The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore by Lorrie Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

Ping-Pong. Either she was stupid or crazy or he was already being too hard on her. Not being hard on people—"You
bark
at them," Marilyn used to say—was something he was trying to work on. When he pictured Zora's lovely face, it helped his tenuous affections. She had written her phone number and signed off with a swashbuckling "Z"—as in Zorro. That was cute, he supposed. He guessed. Who knew? He had to lie down.
     
    he had bekka for the weekend. She sat in the living room, tuned to the Cartoon Network. Ira would sometimes watch her mesmerized face, as the cartoons flashed on the creamy screen of her skin, her eyes bright with reflected shapes caught there like holograms in marbles. He felt inadequate as her father, but he tried his best: affection, wisdom, reliability, plus not ordering pizza every visit, though tonight he had again caved in. Last week, Bekka had said to him, "When you and Mommy were married, we always had mashed potatoes for supper. Now you're divorced and we always have spaghetti."
    "Which do you like better?" he'd asked.
    "Neither!" she'd shouted, summing up her distaste for everything, marriage
and
divorce. "I hate them both."
    Tonight, he had ordered the pizza half plain cheese and half with banana peppers and jalapeños. The two of them sat together in front of
Justice League
, eating slices from their respective sides. Chesty, narrow-waisted heroes in bright colors battled their enemies with righteous confidence and, of course, laser guns. Bekka finally turned to him. "Mommy says that if her boyfriend Daniel moves in I can have a dog. A dog and a bunny."
    "
And
a bunny?" Ira said. When the family was still together, the four-year-old Bekka, new to numbers and the passage of time, used to exclaim triumphantly to her friends, "Mommy and Daddy say I can have a dog! When I turn eighteen!" There'd been no talk of bunnies. But perhaps the imminence of Easter had brought this on. He knew that Bekka loved animals. She had once, in a bath-time reverie, named her five favorite people, four of whom were dogs. The fifth was her own blue bike.
    "A dog
and
a bunny," Bekka repeated, and Ira had to repress images of the dog with the rabbit's bloody head in its mouth.
    "So, what do you think about that?" he asked cautiously, wanting to get her opinion on the whole Daniel thing.
    Bekka shrugged and chewed. "Whatever," she said, her new word for "You're welcome,"
    "Hello,"
    "Goodbye," and "I'm only eight."
    "I really just don't want all his stuff there. His car already blocks our car in the driveway."
    "Bummer," Ira said, his new word for "I must remain as neutral as possible" and "Your mother's a whore."
    "I don't want a stepfather," Bekka said.
    "Maybe he could just live on the steps," Ira said, and Bekka smirked, her mouth full of mozzarella.
    "Besides," she said, "I like Larry better. He's stronger."
    "Who's Larry?" Ira said, instead of "bummer."
    "He's this other dude," Bekka said. She sometimes referred to her mother as a "dudette."
    "Bummer," Ira said. "Big, big bummer."
     
    he phoned zora four days later, so as not to seem pathetically eager. He summoned up his most confident acting. "Hi, Zora? This is Ira," he said, and then waited—narcissistically perhaps, but what else was there to say?—for her response.
    "Ira?"
    "Yes. Ira Milkins."
    "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know who you are."
    Ira gripped the phone and looked down at himself, suddenly finding nothing there. He seemed to have vanished from the neck down. "We met last Sunday at Mike and Kate's?" His voice quavered. If he ever actually succeeded in going out with her, he was going to have to take one of those date-rape drugs and just pass out on her couch.
    "Ira? Ohhhhhhhhh—Ira. Yeah. The Jewish guy."
    "Yeah, the Jew. That was me." Should he hang up now? He did not feel he could go on. But he must go on.
There
was a man of theatre for you.
    "That was a nice dinner," she said.
    "Yes, it was."
    "I usually skip Lent completely."
    "Me, too," Ira