on identification/projecting (amy hempel)

Every time you see a beautiful woman, someone is tired of her, so the men say. And I know where they go, these women, with their tired beauty that someone doesn't want--these women who must live like the high Sierra white pine, there since before the birth of Christ, fed somehow by the alpine wind.

They reach out to animals, day after day smoothing fur inside a cage, saying, 'How is Mama's baby? Is Mama's baby lonesome?'

The women leave at the end of the day, stopping to ask an attendant, "Will they go to good homes?" And come back in a day or so, stopping to examine a one-eyed cat, asking, as though they intend to adopt, 'How would I introduce a new cat to my dog?'

But there is seldom an adoption; it matters that the women have someone to leave, leaving behind the lovesome creatures who would never leave them, had they once given them their hearts.

- Amy Hempel, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom: Stories