Wednesday, 27 February 2002 | Carrot throwing

Her sugar is low; do I have any orange juice? I'll make her a glass of Tang. I picked up the plastic domed container, noticing a discouraging absence of weight. The remaining bright orange powder had turned itself an even darker shade of bright orange and seemed to be permanently adhered to the plastic. I threw it in the recycle bin with a thunk. She turned off her insulin pump and it began to scream in sharp bursts, perfectly spaced apart. I felt ridiculously unprepared, and I apologized. She ate some grapes and said she'd be fine.

She's moving to Alaska on Monday, my new friend; I'm curious to see if we stay in touch. Last night she laughed about how, when she went to boarding school, she'd get letters from her old friends and think, oh, cool! I got a letter, and that it didn't occur to her that she ought to write back until, eventually, they stopped sending her letters.

There are lots of those in my past, too—temporary friends who filled the spaces of certain moments in my life. You exchange numbers and addresses and make empty promises that you truly believe, and then, either suddenly or gradually, those fillings fade into hazy memories and far-away pictures, and that there's really no room for them in your present-day life. There's no room for you in their lives, either, because you, too, are a filling.

For some reason I remember once hearing Florence Henderson say that the secret to staying in shape was not getting out of shape. If she's right, the secret to maintaining friendships, then, should be relatively clear.

So at the close of our simultaneous getting-to-know-you-and-goodbye drink, I tapped on the fish tank at the end of the bar, and the lonely big orange fish jetted over to the corner where my face met the glass. We butted heads and stared at each other—he would turn sideways and forwards, looking at me from all angles, and I would try to look into his moving mouth, studying the pink flesh of his alien little body. Later, when I came home, I fed the mysterious local rabbits (1, 2) some aging carrots, and, to my surprise, they were sitting exactly where I thought they'd be, though I haven't actually seen them for weeks. I broke the carrots in twos and threw them in different directions and watched for a moment before walking back home. Once there, my cat trilled a pledge of obesity, asking me to give her more food, and I obliged.

***

It appears my theory that I'd get three-fourths of my name in print next time my photos ran is, in fact, wrong. This time they left my name off altogether.