Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [59]
“Alike!” said Emily. She stopped in front of a newsstand. “How can you say that? We’re totally different. We come from totally different backgrounds. Even our religions are different.”
“Really?” said Morgan. “What religion is Leon?”
“Oh, Presbyterian, Methodist …” She started walking again. “We’re nothing at all alike.”
“To me you are,” Morgan said. “And you get along so well.”
“Ha,” said Emily bitterly.
“You have the happiest marriage I know of, Emily. I love your marriage!”
“Well, I can’t think why,” Emily said.
But she let herself fall into step with him.
They passed a woman painting her front door a bright green. “Apple green, my favorite color!” Morgan called, and the woman laughed and bowed like someone on a stage. They passed an open window where Fats Domino sang “I’m Walkin’,” and Morgan spread his arms and started dancing. The fact that he had a cigarette clamped in his teeth made it look difficult and precarious; he reminded Emily of those Russians who dance with a glass of vodka on their heads. She stood to one side, awkwardly swinging her purse and smiling. Then Morgan stopped and took his cigarette from his mouth. “Why, look at that,” he said. He was staring at something just behind her. She turned, but it was nothing—a car parked next to a mailbox.
“My car!” he said.
“Your what?”
“It’s my car!”
“Are you sure?”
But that was a silly question; even Emily was sure. (And why would he claim such a ruined object, otherwise?) Morgan rushed around it, breathing rapid puffs of smoke. “See?” he said. “There’s Lizzie’s tennis racket, my turban, my sailor suit that I was bringing home from … See that Nehi bottle? It’s been rolling up and down the back window ledge for the past six months. Or,” he said, pausing, “is it possible that someone else might have a car just like this?”
“Really, Morgan,” Emily said. “Of course it’s yours. Go call the police.”
“What for? Why not just steal it back?”
“Well, you want the thief arrested, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “but meanwhile it’s parked in a No Parking zone and I might be given a ticket.”
“When it wasn’t you that parked it there?”
“You can never tell, in this world,” he said. “I promised Bonny I wouldn’t run up more traffic fines.” He was trying all the doors, but they were locked. He walked around to the front of the car and settled on his haunches before the grille. “I don’t suppose you have your Swiss Army knife with you,” he said.
“My what? No.”
He plucked at a string that was looped through the grille. Then he set his face close and started gnawing at the string. The woman who’d been painting lowered her brush and turned to watch. “I don’t understand what you’re after,” Emily said.
“The key,” Morgan said. Something clinked to the ground. He groped beneath the car for it.
“Over to your right,” Emily told him. “Closer to the wheel.”
Morgan stretched out on his stomach, with his legs trailing behind him. (The soles of his snake-proof boots were as deeply ridged as snow tires.) He reached farther under the car. “Got it,” he said. A little three-wheeled mail truck the size of a golf cart bounced up and stopped. “Help!” Morgan shouted, and he raised his head. She heard his helmet clang against the underside of the bumper. “I’m hit!” he said.
“Morgan?”
“I’m run over! It’s my leg!”
A mailman descended from the truck, whistling, and started toward the mailbox. Emily grabbed his sleeve and said, “Move.”
“Huh?”
“Move the truck! You’ve run a man over.”
“Sheesh,” said the mailman. “Don’t he see the No Parking sign?”
“Move that truck this instant, I tell you!”
“All right, all right,” the mailman said. He turned back to his truck, glancing down at Morgan on the way. Morgan showed him a face that seemed all teeth.
“Hurry,” said Emily, wringing a handful of skirt.
Meanwhile the woman with the paintbrush arrived, dripping apple green. “Oh, that poor, poor man,” she said. Emily knelt next to Morgan. She had a sick weight on the floor of her stomach. But