‘The Refugee’ by Jane Rice
From Story of the Week:
The trouble with the war, Milli Cushman thought as she stared sulkily through streaming French windows into her rain-drenched garden, was that it was so frightfully boring. There weren’t any men, any more. Interesting ones, that is. Or parties. Or little pink cocktails. Or café royale. Or long-stemmed roses wrapped in crackly green wax paper. There wasn’t even a decent hairdresser left.
She had been a fool to stay on. But it had seemed so exciting. Everyone listening to the radio broadcasts; the streets blossoming with uniforms; an air of feverish gaiety, heady as Moselle wine, over all the city; the conversations that made one feel so important— so in the thick of things. Would the Maginot Line hold? Would the British come? Would the Low Countries be invaded? Was it true America had issued an ultimatum? Subjects that, now, were outdated as Gatling guns.
It had been terrifically stimulating being asked for her opinion, as an American. Of course, she hadn’t been home for a number of years and considered herself a true cosmopolite freed from the provincialities of her own country— but, still, it had been nice, in those first flurried jack-in-the-box days of the war to be able to discourse so intelligently on Americana. It had been such fun.
Momentarily, Milli’s eyes sparkled— remembering. The sparkle faded and died.
Then, unexpectedly, the city had become a gaunt, gray ghost. No, not a ghost, a cat. A gaunt gray cat with its bones showing through, as it crouched on silent haunches and stared unwinkingly before it. Like one of those cats that hung around the alley barrels of the better hotels. Or used to hang. Cooked, a cat bore a striking resemblance to a rabbit.
Overnight, a hush had fallen on everything. It was as though the city had gasped in one long, last, labored, dying breath. And had held it. One could feel it in the atmosphere. Almost like a desperate pounding.
