What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  He goes upstairs. Climbs flight after flight. First he left his apartment. He reaches the roof. Door locked. Damn door to the roof locked. Padlocked. Hates that kind of lock. That lock’s not legal by city law. Read that some place. Could turn this walkup into a firetrap. Landlord, you’ve done something illegal. Lots. But this? Why this lock at this time and place? He walks down flight after flight of stairs.

  He goes outside. First he passed his apartment. It’s a city street. So a city block. Row of attached brownstones on both sides of the block. Avenue up the block and avenue down. He’s lived on this sidestreet for years. A typical city sidestreet. Typical for this city, he means. Twenty-five to thirty five-story buildings to a side. A ten-to twenty-story apartment house at all four ends. Parked cars. No parking spaces. Manholes and streetlamps. One to two people walking on the sidewalk on each side. He goes into the next building’s vestibule. Door to the building’s interior is locked. He rings all the tenants’ bells on the mailbox. One person says “Ruth?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  That’s not Ruth. Go away.”

  Click. She’s gone.

  Another answers back on the intercom “Who’s there?”

  “Delivery.”

  “Delivery, hell. I’m not expecting anything.”

  “I mean special delivery. Mail.”

  “My eye. I’m calling the police.”

  “Do.”

  “I will.” Click.

  He goes into the next building’s vestibule. That door to the interior’s also locked. He rings several tenants’ bells. One person ticks back without asking who’s there.

  He walks up flight after flight of stairs. Five to be exact. Five’s a lot. He reaches the roof. No padlock. Good landlord. Just a hook. He unhooks. Landlord who obeys city laws. He bets the tenants here even get hot water and heat on wintry days. And a fuse box that can be found and windows that don’t fall out as one of his did this year. For three days he waited for the windowman to come. The landlord said he’d called for one. When the windowman didn’t come, he put in the window himself. Windy three days. Learned something though. How to put in a window. He asked the hardware store man how. The man didn’t know but gave him the phone number of a windowman. The windowman said measure your window frame, get glass cut quarter-inch shorter than what you measured on all four sides, get glazier points and a cold or brick chisel, and you got it made. A paint scraper will do to push in the points, the windowman said. The windowman was right. It worked. A window. That didn’t rattle or fall out. But now he’s on the roof. Night. No stars or moon. City. Lights of this city. Other apartments. People cleaning, cooking, talking, watching television, playing, making love. Night not so dark because of the city. But what did he come up here for? Answer that. Who? He. Had a purpose. What? To destroy night. To forget night. No. He doesn’t know. Yes he does. He came up. Why? To look at night. No. Came up. He came up. To what? To somehow efface night. Erase night. Which? Both. But how? He had a theory. Not a theory. A solution. He had something. Now nothing. Night again. That’s it. He had a theory of a solution he would try out up here tonight. He’d yell. That’s what he was going to do. Yell. Just yell. Yell away night. So he yells.

  “Night. Damn stinking night. Smelly night. Here again, night. For what? That’s what I’m asking. Why? Why you damn night? Damn starless night. Damn darkness. Damn whatever you are and look like. For what? I’m asking. Me. My name. My history. My present. Everything. Why? Why night? Why day? No. Just night. Day I can take. But night. Why do you come and always come and never stop coming and stay for as long as you stay? Answer me that. I want an answer. Why do you come and come and so often? Every day around here, which is often. Too often. Damn often. Night. Damn you, night. I detest you, night. Can’t stand you, night. You depress me. I’m depressed by you. Night’s depressing. You are. I get. And sick by you. Your darkness, Your length and stars and starlessness. Your moons and no moons and meteorites. This nothing to do almost but but sleep and read at night. Night. Why night? I used to love you so, night. If not love than tolerate you, night. But now? Not now, night. You miserable night. Why these miserable nights? Why this night? These nights. Nights. Night? Damn you, do something, night. I can’t stand another night of you always being around me, night. Of your always sure to be there night after night. Of another sultry night. Any kind of night. So do something, go somewhere, I’m ordering you to, night, night, night.”

  But no use. It’s still there. Moon even comes up. He goes downstairs. First he puts the door hook back in its eye. Then he goes downstairs. Flight after flight.

  What Is All This?

  BOOK TWO

  NOTHING NEW

  INTEREST

  BIFF

  LEAVES

  THE FORMER WORLD’S GREATEST RAW GREEN PEA EATER

  JACKIE

  THE CLEANUP MAN

  CHINA

  SHE

  BURGLARS

  THE LEADER

  THE GOOD FELLOW

  THE TALK SHOW

  DREAM

  P

  STORIES

  NEXT TO NOTHING

  THE PHONE

  MR. GREENE

  PIERS

  KNOCK

  THE NEIGHBORS

  NOTHING NEW.

  Now is the time for all good men to Now is the time for all good men One day she decided she had She’d had enough of the desert and him and packed to leave. Suddenly, a man jumped out of a fifth floor window I was walking under. His folks came to dinner. I was rowing by myself across the ocean when I saw He called his brother. “Jim,” he said, “there’s something very important I have to tell you.” She took her dog out for a walk and saw the same man she’d seen the last few times walking his dog. A boy was standing on a balcony waving down at me when the balustrade broke. I was holding my father’s hand through the raised bed rail when he made that noise in his chest and seemed to expire. They were getting bored with each other. They both knew that. We both agreed we were getting bored with each other. We spoke about it. Talked. One day. Yesterday. We talked yesterday about how we were getting bored with each other. We were sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee. It was morning. Soon after we woke up. This morning, they’d got out of bed and washed up and dressed and he made the bed and tidied up the room while she made them breakfast, and now they were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when they both agreed they were getting bored with each other. All right, enough of getting into it. Now let me get on with it.

  The truth now, Lou, and only the truth, so help you God,” I said, “what do you think of our living arrangement so far?”

  “I was wondering when you’d speak,” she said. “Not specifically about that. But it’s been at least five minutes since we said a word to each other.”

  “You haven’t said anything in that time yourself.”

  That’s what I said. We. But I’m usually the one to start the conversation. If it wasn’t for me we’d almost never speak.”

  “Anyway, you’re exaggerating. It can’t be five minutes since we last spoke.”

  “We haven’t said a word since I poured our coffee, right?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “And your coffee was nearly boiling hot when I poured it, right?”

  “Not ‘nearly boiling hot.’ The water boiled and you poured it into the pot and after it dripped through you poured the coffee into our mugs. That would hardly make the coffee nearly boiling hot. I’d say it was quite hot. Barely sipping hot. But surely not nearly boiling hot.”

  “All right, it was barely sipping hot. Both of us sipped it with difficulty right after I poured it into our mugs, or you did; I just watched you and saw by your expression it was too hot. But since that time you told me the coffee was too hot to drink, we didn’t say a word till we were able to drink it normally, and both our coffees are black.”

  “True. So what’s your point?” I said.

  “I can’t believe you don’t know it by now.”

>   That it would have had to take at least five minutes for our coffee to get from the barely sipping to easily drinking state?”

  “I’m no heat or time scientist, but from my experience with coffee I’m sure it takes at least that long to get to that drinkable temperature it reached when we started talking again.”

  “I agree.”

  “So what I’m saying, of course, is that for five minutes we didn’t say a word. And we sat next to each other all that time, not eating or reading but just glancing at each other or around the room and occasionally barely sipping the coffee.”

  “You’ll probably next say it’s because we’re bored with each other. Have nothing or very little to say to each other. But it could also be because the coffee’s much better than usual today, not that it isn’t very good every time you make it.”

  “Don’t try and get off the subject with flattery. Especially about my no-better-than-average coffee.”

  “It’s always better than average. And I’m saying what I feel. Your coffee today was damn good. I don’t know if it was a new blend or different grind or what previously untried thing you did with it. I know it wasn’t a new pot. So maybe we were just using those silent five minutes thinking about this great coffee.”

  “Were you?” she said.

  “A little. For about fifteen seconds. But we might’ve been musing about other things. Our different work. Your daughter. What we dreamed last night. And we didn’t get much sleep and we’re both usually pretty listless the first half hour after waking up, so we probably didn’t have the energy to speak.”

  “We’ve always spoken—I’m saying, ‘just about always’—more than we do now in the morning no matter how tired we’ve been. Tomorrow we might even speak less than we did today. There’ll be six-minute silences soon, then seven, no matter what the coffee’s like in temperature and quality or how long we’ve been up or slept.”

  “If the coffee’s really bad tomorrow, I might have something to say about it.”

  “You don’t like my coffee,” she said, “you make it.”

  That’s not what I meant.”

  “Anyway, after you’ve said whatever it is about the coffee tomorrow morning, you, and probably me too, won’t have much more to say to the other. In other words, each day we’ve that much less to say, it seems, so why do we bother staying together when we’re obviously bored with each other?”

  “You’re bored with me?”

  “Please, you’re not bored with me?”

  “Answer me first. I asked it first.”

  That doesn’t necessarily mean I have to answer you first.”

  “Just answer it first, then.”

  “Only if you then answer me back honestly,’”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m bored with you. Now, are you bored with me?”

  “Yes, I’m bored with you, or with myself…”

  “No hedging. Be honest. You promised. You’re bored silly with me, period.”

  “No, I’m bored with myself, comma, and because I am, I’m also bored with everything and everyone else. This is someone else’s philosophical statement or Indian-or Chinese-religious belief, which I always felt was much too simplistic for me before, but feel it applies to me now.”

  “No matter whose statement it is or what land it comes from, we’re bored with each other and have to separate.”

  “I felt you were getting to that.”

  “If you did, then you should have said so or asked me to confirm it, so we could have avoided all this getting-around business to what we finally got to now.”

  “If I had, then we really wouldn’t have said much to each other. For it wouldn’t have seemed right for us, after living this long together, to just wake up, wash up and so on and sit down for breakfast and over coffee say right off that we’re bored silly with each other and must separate.”

  “Whether it does or doesn’t, we are and so know now what we have to do.”

  “We’ve been bored with each other before.”

  “Never like this,” she said. “Admit it. We’ve absolutely nothing to say to each other anymore.”

  This conversation hasn’t been that boring.”

  That’s because all we’ve left to talk about is our boredom, and we can’t talk about that subject for very long without it becoming boring and then very boring and then the most boring subject of all. If we don’t resolve the problem now, then all we’ll have to talk about the next time we speak at length, for I’m disregarding the ‘Answer the door, please, Louise’ and ‘Don’t forget to get a package of cream cheese,’ is how boring we are to each other. And since we already spoke about it before, that conversation will have to be less interesting than it is now. And the third time we speak about it will be even less interesting than the previous time, and so on, until we won’t be able to speak about it, it’ll be so boring, and then we will have nothing to say to each other but ‘Answer the door, please, and don’t forget the cream cheese, Louise.’ It’ll just be silence between us. Eight minutes. Ten. Broken, perhaps, only by directions, orders and simple requests. Maybe we won’t even be able to say these because our boredom and presence together is disturbing us so. Half hour to an hour of just no conversation at all while we’re having coffee together at this table. Could you stand that? I couldn’t.”

  “I’d rather wait till it happens before saying how much I couldn’t stand it. I might like it for a while, for all I know.”

  “What about what’s already happened? The five minutes of no talk. You liked that?”

  “It wasn’t bad. I stood it. I thought about things other than us. Something in my childhood, for instance.”

  “I’m not interested,” she said.

  “It’s similar to now. When I was five or six. I can’t know how old I was. Seven, even, or nine, though I doubt I could’ve been older than that. Sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and my mother saying, while sipping a cup of coffee…I know coffee was part of it, as steam was coming out of her cup, and she never drank anything else hot like that, not even cocoa or tea, that I couldn’t leave the table or say another word, just as she wasn’t going to say another word to me, till I finished my milk.”

  “I’ll ask. Did you?”

  “She eventually gave up, let me leave without finishing it. It must have become too boring for her, once she drank her coffee, sitting there without either of us saying a word.”

  “Well, I won’t, and I am not your mother.”

  “I know. You’re my girlfriend, or sweetie, or once was.”

  “Which could be another thing, Herb.”

  That can come back. But before it does, I feel the conversation should come back. And with this conversation, our conversation is coming back.”

  “I already told you. This conversation is self-destructive in that it destroys itself by our having it. And now that we’ve had it—and I have had it, Herb, I have—this conversation is destroyed. Make it easy for us both. Agree to separate, which means, since I live here with my things and child and you only with your things, to leave the apartment agreeably. Find someone or somewhere to live with or at, or do what you want once you leave here, like travel, but don’t try to have anything more to do with me once you leave, as I won’t with you.”

  “I could and would if only I didn’t enjoy these little conversations, which only you of the two of us think are finished and from this point on or thereabouts can only get more boring and self-destructive. But let me think about it. My first inclination is to say you’re probably right.”

  “Maybe what I say now will help you make the decision. If you don’t leave, I will. It’ll be more difficult for me, just as it’ll be difficult to stay without your share of the rent. But what will be more difficult than either of those is staying here if you plan to stay, even if you pay all the rent.”

  “I think I plan to stay with you and pay all the rent, and not because I want to be difficult.”

  Then R
ae Ann and I will have to leave.”

  Then wherever you go I’ll try to go too and pay all the rent, even though I know for a while I’ll be making myself difficult.”

  “But why submit yourself to what you have to admit, this sophistic argument aside, will be almost total and then total boredom between us?”

  “Because I still feel, no matter how boring you say our conversations will get, that if we continue to stay together our conversations will become interesting and soon we’ll have a close relationship again.”

  “It’ll become horrible. You’ll make me mad. I’ll yell at and curse you. I’ll plead with you to stop bothering me. I’ll say it’s bad for me, you and my child. I’ll call you a child. I’ll call you worse. I’ll have you locked up if you persist. People will call you asinine and mean, childish and insane. Particularly, your family. They and your friends will say you’re thoroughly wasting your time in trying to live with me. Face it, Herb, we were once close but now aren’t. There’s nothing left between us. Or only the least thing left, which is like a residue of what once was. Or more like a residual, which like insecticide residuals are more effective against insects than sprays are. This analogy might not be exact from A to Z, but you’ll get what I mean, and of course I’m not saying you’re an insect. But once the residual is applied, it stays around. Sprays go away and are really only effective when sprayed on the insects directly. But, if you’re an insect, just try to casually walk over the residual or even leap over it in the kitchen. It gets on your feet—I’m assuming the insect’s not wearing shoes—because it’s been applied in too wide a space for just about any insect to stride over or leap across. And after it licks some of the poisonous residual off, it dies. So you can’t avoid it. And you more than anyone I know like to go into the kitchen, at least thirty times a day. The residual covers every entrance to the kitchen, surrounds every opening and hole. Because the insect, in its own way, knows after a while it can’t go into the kitchen without dying, it must separate from that room. Separate from me, Herb. I am that kitchen. Find another kitchen to get food from. Agree to leaving alone or staying here alone or whatever you want to do so long as it doesn’t include being with me, because obviously the kitchen can’t separate from the rest of the apartment to get rid of the insects. No matter what, I’m not saying another word to you till you agree to one of those types of separation I mentioned.”