Real Life by Kitty Burns Florey Page A

“Don’t make such a face, Dorrie. It was entertaining, like eating pastry. Probably bad for you but fun—sort of like William, actually.” She sighed. “I still miss that selfish bastard.”
    â€œI doubt it.” Dorrie knew it wasn’t William Rachel had come to talk about, either—that the reference to William was Rachel’s way of leading up to her announcement. Dorrie didn’t want to hear it, not until she’d had more to drink, but Rachel said, “Well, maybe I don’t. Anyway, I’ve met someone, Dorrie. A man named Leon, a lawyer, forty-two years old, divorced. I’ve been seeing him every weekend.”
    â€œI suspected it,” Dorrie said—briefly pleased, after all, that she had read the signs right.
    â€œI met him in my dentist’s waiting room. He had an abscess,” Rachel went on. “He was pretty doped up. We talked about cheese, and he’d seen one of my stories in The Atlantic and liked it. He had to have a root canal, and I waited and drove him home afterward. He was really in bad shape. The next day he sent me flowers, to thank me, and I sent him flowers, because of his tooth, and it just went on from there.” It sounded like one of the wacky, improbable courtships in Rachel’s stories: in the story they would go to the zoo; she would tell him about her dog Montmorency; he would show her his membership card in the International Telephone Book Collectors’ Association; she would give him her straw hat to hold and disappear into the monkey house; she would watch two chimps mating and then look out the window at him, squinting into the sun, patiently dangling the ribbons of her hat in the dust, and she would fall in love with him. Dorrie always had trouble liking Rachel’s stories; they didn’t seem to be about anything.
    Rachel continued: he was nice looking, considerate, good in bed, prosperous … Dorrie knew she would meet him eventually, and he would turn out to be a pleasant middle-aged chap with a Williamish taste for silly jokes—Rachel’s inevitable choice. “And here’s the best part, Dorrie,” she said. “He has this absolutely terrific friend. His name is Charles Lind. Divorced, a painter, quite attractive—”
    â€œSorry, Rachel,” Dorrie said immediately. “I’m not interested.”
    â€œWhy? Have you found a new messiah?”
    â€œI would have told you if I was seeing anyone.” As if a prior commitment were the only reason to pass up the divine Charles.
    â€œThen why not just meet him? You don’t have to marry him, Dorrie. Just come for dinner, just a nice casual evening, the four of us.”
    Dorrie closed her eyes. There had been men, since Teddy, whom she had met and liked and who hadn’t responded. One she’d met at a craft show and made a fool of herself over, another she’d pursued at a party until his beautiful blond girlfriend had come and taken him away in an instant. Petty humiliations, little failures. And there had been men interested in her too, like the pharmacist in town, newly divorced and pushing sixty, who had invited her for a drink at the Elks’ club.
    â€œI’m simply not interested, Rachel. Is that so strange? I’m old and ugly and I don’t want to start anything. I don’t want to let myself in for it. And I know what you mean by quite attractive. He’s a loser just like me. Losers don’t like other losers. It’s not like matching up tennis players or something. Dog breeders. Losers have their pride, Rachel.”
    â€œDorrie, you’re not a loser.” There had been many similar discussions over the years. “Christ, you’re not beautiful, honey, you’re not a glamour girl, but hell—who is?” Rachel was genuinely upset, as always. “You’re extremely attractive, Dorrie, you’ve kept your figure like no one else I know, you’re