“Well, let’s not get down on yourself too hard. Just have a good shower and snack and a pleasant sleep. If you like Mandelbrot—do you know what it is?” He nods. “Some of my mother’s homemade ones are in a coffee can in the refrigerator. I’ll probably be up earlier than you but I’ll patter around. I don’t think Sammy will get out of my room, but if he does and ends up on your bed, don’t be alarmed—he doesn’t scratch. I’ve no shades on any of my windows, so if it gets very bright out it might wake you. Any idea what the weather report is for tomorrow?”
“No, and go ahead and wake me. Do everything you’d normally do if I wasn’t here. All I want is a few hours sleep. Also, and I know it’s a little late in the conversation for this, but you never said how your evening went after you left Diana’s. The wedding reception?”
“I didn’t. Thought I had. Anyway, you probably still want to talk and I don’t. If you want to chat later in the morning and I don’t feel too rushed to get busy with my work, we can do so over coffee.”
“Fine. Do you have to use the bathroom, because I’m going to be in there a while.”
“Give me a minute and then it’s yours. Oh, one more thing and then you’ll be set. Around five or five-thirty a man might yell ‘Mike’ from the park side of the drive a few times and possibly startle you. Either he’s crazy and doesn’t have a dog or he does have one and it runs away from him and gets lost every other day. Otherwise, have a good night.”
“Goodnight.”
She’s dreamed. How old is she in it?—that’s always the first thing she asks about her dreams. Same age she is today. She and Dan were on a beach. It seemed like the same beach she rents a cottage on every summer for one or two months, lots of pebbles and shells and huge smooth tocks sticking out of the sand or the water near shore. Then it seemed like Coney Island, a gray colored sand but without people or wire trashcans or lifeguard highchairs on it, and no pebbles, shells or rocks. The sky was clear, weather was mild and the sun was setting in the East. He was in bathing trunks and a tank top, she in a light sleeveless cotton dress, more like a young girl’s dress with blue forget-me-nots all over it and a big bow at the waist in back. She have one like it as a girl? Doesn’t recall. They were holding hands. The Boardwalk and Parachute were behind them—still no other people—and she pointed to the Parachute and said “I once got stuck at the top of it for half an hour when there was a fire in the gear box thirty feet above me and it scared me so much I couldn’t speak for a week and could never go on an amusement park ride again, not even the merry-go-round or one of those dumb bumping cars I used to love.” All that happened. She also couldn’t get into an elevator for months or on a plane till about ten years ago and even today when she drives a car over a high bridge her pulse speeds up. He said “Don’t look at it then,” not that sympathetically; “let’s just count birds.” They turned back to the water. Both were barefoot and her feet were sinking into the muddy sand, making her shorter and then much shorter than he. She held a finger out to point at birds and he held a pen and pad in his free hand. A bird flew past. She said “There’s one—a tern. How many are we up to now?” He said “One,” and let go of her hand to write the number in the pad. She said “It seems we’ve been here much too long for just one tern.” “There’s a second bird,” he said; “quick, what is it?” “A sandpiper, but they usually travel in twos or schools.” “Prides,” he said. “Plagues,” she said, “or maybe not. I can be very morbid, so you better watch out for me.” He said “I’ll do more than that; a gaggle of mores. I’ll look out for you, look after you, look forward to you, look into you, look up to you, but I’ll never look down my nose or look through you, or so I say.” “Never mind,” she said, “but tell me: why are we counting birds?” “We were asked to for the betterment of our environment, yours, mine and the child’s.” “Never mind, and look; there’s a third one—a murmuration bird,” and she took his pen and wrote the number and name in his pad. He hugged her, she didn’t resist. He said something like “Stabilize your mouth, I’m going to navigate you,” she opened her mouth wide and moved her head closer to his. He kissed her neck and fiddled with her dress bow and shoulder strap. She said “Will you get your hands and lips off me? I don’t know you and I do mind.” He let go, held his hands out to her in a strangulation pose. She backed away and he dropped to his knees, put his face to the hole her feet had made and screamed the most horrified scream and she thought he’d just found his child dead in its crib, and woke up.
What to make of it? The dream, if just the scream and dead child thought, certainly woke her up. But what of the rest? Multiple meanings of tern? Fiddling with her bow only in there for a laugh? All the baby talk with Marietta could explain the dead child being in, but what does that dropping-to-his-knees scene mean: child she wants but might never conceive, being stillborn? Her wanting to kiss him, then resisting, related to what happened with Peter before? Was the mud she was in primeval? The strangulation pose supposed to be what she thinks sex would be like with him? The sandpiper flying past the piper of passing time? Nothing she can now think of makes her think the dream was very self-revealing or profound. Engaging, moving, cinematic, even tragic, and her favorite kind stylistically, one that for the most part moves forward and tells a story. But when the meaning doesn’t come at once or after some thought, she lets the interpretation of it drop till it pops out on its own. Now that’s interesting.
She gets up, her mouth dry from all the drinking tonight. Bathrobe on, shuts the bedroom door to keep Sammy in. Bathroom still steamy from what must have been a long shower. Doesn’t have to pee but will on her way back so she won’t have to get up again tonight. Heads for the kitchen for a glass of water. Living room’s dark except for the street lights but ample light to see. He seems to be sleeping, hardly breathing. She holds her breath, doesn’t even hear him then. He can’t have anything on underneath since his pants are folded on the floor beside the bed and he said he lost his undershorts. On top of the pants his neatly folded shirt and beside them on top of a newspaper folded in half his shoes side by side with what appear to be socks inside. Why’d he move the shoes in? Probably from some infixed sense of order or he didn’t want her to feel his things were strewn all over. He’s on his stomach, covers down to a little above his waist. Room’s fairly cold, so won’t do for his chill. She goes to the side of the bed he’s not facing. He has big shoulders, fairly big back muscles which seem unusually tight for a man sleeping, even flexed. Big tuft of hair on his back just below the neck, also hair that comes up almost to the tops of his arms. He smells from her hair conditioner, so he must have shampooed. Same smell she smelled when she passed the bathroom. All right by her if it made him feel better, but maybe he should have asked if he could use them. She pulls the covers up to his neck, he doesn’t move. She goes into the kitchen, runs the tap water to get it cold. What’s she doing?—she has enough bottled spring water to take a bath. She gets it out, in the refrigerator light pours out a glass. Shuts the refrigerator door, drinks. Too cold to drink all at once, truck roars past. At this hour and that sound could only be a Times or News delivery truck, hopes it didn’t wake him up. Thinks between sips he’s a very bright guy, a terribly nice guy, well just a bright nice lively guy, that much is clear, with a tendency to get into scenes. Also a lot better looking than she remembered him, grubby as he was when he got here, with a sense of neatness and cleanness about himself, and that while he was here, big contrast to Peter, he didn’t make any kind of pass. In the morning he’ll ask—she’ll sit down for toast and coffee with him—if he could see her again, and what will she say? Say yes, see what he’s like once he gets over his nervousness about her and evening fatigue and lingering tipsiness, meet for tea, maybe the second time for a long walk and lunch, and if he gets as pushy as he was on the phone, stop him, and if he continues to be pushy after that, drop him, since that’s not the type of man she ever especially liked and certainly not what she wants to start up with again, so just, and this has
to be the main thing, go slowly with him from date to date and if it works it works, what more is there to say other than she thinks this is what she’ll still think if she remembers it when she wakes up again later today, and sets the glass upside down in the dishrack, tiptoes to the bathroom without looking at him, pees nothing much so doesn’t flush it, more not to waste water than not to wake him, gets down in a crouch and slowly opens the bedroom door, grabs Sammy just as he’s about to scoot out through her legs and kicks the door shut and carries him with her to bed.
Shulumu, gutsofar. What is, with, I affir, I affir, behind me befar, so near, so nar, cower me dup tweetly, twilleries, get back there and didn’t let are, wise up me for once, buf something like one like, gist wanded to see what she would do, nice, she was so noose and then some niece, covers over me, I was too tired to and thought I’d freeze, in time I might’ve covered myself up all right, a find kine lady, eager to see her out of mourning in daylight, now go to slip, sluff, go to, sloop, time to, eferthink fault wheret May, going fizz, fuzz, bing bomb, bye bye blackbird, how do you fly today? climb on its back, time another time goodbye, slaff, baa, shhh, ssss, sleepily, bobby go nug, not knee, pot cheese, flug dwempt tomb, tinny time, tommy too, tea for tots, sofa mat, softer than mine, wean my gloom, bridge slapped dashed on, sheet and pillowcase so smellowy clean, he and Helene in a car with two men friends, don’t know whose and, catching them in the rearview, who they are, but everyone having a ding-a-dang time, yokes, laughs, “Catch this one,” one of the men says, Dan in the driveler’s seat steering, North is his best, South on his left, West afront, East ahind, Helene beside him speaking, silent visible words out of her mouth letter by letter “Lovely landscape. Nice drive. Big bridge. Why’s it rise so high? Tale-telling clouds. I see a hamstring in that one, a man strung in the next one. Beautiful ocean or bay. Where are we, Dan, and where we going?” “We’re crossing the George Washington Bridge—the one that’s lit up like a brassiere on its back. You don’t recognize the Jersey side?” “Don’t reproach me,” she says. “Just ask ‘Do you recognize it?’ rather than ‘Why don’t you?’” “I said it like that?” he lies. “If I did, I deeply apologize,” when one of the men grabs him around the neck from behind and yells “The bridge, dimwit—watch it!” and they’re all screaming as the car crashes through the side-railing and coasts over the water a few seconds before it starts to dive. “Are we in a pursuit plane?” Dan asks Helene. The men punch open their doors and make expert jackknife dives out of the car and with their arms out glide downward side by side talking about the great view. Helene’s in the back seat screaming, a one-to two-month-old baby’s in her lap sleeping, car’s still diving straight down. Dan shouts “Oh no, oh darn, oh my dolls, we’re ruined, dashed, we, so soon, nothing nothing I or any man can do,” and throws his arms back to grab them in a last hug but can’t reach them. Then when he reaches them his arms won’t come down. Then they won’t go around. Car roof’s gone, blue sky and white clouds and a preschool teacher and her class flying above and below. He stands on the seat, top half of his body’s outside, and yells “Help us, stop it,” raises his arms, “All right, I suppercake, I beg!” is on his bed, where’s he? Helene’s, sleeping over, now he sees, it’s still dark, orangy sky, strange window frame shadows on the ceiling, Mondrians they remind him of, sofabed, softer bed, better pillow, just a dream, mean, man on the mule mews moody night, jorst a morst a lost a florst by morning heights dive, doors, forced, birdmen’s frenzed strength, bridge, scary biz, bees, buzz buzz, by, ben, aboo, “Mr. Krin?” “Yes?” he says. “Dr. Krin—Professor, nitch?” head of his department says. “No, jest a lecturer, Professor Fish.” “Lieutenant Krin then, we’d like you to take a fourth class ex pes this term—physics, and on the cusp I’m a fade, since we don’t have the font to pay extra, extra.” “Me? Fee free? Physics gas and lab? That’s good for a gaff, cost it’s the last thing I could dabble in. As a unicycle student I used to freeze whenever I went into my physics and chemistry classes and I never got higher than a D.” “Chemistry has nothing to do with it, Lieutenant, and do it for me. It’ll help you in this apartment, Sergeant, take it from me. I gibt you ein box, privately. In it is Miss Effie’s things to know how to teach your physics class.” He gives Dan an artist’s paint box. “Return it clean,” and leaves. Dan takes an old leatherbound book from the box, thumbs through it and sees everything he’s supposed to teach. Chapter One: First Class. Chapter Two: Second Class. All the way to thirteen. Bit book but not hard, he thinks. He takes the box to the office next door. Helene’s typing a letter at her desk. “Dear sir,” she says to the page as she types, “the bill must be paid.” “Helene, a minute of your time, please. The chairman wants me to teach cottage physics in addition to my three languages and lit quarts this term.” “Physical? What do you know about physical?” “Roughly nothing, but he gave me this monstrous book and I brushed through it and found I coo do it. It’s in this box. I’m not afraid.” He opens the box. Several other books besides the big one are in it, all old and bound in the same dark leather. He takes out the smallest book. It’s a wooden alarm clock that looks like a model of an operating table with many drawers underneath and stirrups and straps on both ends. “I’m sure I’ll be expected to explain this clock to my class, but damned if I know how it works. I’ll save it for the last meeting.” He puts it back and takes out another book. It’s a cuckoo clock, handcarved in the Black Forest it says on it, and when he holds it up a wooden bird pops out, cuckoos twice, pops back. He tries to open the cuckoo’s door, tries to open the hatch in back, both are sealed shut. “How do they expect me to teach about this cuckoo clock if I can’t get into it? I know what. I’ll call in sick the day of the cuckoo clock class. But I’m going to teach this course. And from elementary go on to advanced. I can make a good living this way and can use the change. People need people who can teach physics. It’s an important subject. Goddamn, it’s the law.” “Economics is important also,” she says. “For instance, in Port-au-Maine—” Someone’s starting up a motorcycle outside. If she has a cat, where’s the litter box? “What’s that your saying, Helene? Car harley hear ya.” He wants to go to the window and tell the motorcyclist to stop that noise. But he’s in bed, no clothes on, it’s the ninth floor and not his building, she might come into the room again thinking he’s asleep and see him naked and ask him to leave. Noise is even louder now. Gets up, just to look, sees he has an erection, forces it back between his legs, tries to pull the blanket off the bed to wrap around him but it doesn’t seem it’ll come off without ripping. He goes to the window naked. “Mike,” he yells outside, “can that damn rocket—people have to sleep.” Mike, seated on a motorcycle, jams his foot down on the kick-starter several times. The motor always starts up and stops. A young woman sits behind him watching television on a small set strapped to the seat between them. “Fuck this machine,” Mike says and gets off. “Mike,” the woman says, “stay here. This is the best part. I’ve seen it five times before. Television I’m telling you is the wave of the future and maybe even now is where it’s all at.” Mike walks up to the window, holds his fist under Dan’s nose and says “This little finger’s the cylinder, this next little finger’s the transformer, the middle little finger’s the responder, the fourth little finger’s the resonator, and the littlest little finger’s the thumb that’s gonna pop out your eye, screwball,” and thrusts his thumb at Dan’s eye, it goes through the window, glass gets in Dan’s eye but it doesn’t hurt. “Oh my,” he says, “not feeling the pain usually signifies the last moments of the eye. I’m losing my brother,” and starts to cry. He puts his hand over the eye, is in bed. Feels the eye, closes the other one: outside it’s beginning to get light. Orangy sky still, supposed to mean snow. Maybe she took the kitty litter box into her bedroom, thinking it’d be unpleasant for him to be near it. Brushing his teeth and seeing and smelling those turds, maybe it would, but he’s sure she keeps the box clean. Physics dream. Yes? Something like the ones when he was in school and shu
l and couldn’t get out if not. Motorcycle drives off. Five, six, even seven o’clock? If he’d washed his socks and wrung them tight, he could’ve put them on the bathroom radiator and by eight they would’ve been dry. But she wouldn’t want to see his socks when she goes into the bathroom. Kind of ugly too: black nylon, thin, frayed if not holed at the heels and toes, one of his father’s pairs he didn’t want but his mother gave him to wear or throw out. He likes the Christmas season because of all the oratorios the radio plays. But doesn’t want to give Helene the impression he’s trespassing with his socks and songs and—They’re at a restaurant with friends. Really the lobby of an old unrundown hotel with tables and chairs in it, gurgling fountains and cartouches around the room. Diana and the Hungarian novelist and two couples from her party that night: Chase and Nancy, good friends of his from Hokku; Hasenai and his wife, Hasenai looking angry that Dan lost the poetry book. Dan reads the note Hasenai slipped him before: “Who do I impale whales to but you? Drink drank, roustabout. Must brake relations fast: let this’ve been our ship’s wake.” “Jun,” Dan says, “I was going to call you in Japan—I know the dialing code and rates. You dial one-one. You dial two-two. You get the overseas Asian-American connection and you say ‘Three-three, four-four,’ and she gives you the operator on a ham sandwich island off the coast of Japan. To her you can speak Japanese or say ‘Five-five, six-six,’ and then the phone number which I have here in my address book.” He goes through his pockets. “Ding, that book must’ve been stolen too.” “Act,” Hasenai says and goes with his wife and the other couples to the cloakroom. “I guess we’re stuck with figuring out how to divvy up the chick,” he says to Helene. “I think we should pay it,” she says. “All? I thought half.” “All,” she says. “People have been paying our way for years.” “Not so. Since when? Okay, let’s for a change turn the tables on them.” The other couples come back with their hats and coats on and Dan says “I’m picking up the check today—we are—it’s entirely up to us.” “No,” the novelist says and pulls out a wad of twenty-dollar bills. “Let Dan,” Hasenai says; “he’s cost me the cost of more diners than I can name.” “Thank you, Jun,” Dan says and opens his wallet. The check comes to $53.22 including tax and he only has fifty-three dollars on him. “I think, after all, I will need about ten dollars from the rest of you for the tip.” “Pay with our credit card,” Helene says. “What credit card? I’ve no credit or cards of any kind.” She pats his side pants pocket, pulls his wallet out and takes several cards from it. “Where’d they come from? And they’re all in my name too. Waiter,” he shouts, “waiter,” and a waiter comes over carrying a tray stacked with plates of food. Dan’s sitting at a small square table in the back of a delicacy store, eating off of a plastic tray. Chicken, baked potato, roll, salad, beer. Three people he doesn’t know are eating at the same table. He finishes the beer and goes to the front of the store and stops at the turnstile next to the cashier’s booth. “Where’s your food ticket?” the cashier says. “Do I really need to go back for it?” Dan says. “I know what I ate and you can ring it up when I tell you what it was.” “If you don’t have your ticket, the rules of the house say we have to ring up the maximum in quality and amount that someone your size and age can eat in one sitting before we can let you leave. What’s your height and weight?” “Look, I’m an old customer—everybody here knows me by now. Oh, just guess.” “Six-one, hundred and seventy-eight, thirty-nine fifty and three cents.” “For one small-portioned cafeteria meal without even an appetizer or dessert? I’ll find my ticket.” He goes back to his table. The tray with his dirty dishes and the ticket that was on it are gone. “Any of you see my food ticket?” he says to the other diners. “It was punched to about a dollar-eighty.” They all keep eating without looking up. “Did any of you, then, take my ticket because it was punched less than yours?” They keep eating without looking up. “Then my tray—did you see the clean-up man or anyone else take it away?” They keep eating. “Thanks.’” He goes to the cashier, says “Listen, I’m even better than an old customer. Without seeming immodest, I’m an exceptionally good customer in a number of different ways. Not only do I regularly eat complete meals in the cafeteria and always pay for them, but I buy from the retail sections a few hundred dollars a year of smoked turkey legs, sliced sable, coleslaw, pickles, olives, Russian coffee cakes and pâtés. So you have to take my word when I say I only had four things—a baked potato, fried chicken-wing and two other things, but give me a second to remember what they are.” Just then two black men come into the store and go into the men’s room behind the cashier’s booth. They look like father and son—almost the identical face. The room quickly fills up with people buying from the retail counters, the booth disappears behind several tall women and men, it’s an underground garage they seem to be in but one without cars. Something awful is happening in the men’s room and some of us should go inside. That young man looked sinister, the old man looked helpless. I’d go but maybe I’m wrong, as they were both so well-dressed in stylish suits, homburgs and vests, and I’d also never be able to get past all these people in time. The young man comes out of the men’s room, cuts through the crowd with swishing motions of his hands, stands a few feet from Dan on top of a small flight of steps leading to the exit door. Everyone looks at him and then at the men’s room when the door there opens. The old man staggers out, his hand around the handle of the knife in his chest, leans against the wall and starts crying and coughing. Everyone goes “Ohhh,” but seems afraid or too squeamish to touch him. The young man points over the crowd and says “Dat man demoralized me,” and goes out the exit door. I’ve got to get the police, but if I go out that door he might be waiting with a knife. He pushes through the crowd to find another exit, sees the old man on the ground, bends down, listens for his heartbeat, feels for his wrist pulse, breathes into his mouth several times, pulls his eyelids back and lets them drop, says to some people watching “I think he’s had it. I knew we should’ve gone into the men’s room to help.” “You should have said something,” a woman says. “I knew something was wrong also and I would have gone in there in two seconds if I’d had support.” “Meanwhile,” Dan says, “the kid ought to be caught, but it’d be asking for it for anyone to go through that exit door.” “Try up there.” She points to the car ramp leading to levels B, C, D and F. He runs up the first ramp. A car’s speeding down and he has to jump out of its way. “Bugger,” he yells after it. “Roach!” The car starts to back up. He runs up the other ramps and leaves through the roof door. He’s on top of a tall hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Ocean. I’ve seen this same view in a movie, with the actor standing exactly where I am. He runs down the hill to find a policeman, all the time looking around to make sure the young man isn’t nearby. His mother, sister and he go into the Seventy-second Street IRT station. I’ve had this dream before, he thinks, stopping in front of the turnstiles. His mother says “Everyone has the correct change to get in?” His sister and he hold their coins up, his mother says “Good, then let’s go, but stay close.” He’s first and is about to put his coin in when he sees a sign on the turnstile: Exit, No Entrance. “Don’t let’s go in there,” he says to his mother. “We’ll never get out if we do. That sign. It means death’s inside.” “That sign means you can only leave through that turnstile, not go in, so try the next one without a sign.” His sister puts her coin into the next turnstile. “Don’t let her go,” he says. “I’m not a dumb-ox. I know what that sign means.” His sister goes through and his mother follows her. “Both of you—come back through the leave-turnstile while you’ve still time.” “Hey, kid,” a man says behind him. “You coming or going, but you’re blocking my way.” He steps aside, the man looks at the sign and puts a coin into the next turnstile and goes through. “Dan,” his mother says by the downtown stairs. “I’m fed up with your emotional notions and tantrums. We’ll wait for you on the platform. If you’re not there by the time the train comes, go straight home,” and they go down
stairs. “Please,” he shouts, “I don’t want you both to die or for me to be left alone.” He hears the downtown train coming into the station, pulls his cap down over his ears and runs outside. It’s a nice day, sunny and mild, a faint smell of blossoms or orange juice in the air, but I have to get away from here fast as I can. He puts his arms out, flaps them, but can’t get off the ground. The station’s a stone house on an island in the middle of Broadway. Cars, buses and pedestrians go in all directions around it. They’re making me dizzy, and he shuts his eyes and stands still till his head stops spinning. A canoe’s parked at the northern end of the island. “Is this anybody’s?” he asks the people waiting at the curb for the light to change. None of them turn to him, but one woman shakes her head. “Mister,” he says to the man in the newsstand outside the station, “you know if that canoe belongs to anybody?—I don’t want to steal.” “You buy a paper, sonny, I give you change.” He goes to the newsstand on the other side of the subway entrance. A sign on its shutters says Closed because of family. Which end of the canoe is the rear? Both ends have a seat with a paddle underneath and look the same. Get into the end that’s nearest and call that the rear. He gets in. The street turns to water. He looks up: it’s still sunny, hasn’t rained. He starts paddling home. But why go any farther? Nobody’s there—my mother and sister are gone for all time. He starts crying. Stop being a baby; be a young grownup man. You did what you could for them and now you can’t do anything more. I could’ve gone in after them; you never would’ve got out alive. I could’ve stopped them by force; you might have your sister if she was alone, but your mother’s stronger than you by more than double. He starts crying. Stop crying; get a move on, makes no difference where, before someone claims the canoe. He paddles toward Central Park West. My dentist practices right over…there. He’s paddling so well and enjoying the canoe so much that he paddles into the park and through it to the East Side. There’s the doctor’s office I went to for my prostatitis, there’s the one for my baker’s cyst. He paddles uptown along Madison and at a Hundred-tenth paddles west to Broadway and then to Riverside Drive. I know someone who lives around here but I don’t know who. Heck, I know someone almost everywhere in this city; I’ve been living here long enough. He paddles to Riverside Park and then up to Washington Heights. He stops in front of his aunt’s apartment house on Fort Washington Avenue and yells up “Aunt Goldie, Aunt Goldie—it’s me.” She doesn’t come to the window as she always did when my parents and sister and I used to come up here when I was a boy. He paddles across the Hudson to New Jersey and back to Manhattan and down Broadway. He’s hungry, rests the paddle across his thighs, takes a brown bag off the floor and opens it. There are two waxpaper-wrapped sandwiches and a bottle of soda and paper napkin inside. He unwraps a sandwich and bites into it—liverwurst, lettuce and mustard on fresh packaged white bread; my favorite kind. He snaps the bottle cap off with his thumb and drinks from the bottle as the canoe drifts along Broadway.
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