Read Online The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore by Lorrie Moore - Free Book Online Page A

misplaced files. Sometimes he knocked things over by accident—a glass of water or the benefits manual. The buildup to war, too, was taking its toll. He lay in bed at night, the moments before sleep a kind of stark acquaintance with death. What had happened to the world? It was mid-March now, but it still did not look like spring, especially with the plastic sheeting duct-taped to his windows. When he tried to look out, the trees seemed to be pasted onto the waxy dinge of a still wintry sky. He wished that this month shared its name with a less military verb. Why "March"? How about a month named Skip? That could work.
    He got a couple of cats from the pound so that Bekka could have some live pet action at his house, too. He and Bekka went to the store and stocked up on litter and cat food.
    "Provisions!" Ira exclaimed.
    "In case the war comes here, we can eat the cat food," Bekka suggested.
    "Cat food, heck. We can eat the cats," Ira said.
    "That's disgusting, Dad."
    Ira shrugged.
    "You see, that's one of the things Mom didn't like about you!" she added.
    "Really? She said that?"
    "Sort of."
    "Mom likes me. She's just very busy."
    "Yeah. Whatever."
    He got back to the cats. "What should we name them?"
    "I don't know." She studied the cats.
    Ira hated the precious literary names that people gave pets—characters from opera and Proust. When he first met Marilyn, she had a cat named Portia, but he had insisted on calling it Fang.
    "I think we should name them Snowball and Snowflake," Bekka said, looking glassy-eyed at the two golden tabbies. In the pound, someone with nametag duty had named them "Jake" and "Fake Jake," but the quotation marks around their names seemed an invitation to change them.
    "They don't look like a snowball or a snowflake," Ira said, trying not to let his disappointment show. Sometimes Bekka seemed completely banal to him. She had spells of inexplicable and vapid conventionality. He had always wanted to name a cat Bowser. "How about Bowser and Bowsee?"
    "Fireball and Fireflake," Bekka tried again.
    Ira looked at her, he hoped, beseechingly and persuasively. "Are you
sure?
Fireball and Fireflake don't really sound like cats that would belong to you."
    Bekka's face clenched tearily. "You don't know me! I only live with you part time! The rest of the time I live with Mom, and she doesn't know me, either! The only person who knows me is me!"
    "O.K., O.K.," Ira said. The cats were eyeing him warily. In time of war, never argue with a fireball or a fireflake. Never argue with the food. "Fireball and Fireflake."
    What
were
those? Two divorced middle-aged people on a date?
     
    "why don't you come to dinner?" Zora phoned one afternoon. "I'm making spring spaghetti, Bruny's favorite, and you can come over and meet him. Unless you have Bekka tonight."
    "What is spring spaghetti?" Ira asked.
    "Oh, it's the same as regular spaghetti—you just serve it kind of lukewarm. Room temperature. With a little fresh basil."
    "What should I bring?"
    "Perhaps you could just bring a small appetizer and some dessert," she said. "And maybe a salad, some bread if you're close to a bakery, and a bottle of wine. Also an extra chair, if you have one. We'll need an extra chair."
    "O.K.," he said.
    He was a little loaded down at the door. She stepped outside, he thought to help him, but she simply put her arms around him. "I have to kiss you outside. Bruny doesn't like to see that sort of thing." She kissed Ira in a sweet, rubbery way on the mouth. Then she stepped back in, smiling, holding the door open for him. Oh, the beautiful smiles of the insane. Soon, he was sure, there would be a study that showed that the mentally ill were actually better-looking than other people. Dating proved it! The aluminum foil over his salad was sliding off, and the brownies he had made for dessert were still warm underneath the salad bowl, heating and wilting the lettuce. He attempted a familiar and proprietary stride through Zora's living room, though