Alice Munros Best

slithery, yellowish, indecent old beast, some mangy but urgent old tiger, was going to pounce among the books and the dirty dishes and conduct a familiar rampage.
    A day or so later I got a letter from Donald. He wanted a divorce, so that he could marry Helen.
    I HIRED A CLERK , a college girl, to come in for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so I could get to the bank, and do some office work. Thefirst time Charlotte saw her she went up to the desk and patted a stack of books sitting there, ready for quick sale.
    “Is this what the office managers are telling their minions to buy?” she said. The girl smiled cautiously and didn’t answer.
    Charlotte was right. It was a book called
Psycho-Cybernetics
, about having a positive self-image.
    “You were smart to hire her instead of me,” Charlotte said. “She is much niftier-looking, and she won’t shoot her mouth off and scare the customers away. She won’t have
opinions.”
    “There’s something I ought to tell you about that woman,” the clerk said, after Charlotte left.
    THAT PART IS not of interest
.
    “What do you mean?” I said. But my mind had been wandering, that third afternoon in the hospital. Just at the last part of Charlotte’s story I had thought of a special-order book that hadn’t come in, on Mediterranean cruises. Also I had been thinking about the Notary Public, who had been beaten about the head the night before, in his office on Johnson Street. He was not dead but he might be blinded. Robbery? Or an act of revenge, outrage, connected with a layer of his life that I hadn’t guessed at?
    Melodrama and confusion made this place seem more ordinary to me, but less within my grasp.
    “Of course it is of interest,” I said. “All of it. It’s a fascinating story.”
    “Fascinating,” repeated Charlotte in a mincing way. She made a face, so she looked like a baby vomiting out a spoonful of pap. Her eyes, still fixed on me, seemed to be losing color, losing their childish, bright, and self-important blue. Fretfulness was changing into disgust. An expression of vicious disgust, she showed, of unspeakable weariness – such as people might show to the mirror but hardly ever to one another. Perhaps because of the thoughts that were already in my head, it occurred to me that Charlotte might die. She might die at any moment. At this moment. Now.
    She motioned at the water glass, with its crooked plastic straw. I held the glass so that she could drink, and supported her head. I could feelthe heat of her scalp, a throbbing at the base of her skull. She drank thirstily, and the terrible look left her face.
    She said, “Stale.”
    “I think it would make an excellent movie,” I said, easing her back onto the pillows. She grabbed my wrist, then let it go.
    “Where did you get the idea?” I said.
    “From life,” said Charlotte indistinctly. “Wait a moment.” She turned her head away, on the pillow, as if she had to arrange something in private. Then she recovered, and she told a little more.
    CHARLOTTE DID NOT DIE. At least she did not die in the hospital. When I came in rather late, the next afternoon, her bed was empty and freshly made up. The nurse who had talked to me before was trying to take the temperature of the woman tied in the chair. She laughed at the look on my face.
    “Oh, no!” she said. “Not that. She checked out of here this morning. Her husband came and got her. We were transferring her to a long-term place out in Saanich, and he was supposed to be taking her there. He said he had the taxi outside. Then we get this phone call that they never showed up! They were in great spirits when they left. He brought her a pile of money, and she was throwing it up in the air. I don’t know – maybe it was only dollar bills. But we haven’t a clue where they’ve got to.”
    I walked around to the apartment building on Pandora Street. I thought they might simply have gone home. They might have lost the instructions about how to get to the nursing home and not wanted to ask. They might have decided to stay together in their apartment no matter what. They might have turned on the gas.
    At first I could not find the building and thought that I must be in the wrong block. But I remembered the corner store and some of the houses. The building had been changed – that was what had happened. The stucco had been painted pink; large, new windows and French doors had been put in; little balconies with wrought-iron railings had been