Free Honored Guest (Vintage Contemporaries) by Joy Williams

wouldn’t, and it wasn’t. Donna had gone outside into the street and walked slowly back toward the house, avoiding the nestling. Then she had run, waving her arms. There had been no barking at all, only the sound of her own feet on the crushed-rock yard. It had not worked in her own apartment either. It had not even felt warm.
    Poor old soul, Donna thought.
    Night was flickering at the corners of the hospital. There was the smell of potatoes, the sound of wheels bringing the supper trays. They always made the visitors leave around this time.
    “Cynthia,” Donna said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “Why?” Cynthia said.
    At home, Donna pretended she was on a train with no ticket, eluding the conductor as it sped toward some destination on gleaming rails. She made herself a drink. She almost finished it, then freshened it a bit. The phone rang and it was Cynthia. She was delighted it was Cynthia.
    “You will not believe this, Donna,” Cynthia said. “You know that new guy, the really annoying one? Well, at dinner hewas saying that when women attempt suicide they often don’t succeed, but with men they do it on the first go-round. He said that simple statistic says it all about the difference between men and women. He said that men are doers and that women are deceivers and flirts, and Holly just threw back her chair and—”
    “Who’s Holly?” Donna asked.
    “My roommate, for godssakes, the one who hates you. She attacked this guy. She gouged out one of his eyes with a spoon.”
    “She gouged it
out?”
    “I didn’t think it could be done, but boy, she knew how to do it.”
    “I wonder if that could have been me,” Donna said.
    “Oh, I think so. It’s bedlam in here.” Cynthia laughed wildly. “I want to leave, Donna, but I don’t feel better. But I could leave, you know. I could just walk right out of here.”
    “Really?” Donna said. She thought, When I get out of here, I’m going to be gone.
    “But I think I should feel better. I lack goals. I need goals.”
    Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, Cynthia using the phone. Donna preferred sitting quietly with her in Pond House, offering to get her little things she had expressed no desire for, reflecting about Dennis, her married man who had not come by to see her once. Of course he was probably still annoyed about his car, although he had filed no charges.
    Cynthia kept talking, pretty much about her life, the details of which Donna had heard before and which were no more riveting this time. She’d had a difficult time of it, starting in childhood. She had been an intense little thing but was thwarted, thwarted. Donna walked around with the phone toher ear, making another drink, crushing an ant or two that ventured onto the countertop, staring out the window at the dark only to realize that she wasn’t seeing the dark, merely a darkened image of herself and the objects behind her. She sipped her drink and turned toward some picture postcards she’d taped to one of the cupboards. Some of them had been up for years. One was of a city, a cheerless and civilized city similar to the one on the old woman’s playing cards.
    Cynthia was saying, “I just can’t accept so much, you know, Donna, and I feel, I really feel this, that my capacity to adapt to what
is
has been exceeded. I—”
    “Cynthia,” Donna said. “We’re all alone in a meaningless world. That’s it. OK?”
    “That’s so easy for you to say!” Cynthia screamed.
    There was a loud crack as the connection was broken.
    Donna had no recollection who had sent her the postcard or from where. She couldn’t think what had prompted her to display it, either. The city held no allure for her. She had no intention of taking it down and looking at it more closely.
    Later, she lay in bed trying to find sleep by recounting the rank of poker hands. Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House … A voice kept saying in her head,
Out or In. Huh? Which will it be?
Then it was dawn.