Read Online Honored Guest (Vintage Contemporaries) by Joy Williams - Free Book Online

deliberately bumped into her as she walked down the hall. The girl’s flesh was hard and she smelled of coconut. She thrust her face close to Donna’s. Her pores were large and clean and Donna could see the contacts resting on the corneas of her eyes.
    “I’m passionate, intense and filled with private reverie, and so is my friend,” the girl said, “so don’t slime us like you do.” Then she punched Donna viciously on the arm. Donna felt like crying but she was only a visitor. She didn’t have to come here so frequently; she was really coming here too much, sometimes two and three times a day.
    There were group meetings twice a week and Donna always tried to be present for these, although she was not permitted to attend them. Sometimes, however, if she stood just outside the door, the nurses and psychologists didn’t notice her right away. Cynthia and the fat teenagers and the old lady and a half dozen others would sit around a large table and say anything they wanted to.

     
    “I dreamed that I threw up a fox,” one of the fat girls said. Really, Donna couldn’t tell them apart.
    “I shit something that looked like an onion once,” a man said. “It just kept coming out of me. I pulled it out of myself with my own hands. I thought it was the Devil, but it was a worm. A gift from Central America.”
    “That is so disgusting,” the other fat girl said, “That is the most—”
    “Hey!” the man said. “Get yourself a life, woman.”
    The worm thing caused the old lady to request to be excused. Donna walked back to the room with her, and they sat down on her bed.
    “Feel my heart,” the old lady said. “It’s pounding. I wasn’t brought up that way.”
    The old lady liked to play cards, and she and Donna would often play with an old soiled deck that had pictures of colorful fish on it. Donna pretended she was in the cabin of a boat on a short, safe trip to a lovely island. The old woman was a mysterious opponent, not at all what she seemed. Donna had, in fact, been told by the nurses that she was considerably more impaired than she appeared to be. Beyond the window of the cabin were high waves, pursuing and accompanying them. The waves were an essential part of the world the boat required, but they bore malice toward the boat, that much was obvious.
    “What kind of fish are these?” Donna asked.
    “These are reef residents,” the old lady said.
    They played a variation of Spit in the Ocean. Donna had had no idea that there were so many variations of this humble game.
    The two fat girls came in and lay down on their beds. The old lady was really opening up to Donna. She was telling her about her husband and her little house.
    “After my husband died, I was afraid someone might come in and …” She passed her finger across her throat. “I bought one of those men. Safe-T-Man II, the New Generation. You know, the ones that look as though they’re six feet tall but can be folded up and put in a little tote bag? I put him in the car orI put him in my husband’s easy chair right in front of the window. He had all kinds of clothes. He had a leather coat. He had a baseball cap.”
    “Where is he now?” Donna asked.
    “He’s in his little tote bag. Actually, he frightened me a little, Safe-T-Man. I think I ordered him too dark or something. I never did get used to him.”
    “That’s racist,” one of the fat girls said.
    “Yeah, what a racist remark,” the other one said.
    “I bet he wonders what happened to me,” the old lady said. “I bet my car does too. One minute you’re on the open road, one excitement after another, the next you’re in a dark garage. I’m not afraid of dying, but I don’t want to die old.”
    She was quite old already, of course, but the fat girls did not challenge her on this. Cynthia came into the room, eating a piece of fruit, a nectarine or something.
    “The first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is go home and make Festive Chicken,” the old