I got to go.”
“I’ll walk you.”
“No, no, sometimes a person feels to be alone.”
“If you’re alone too much,” Persky said, “you think too much.”
“Without a life,” Rosa answered, “a person lives where they can. If all they got is thoughts, that’s where they live.”
“You ain’t got a life?”
“Thieves took it.”
She toiled away from him. The handle of the cart was a burning rod. A hat, I ought to have worn a hat! The pins in her bun scalded her scalp. She panted like a dog in the sun. Even the trees looked exhausted: every leaf face downward under a powder of dust. Summer without end, a mistake!
In the lobby she waited before the elevator. The “guests”—some had been residents for a dozen years—were already milling around, groomed for lunch, the old women in sundresses showing their thick collarbones and the bluish wells above them. Instead of napes they had rolls of wide fat. They
