Free Like Life by Lorrie Moore Page A

“Had to open up the register myself. It’d be curtains if the manager’d come by. Lucky I had keys.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Jane. “I had to take my cat into the vet’s this morning, way over on the west side. Any customers?” Jane gave Heffie an anxious look. It said “Please forgive me.” It also said “What is your problem?” and
“Have a nice day.”
Pleasantness was the machismo of the Midwest. There was something athletic about it. You flexed your face into a smile and let it hover there like the dare of a cat.
    “No, no customers,” said Heffie, “but you never can tell.”
    “Well, thanks for opening up,” said Jane.
    Heffie shrugged. “You doing the samples today?”
    “Thought I would, yes,” said Jane, flipping through some papers attached to a clipboard. “Unless
you
wanted to.” She said this with just a hint of good-natured accusation and good-natured insincerity. Heffie wasn’t that interested in doing the samples, and Jane was glad. It was just that Heffie didn’t much like doing anything, and whatever Jane did apparently seemed to Heffie like more fun, and easier, so sometimes the older woman complained a little by means of a shrug or a sigh.
    “Nah, that’s OK,” said Heffie. “I’ll do them some other time.” She slid open the glass door to the refrigerated deli case and grabbed a lone cheese curd, the squiggly shape and bright marigold color of it like a piece from a children’s game. She popped it into her mouth. “You ever been surfing?” she asked Jane.
    “Surfing?” Jane repeated incredulously. She would never figure out how Heffie came up with the questions she did.
    “Yeah. Surfing. You know—some people have done it. The fiberglass board that you stand on in the water and then a wave comes along?” Heffie’s face was a snowy moon of things never done.
    Jane looked away. “Once a couple of summers ago I went water-skiing on a lake,” she said. “In Oregon.” Her lover, the daredevil toymaker, had liked to do things like that. “Khem on, Jane,” he had said to her. “You only live at once.” Which seemed to her all the more reason to be careful, to take it easy, to have an ordinary life. She didn’t like to do things where the trick was to not die.
    “Water-skiing, poohf,” said Heffie. “That’s nothing like surfing. There’s not the waves, the
risk.
” Jane looked up from her clipboard and watched as Heffie waddled away, the tops of her feet swelling out over the straps of her shoes like dough.Heffie walked over to the Swiss nut rolls, put a fist down lightly on top, and gazed off.
    “ CARE TO TRY some of our horseradish cheddar today?” Jane smiled and held out the tray. She had placed little teaspoonfuls of spread on some sickly-looking rice crackers, and now she held them out to people like a caterer with the hors d’oeuvres at a fancy party.
Horses’ douvers
, her mother used to call them, and for years Jane had had her own idea about what a douver was. “Care to try a free sample of our horseradish cheddar spread, on special today?” At least it wasn’t spraying perfume at people. Last month she had met the girl who did that next door at Marshall Field’s. The girl, who was from Florida originally, said to her, “Sometimes you
aim
for the eyes. It’s not always an accident.” Malls, Jane knew, were full of salesgirls with stories. Broken hearts, boyfriends in jail. Once last week two ten-year-old girls, one pudgy, one thin, had come up to Jane, selling chocolate bars. They looked at her as if she were just a taller version of themselves, someone they might turn into when they grew up. “Will you buy a chocolate bar?” they asked her, staring at her samples. Jane offered them a cracker with a big clump of spread, but they politely declined.
    “Well, what kind of chocolate bars are you selling?”
    “Almond or crisp.” The pudgy girl, wearing a purple sweatshirt and lavender corduroys, clutched a worn-out paper bag to her