Free City of Strangers by John Shannon

altogether too frequent and too exasperating, he thought.
    “A VW-size heart is good enough for me,” he said, as evenly as he could.
    The de Villiers house was the tiniest of bungalows on a little walking path called Florita Court, face-to-face with a half dozen other bungalows separated by handkerchief-sized lawns and tiny plots of geraniums and pansies that were all fading now into eerie evening shadow. He wondered how somebody living here could afford Kennedy-Westridge.
    The peephole darkened up. “Mr. Liffey?” It was a mellow voice through the door, with a strange accent, like British run through a sieve. He had called ahead and heard the same accent.
    “Jack Liffey. Mrs. Aneliese de Villiers?”
    He heard a chain come away and then several bolts, like a New York door. He was actually a little stunned when he saw her, a lot of flyaway blond hair and a face that could launch quite a few ships, though maybe not a thousand. Probably late forties, but looking less.
    “Please come in.”
    She backed away. Or the rest of her backed away, but her breasts pretty much stayed right there, making the cottage seem even smaller than it was.
    “Thanks. Is Billy available?”
    “He’s closeted in the bedroom, working on his computer. You have no idea how precious privacy can be in a house this small.” She pronounced it PRIV-a-cee.
    “I can try hard.”
    She smiled and lit him up like a searchlight. Her eyes were the deepest blue, the blue of the sky high up in the mountains above the dustiest layers of the atmosphere. “Please sit down for a few moments. Our agreement is he finishes his algebra before TV or any other interruptions.”
    “Bless you,” he said. “And all who sail with you. I don’t know many mothers who could enforce that these days.” He sat on a threadbare sofa of some dark indeterminate pattern.
    “Could I get you something to drink?”
    “Water would be fine.”
    “I have some tolerable cabernet, and various types of mixed drinks.”
    “No, thanks.” As she left to fetch him the water from a tiny side kitchen, he looked over the room. Pattern on pattern, wallpaper and rug and curtain, plus a print of a shaggy Highland bull. The room looked prewar British, or what he would have guessed was prewar British, mostly from watching PBS. “Where are you from?” he called.
    “Zambia, though it was called Northern Rhodesia when we left. It was long ago, when we were trying to hold on to it. Anyone who could count knew it was time to go. And I didn’t like the ugly way the whites talked about the blacks. My husband and I took what was called the ‘chicken run,’ and never looked back. We lost a small business in Lusaka in the process, like a lot of white refugees.”
    “Is Billy Zambian?”
    “Oh, no. He was born here.”
    “And his father?”
    There was a tiny hard glitter in her eyes. “I no longer need to punish myself over him, or deceive or compromise myself. I’m quite fortunate.”
    “Whoa, I detect anger.”
    “Quite a lot of rage, actually. The less said … Do you have children, Mr. Liffey?”
    “Jack, please. A wonderful daughter who knows more about Victorian literature than I do, about Billy’s age. Her mother and I are divorced as well.”
    Aneliese de Villiers sat down in an overstuffed chair and smoothed her cotton skirt over her knees; but when she was through smoothing, even more knee seemed to show. They were nice knees. “It’s been quite a transformation from our youth, hasn’t it?” she suggested. “I didn’t know a single child in my school whose parents were divorced.”
    He thought for a moment. “I knew one in my neighborhood, but just one. It seemed like an immense tragedy for the poor boy, hush-hush, not to be talked about. I think we both grew up in a strange postwar moment in history that will never be repeated. Our fathers came through the Depression and then the big war, desperate to make everything as stable and peaceful and respectable as possible.