Deborah Eisenberg - Your Duck Is My Duck: Stories

Way backoh, not all that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before Id gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earths core to its surfaceI was going to a lot of parties.

And at one of these parties there was a couple, Ray and Christa, who hung out with various people I sort of knew, or, anyhow, whose names I knew. Wed never had much of a conversation, just hey there, kind of thing, but Id seen them at parties over the years and at that particular party they seemed to forget that we werent actually friends ourselves.

Ray and Christa had a lot of money, a serious quantity, and they were also both very good-looking, so they could live the way they felt like living. Sometimes they split up, and one of them, usually Ray, was with someone else for a while, always a splashy, public business that made their entourage scatter like flummoxed chickens, but inevitably they got back together, and afterward, you couldnt detect a scar.

Ray had a chummy arm around me, and Christa was swaying to the music, which was almost drowned out by the din of voices in the metallic room, and smiling absently in my direction. I was a little taken aback that I was being, I guess, anointed, but it was up to them how well they knew you, and I could only assume that their cordiality meant either that something good had happened to me that was not yet perceptible to me but was already perceptible to them or else that something good was about to happen to me.

So, we were talking, shouting, really, over the noise, and after a bit I realized that what they were saying meant that they now owned my painting Blue Hill.

They owned Blue Hill? I had given Blue Hill to Graham once, in a happy moment, and he must have sold it to them when he up and moved to Barcelona. Blue Hill is not a bad paintingin my opinion, its one of my beststill, the expression that I could feel taking charge of my face came and went without making trouble for anyone, thanks to the fact that, obviously, there were a lot of people in the room for Ray and Christa to be looking at, other than me.

How are you these days, they asked, and at this faint suggestion that theyd been monitoring me, a great wave of childish gratitude and relief washed over me, dissolving my dignity and leaving me stranded in self-pity.

Why did I keep going to these stupid parties? Night after night, parties, partieswas I hoping to meet someone? No one met people in person any longeryou couldnt hear what they were saying. Except for the younger women, who had piercing, high voices and sounded like Donald Duck, from whom they had evidently learned to talk. When had that happened? An adaptation? You could certainly hear them.

It was getting on my nerves and making me feel old. Im exhausted, I told Ray and Christa. I cant sleep. I cant take the winter. Im sick of my day job at Howards photo studio, but on the other hand, Howards having some problemslast week there were three of us, and this week there are two, and Im scared Im going to be the next to go. And as I told them that I was frightened, that I was sick of the winter and my job, I understood how deeply, deeply sick of the winter and my job, how frightened, I really was.

Yeah, thats terrible, they said. Well, why dont you come stay with us? Were taking off for our beach place on Wednesday. Theres plenty of room, and you can paint. We love your work. Its a great place to work, everyone says so, really serene. The light is great, the vistas are great.

Im having some trouble painting these days, I said, Im not really, I dont know.

Hey, everyone needs some downtime, they said; youll be inspired, everyone who visits is inspired. You wont have to deal with anything. Theres a cook. You can lie around in the sun and recuperate. You can take donkey rides down into the town, or there are bicycles or the driver. What languages do you speak? Well, it doesnt matter. You wont need to speak any.

Naturally I assumed theyd forget all about their invitation, so I was startled, the day after the party, to get an e-mail from Christa, asking when I could get away. One of their people would deal with the flights. I could stay as long as I liked, she said, and if I wanted to send heavy working materials on ahead, that would be fine. Lots of their guests did that. It could get cool at night, so I should bring something warm, and if I wanted to hike, I should bring boots, because snakes, as I knew, could be an issue, though insects were generally not. I would not need a visa these days, so not to worry about that, and not to worry about Wi-Fithat was all set up.

I doubted that anybody else who visited them would not know exactly how to prepare, and yet there was Christa, informing me so tactfully of everything, like snakes and visas, that Id need to know about, by pretending that of course Id already have thought of those things. A week or so later a messenger brought a plane ticket up the five flights of stairs to my little apartment, which was when it dawned on me that the good thing Ray and Christa had perceived happening to me was that they now owned one of my paintings, which meant, obviously, that it most likely was, or would soon be, worth acquiring.

My job at Howards studio expired, along with the studio itself, at the end of the following month, just in time to save Howard and me from my quitting right before I got on the plane. At least it was no problem to sublet my apartment, even at a little profit, to a guy who liked cats, because as everyone was observing with wonder, the real estate collapse had not flattened rents one bit.

Howard looked around at all the stuff that represented his last thirty years. Bon voyage, he said. He gave me a little hug.

The plane took off in frosty grime and floated down across water, from which the sun was rising in sheer pink and yellow flounces. It was a different time heremust that not mean that different things were happening? Id brought my computer, but maybe I could actually just not turn it on, and the dreary growth of little obligations that overran my screen would just disappear; maybe the news, whichlike a magic substance in a fairy talewas producing perpetually increasing awfulness from rock-bottom bad, would just disappear.

I had exuded a sticky coating of dirt during the night on the plane, but in the airport, ceiling fans were gracefully turning and the heat was dry and benign, like a treatment. As everyone exited with their luggage, I kept peering at the e-mail from Christa Id printed out, which kept saying: Someone will be waiting to pick you up. I had her cell number on my phone, I remembered, and scrabbled in my purse for it, but as I pressed and tapped different bits of it and stared at its inert face, I was struck by how complete the difference is between a phone that works and a phone that doesnt work.

For a long time, whenever I traveled anywhere, it had been with Graham, who would have thought to deal with the issue of international phone service, even though Christa hadnt mentioned it. And as I stood there, a lanky apparition ballooned up into the void at my side, frowning, mulling the situation over. Graham! But the apparition tossed back its fair, silky hair, kissed me lightly, and dissipated, leaving me so much more alone than Id been an instant before.