Free The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel and Rick Moody Page B

we’re together or not?”
    Ahead of us poplars wave against the sky, just as if they had grown here.
    “Isn’t it true that that’s what people can do?” Wesley asks.
    And I say, “Who’s to live in a world where that isn’t true?” But I think, Three popes walk into a bar.

The Man in Bogotá
    The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge—though not, she threatens, for long.
    I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.
    I tell the woman about a man in Bogotá. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.
    Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.
    When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then—that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.

    Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogotá. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.

When It’s Human Instead
of When It’s Dog
    It is just inside the front door. It is the first thing she sees when she stops to wipe her feet.
    It has been raining for a week, and it won’t be stopping soon. It’s what the people were talking about on the bus ride in, and Mrs. Hatano guesses that’s what they’ll be talking about on the bus ride going home.
    She wonders if the stain is from water leaking in. But the plaster isn’t buckled on the ceiling above the spot. It’s as big as a three-quart saucepan, though it is not a perfect circle.
    It is two weeks since Mrs. Hatano cleaned this house. The Mr. gave her time off after the Mrs. died. Before, Mrs. Hatano left at five o’clock. Now the schedule is this: She will come every day at five o’clock to make dinner for the Mr. She will do some light cleaning—a load of laundry, an upstairs dusting—then she will wash the dinner dishes, collect her forty dollars, and let herself out.
     
    No one seems to be at home. Mrs. Hatano at the kitchen counter tears a sheet of paper from the telephone message pad. She draws a question mark at the top of the page. Under the question mark she writes in a column: lamb chop, pork chop, chicken, fish. She writes: bake or broil. Vegetables she will serve cut in strips and stir-fried. The rice can cook while she runs the vacuum.
    Upstairs, there is one room she never cleaned. The door was always closed, the Mrs. never well. But the door is open now.
    The room is dark—the shutters are closed—so Mrs. Hatano turns on a lamp.
    The wastepaper basket is filled with cards. There is an open letter on the desk, and, although it is not in Mrs. Hatano’s nature to pry, she begins to read. It is a sympathy note.
     
    Mrs. Hatano hears the front door open. She puts down the letter and moves to the bed, which is stripped of its sheets. On a chair beside the bed is a stack of clean linen, and a queen-size folded blanket.
    From the doorway the Mr. says hello. He smiles at Mrs. Hatano and offers to help her make up the bed.
    Before she can tell him no, he should please read his paper, the man takes two corners of the blanket and flaps it over the mattress. He waits for Mrs. Hatano to smooth out her side. She is unable to tell him, until she does, that the sheet goes first.
    “My God,” the man says quietly. He stares a thousand miles into the bed.
     
    At the smell of the dinner frying in