We Don't Live Here Anymore Three Novellas

WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE Pity is the worst passion of all: we don't outlive it like sex. -Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear Come see us again some time; nobody's home but us, and we don't live here anymore. -A friend, drunk one night 1 The owner of the liquor store was an Irishman with graying hair; he glanced at Edith, then pretended he hadn't, and said: "There's my ale man." "Six Pickwicks," I said. "And a six-pack of Miller's for the women." "You hardly find a woman who'll drink ale." "That's right." We leaned against the counter; I felt Edith wanting to touch me, so I stepped back and took out my wallet. Hank had wanted to pay for all of it but I held him to two dollars. "Used to be everybody in New England drank ale. Who taught you? Your father?" "He taught me to drink ale and laugh with pretty girls. What happened to the others?" I was watching Edith enjoying us. She is dark and very small with long black hair, and she has the same charming gestures that other girls with long hair have: with a slow hand she pushes it from her eye; when she bends over a drinking fountain, she holds it at her ear so it won't fall into the basin. Some time I would like to see it fall: Edith drinking, lips wet, throat moving with cool water, and her hair fallen in the chrome basin, soaking. "World War II. The boys all got drafted before they were old enough to drink in Massachusetts, see? So they started drinking beer on the Army bases. When they came home they still wanted beer. That was the end of ale. Now if one of your old ale drinkers dies, you don't replace him." Outside under the streetlights Edith took my arm. In front of the newsstand across the street a cop watched us get into the car, and in the dark Edith sat close to me as I drove through town. There were few cars and no one was on the sidewalks. On the streets where people lived most of the houses were dark; a few blocks from my house I stopped under a large tree near the curb and held Edith and we kissed. "We'd better go," she said. "I'll bring my car to the Shell station at twelve." She moved near the door and brushed her hair with her fingers, and I drove home. Terry and Hank were sitting on the front steps. When I stopped the car Edith got out and crossed the lawn without waiting or looking back. Terry watched me carrying the bag, and when I stepped between her and Hank she looked straight up at me. We talked in the dark, sitting in lawn chairs on the porch. Except Hank, who was always restless: he leaned against the porch rail, paced, leaned against a wall, stood over one of us as we talked, nodding his head, a bottle in one fist, a glass in the other, listening, then breaking in, swinging his glass like a slow hook to the body the instant before he interrupted, then his voice came, louder than ours. In high school he had played halfback. He went to college weighing a hundred and fifty-six pounds and started writing. He had kept in condition, and his walk and gestures had about them an athletic grace that I had tried to cultivate as a boy, walking home from movies where I had seen gunmen striding like mountain lions. Edith sat to my right, with her back to the wall; sometimes she rested her foot against mine. Terry sat across from me, smoking too much. She has long red hair and eleven years ago she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen; or, rather, the prettiest girl I had ever touched. Now she's thirty and she's gained a pound for each of those eleven years, but she has gained them subtly, and her only striking change is in her eyes, blue eyes that I fell in love with: more and more now, they have that sad, pensive look that married women get after a few years. Her eyes used to be merry. Edith is twenty-seven and herDubus, Andre is the author of 'We Don't Live Here Anymore Three Novellas', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400079261 and ISBN 1400079268.