Free Honored Guest (Vintage Contemporaries) by Joy Williams Page A

She had not slept but she felt alert, glassy even. She showered and dressed and hurried to Pond House, where she had coffee in the cafeteria. Her eyes darted about, falling on everything, glittering. There was her coat, hanging on a hook next to her table. The coat seemed preposterous to her suddenly. Honestly, what must she look like in that coat?
    Up on Floor Three, Cynthia wasn’t in her room but one fat girl was, her face red and her eyes swollen from crying.
    “I just lost my friend,” the fat girl said.
    “You’re not Holly then,” Donna said.
    “I wish I was,” the fat girl said. “I wish I was Holly.” She lay on her bed, crying loudly.
    Donna looked out the window at the street below. You couldn’t open the windows. A tree outside was struggling to burst into bloom but had been compromised heavily by the parking area. Big chunks of its bark had been torn away by poorly parked cars. When she was a child, visiting Florida, she’d seen a palm tree burst into flames. It was beautiful! Then rats as long as her downy child’s arm had rushed down the trunk. Later, she learned that it was not unusual for a palm tree to do this on occasion, given the proper circumstances. This tree didn’t want to do anything like that, though. It couldn’t. It struggled along quietly.
    She turned from the window and left the room where the fat girl continued sobbing. She walked down the corridor, humming a little. She pretended she was a virus, wandering without aim through someone’s body. She found Cynthia in the lounge, painting her long and perfect nails.
    Cynthia regarded her sourly. “I really wish you wouldn’t visit me anymore,” she said.
    A nurse appeared from nowhere like they did, a new one. “Who are you visiting?” she said to Donna.
    Cynthia looked at her little bottle of nail polish and tightened the cap.
    “You have to be visiting someone,” the nurse said.
    “She’s not visiting me,” Cynthia muttered.
    “What?” the nurse said.
    “She’s not visiting me,” Cynthia said loudly.
    After some remonstrance, Donna found herself beingsteered away from Cynthia and down the hallway to the elevator. “That’s it,” the nurse said. “You’ve lost your privileges here.” Donna was alone in the elevator as it went down. On the ground floor some people got on and the elevator went up again. On Floor Three they got off. Donna went back down. She walked through the parking lot to her car.
    She would come back tomorrow and avoid Cynthia and the nurse, too. For now, she had to decide which route to take home. It was how they made roads these days; there were five or six ways to get to the same place. On the highway she ran into construction almost immediately. There was always construction. Cans and cones, those bright orange arrows blinking, and she had to merge. She inched over, trying to merge. They wouldn’t let her in! She pushed her way in. Then she realized she was part of a funeral procession. Their lights were on. She was part of a cortège, of an anguished throng. Should she turn on her lights to show sympathy, to apologize? She put on her sunglasses. People didn’t turn their lights on in broad daylight just for funerals, though. They turned them on for all sorts of things. Remembering somebody or something. Actually, showing you remembered somebody or something, which was different. People were urged to put them on for safety too.
Lights on for Safety
. But this was a funeral, no doubt about it.
    After what seemed an eternity, the road opened up again and Donna turned the car sharply into the other lane. In quick moments she had left the procession far behind.
    On her own street she parked and walked quickly toward her door. She felt an unpleasant excitement. It was midmorning, and as always the neighborhood was quiet. Who knew what people did here? She never saw anyone on this street.
    Then a dog began to bark, quite alarmingly. As she walkedon, the rapid cry grew louder, more frantic. It