Category: Art

Sex and/or Mr. Morrison

by

Carol Emshwiller

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I can set my clock by Mr. Morrison’s step upon the stairs, not that he is that accurate, but accurate enough for me. 8:30 thereabouts. (My clock runs fast anyway.) Each day he comes clumping down and I set it back ten minutes, or eight minutes or seven. I suppose I could just as well do it without him but it seems a shame to waste all that heavy treading and those puffs and sighs of expending energy on only getting downstairs, so I have timed my life to this morning beat. Funereal tempo, one might well call it, but it is funereal only because Mr. Morrison is fat and therefore slow. Actually he’s a very nice man as men go. He always smiles.

I wait downstairs sometimes looking up and sometimes holding my alarm clock. I smile a smile I hope is not as wistful as his. Mr. Morrison’s moonface has something of the Mona Lisa to it. Certainly he must have secrets.

“I’m setting my clock by you, Mr. M.”

“Heh, heh . . . my, my,” grunt, breath. “Well,” heave the stomach to the right, “I hope . . .”

“Oh, you’re on time enough for me.”

“Heh, heh. Oh. Oh yes.” The weight of the world is certainly upon him or perhaps he’s crushed and flattened by a hundred miles of air. How many pounds per square inch weighing him down? He hasn’t the inner energy to push back. All his muscles spread like jelly under his skin.

“No time to talk,” he says. (He never has time.) Off he goes. I like him and his clipped little Boston accent, but I know he’s too proud ever to be friendly. Proud is the wrong word, so is shy. Well, I’ll leave it at that.
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