What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  “You’re right.”

  “I waitressed for a while, so that’s the reason I know.”

  “I know. I wasn’t figuring the rest. Cleaning. Overhead.”

  “I still don’t understand how you got four to five times the profit for a cup of coffee when the coffee growers only doubled the wholesale price of it and the supermarkets only raised it by half. It could be you didn’t explain it clearly or it just went past me.”

  “No, I think it’s my fault. Let me try again.”

  “Here you are, sir,” waiter says, “and have a good night.”

  “You mean ‘Here you are, ma’am,’” and I put the tray with the change on it in front of her.

  “Oh?” he says. “Well, all right.”

  “No, I’m only kidding. That was my money. Tonight was my treat, next week’s hers. Thanks. You’ve been very nice, and this is for you.”

  Thank you.” He puts the tip in his pocket, takes our glasses, the spoon she didn’t use and the tray. Our table’s clear except for our cups and saucers, pitcher of milk and sugar—pepper and salt dispensers will stay—and my spoon. He knows I drink it with milk. I pour the milk into the cup and stir it. I drink, she sips. She looks at her coffee.

  “I wish I had a spoon,” she says.

  “You drink it black.”

  “To stir like you. I like to do it.”

  “Use mine. I’m finished with it.”

  “You used it.”

  “Only in my cup. I didn’t stick it in my mouth.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you had. But it has milk on it. I know it’s nutty, but I like my coffee absolutely black.”

  “Lick it off,” I say.

  That would look ridiculous.”

  Then I will.”

  “But no milk on it. It has to be licked clean.”

  I lick it. It still has some milk on it. I lick it all the way in and out of my mouth, and look at it. It’s clean. I give it to her and she stirs her coffee with it.

  “Well?” I say.

  Just looks at her coffee and stirs.

  “Come on. Do you? Don’t you?”

  That question from before?”

  “What other questions?”

  “You could’ve asked other questions before.”

  “I did ask other questions. But I’m asking now about this one, that one, the one.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When, then?”

  “I don’t like to be pushed or rushed.”

  “I haven’t. I’ve asked you and you said you don’t know and you don’t know and you don’t know. And now we’re having another coffee and the customers waiting at the front want our table and the waiter wants us out of here and a question like the one I asked is best answered right here when we’re sitting and comfortable rather than when we’re on the street and cold.”

  “Give me a little more time.”

  “Everything okay?” waiter says.

  “Yes, thanks,” I say. He goes. Busboy takes my empty cup away.

  “If I had had it black like yours he wouldn’t have taken my cup.”

  That’s why I have it black,” she says.

  “To give yourself more time?”

  “I don’t know if it’s that. More because I like it black.”

  Busboy passes our table again, comes back and takes my spoon.

  “I don’t think she’s through with the spoon yet,” I say.

  “Oh, sorry.” And to her: “You’re not?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He puts the spoon down and goes.

  “You could have let him take the spoon,” she says. “I’m through with it.”

  “I don’t like them shoving us out of here like that.”

  They’re busy. It’s Saturday night. Dinner hour, the night and time they make about forty percent of their week’s tips and the restaurant its earnings and which makes up for all the nights they don’t have that many customers. I should be more understanding of them and just drink up and go.”

  “First tell me yes or no.”

  “Maybe I should just leave the rest of the coffee and go. I didn’t want a full cup anyway.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “And you didn’t tip him enough.”

  “I gave him exactly fifteen percent.”

  “You didn’t. I calculated it. You gave him about thirteen percent.”

  “You must be figuring thirteen percent of the total bill plus tax. I gave him fifteen percent before tax.”

  “Oh, maybe you’re right.”

  “Not maybe; I am. And what do I have to do, consult you about everything at a restaurant?”

  “Don’t get snappy again.”

  “Why not? You’re more worried about the damn waiter, nice as he is, and the restaurant’s overhead and cleaning costs, than about me or us.”

  “Not true, and don’t raise your voice to me.”

  “Ah, forget it,” and I get up, get my coat off my chair and say to her “If you’re ready, I’ll walk you home or wherever you want to go.”

  “You don’t have to walk me anywhere. I’d rather be alone.”

  “Good, then,” and I turn to go, turn to her, “Goodnight,” she looks away from me, and I leave.

  I go home. Phone’s ringing when I get there. “What is it now?” I say.

  “What is what?” Murray says.

  “I thought it was Vera. How are you?”

  “By the tone of your voice, I’m glad I’m not Vera. What’re you doing tonight?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Want to see Challenges?”

  “Sure.”

  “I thought Saturday night you’d be out, but then thought maybe this Saturday, miracle of miracles, you’re not. In front of the Laron at nine?”

  “Right.”

  I hang up. “Right.” I grab a plant Vera gave me and yell “Right, yes, sure I want to go to a movie tonight,” and throw it against the wall. It breaks, earth and planter parts going several different ways, big stain on the wall, mess on the floor. “Sure I do, goddamn you,” and slam my fist through a closet door.

  I wash it, iodine and bandage it, dial Murray with my other hand but he doesn’t answer. I go to the Laron and see him out front.

  “What happened?” he says.

  “I called before but you weren’t in.”

  “But what the hell happened? Your hand. It’s bleeding through the bandage.”

  “I suppose you already left. I called to say I couldn’t go to the movie after all.”

  “You shouldn’t have come. I would’ve known something was wrong or you got a better date. But it must have just happened. You get into a fight? Catch it on a knife at home?”

  “I just came here to tell you, didn’t want to stand you up. I’m not feeling well. I’m going home.”

  “Okay, I appreciate that. But how bad’s the hand? You can’t answer a little question?”

  I shake my head and start home.

  “What’s with you? Look, I won’t go to the movie. I’ll take you to the hospital if you want.”

  I keep going.

  He says “Okay, I’ll drop it. Hell with your hand. Forget I asked.”

  I walk back. “I can’t answer because of how I’m feeling, don’t you see? I got crazy with myself over Vera and punched it through a door and mashed it, and it was so stupid to do, I’m ashamed.”

  That’s better. Buzz me if you need me,” and he goes into the theater.

  I go home. Vera is sitting on my building’s stoop.

  There you are,” she says. “I was going to wait five more minutes and then send it by mail.”

  “You mean you finally have an answer for me? Hallelu.”

  “Answer? To that question in the restaurant? I forgot about that. No. Your set of keys. There was no room to slip them under your door and I didn’t want to just leave them there. Here.”

  She holds my keys out. I take my bandaged hand out of my coat pocket and hold it out to her palm up
. She says “What’s this, a joke? No, I don’t want to know. I know it’s bad. I’m sorry if your hand hurts you the way your face now tells me it does, but I’ve got to be going, goodnight,” and sticks the keys into my coat pocket.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” I say as she crosses the street.

  “I told you. Save it for another time.”

  “I’ll still tell you because I believe in answering a question when it’s asked.”

  “Good. You got your big dig in. That should be enough.”

  “I’ll still tell you, and I wasn’t trying to get a dig in, because I’ve nothing to hide from you and I think you’ll want to know.”

  She’s across the street, stops, says “All right—I’m listening. What?”

  “I’m not shouting it across the street.”

  “You’ve shouted everything else across, why not this?”

  “Come here or I’ll go there.”

  “I’ll come. You’re hurt. You are hurt? That bandage with blood isn’t a fake?”

  The answer is no.”

  She waits for a car to pass before she crosses the street. “Now, what? If you’re not going to act like an ass again with that ‘The answer is no.’”

  “First, how do you feel about me?”

  “About what? Which way? What does that have to do with anything? And when are you talking about?”

  This way. About everything. Your feelings to me. Before and now.”

  “A week before—we both knew. Now—let’s be honest—neither of us does.”

  “Will you come upstairs with me?”

  “Have you been to a doctor or hospital?”

  “No.”

  Then only to look at your hand and wash and dress it if it needs it.”

  “I don’t feel too well anyway, so that’s okay with me.”

  We go up the stoop and into the vestibule. She gets the keys out of my pocket, unlocks the door, and we start upstairs, she in front.

  “What was the question before that you asked me in the restaurant?” she says, without turning around.

  “One at the end? You don’t know?”

  That’s why I asked. I’m curious because of what maybe it all led to.”

  “I forget also.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “No I did. It was an important one for us, though. First the argument and my storming away and eventually smashing my hand through a closet door, which is part of what I was going to tell you I did and why.”

  “It was much more important to you. But maybe we better forget it because of what it could lead to now. More arguing and bitterness, and that’s the last thing I want to get involved in again.”

  “Now I remember,” I say.

  “All right. Though I don’t believe you. But what is it? Bad hand, sour feelings, potential explosion, but you want to have it out, let’s.”

  “No, I suddenly forget. Tip of the tongue, off it again. Probably because of the damn pain and a headache now. I’ll remember it, though.”

  “Hopefully, when I’m not here, if you did forget.”

  “Honestly, I did.”

  We’d reached the fourth-floor landing. She unlocks my door, puts the keys on top of the refrigerator, looks around and says “My God, what a mess you made. What could have got into you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She has me sit on the toilet seat cover, takes my bandage off, says “Look at this; it’s awful,” washes and dresses my hand, makes me take three aspirins. I say “I still don’t feel too well. Could you stay?”

  “All right, but on different sides of the bed.”

  I go to bed and sometime later she joins me. My hand hurts like hell. I can’t fall asleep. She says “Your jumping around is keeping me up.”

  “My hand.”

  She turns on the light. There’s a lot of blood on me and my side of the bed. She says “I better get you to a hospital.”

  We go to one. They take x-rays and say I broke a couple of fingers and part of the rest of the hand.

  After they put in a few stitches and a cast is put on, she says “Whatever it was you asked me in the restaurant that was so important to you then, I would have said yes to if just to avoid all this.”

  “Who can predict anything?”

  “I know. But I only said that about your restaurant question as an expression of how I now feel.”

  “Anyway, it only proves you never know what can sometimes happen.”

  “Now I know, and you frighten me and made matters much worse for us, much.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I am. You want me to retract it? I can’t.”

  “You’ll feel different tomorrow or so.”

  “No I won’t. You scared me silly. Break your hand? Next you’re liable to break my fingers and then my face. I feel awful for your hand and your pain and such, but for us you couldn’t have made matters worse. I’ll get us a cab and see you to your building, but that’s all.”

  “All I ask is that you sleep on it.”

  “No. It’s the wrong time to say this now, but I’ve definitely made up my mind. No more.”

  I slam my hand with the cast on it against the hospital wall. She runs away. I’m screaming at her from the floor to never come back, while trying to hold my hand.

  OVERTIME.

  I do everything he told me to. Then there’s nothing more for me to do. I check over what I did and it seems good as I can get it. I wait. I get up, sit down, look at the clock, walk around. Where is he? And she? Where are they? How long do they expect me to sit, stand, look, walk around, wait for them like this with nothing to do? They say they’ll be back in an hour, why does it have to be three? If I could go to sleep or take a walk outside and step in for coffee someplace, it wouldn’t be so bad. But if one of them caught me sleeping or not here when they got back, it would. They’d think I always slept or went out when they weren’t here. Hell, I’ve waited long enough. I’m taking a walk and will live with the consequences if they find out.

  Going down the stairs, I see them coming up. “Where you been?” I say.

  “And where you going?” he says.

  “I waited so long, I decided to take a walk. Waiting tired me out, and I need some exercise like walking to pep me up.”

  “Now you don’t have to wait any longer, and you’ll get plenty of exercise working, so come on back up. We still got lots to do, which you could’ve started doing before we got back here.”

  “Like what? I finished what you told me to do and checked it to make sure it was done right. And you didn’t leave instructions for anything else to do because you said you’d be back before I was through.”

  “You could’ve cleaned up the place.”

  “Cleaning’s not what I was hired for. I left that kind of unskilled work for better pay and more demanding work like what you hired me to do.”

  “But that’s how you could’ve spent your time. You should’ve thought of that. Anything can be cleaned. Ten minutes after you clean something it can be cleaned. Soap can even be cleaned. And cleaning or anything like that would’ve been more productive than getting bored and irritable waiting for us or going out for a walk.”

  “Maybe for you it would’ve been more productive, but for me it would’ve been the opposite. It would’ve been going backwards from something I worked myself up to be, which might’ve ended with my being even less productive for you.”

  “Look, you’re wasting our time talking. Let’s get to work.”

  “I’m still so restless from waiting that I’ve got to take a walk.”

  “Walking’s not what I’m paying you for except when you’re doing it for me. You want to keep your job, you come upstairs now and work,” and they go upstairs.

  I think it over and go upstairs. They’ve already started working and I join in. Later he tells me what else I should do. Later she does too, tells me, and I do it. At times we’re working on the same thing together. Other times we’re working on separ
ate things or the same thing but in different parts of the room. Sometimes two of us are working on the same thing and one on another thing. Other times one of us is in the restroom or on the phone or making coffee for us all and two are working on the same thing or separate things in the same or different parts of the room, and so on. Then it’s all done. I even worked an hour longer than I’m being paid for and there’s more work to come. We put what we worked on into boxes, tape and address the boxes and bring them to the post office and send them off.

  That didn’t take too long,” he says.

  “Long enough,” I say.

  “About as long as I expected it to,” she says.

  “But we did it quicker than I thought we would is what I’m saying,” he says.

  “It might not have been quicker but it would’ve been sooner if both of you had come back earlier.”

  “Anyway, we got it done and we’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.

  “About tomorrow,” I say to him. “If you’re both not there or don’t plan to be by the time I get to work, could you leave instructions for me if you’re going back now or phone them in early tomorrow so I can get right to work rather than waiting around for you?”

  “If we’re late,” he says, “and I haven’t left instructions or phoned them in or she hasn’t phoned them in for me, then just clean the floors a little, wash the windows. They’re all dirty, the floors especially. Tidy up the place a little is what I’m suggesting, scrub down the restroom and all its parts. If we’re really late and neither of us has phoned in your instructions and I don’t send them in with somebody else and you’ve cleaned the entire place where it really shines, give a little paint job to the ceiling and walls. The paint, brushes, turpentine and ladder are in the back closet. One coat. If we’re really very late and never got instructions to you and the paint’s dried, give it two coats, but no more than two.”

  “I don’t see how I could do more than two coats in one workday. You said turpentine, which means the paint has an oil base. Oil paint takes a long time to dry. I doubt I can even put on a second coat in my scheduled worktime tomorrow if you have me do all those cleaning chores besides.”

  “So put in a couple hours extra.”

  “For money?”

  “Do it because you like the job. Show me that. And that you want to keep it. Because you complain too much. You ever hear her complain?”