Charlie Dickinson The Cat at Light's End and Other Stories (pdf)

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here. Laura knew that luminous hazelnut-sized defect was a time
bomb.
She next heard, Medical intervention can t do much.
Understandably, she forgot the unwieldy Latinate phrase for why
she had no more than eighteen months of active life left. A
prescription in hand, nothing more than a palliative, really, Laura
walked steadily out to the clinic parking lot, no wiser.
She had to keep about the day s business, she reasoned, so the
dizziness would not get her. Small, quotidian purposes could help.
She would stay standing, as she did now, Friday morning, behind a
glassed-in walkway across one wall of a multilane garage bay under
a ceiling studded with evacuation fans. She would give complete
attention to her Tercel spinning front wheels, going nowhere on
enormous steel rollers, a sensor attached to its tailpipe. She would
wonder, Can this aged car pass? A fifteen-year-old car had to be a
match for her sixty-seven years.
The blue-jumpsuited technician gunned the motor. The front
wheels skittered sideways. A quick steering wheel tug, though, and
the guy had the car again tracking true. Then elbow out the driver s
window, he studied an orange line wriggling across a computer
display. He revved it up again.
Someone else joined Laura. A suit-and-tie man, cell-phoning,
who declared, above the din of her testing-abused Tercel and other
vehicles in the bay, I m at DEQ getting tested. Laura figured his
anthracite black BMW, next up, was a business lease: new enough
to be an automatic pass.
The technician, out of the car, hit a floor lever. The rollers
retracted. He yanked the sensor off the tailpipe. Back in the car, he
drove smartly forward, the brake lights flicking at the far apron of
the garage.
Laura fished out twenty-one dollars for the inspection fee and
walked out to pay.
No charge, the cashier said, seeing Laura s money. Your car
failed. The woman s face seemed genuinely disengaged about
having bad news and waited for a computer printout.
You can take this to a mechanic to work on your car. Okay?
Laura took the free printout, ready to accept the car was
getting old like her.
She got in the Tercel, moved the seat up. She shrugged, turned
the ignition key. If the motor had to be replaced, maybe she could
sell the car, take the bus. That was one long-term solution.
* * *
Back at the house, Laura had, as ever, many things to do. She
couldn t be sure if teaching Speech and Drama to distraction-prone
high-schoolers wasn t easier than retirement.
She rattled around in this Irvington bungalow, generously sized
with five bedrooms, one of a kind said to be built for large Irish-
Catholic families in the Twenties. The house was appreciated all the
more when she was left with Cath, Rob, and little Petey to bring up,
post-ex, so many years ago. She got the house from him, worth
then about a tenth of what houses like it went for now. But it had
to be kept up.
In the downstairs sunroom, Laura grabbed the phone, dialed a
number in Healdsburg, California.
Good afternoon. Dry Creek Meditation Center. How can I
help you? the unseen woman said, upbeat as only a Golden Stater
could be.
Yes, I was talking with a friend, she said you ve one-week
retreats people sign up for. On her own, Laura had tried to
meditate. Nothing much came of it. She would doze off. Still, the
art of meditation was a mystery for which she was determined to
gain initiation.
Cath s friend loved this place in Northern California. An old
farm converted to a retreat on Dry Creek Road in Healdsburg,
nestled among some of the best vineyards in Sonoma County. Nora
liked the open, unpretentious approach. Cath, who personally was
into the Alexander Technique, joked it would be nice having a Plan
B.
That s right, the Meditation Center woman said. We have
one coming up next week. Let me check. There re vacancies.
Laura said okay, gave her credit card info, billing address, and
other details: She d pass up the historic hotel on the square
downtown, the Spartan sleeping facilities at the retreat would work.
Then she hung up. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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