Fall and Rise

by Stephen Dixon

  “The evening one, Sandy?”

  “He said Shafik. Little guy, dark, glasses—”

  “Everyone calls him Sandy. He’s an Arab. What’s up, he hurt?”

  “He almost was. I don’t mean this to boast, but he could’ve been hurt a lot worse if I hadn’t stopped two men from mugging him an hour ago. He’s gone home. But someone took my coat when I jumped in to help Sandy, and all my money—”

  “Can’t let you in without a token. Borrow from Sandy if you helped him so much.”

  “I already said. He closed up early, was afraid something worse would happen to him and went home. He gave me enough change for the subway, but I used it all on phone calls from the booths upstairs—to get a locksmith, to call friends—since in that stolen coat of mine were my house keys. Remember I—”

  “All that’s not—”

  “But remember I came down before and asked if I could use the phone here because the ones upstairs were so cold and you said I’d have to pay a token to use it because it’s on the platform and I said—” He’s shaking his head. “What are you shaking your head for? I said I couldn’t pay for a token and use the phone booth because I only had enough change for a token and wanted to make some more calls to find a place to sleep tonight.”

  “I only came on a half an hour ago. Want to be exact?” Looks at his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes ago. It had to be Morton, if it was this station and entrance—the clerk before me. Bald? Scar across the nose?”

  “I don’t recall any clerk with glasses.”

  “I didn’t say glasses. Scar across the nose. Bald. Elephant ears.”

  “I’m sorry. It was this station entrance and I thought it was you.”

  “We don’t look anything alike. He’s tall, I’m not, but you can’t tell that because we’re both sitting—okay. But I’m much broader in the chest and no scar on the nose and a different face and ten years on him and no big ears or bald.”

  “But you know Sandy. And my coat stolen’s no lie, because you don’t think I’m wearing this smelly summer sweater because it’s my choice and garishness is my style and I think it’s summer out, do you? The police gave it to me to keep me warmer than I’d be without it. And I finally found a place to stay tonight—Hundred-tenth and Broadway—the subway stop is—and the person’s given me thirty minutes to get there at the most. I called her from upstairs with a borrowed dime. ‘Mister, can you spare a dime?’—I did that. So what?—but my chat with Morton before is true.”

  “I can’t let you on either. I do, which I’d love to, but am seen doing it—fired on the spot.”

  “Then I’ll have to sneak on. Not ‘sneak,’ just climb over the turnstile in front of you. Because I tried getting a cab—person I’m going to said she’d leave the money for one in her lobby—but none would pick me up because of these torn clothes, I suppose, and messed-up physical condition, all of which I got protecting Freddy.”

  “Freddy?”

  “Sandy. I don’t know why I called him Freddy. Who the hell’s Freddy anyway? I’m very tired and a bit slaphappy. Was hit on the head by Sandy’s muggers several times. The Lebanese. Dark, small, but big in the shoulders and arms. I only noticed that later. Looked like he lifted weights. Truth is he could’ve helped me more than just by going for the police. Maybe he has a lead plate in his head or, young as he is, a heart or some other condition. Or afraid. And why shouldn’t he be? Or in that job, in that outpost and late at night and probably with a wife and kids at home, the ironclad rule ‘Never fight back.’ But glasses, Sandy, thin mustache, sweet voice and face, heavy lips, he called the police and they came promptly and muggers ran. But you weren’t around when it happened.”

  “If it happened after I came on I still wouldn’t have heard it. This box is soundproof except when you speak into it or I want it to be, which, if you don’t mind—pardon me, okay?—will be now,” and he unhitches a disk to cover the hole and looks at the newspaper on the change counter. Morning News, BRIDGE SPLIT IN STORM, photo of freighter’s front rammed into a suspension bridge, car dangling off the side, caught in the cables, “2 die, 7 hurt as supertanker Ignatius’s prow,” he thinks the caption begins, clerk’s eyes on him every now and then, “—Tampa Bay.”

  “Then I feel free to jump over. Cop comes, I’ll explain. I have to stay someplace tonight and I’m sure they’ll have the mugging report or I’ll ask them to call in for it. They’ll see why I tried beating the fare, if I’m caught, and they’ll look at you as if you’re nuts. Not nuts but just wrong for carrying out your job so much.” Clerk, without looking up, points to his ear and then the closed hole while shaking his head. Dan goes to the turnstiles. Climb over or crawl under? Each seems an effort. Looks back. Reading the paper. “Come on,” rattling the gate, “buzz me in.” Clerk looks at the clock behind him. Nearly three? Dan can’t quite see. Once—Fiftieth and Broadway stop—watched unobtrusively from the platform—late afternoon last week—fare beaters sneak in by slipping through the turnstiles. Started counting and one of every seventeen people got in that way though a few by going over or under. He try it, one of the arms will pin his waist to the stile’s side just when the police come. Would seem easier to go under and goes under and over to the platform edge to see if a train’s coming. None. Looks back. The paper. Who’s he fooling?—he’s looked at me. Platform pay phone. Had a dime he’d call Helene to say “Complications—finally on my way.” Do and she might say “Forget it, much too late.” Come on, train, come on. Hopes it’s the local which he’ll take all the way to a Hundred-tenth. Looks back: paper, clock, stair exit, never me. Hole where the train could be coming: dark as far back as the next station. But this is Sixth, so at the Seventh Avenue stop or even Forty-second or Thirty-fourth, just to throw the police off if the clerk did call them, he’ll change for the D, if the train that comes is the E or F, but if it’s the D, take it to Fifty-ninth, though maybe changing cars along the way, and change there for the Broadway local.

  Suddenly has to pee and walks toward the other end of the platform. “I’ve reported you now, striped sweater,” clerk says over a loudspeaker somewhere, “so you better pray a train comes soon and on it isn’t a transit cop, which at this hour every train’s supposed to be.” Takes off the sweater and pushes it through a trashcan flap. Has to pee badly. Men’s room locked, but he wouldn’t have used it, and hates to do this but does, zipping down his fly just in time, with a train coming into the station on the other side and his back up against the last pillar on the platform onto the tracks.

  “You there, you filthy slob,” a man shouts from the downtown platform after Dan turns to pee against the pillar because he can’t stop. Train goes, nobody over there or on his side, zips up, train on the uptown track’s in sight but don’t get your hopes up as it could be at this hour the train to pick up money from the token booths or one to collect the trash or clean the tracks.

  Now this is going too far. Should have just said to him, well whatever I should have said I didn’t, and now look at the time. He’s never going to come. Maybe he’s a great practical joker. Say, that what you are too, Mr. Bum? Well if so, last time. But he seemed truly desperate. “Oh I have to, oh I must.” But stop making a big fuss. Go to sleep. Can’t do yet. Then give it another five minutes, ten, fifteen at the most. That’s more than anyone should expect from an almost total stranger, but cut it off at fifteen. Even if the downstairs vestibule bell rings a split second after his time is up. Starting from—clock—now. Good. So, sweetie, what to do till then? Yesterday’s morning coffee? No, I’m up. Maybe something’s on TV. Turns it on. Ad. Switches channels. Ad. Ad. Then nothing on, nothing, and then an Abbott and Costello movie or TV short. Watched these on TV as a kid and thought them senseless then. Who would have thought so many programs at this hour? The wasteland never sleeps. UHF? Too many channels to dial. Cable. Switches around and only thing on but tomorrow’s cable listings and today’s final stock-quotes do they call those is a nude videotape movie or scene in one. Two men an
d about five women rolling around together and engaging in real or simulated copulatory and oral sex on what looks like an enormous waterbed in an over lit cheap motel room. A TV’s on the bed or is that the monitor of what the video camera’s recording? Very violent rock music interlarded with human sucking and smacking sounds as a soundtrack. Then the sex and sounds stop, couple or triples uncouple, whose-is-it Adagio for Strings comes on faintly as background music and a man wrests himself from the others, stretches a leg as if he’s working a cramp out of it and walks to the camera shaking his semierect penis. “See this,” he says to the camera angrily. “Yeah,” the nude people say behind him, looking at the monitor, women shaking their breasts or behinds at the camera and the other man his penis. “I’m fucking crazy angry,” the man says to the camera, “and you want to know why?” “Yeah,” they say to the monitor, shaking their parts harder. “Not you nymphozodiacs—you already got it all. But those sex crazed viewing mothballs out there, hellbent on blowing up this sensual globe, that’s what it is, sensual, with one and one-half tons of TNT per human person in the great U.S. of anuses. I’m fucking craziness angerness because this mother-eating lunacy hypocrisy frustration world, inside and out, and this is the truth inside the troot so you cockcruncher mothballs out there better be listening to me or I’m gonna shit on ya, gonna shit on ya, is—” Turns the TV off. Even if people want this rubbish and pay for it? I’m no prude but—Makes you wonder about the extras in the scene, not the lead himself. He’s hopeless, but they think they need an acting credit that much where—But I’m getting away from my—I can’t even begin to assimilate why—What if a youngster’s up now and turns to that channel? My folks should see this. No, they’d still say this is the greatest country and the greatest city in it and the reason is the freedoms you have in both and though some things might seem to go too—So what’s my main objection? Not just the self congratulatory fatuity and vulgarity—And the Albinoni, if that’s whose it was—not even a nod at cleverness—Oh a nod, yes, but just because you play serious music, quote unquote, that’s supposed—Why even think of it? And my feelings that such bilge shouldn’t be on has nothing to do with censorship. Just that—If I had to argue the point rationally, in other words, I’d say—In other words it’s not that anything about life shouldn’t be brought into the open, though whether everything should be seen on TV is another—Not “another”—everything shouldn’t. That was made-up life, antilife, vomit-manure to make tons of money out of life—Good God, I like to fuck as much as the next person but—So what if it’s past three and only a few thousand onanists are watching this—What I’m saying—Hell, I like to play with myself as much as the next person too, but—Maybe not as much—No. What’s that biblical quote about how many good or just men or just good just men each civilization needs—No sense is going to come from me tonight on this or any half-serious—And nothing to do with fatigue, I believe, and it’s possible that quote comes from the Talmud. Just that I’m too darn—I’m so damn mad because—Just shut your eyes and do away with it. Shuts them, slashes her hand through the air, opens her eyes to the Times and turns to the TV page. Ten just men was it? If so why does “36” appear? Sex times sex? Some other day. Say, supposedly great movie is on, one she’s wanted to see for years. Terrific critical reviews and one of the few movies her mother didn’t walk out of in twenty minutes, and the hookup of those two was usually a good recommendation. Turns the TV on to one of the channels from before. Ad. Turns the sound off but picture stays on and reaches for the book of poetry by her bed. Opens it to her marker and reads “Lights are like a lot on fire/ From somewhere far-off doomed to zoom into your—/ The city, the city, someone speak to me about the city/ Tell me what could be more important, far-off or close by?/ Speak to me about manholes and women’s bones/ About the surfeit of noises, smells, indirect touches and sights/ Lights, gloom, lots, afire/ Burned-out hearts and backyards of barbed wire/ Speak to me if you can and please, in the city/ of the city/ Where the rich don’t even speak to the next-door rich/ Both so thin as the poor but from slimming drinks/ and diet creams/ The poor, groomed to be entombed to tumble and tumefy/ Rooming sights unseen to multiply/ Swooning sores unsettled to—” Tosses it to the floor. Tell me, am I just dumb or is this just junk? Movie’s on. Even if she’s my colleague and sort of a friend and had her publisher send me an inscribed copy, I feel cheated having spent half an hour with it. But I’ll say in the Monday note I’ll drop in her office box “Thanks loads, am enjoying your book I can’t say how much, and lovely cover, beautiful type, acid-free paper and sewn instead of gummed? it’ll still be around when the rest of ours and us have moldered to dust, overall the publisher did a bang-up job of putting it together and you must be awfully proud of the production, I know I’d be, though wish you would have given me the chance to buy the book, which I will anyhow and always do when I get one on the house, and present to a metromaniac friend—maybe he’ll see what he’s up against and just buy poetry instead of writing it for a while and start taking care of their kids,” which should get me off the hook, because I’ll never finish it. Then give it to the library on a Hundred-fourteenth. Librarian says he appreciates any gift, since if he can’t circulate it he can sell it at their annual book sale. Or destroy it. Done it with others. Into the trash pail and out with the garbage, vanity-press works and textbooks on how to write and publish and potboilers so I should spread the serious word I somehow get through the mail or sometimes by messenger. The library, don’t be such a Nazi, and poet lives in Rockland County, so little chance she’ll find out.