"Why do you watch that? I swear, you're a sociopath." She could barely hear him. She took a seat in the chair next to the balcony door and took a bite out of her pastry. It was frozen in the middle.
There was nothing to see, really. Just a red truck, a blue truck behind it, the door to the house was wide open. And it was silent. There were no lamentations, nor busy entries and exits, no oxygen tanks or flashing lights. Two men in matching navy shirts loped up the front steps, stretcher in hand. There was no one else.It had never been this quiet.
They had moved to this house only a month ago, she and him. Every morning there had been something to wake them, a wailing beagle, or the garbage truck, the sharp scratch of a rake against the concrete. The sounds would move around the walls, vibrate up the posts of their bed, shake the pillows beneath them, until they had to surrender. They would crawl out of bed, start the coffee, and stare out the balcony door, glaring daggers into the direction of the noise. Especially her.It had become a necessity of her morning ritual. She paced from one frame of the closed glass doors to the other, her hands clutching the warm sides of the mug, her fingers sliding back and forth through the handle. She blamed the city, the tourists who came to it, the modern world's lack of attention to manners, the economy, the situation in Georgia, her mother--she blamed everything. She would tell him how different it was where she was from. In Virginia it would be a travesty to be this loud, she said. They consider others down south, she said, they may have been Confederates, but they care for their neighbors, no one gives them credit for that. He nodded and refilled the kettle.
Today, though, was different.
"Her mother lives with them, you know," she said. "It must be her."
"Stop watching. It's a personal matter."
"If it was a personal matter there wouldn't be two trucks blocking my driveway. Death is not an exclusive engagement, in case you haven't noticed yet."
He glanced at her. A tuft of her hair stuck out from the rest. He was used to it.
"What time do you have to leave?"
"7. It's always 7. 7:15 and I'm stuck in traffic for half an hour. They've been in that house for a while."
"Who?"
"She was pretty old. I wouldn't be surprised." Her eyes had not moved from the house.
"And you call yourself a humanist. I haven't seen you shed a tear so far."
"That's because I was raised in a church community. We have ways of dealing with death. You know, in Virginia everyone belongs to a church community. Sentimentality is a setback. I grew up on a farm. We didn't name our pets, there was no point. If we had more of that around here, things like this wouldn't happen."
"Things like what?"
"Here they come."
She furrowed her brow and squinted through the glass. The stretcher moved back out of the doorway. It was still empty. The two men loaded it back into the blue truck. The red truck drove away, the blue followed. He watched her shoulders rise and descend: a sigh of disappointment filled the kitchen.
He sighed back. "Well, I suppose that's a good sign."
She turned around in her chair. There was a strange element in her gaze, it was tranquil on the surface, but beneath the clear film, there was a spark of indignation, or perhaps, if he was closer, perhaps rage. He wanted to say he had never seen it before, that it was something unexpected, but now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure. He nervously toyed with the corner of the newspaper page, and she shifted her glare to the clock behind him.
"It's 7."
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