Like Life by Lorrie Moore Page B

it wide. Zoë set her bags on the hall floor and hugged Evan hard. When she was little, Evan had always been affectionate and devoted. Zoë had always taken care of her, advising, reassuring, until recently, when it seemed Evan had started advising and reassuring
her.
It startled Zoë. She suspected it had something to do with Zoë’s being alone. It made people uncomfortable. “How
are
you?”
    “I threw up on on the plane. Besides that, I’m OK.”
    “Can I get you something? Here, let me take your suitcase. Sick on the plane. Eeeyew.”
    “It was into one of those sickness bags,” said Zoë, just in case Evan thought she’d lost it in the aisle. “I was very quiet.”
    The apartment was spacious and bright, with a view all the way downtown along the East Side. There was a balcony and sliding glass doors. “I keep forgetting how nice this apartment is. Twentieth floor, doorman …” Zoë could work her whole life and never have an apartment like this. So could Evan. It was Charlie’s apartment. He and Evan lived in it like two kids in a dorm, beer cans and clothes strewn around. Evan put Zoë’s bag away from the mess, over by the fish tank. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Now what can I get you?”
    Evan made them a snack—soup from a can, and saltines.
    “I don’t know about Charlie,” she said, after they had finished. “I feel like we’ve gone all sexless and middle-aged already.”
    “Hmmm,” said Zoë. She leaned back into Evan’s sofa and stared out the window at the dark tops of the buildings. It seemed a little unnatural to live up in the sky like this, like birds that out of some wrongheaded derring-do had nested too high. She nodded toward the lighted fish tanks and giggled.“I feel like a bird,” she said, “with my own personal supply of fish.”
    Evan sighed. “He comes home and just sacks out on the sofa, watching fuzzy football. He’s wearing the psychic cold cream and curlers, if you know what I mean.”
    Zoë sat up, readjusted the sofa cushions. “What’s fuzzy football?”
    “We haven’t gotten cable yet. Everything comes in fuzzy. Charlie just watches it that way.”
    “Hmmm, yeah, that’s a little depressing,” Zoë said. She looked at her hands. “Especially the part about not having cable.”
    “This is how he gets into bed at night.” Evan stood up to demonstrate. “He whips all his clothes off, and when he gets to his underwear, he lets it drop to one ankle. Then he kicks up his leg and flips the underwear in the air and catches it. I, of course, watch from the bed. There’s nothing else. There’s just that.”
    “Maybe you should just get it over with and get married.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. I mean, you guys probably think living together like this is the best of both worlds, but …” Zoë tried to sound like an older sister; an older sister was supposed to be the parent you could never have, the hip, cool mom. “… I’ve always found that as soon as you think you’ve got the best of both worlds”—she thought now of herself, alone in her house; of the toad-faced cicadas that flew around like little caped men at night, landing on her screens, staring; of the size fourteen shoes she placed at the doorstep, to scare off intruders; of the ridiculous inflatable blow-up doll someone had told her to keep propped up at the breakfast table—“it can suddenly twist and become the worst of both worlds.”
    “Really?” Evan was beaming. “Oh, Zoë. I have something to tell you. Charlie and I
are
getting married.”
    “Really.” Zoë felt confused.
    “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
    “Yes, well, I guess the part about fuzzy football misled me a little.”
    “I was hoping you’d be my maid of honor,” said Evan, waiting. “Aren’t you happy for me?”
    “Yes,” said Zoë, and she began to tell Evan a story about an award-winning violinist at Hilldale-Versailles, how the violinist had come home from a competition in