excerpt
He laughs and turns to look the other way. They are walking to her car, the
same old Chevy Impala; it must be at least twenty years old by now. He
remembers her having that car for a long time.
“You still drive this Impala? I’m amazed it’s still running; and, yes, to come
back to the subject of retirement, I’m thinking of retiring next year. And yes, I
can see myself without the service.”
“What are you going to do? Most people, after so many years with an
organization, go downhill as soon as they retire, because they don’t know what to
do with themselves. What are you going to do, Bevan?”
“I haven’t thought about that yet, Evelyn. Perhaps I’ll come this way and
retire with you in your hermitage and be as isolated as you for the rest of my life.”
He makes fun of her.
She starts the car and drives out of the parking lot; it’s a busy evening as most
people have finished their work week and are headed home for the weekend.
“You would be welcome to come and stay with us for as long as you like; but I
know you, you like to be with lots of people. You could never live isolated in a
hermitage, as you call it.”
He turns to her.
“Sometimes, one can feel isolated even among people, my dear Evelyn,
particularly in the midst of lots of people, trust me.”
Evelyn doesn’t respond as she concentrates on driving the busy streets of San
Francisco. It takes forty minutes to get to her house, and they find William half
asleep in his chair, watching TV.
Evelyn shouts at him, “William, for God’s sake, you’re asleep, at six in the
evening.”
William gets up and shakes Bevan’s hand.
“Hello, Bevan, what brings you this way?”
“Hello, William.”
Talal and Hakim take the bags and go inside. The house smells stuffy from being
closed up for so many days. The flowers in the pots are dry and Emily takes the
watering can to freshen them up as she talks to Jennifer about her trip. It is, of
course, hard for anyone to understand by just listening.
“You’d have to go there to understand what it’s like, sweetheart; it’s difficult
to grasp the way they live, which is so different from the way we do things here.
Life goes on for them as it does for us. They’re people with dreams and…
Manolis Aligizakis 