Scissors

by Stephane Michaka

  Edgar says, “We’re in the avant-garde, we’re pathfinders.” He repeats that all day long. People don’t know what they’re missing. Or rather, they feel something’s missing, but they don’t have the words to express what it is. That’s where we come in. We invite them to connect with themselves. And eventually with other people. First with themselves, then with others. The process has to start in the body. Not in the head. Thanks to us, people learn to distrust their head. Edgar and I are writing pamphlets about this. People are reluctant in the beginning. But that reluctance is a symptom of what they’re missing. We don’t tell them that, of course. We make them feel this need, this necessity of connecting. The first pamphlet’s free. Edgar thinks it’s bound to catch on and spread.

  No, that would be stupid. I have to give him some room. Raymond … Raymond has to reach the end of himself. If I called him every day … I’m not saying I don’t get the urge. I’m dying to call him. Edgar says, “Why do you always have to be calling up your ex-husband?” He calls him my ex-husband.

  I think Raymond can win his fight with alcohol if I don’t ask him how it’s going every blessed day. That’s between him and his conscience. It’s his battle, not mine. If there weren’t three hundred miles between Raymond and me, if I hadn’t found a position here and he hadn’t gotten that college teaching job, we would have put that much distance between ourselves anyway. To have a better chance of finding each other again.

  Yesterday Edgar suggested we go away for the weekend. I pointed out that I was wearing a wedding ring, and that it means something. Edgar said he knew of wedding rings whose only function was to prevent their owners from connecting with anyone else. Sometimes he lays it on a bit thick.

  Do you know that Raymond’s practically a celebrity? His story collection has received rave reviews, there’s been a ton of articles written about him, and invitations have come pouring in from all over the country. People want to meet him. Critics say he writes about the losers and rejects of society like nobody else. I should find that delightful. Except that the losers are us. They’re me. And I’m supposed to be delighted about that? Thanks for the compliment! I’d just as soon not be in his stories.

  I feel more peaceful today. Thanks to you, Claire, and the time I spent with you.

  When I lose hope, I reassure myself by remembering that Raymond’s right on the verge of making a huge discovery about himself. Nobody else can make it for him.

  And when he does, he’ll come back.

  Then we’ll be together again.

  RAYMOND AND JOANNE

  It’s springtime. I ought to find all this delightful—the mild weather, the starry night, the festive atmosphere pervading this house.

  There’s a certain fervor in the air.

  The house belongs to a specialist in religious history. I’m not sure whether the host is a man or a woman. I heard someone say “professor,” but I didn’t catch the name. Makes no difference; I’m supposed to enjoy myself. To have a delightful time, like everybody else.

  The jazz record that’s been playing since I got here makes me feel like tapping my feet. Someone says, “I always feel more creative when swing music’s in the air.” We’re on a university campus, no doubt about that.

  Professors and students are laughing together, barriers are falling, and I’m staying far away from the ginger punch they’re ladling out in the back room.

  For the past three weeks, I’ve been limiting myself to one drink a day. Not a single drop more. I can smell the rum in that punch from here, and its vapors make me tremble, I hope imperceptibly. If I let myself go, if I have so much as a taste, I’ll be finished. I’ll be dead.

  Fortunately there’s a rumor going around: “The ginger punch is vile. Avoid it.” That suits me fine. I’ll stick with water.

  I smile at anyone who smiles at me, but I’m not budging an inch. I feign interest in the host’s library, whoever he or she may be. Bibles in every language, dating from every time period. The titles of the books not in the Bible section all seem to contain the word Religion, or in some cases Faith. I still haven’t decided which of the two I prefer when I notice a couple of others: Belief and Dogma. It occurs to me that a subject with so many different designations must be a highly problematic subject indeed. I congratulate myself on being a writer of few words.

  I look for a place to put my paper cup so I can leaf through a book about crucifixion.

  At that moment, a woman with long black tresses and a seashell hair clip plants herself in front of me. She’s my age. Her incisors point in several directions, which gives her a certain charm. Her eyelids are half closed; her lips ripple and twitch. She looks like she’s teetering on the edge of a laughing fit.

  As I’m considering the seashell, I hear her say, “All right, on a scale from one to ten, how much do you think you’re going to like it?”

  I lower my eyes and see that she’s handing me a cup of punch.

  “No thanks. I’m sticking with water.”

  Her lips form an O. “What rotten luck. Everyone here is sticking with water. Or Scotch.”

  I smile.

  “Try it all the same.”

  She holds out the cup. The punch has a brackish color.

  “Sorry, but I recently stopped drinking.”

  Her eyes brighten. I apparently interest her.

  “Both of my ex-husbands were alcoholics.”

  “My goodness, you’re dangerous!”

  She looks at me as if she doesn’t understand and then holds out the cup again. “Oh, come on, there’s hardly any alcohol in it. Nobody wants any.” (She looks sidelong at the other guests.) “I’m starting to believe this is some kind of practical joke.”

  “If it is, nobody told me about it.”

  To see her smile again, I take the cup. But I don’t lift it to my mouth.

  Her face lights up. “Well then, on a scale from one to ten, how much do you think you’re going to like it?”

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “Anticipation increases pleasure.”

  “Anticipation?”

  “Increases pleasure,” she repeats.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  She says, “First rule of psychomarketing.”

  “Is that your specialty?”

  “No, it’s just a day job. I’m actually a poetess. People make fun of me when I say that. But not you, strangely enough.”

  “And what’s the second rule?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Of psychomarketing.”

  “Uhh … it seems to have slipped my mind. As I said, it’s just a day job. I spend three hours a day in a huge supermarket. I get customers to try a range of products. Before they do, I ask them—you always have to ask them before—”

  “Before what?”

  “Before they taste whatever it is. I offer them paprika chips or sausage slices or cubes of Gorgonzola or—”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “And so on and so forth, and I say, how much do you think you’re going to like these blah blah blah.”

  “And that increases their pleasure?”

  “Every time. People really enjoy themselves. Or pretend to so I’ll leave them alone. Don’t you want some of my punch?”

  “Five.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I think I’m going to give it a five.”

  “That’s all? You’re not making much of a commitment.”

  I search for a good comeback but find none. Her presence agitates me.

  “You don’t want a taste?”

  “Listen, uh … what’s your name?”

  “Joanne.”

  My legs start to feel wobbly.

  “And yours?”

  “Raymond.”

  “Do you teach?”

  “I run a writing workshop. CW-6.”

  “Well, isn’t that something? I run CW-7. We’re neighbors.”

  “Our classrooms?”

  “No, just the workshop numbers.”

&nb
sp; “Ah,” I say, disappointed.

  “And what do you write?”

  “Short stories.”

  “You’re shaking … Give me that cup.” She takes back the punch I haven’t touched.

  “Are you interested in short stories?” I ask her.

  “I love good stories. I read the ones my friends write and give them my opinion.”

  “Do they pay attention to what you say?”

  “Every time. I’m an excellent … diagnostician,” she says, swaying on her legs.

  She’s drunk too much punch. It must contain more alcohol than she’s willing to admit. “You should wear a lab coat,” I remark. “And a stethoscope.”

  She laughs. Her tongue protrudes slightly and makes her lips glisten. “Come on,” she says. “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “Your poems … what are they like?”

  She blinks as though pondering the question.

  “In the beginning I wrote short pieces, haiku-type things.”

  I raise my eyebrows. She starts to recite: “A stranger here and elsewhere / A screen between the world and me / Two booze-hounds for husbands.”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s all.”

  I ask myself how she got put in charge of the CW-7 workshop, but I find her devilishly exciting.

  She opens her eyes wide. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Uh …”

  “You didn’t think that was poetry?”

  She looks ready to throw her punch in my face.

  “No.”

  “So much the better.” She starts smiling again. “Still,” she goes on, “I really did write short when I started. Really very very short,” she repeats, as if I didn’t understand her. “I need to blossom out now. I need amplitude. You follow me?”

  “I like amplitude.”

  She takes a little swallow of punch and begins to talk again, as if she’s thinking out loud. “The more time passes, the more I feel I have to say. And the more space I need to say it in.”

  I nod my head vigorously. In a tone filled with self-assurance, I say, “Concision is for novices.”

  “Absolutely right. You can’t express all the richness of existence in five-word sentences.”

  “Especially if they don’t have any commas.”

  “Right again!”

  There’s a silence. I stammer, “Nevertheless … I know a word …”

  I look her in the eye. I feel as though I’ve lived beside her for decades.

  “You’re still trembling. Are you cold?” Her fingers graze the back of my hand.

  “No, I feel fine. I’m feeling better and better.”

  She takes my water glass and puts it on the table. Then she raises her cup and says, “Never fear, you can drink some.”

  I take a swig.

  “What were you saying?”

  “I was saying I know a word … a word that suffices by itself to express a great many things.”

  “What word?”

  “Mamihlapinatapei.”

  She furrows her brow.

  “It comes from Tierra del Fuego.”

  She tries to say it: “Mami …”

  “… hlapinatapei.”

  She tilts her head as though she’s concentrating. I go on: “I think it means, ‘The look two people share when both of them want something to start but neither dares to make the first move.’ ”

  I lower my eyes. Joanne rises on the tips of her toes. Her mouth is very close to mine. We kiss.

  She asks me, “On a scale from one to ten, how much do you think you’re going to like it?”

  I can’t hear the music anymore.

  “Ten,” I answer. “Ten, no doubt.”

  There’s a smell of doughnuts in the room.

  I have the feeling my life’s starting over. I died the first time, and now it’s starting over.

  DOUGLAS

  “Minimalism.” Don’t you get it?

  I’m surprised this word hasn’t caught on in literary circles.

  It came to me by accident. The best ideas come like that. A word thrown out without a thought. As it happens, my wife was the one who threw it out. My ex-wife, the third one—no, the fourth. Before she left, before she cleared out, she said, “I’m not putting up with this anymore, you hear me? I’ve never gotten used to all these books cluttering up the apartment. I’ve never felt at home here. What are you trying to do, Douglas, build a wall of books between us?” Those were her parting words, right before she stepped out onto the landing. Wait, there’s more. Still in the doorway, she says, “When I want to walk across the living room or down the hall, I have to step over rows and rows of volumes, I have to dodge around piles of books, piles that go up to the ceiling.” She makes a motion with her hands as if somebody’s strangling her. And then, before she slams the door, she says, “Me, I’m a minimalist!”

  Her name’s Judith. She left me with that word. I really owe her a lot.

  What is minimalism?

  It’s the crackle of a sentence, the whiplash of an astoundingly concise turn of phrase, a newborn tale that dies in your hands. Not with a bang but a whimper.

  A muffled noise, an invisible gash, emptiness; and yet the shadow of something. There are those who have sung the praises of the shadow. I’d like to praise emptiness. Without disclosing what it conceals.

  Don’t ask me, it would spoil your pleasure.

  I find it ironic that you’ve come today. My last day at the magazine. No, it’s a scoop. You’re the first to hear it. I’m giving it to you, along with minimalism.

  At the very moment when I’m leaving the magazine, you come and ask me how things are going. You want me to appraise—how did you put it?—“the art of the short story in our country.” Strike “art,” strike “short story,” strike “country.” Call your article “The Secret Life of Our Time.” That’s the title of my first anthology. My stories have never been about anything else. I’ve been whispering my secrets for seven years. Before getting fired.

  You’ve been here before? Really? In this office? Seven years ago … Well, how can you expect me to remember that? A student. Do you have any idea how many eager female students I’ve had? Yes, I know what that sounds like: Do you have any idea how many eager female students I’ve had in my bed?

  The most annoying part of the whole thing is that I’m not going to be able to take my stained-glass window with me. The outfit across the street has a rule—all the windows must be the same. You see? Already I have to contend with formatting. I held out a long time, but they got me in the end. They kept adding zeros. No, I won’t tell you the figure.

  Of course I’m keeping my authors. Why should they leave me? I love them like my children. And as for the ones who aren’t novelists, the short-story specialists, well, I’ll publish them in collections.

  Raymond—you know the author I mean?—when I talk about minimalism, I think of Ray. It’s as if the very word was invented for him. No, I didn’t ask his opinion. Be careful; writers don’t like labels. The only ones they’re willing to put up with are the bar codes on the backs of their books. Because nobody can decipher them. But for somebody who knows how to read between the lines, Raymond’s a minimalist.

  So your article, when does it come out? In the weekend supplement? On page one? Listen, I’m not going to give you his telephone number. He doesn’t like to be disturbed. But you can run with minimalism, don’t worry. He’ll thank you. Raymond expects only one thing: to be recognized for what he is.

  You can quote me if you want, but the word’s in the air. Minimalism is the environment we live in. Well, if you insist on a source, attribute the word to Judith. Say it comes from a woman who’s leaving and slamming the door behind her.

  July, you say? Perfect. I’m publishing Raymond that same month. I can already envision it: your report on minimalism on page one, and inside a boxed article about his story collection. I could buy space and run an ad for my list. How much space do you have left?

 
Now I remember. You had a scarf around your neck. You didn’t take it off, not even in bed. What about the scars on your throat? It’s much sexier when they’re visible. Look here, see my scales. Do I try to hide them?

  Married already? A married woman, the mother of two children, and a literary critic. All that in seven years. I bet you read Kerouac at night. I do too, you know. I too let books live my life in place of me.

  No, I have no idea what I’m going to do with that stained-glass window. Don’t you know somebody who could buy it off me?

  JOANNE

  I didn’t tell him everything when I met him. I made out I’d never seen him.

  But I knew him already. I was waiting for him.

  I’d watched his hands. They shook the way my former husbands’ hands did. It was in a bookstore, about a year ago. He’d come there to talk about his short stories. I paged through them. Then I read them over and over. So I knew Ray well before I met him. I followed the grooves of his sentences like someone stroking a beloved face. I figured out where his pain was.

  When I saw him the other night, it was like a sign. I gulped down two cups of punch and headed straight for him.

  There he was, encumbered with himself. I wasn’t afraid I’d make him drink, I could tell how much strength there was under his fragile exterior. My ex-husbands were different. Rough exteriors, fragility underneath. I wasn’t able to heal them. They no longer believed in their luck. But Raymond … I tried right away to coax him into drinking. As if I was challenging him to stop the very next day.

  To tell the truth, it wasn’t as calculated as all that. After the fact, I can always find the reasons behind my intuitions. I spread a layer of glue over them so they’ll stay put. I am, if you will, a post-sensual intellectual.

  “Glue Girl.” I had a boyfriend who called me that, because he thought I was full of fixations. “Glue Girl.” I like that a lot. I dumped the boyfriend and kept the nickname.

  To Raymond, I’m Joanne. He doesn’t know what’s in store for him.

  Happiness without end.

  DOUGLAS

  June 3