LOVELIEST AFTERNOON OF THE YEAR, THE

by Guare, John

THE LOVELIEST AFTERNOON OF THE YEAR. He and She first meet when She is feeding pigeons in the park, and He asks her for the plastic favor at the bottom of the Crackerjack box. He tells her that his wife takes all his money, bends the coins in her teeth, and shoots at his feet with a rifle with a blue silencer. She doesn’t know what to make of him, but they begin to meet regularly, and gradually more of his story comes out. He tells her he is a seeing-eye person for blind dogs; that years ago his sister Lucy’s arm was ripped off by a polar bear in the park zoo and that as a result she became covered all over with white hair; and then that he doesn’t have a wife at all. He embarrasses her by singing at the top of his lungs—and She begins to wonder if he is not utterly mad. She is lonely and wants to be married, but is that the answer? The sight of a fat woman pushing two gross children in a perambulator increases her doubts, but then she notices that a blind dog walks beside her, and everything begins to make strange, awful and rather dismaying sense. The fat woman pulls out a rifle with a blue silencer and fires. He and She fall, mortally wounded. Was it all true? Does He really have a sister named Lucy? With his dying breath He proclaims that he does, and they expire contentedly, reaching out for each other as they tumble to the ground.