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Welcome

Denouement

She imagines Carlisle in a wheelchair. One of her friends in Minnesota said, “Is he in a wheelchair? Is that why you aren’t talking? Is he old and in a wheel chair?”

Mill imagines him in a wheelchair; she imagines him standing miraculously to touch her hair. She imagines him old and miraculously turning fifty. She imagines the denouement.

“Come up and see me sometime,” she drawls. “Is that a pistol in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”

When the doorman rings, Mill remembers Carlisle can read her thoughts. “Let him up,” Mill says. She is wearing an African kaftan and briefs and a bra under it. She is glad her legs are waxed, her hair and nails are fresh. She slips on flat sandals and pulls a brush through her hair. She douses herself with Dior, leaves the door ajar, and waits.

Carlisle steps in to the apartment as if he were there to build it, mysteriously raising his foot as if stepping over a stone fence. He is wearing a black suit and hat.

Mill blushes as if she has nothing to hide.

“Come here,” Carlisle says. He locks his fingers behind her neck and pulls her to his mouth. They fall into a bookshelf. “You’re not getting out of this.”

“I quit my job,” she mumbles.

“You quit your job in twenty-ten,” he tells her.

Dual citizens

The phone rings: Carlisle.

“Good evening,” Mill says.

“Where are you?” he says.

“At home,” she says.

“Are you in for the night?” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“Have you thought about the upcoming year twenty-ten?” Carlisle says.

“Is twenty-ten what it will be called?” Mill says.

“Your voice sounds sexy when you're sleepy," he says. "Look it up.”

“It isn’t in the dictionary,” she says after a pause. “It was a science fiction novel and film. The census is next year and the winter Olympics in Vancouver.”

“Twenty-ten will be a good year,” he says.

“Everyone is hoping,” she says. “People say this was a bad decade due to the War.”

“Obama won,” Carlisle says.

“Yes,” she says, “Obama will be President in twenty-ten.”

“Miss Mill will be Mrs. Carlisle,” he says.

“You borrow trouble,” she says.

“I eschew borrowing,” he says. “It’s a fair topic.”

“We’re not equals,” she says.

“Look it up,” he says.

“Es-choo,” she says, “sounds like a sneeze. I prefer es-skew, but it isn’t listed. It comes from old German meaning shy.”

“We are equal under the law,” he says.

“Equal in legal contexts,” she says. “Otherwise it means identical.”

“You're sure?” he says.

“That is what it says right here,” she says.

“I thought I would call my lawyer,” he says. “You call your lawyer, and we’ll sit down and hash it out and come up with a prudent agreement.”

“I never wanted a big church wedding,” Mill says. “I lost my belief in God early. It was like losing my virginity by falling off a bike or horse; I lost connection with God when I hit the ground. I got back on the bike or horse and rode away, but I was godless.”

“Religion is the source of true fiction,” he says.

"I feel like a mail-order bride from Canada," she says.

Truck

Mill rolls her chair under the desk and turns out the light.

The phone rings: Carlisle.

Mill answers in the dusk.

“I talked to your mother,” Carlisle says.

“She’s in Eau Claire,” Mill says, not bothering to turn on the light.

“She’s back,” Carlisle says. “I asked her why you left Texas, and she said, ‘Truck.’”

“She’s flirting with you,” Mill says. “I told you she is a modern.”

“What is ‘truck’ in her lexicon?” Carlisle says.

Mill turns on the light and budges the mouse. “'Keep on trucking’,” Mill says, “‘to carry on with work or life in a cheerful and relaxed way, in spite of problems (informal)'.”

“Your mother is a contemporary of Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter, and The Grateful Dead,” Carlisle says.

“Truck that hauls or carries,” Mill says.

“I get the idea you didn’t ‘fall off the turnip truck,’” Carlisle says. “Or the ‘Swedish carrot’ truck to be German about it," he adds, referring to last week’s discussion of "rutabaga."

“‘Truck’ is archaic for barter,” Mill says. “That is probably the sense she means.”

“What sort of truck was it in Texas?” Carlisle says.

“Small as truck goes,” Mill says. “Smaller than a full-size pick-up.”

“If full-size pick-up means you killed someone?” Carlisle says.

“No, if eighteen-wheeler means someone else did,” Mill says. “It wasn’t my truck.”

“Whose truck was it?”

“Dean’s,” Mill says.

“Go on,” Carlisle says.

“Dean is my former boyfriend,” Mill says.

“Dean is his last name?” Carlisle says.

“Dean is his middle name,” Mill says.

“Did he hurt you?” Carlisle asks.

“If by hurt, you mean dismayed, disappointed, or chagrined, yes,” Mill says.

“I mean ‘hit,’” Carlisle says. “Did he hit you?”

“He hit the wall next to my bed,” Mill says.

“Are you still in love with him?” Carlisle says.

“It was last century," Mill says. "I’m in love with The Doctor as I told you.”

“Whose doctor?” Carlisle says. “Your doctor?”

“The Doctor,” Mill says, “my cat.”

Wildlife

She speaks to her mother on Tuesdays, but today her mother is in Eau Claire with her garden journey group.

Her mother knows that Mill has met Carlisle in person, but certain others in Minnesota suspect that she has never even seen him. They quiz her during return trips on his appearance: Is he tall, broad, handsome, good-natured, good-looking, older, younger, available?

"He's my boss," she says, or "he is he," when cornered.

Carlisle asks for discretion in relating details of her position to anyone except her mother, whom he has judged (without meeting) to be of the older generation, from the set who survived the Great Depression and World Wars, who preserves homegrown tomatoes, who is old school. Mrs. Mill is all that, and she is also a modern.

Mill misses the wildlife of her home in Wayzata: the rabbits at the birdfeeder, the deer in the woods, the gardens and wild leeks. She misses the moths and butterflies, the frogs that climb and toads that crawl. She misses Tilly Artaud, an American toad who sat at Mill's glass door every midnight for a summer, as if she had swallowed a Timex watch battery. She misses her cat, The Doctor: his bushy gray tail and Roman nose, his pacing the hallways at night as if carrying transcripts of her speeches to Congress.

Carlisle has urged her to get a dog to walk in the morning. If she gets a dog, his name will be "Johannes." If she doesn't get one, she'll consider a bird.