Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

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Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine Page 1

by Diane Williams




  McSWEENEY’S

  Copyright © 2016 Diane Williams

  This book is made possible by generous support from Xandra Coe.

  Cover design by Dan McKinley.

  The art on this book’s cover is unsigned and was created for a romance novella published in Mexico City in the 1960s that appeared in serial form. This piece was produced using collage and gouache overpainting on illustration board, and the back reads “El Angel No. 64.” The printer of these covers held on to the originals for decades, and the entire collection was recently purchased from his warehouse. Works are available from the Pardee Collection Gallery of Iowa City, and “El Angel” is provided courtesy of Diane Williams and Wolfgang Neumann.

  All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or in part, in any form.

  McSweeney’s and colophon are registered trademarks of McSweeney’s, an independent publisher with wildly fluctuating resources.

  ISBN 978-1-940450-85-8

  www.mcsweeneys.net

  ALSO BY DIANE WILLIAMS

  This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate

  Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear

  The Stupefaction

  Excitability: Selected Stories 1986–1996

  Romancer Erector

  It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature

  Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty

  Contents

  BEAUTY, LOVE, AND VANITY ITSELF

  A GRAY POTTERY HEAD

  CINCH

  GULLS

  TO REVIVE A PERSON IS NO SLIGHT THING

  HEAD OF A NAKED GIRL

  RHAPSODY BREEZE

  LAVATORY

  PEOPLE OF THE WEEK

  THE ROMANTIC LIFE

  THE GREAT PASSION AND ITS CONTEXT

  SPECIALIST

  THE POET

  AT A PERIOD OF EXCEPTIONAL DULLNESS

  HEAD OF THE BIG MAN

  LIVING DELUXE

  PERSONAL DETAILS

  FLYING THINGS

  HOW BLOWN UP

  SIGH

  THERE IS ALWAYS A HESITATION BEFORE TURNING IN A FINISHED JOB

  THE MERMAID POSE

  GREED

  CLARINDA

  THE SKOL

  THE THICKENING WISH

  LAMB CHOPS, COD

  OF THE TRUE AND FINAL GOOD

  GLIMPSES OF MRS. WILLIAMS

  GIRL WITH A PENCIL

  PERFORM SMALL TASKS

  WITH RED CHAIR

  TRY

  REMOVAL MEN

  A MERE FLASK POURED OUT

  BANG BANG ON THE STAIR

  A LITTLE BOTTLE OF TEARS

  WHEN I WAS OLD AND UGLY

  PALM AGAINST PALM

  HUMAN COMB

  How long will Harry Doe live?… Who will win the war?… Will Mary Jane Brown ultimately find a husband…?

  —LEO MARKUN

  BEAUTY, LOVE, AND VANITY ITSELF

  As usual I’d hung myself with snappy necklaces, but otherwise had given my appearance no further thought, even though I anticipated the love of a dark person who will be my source of prosperity and emotional pleasure.

  Mr. Morton arrived about 7 p.m. and I said, “I owe you an explanation.”

  “Excellent,” he replied. But when my little explanation was completed, he refused the meal I offered, saying, “You probably don’t like the way I drink my soda or how I eat my olives with my fingers.”

  He exited at a good clip and nothing further developed from that affiliation.

  The real thing did come along. Bob—Tom spent several days in June with me and I keep up with books and magazines and go forward on the funny path pursuing my vocation.

  I also went outside to enjoy the fragrant odor in an Illinois town and kept to the thoroughfare that swerved near the fence where yellow roses on a tawny background are always faded out at the end of the season.

  I never thought a big cloud hanging in the air would be crooked, but it was up there—gray and deranged.

  Happily, in the near distance, the fence was making the most of its colonial post caps.

  And isn’t looking into the near distance sometimes so quaint?—as if I am re-embarking on a large number of relations or recurrent jealousies.

  Poolside at the Marriott Courtyard, I was wearing what others may laugh at—the knee-length black swimsuit and the black canvas shoes—but I don’t have actual belly fat, that’s just my stomach muscles gone slack.

  I saw three women go into the pool and when they got to the rope, they kept on walking. One woman disappeared. The other two flapped their hands.

  “They don’t know what the rope is,” the lifeguard said. “I mean everybody knows what a rope means.”

  I said, “Why didn’t you tell them?” and he said, “I don’t speak Chinese.”

  I said, “They are drowning” and the lifeguard said, “You know, I think you’re right.”

  Our eyes were on the surface of the water—the wobbling patterns of diagonals. It was a hash—nothing to look at—much like my situation—if you’re not going to do anything about it.

  A GRAY POTTERY HEAD

  How tenderly she had arranged the gray pottery head of a woman on her mantel—the subtly revealed head of an archaic woman. It exhibits some bumps and some splits.

  This was a gift from the Danish gentleman who had also given her a Georg Jensen necklace in the original box.

  She had been lucky in love as she understood it.

  And that night—some progress to report. Something exciting afoot. She has a quarter hour more to live.

  Even if she only gets to the lower roadway, she’ll have to manage somehow.

  Her boiled woolen cloak was wrapped around her tilting body and she was driving her car as if it were being blown away by the wind.

  She had gone down this particular road to go home for years. This time she also arrived close by the familiar place, dying.

  A tulip tree, tucked into a right angle formed by two planes, was brought into her view.

  The police officer who inspected her dead body saw one area of damage and the pretty mother-of-pearl, gold and enamel Jensen ornament that was around her neck.

  She has been associated with sex and with childbirth. No less interesting, she was a traveler on this unsophisticated country road.

  Her facial features are remarkably symmetrical, expressing vigor and vulnerability.

  CINCH

  My back started killing me and Tamara asked what else did I want and why? Oddly, she was suddenly unenthusiastic about me and she revealed resentment, of all things, and possibilities for her revenge.

  But how busy I was!—building the twelve-by-sixteen rec room at the rear of the house.

  I made bedplates and cut boards. And this was the day that Tamara baked her standard sponge cake.

  When I reached for a taste of the cake, she took the plate away.

  So I slapped her and drilled holes for anchor bolts, used a shim to level bedplates and my half-inch nuts to secure the bedplates.

  “Have I seen that before?” I asked her, for by then Tamara smoked a cigarette near the site and she was waving an arm on which slid—up and down—a bracelet of lumpy blue glass.

  A beautiful beam of light—perhaps it was aqua—was produced by the sun poking through the dangles at her wrist.

  And then again that woman behaved unfavorably toward me, for I had laid my hands on her small-sized, stooped back, or I had prodded her.

  By the next May, Tamara had departed and Hesper, her replacement, carried a tray of old-time spring tonic for the two of us. Yet Hesper is so perfectly content to pursue me, seeing as how I expected s
he’d soon lose interest in the project or not have any real knack for it.

  At this point we marched around the yard attentively, and I could tell from her remarks, and from how she laughed seriously, that I would not need to worry too much about her—as if I’d considered all of the pitfalls and avoided them.

  There was a green glow from the thin, scratched surface of the lawn.

  And there was that underlying melody when Hesper groaned because she saw the gopher hole—rather, we saw that typical mound of soil.

  We had to set a cinch trap.

  After you catch a gopher, you tap it headfirst, dead, right back into the hole! That’s good fertilizer.

  This isn’t just a big joke. Pests move in from other areas and damage can occur in a short time from new ones who reinvade the world of nature.

  But after I put to death a friendship, a marriage?

  There are people to take their places, who move in from other areas, of course. There are people who are dedicated to the true good, who work toward this goal. There are animals that may not.

  GULLS

  The gulls in the wind looked to her like fruit flies or gnats.

  Two gulls flying suffered an in-air collision. One fell. The other briefly stood there—appearing to do next to nothing.

  The woman didn’t think she was supposed to see that.

  So how far did the injured gull fall?—for it did not show itself again.

  From the ninth floor, the adults in the street looked to her like children. But who were the children that she saw meant to be?

  “We’ll have to knock ourselves into shape, won’t we?” the woman told her husband. She had once intended to evaluate their options for the improvement of their understanding.

  She was fingering her glass that held water—the water that, of course, slides downhill when she drinks it—the water that one could say stumbles.

  Now, in the back of their building beyond the river, there is a hollow—the unfilled cavity—although nobody can escape that way.

  The woman went to bed that night with nothing much accomplished vis-à-vis the mysteries of daily life.

  Her husband, next to her, squats carefully. Then he is on his knees above her.

  He keeps his chin down, giving proper shape to what he is trying to express—his romantic attitude toward life.

  TO REVIVE A PERSON IS NO SLIGHT THING

  People often wait a long time and then, like me, suddenly, they’re back in the news with a changed appearance.

  Now I have fuzzy gray hair. I am pointing at it. It’s like baby hair I am told.

  Two people once said I had pretty feet.

  I ripped off some leaves and clipped stem ends, with my new spouse, from a spray of fluorescent daisies he’d bought for me, and I asserted something unpleasant just then.

  Yes, the flowers were cheerful with aggressive petals, but in a few days I’d hate them when they were spent.

  The wrapping paper and a weedy mess had to be discarded, but first off thrust together. My job.

  Who knows why the dog thought to follow me up the stairs.

  Tufts of the dog’s fur, all around his head, serve to distinguish him. It’s as if he wears a military cap. He is dour sometimes and I have been deeply moved by what I take to be the dog’s deep concerns.

  Often I pick him up—stop him mid-swagger. He didn’t like it today and he pitched himself out of my arms.

  Drawers were open in the bedroom.

  Many times I feel the prickle of a nearby, unseen force I ought to pay attention to.

  I turned and saw my husband standing naked, with his clothes folded in his hands.

  Unbudgeable—but finally springing into massive brightness—is how I prefer to think of him.

  Actually, he said in these exact words: “I don’t like you very much and I don’t think you’re fascinating.” He put his clothes on, stepped out of the room.

  I walked out, too, out onto the rim of our neighborhood—into the park where I saw a lifeless rabbit—ears askew. As if prompted, it became a small waste bag with its tied-up loose ends in the air.

  A girl made a spectacle of herself, also, by stabbing at her front teeth with the tines of a plastic fork. Perhaps she was prodding dental wires and brackets, while an emaciated man at her side fed rice into his mouth from a white-foam square container, at top speed, crouched—swallowing at infrequent intervals.

  In came my husband to say, “Diane?” when I went home.

  “I am trying,” I said, “to think of you in a new way. I’m not sure what—how that is.”

  A fire had been lighted, drinks had been set out. Raw fish had been dipped into egg and bread crumbs and then sautéed. A small can of shoe polish was still out on the kitchen counter. We both like to keep our shoes shiny.

  How unlikely it was that our home was alight and that the dinner meal was served. I served it—our desideratum. The bread was dehydrated.

  I planned my future—that is, what to eat first—but not yet next and last—tap, tapping.

  My fork struck again lightly at several mounds of yellow vegetables.

  The dog was upright, slowly turning in place, and then he settled down into the shape of a wreath—something, of course, he’d thought of himself, but the decision was never extraordinary.

  And there is never any telling how long it will take my husband, if he will not hurry, to complete his dinner fare or to smooth out left-behind layers of it on the plate.

  “Are you all right?” he asked me—“Finished?”

  He loves spicy food, not this. My legs were stiff and my knees ached.

  I gave him a nod, made no apologies. Where were his?

  I didn’t cry some.

  I must say that our behavior is continually under review and any one error alters our prestige, but there’ll be none of that lifting up mine eyes unto the hills.

  HEAD OF A NAKED GIRL

  One got an erection while driving in his car to get to her. Another got his while buying his snowblower, with her along. He’s the one who taught her how to blow him and that’s the one she had reassured, “You’re the last person I want to antagonize!”

  The men suspect her of no ill will and they’ve stuck by her.

  She’s enjoyed their examinations of her backside in her bed.

  And although there’s no danger, one of the men had a somewhat bluff interest in her. He was handsome with dim-lit eyes. She liked to joke with him.

  While she bent forward to her comfort level, at her sink, without holding her breath, she kept her mouth open. He applied himself against her and she allowed his solution to gently drain from her.

  The paper she’d gathered together, and added to several times—to dry herself—was unfairly harsh—so often, such a number of times, regularly, usually.

  But something more. Another man, when he stopped by, noted that things had become almost too satisfactory. He saw copies of old masters on the wall, not obvious to him on his previous visits.

  “Is something wrong?” the girl asked.

  As a rule, she blamed herself—for yet another perfect day.

  RHAPSODY BREEZE

  Her salesman had hair like a fountain on top of his head, and then it came down around at the sides of his head to just above his shoulders. He had a boy’s physicalness, yet his mustache was gray and he never thanked her for the big sale.

  No one would ever say of him—He has such a nice face or that he looks like such a nice man, but he had not intended to misuse her.

  After all, hadn’t he tried to stop her from buying one of the heaviest mattresses that she surely will regret purchasing.

  That poor decision of hers is well past her now as she presses her paint roller from here to there and back while she is uttering little grunts that sound reasonable as she shifts her ladder.

  The ceiling turns terra-cotta—the walls will be red, the door cerulean blue, the sills and window sashes kelly green. There’ll be a turquoise mantel—and, for her dinner�
�more pleasure and change. She’ll cook a strong-juiced vegetable, prepare a medley salad with many previously protected and selected things in it.

  The salesman, at his home, empties a pitcher of water into a potted plant that has produced several furred buds that he’s been studying and waiting on—courting, really—but it’s as if these future flowers intentionally thwart him. He assumes responsibility for their behavior.

  Also, he thinks he doesn’t know how to get people to do things.

  He takes a cloth and wipes the greasy face of his computer. He checks his mustache in the mirror to see if it is trimmed properly.

  He asks himself, What do you want to ask me? Will you look at that?

  To begin with he thinks he’s had enough of chewing on his mustache. The next thought after that is—What a lot of wild sprouts there are above his mouth—and he assumes responsibility for their behavior. The step after that is to get his hairbrush and the scissors and to approach the real challenge, which is to steady his oscillating hand so he can aim it at the appropriate section of his face where the offensive hairs are. Then he brushes the mustache to see how unevenly he’s cut it, and then it depends on how much time he has, not enough. Should he adjust the one side to match the other side?—because there is a limit. He may end up cutting off his entire mustache.

  He presses his face closer to the mirror. He could not make it out, could not recognize the opportunity for bewitching himself.

  LAVATORY

  There had been the guest’s lavatory visit—to summarize. She did so want to be comfortable then and for the rest of her life. She had been hiking her skirt and pulling down her undergarment, just trying not to fall apart.

  Once back in the foyer, she brought out a gift for her host. “I tried to find something old for you to put on your mantel, but I just couldn’t. I tried to find something similar to what you already have, to be on the safe side, but I couldn’t.”

  It was difficult for the guest to comprehend easily what the other invitees were saying, because she wasn’t listening carefully. One man happened to have a son who knew her son. He had learned something of importance about her son—about his prospects. Something.

 

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