At first it looked like they’d just taken the TV and what little silver we had. “Thank goodness,” Epsilon said. “As long as we have each other,” I said. However, I looked with fresh eyes at the watercolors I’d painted and the homemade pearl necklace lying on the nightstand. Epsilon was surprisingly calm, but that was before he discovered the empty space on the bookshelf. Despondent, he sank down in the nearest chair. Luckily, whenever I laugh it sounds like I’m crying, so Epsilon never got suspicious.
The robbery was nice. It was something to talk about. I myself talked about it for several years, and when he’d gotten a little distance on things, Epsilon could talk about it too.
Even if I don’t have the energy to go out, I can always open the window. I’m painfully aware that the light breeze I feel whenever Åge B. breathes on me is nearly like my breathing on myself, so maybe I should try to breathe on people other than Epsilon, because it would be nice to mean something to someone. For me at least. However, I haven’t even managed to retrieve the newspaper from the doormat the last few days. The papers are probably piling up, and I wonder how long it’ll be before someone thinks I might be dead.
Speaking of which, when I close the window and go into the living room to turn on the TV, I find a man who can talk to the dead. “But where are they exactly?” the host asks him. “Where’s the Internet?” the man replies.
Einar Lunde is talking again, about everything that’s happened over the last day or so. Then the meteorologist comes on and says that Mary the storm is heading for the coast. It hits me like a fist in the gut. Surely I’m faster than Mary. And then I know what I have to do. There’s no way to avoid it. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” I say and head for the empty bedroom.
~ ~ ~
I’VE DECIDED TO GO to the get-together at the senior center, it’s the final thing on my list. I’ll stop at the last station before death, I might be claimed at the Lost and Found, it would kill two birds with one stone. That doesn’t rhyme, though one might think that it should. I try to keep my nerves under control. I eat jam straight from the tube and read the obituaries, but my thoughts are elsewhere.
I drag a chair from the kitchen to the bathroom, climb up on it, and stand looking at myself in the mirror for a long time. I feel like something’s missing besides the seven teeth.
In the bedroom, I feel around in the sheets and finally I find my tiny mole. I use a little spit to glue it to my face and then I clamber back up on the chair in front of the mirror. I’ve always wondered why you call them “moles” when they’re on your back, but “beauty marks” when they’re on your face. Now I know why.
I spray perfume on my body’s pulse points before I go and find my hat. Then I pull on my newly knitted jacket. After thinking about it for a minute, I consciously button it crookedly. I feel sly but don’t know why. That rhymes. I step over the pile of newspapers on the mat.
I stop at the message board in the foyer and read the flier about the get-together one more time, just in case there’s any fine print.
The other old people will probably be young and vivacious, at least compared to me. I might be the oldest of them all. It’s rarely good to be the oldest of them all. At least not in the West.
Åge B. still doesn’t notice my hat or my new jacket, even though I should be visible from Mars. I watch him and wonder how buses can run, how there can be food at the store, how the evening news is always right on time, how the world seems to get by somehow. I brush off my thoughts and carry on. In front of me, I see the old man with the walker, the one I raced a while back, he’s probably on his way to the get-together too. He looks so lonely walking there, much lonelier than me, and much, much smaller, but that might be because he’s so far away. I catch up to him. If I walk right behind him, people will think we’re together. If I’m lucky, the man with the walker will think so too. I almost believe it myself.
When we get to the senior center, I can’t bring myself to open the door for him, there’s a fine line between shyness and rudeness. We enter a hall full of hats and “granny carts,” and from the doorway in front of us I can hear the sound of raised voices — probably trying to drown out the beeping from all those hearing aids. Even though I’m so tired of green carpet and brown wallpaper, I miss them now, at least I know how to act when I’m home, whereas I have no idea how to act in a room full of people. So I close my eyes and follow the man with the walker. “Look, Rolf’s here,” someone says. “Sit with us, Rolf,” someone else calls. I open my eyes again, he looks so different from when it was just him and his walker. I’m about to turn around, I want to go home and plan my death, but then someone in green pants closes the door behind me. “Go ahead and sit down, the show’s starting,” she says. Apparently, there was some fine print after all.
There’s only one table where nobody’s sitting. However, it’s full of crocheted toilet-seat covers, small homemade dresses meant to hide bottles, wooden signs painted with the Mountain Code for hikers. I sit there after draping my jacket over the seat in front of me, so it looks like someone else is sitting here too. I wonder what makes Walker Rolf so special.
The “show” turns out to be five Pakistani girls in colorful outfits. They tell us they’re from the school next door, and then they put on a cassette and dance to strange music, while the old people clap excitedly. I try to be excited and clap too, but fail miserably at both. The music ends and then a woman says: “Let’s give a cheer for the Indians.” But the suggestion falls flat.
I want to get up now, I’ve given it a try and I’ve experienced Pakistan, and what else can one expect, but then green-clad servers start going from table to table with jelly rolls and juice, and jelly rolls aren’t exactly the worst thing in the world. While I sit and wait, I look at the five women at the next table over, they mash their dessert with a fork before putting it in their mouths. If I’d brought the bag full of teeth to lend, I could’ve made myself some friends. Even though they remind me of some housewives I used to know, I would’ve liked to approach them, but they talk so loudly and hear so badly, and I talk so softly and am so far away.
Instead, I practice saying thanks for the dessert. If the server says something I don’t understand, I can just make the sign of the ox, both to seem friendly and to show that deaf people aren’t necessarily dumb. I’ll have to cross my fingers that they don’t understand sign language and ask what color my ox is and whether it has big horns. I try to look hungry, but when someone finally approaches my table, it’s not to give me a piece of cake, but instead to take some plastic containers from underneath the table. “Now it’s time for the raffle!” she says loudly. Things are getting out of control.
The old people pass around the containers full of tickets, and they unfold these pink and yellow and blue pieces of paper, which they lay on their tables in front of them — each person has a territory, and some have even put their handbags between them to protect it. I’m mostly focused on how close I’m sitting to the green, pressed pants of the woman running the show. If I just lean a little to the side, I can smell detergent, and I want nothing more than to press my head against this nice fabric and cry, I don’t know why. That rhymes. But then the woman announces that the draw is about to begin. “We’ve all got to focus now.” I sit up straight again. The woman picks up an embroidered napkin from the table and shows it to the room. “And the lucky winner is. ” she says and draws a piece of paper from a bowl, “Z-35, Zimbabwe 35.” After a few nerve-wracking seconds, a nearly transparent man gives a soft whoop, and I wonder how someone can celebrate winning an embroidered napkin when they’re about to die. “Burkina Faso 45” is called, and so it goes until most of the African continent is covered and all the knickknacks and other useless things have been divvied up. The table in front of me is empty. “Now there’s only one prize left,” the woman says. My cheeks start to burn, because I think she means me. But then she grabs my jacket and holds it up in front of her. “This jacket is rather special,” she says after examining it closely. “It looks like it’s made out of earwarmers.”