Hi! Howya Doin!
Joyce Carol Oates never wastes an image. This is from the first story — “Hi! Howya Doin!” — of her new collection The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense, just out in paperback.
[p. 1] Good-looking husky guy, six foot four, in late twenties or early thirties, Caucasian male as the initial police report will note, he’s as solid-built as a fire hydrant, carries himself like an athlete, or an ex-athlete, just perceptibly thickening at the waist, otherwise in terrific condition, like a bronze figure in motion, sinewy arms pumping as he runs, long muscled legs, chiseled-muscled calves, he hurtling along the moist wood-chip path at the western edge of the university arboretum at approximately 6 p.m. Thursday evening and there comes, from the other direction, a woman jogger on the path, in her late thirties, flushed face, downturned eyes, dark hair threaded with gray like cobwebs, an awkward runner, fleshy lips parted, holds her arms stiff at her sides, in a shrunken pullover shirt with a faded tiger on its front, not large but sizable breasts shaking as she runs, mimicked in the slight shaking of her cheeks, her hips in carrot-colored sweatpants, this is Madeline Hersey, frowning at the wood-chip path before her, Madeline’s exasperating habit of staring at the ground when she runs, oblivious of the arboretum though at this time in May it’s dazzling with white dogwood, pink dogwood, vivid yellow forsythia, Madeline a lab technician at Squibb, lost in a labyrinth of her own tangled thoughts (career, lover, lover’s learning-disabled child), startled out her reverie by the loud aggressive-friendly greeting Hi! Howya Doin! flung out at her …
– Joyce Carol Oates, “Hi Howya Doin!”
The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (Harvest; $14) IN STOCK.
