“That’s something I hear around me, for sure,” said Tom. “It might be very old, might have been around for a long time. Or maybe it’s just modern jargon.”

“No matter,” said Allam. “I feel that now I am reaching for a whole ’nother level in this language.”

“This is impressive, Allam. I don’t think I would do nearly as well as you are doing.”

“Thank you, Toe-mas. But I think you would. If you found yourself in another country, you, too, would learn the language of that place.”

Allam was grinning when Tom dropped him off.

Keeping Vigil

ADDIE

Late Friday afternoon, Addie had a couple of hours to fill. Maybe she should play the Emperor Concerto and dust. Or wipe out the fridge. Carry out quotidian tasks that required no thought. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d lost touch with something vital, significant. Her present life had narrowed to a singular context. The way Sybil’s had, but without the accompanying illness. Immediately, she regretted making the comparison, knowing what Sybil was facing. Or trying to face down.

Even so, Addie’s life as it had existed only months ago could scarcely be imagined now. She was functioning at work, that was true, though she wondered what staff members said about her among themselves. Maybe they didn’t discuss her at all. She couldn’t remember if she’d told them about her friend’s illness. Five days a week, first thing in the morning, she showed up at her office. Five days a week, she disappeared when the day was done. She assumed, but wasn’t certain, that she was bumbling through the requirements of her job. Weekends, she was in Greenley. At least two evenings a week, she was back in Greenley again.

She could take a leave of absence. She’d considered this before. But then what would happen? She’d sit in her apartment filling the hours until it was time to drive to Greenley. Sybil weighed less than ninety pounds, but she wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. She was still in her single room, and her mother, her brother and his wife were there most days. Occasionally someone pushed Sybil out to the sunroom in her narrow hospital bed or—if she could sit without pain and discomfort—in a wheelchair. That was something Addie could do, and did, when Sybil had the stamina to both contemplate and withstand being lifted, pushed, wheeled. Addie talked; Sybil preserved her strength and listened. Sometimes the two laughed quietly together, remembering a detail of Sybil’s earlier life—before cancer. Sometimes they told stories to each other about places they’d been.

“Do you remember the thief in Geneva? He was gaunt and shabby. Baggy pants, old clothes. He’d have been fifty at most. Probably stealing for his family. He ran out of a corner pharmacy holding a shopping bag, a trail of people after him, and we were on the street gawking, trying to see what the hullabaloo was about. He dropped the bag and lost a shoe and kept running, but he was nabbed by a pair of policemen who pursued him on their bikes. They dragged him back and the pharmacy owner was shouting, and the crowd made a huge circle with the thief at the centre. Humiliation made public. You, Sybil, broke through the ring around the desperate man and handed him his missing shoe. He looked so downtrodden and pathetic with a shoe on one foot and a sock on the other.”