Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  Izzy went first and then me.

  Then Eddie came out, and Mel said no. So then I went back in instead of Mel going at all.

  This was when I get her to drink all the rest of the bottle and when that's what she did, drank it, I'm sorry, but money's money, you know?

  So I come out and say we don't have to pay her, she'll never know. Eddie says give her half. Izzy says what's this?

  Hey, it was what they used to call a little black book back in those golden olden days.

  Izzy says, "You see this?"

  WE TOOK IT. We didn't pay her. We didn't give her one red cent.

  Here is the aggravation I remember.

  I say, "I don't think we should have taken it."

  Izzy says, "We'll look at it. We'll see the names in here. The guy which told me about her, we'll see if he's in here "

  Mel says, "Suppose we call them and tell them they have to come across with something or we're telling their wives or something, all of the guys."

  Eddie says, "No, what we do is we call her and tell her it'll cost her just for her to get it back."

  I say, "That's terrible. We can't do that. You've got to see it this way—it's stealing something, it's robbery."

  Izzy says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm thinking there's something here we're not thinking yet."

  I say, "Give it to me. This is lousy. You guys are louses. The day will come when you will stop and remember this, and hang your heads in shame."

  SO THE THING IS I got it away from them and I went back up to her place, and I got her to give me a double sawbuck for her to get it back.

  Or it could have been I just took the twenty because she was too plastered for her to give it to me herself.

  Night before last I was sipping and nibbling and just being a thing that was leaning and letting all of this come, even the part about how for all of the time I knew them after that, I never stopped showing them who the disgusting ones were and who the nice guy was because of who it was who took it and went and gave it back. Eddie, Izzy, Mel—want to bet me they're still a mess? Then I tiptoed to the bathroom off the bedroom and sat down on the toilet and turned to other thoughts. That's when those names came—the Strand, the Columbia, the Laurel, the Lido, the Gem—and let's not forget the Central!

  Look, I sat there urinating.

  The thing was for me to keep my eyes closed and keep ready to fall more or less back to sleep. So why did I turn on the light to see the big blue box and the yellow rose on it, the million-dollar decision in some genius's brain to make the whole deal hazy?

  THREE

  THREE THINGS HAPPENED to me today. One of them taught me the meaning of fear. Actually, these were not things that happened to me. They were just things that happened in my presence. I am not certain how much of my presence was involved. Let's leave it at this—I was there when these things happened.

  THE FIRST THING WAS the woman speaking.

  You might want to see her this way—nice eyes, nice hair, pretty face, those bones, good ones. The eyes are liquid, the hair chestnut, a barrette hiking a section of it up front into a flung-back pleated effect.

  I had my eye on those bones as she talked.

  She was talking about a lover of hers, the man's funeral.

  She said she rather enjoyed it.

  She knew I'd known the man. Perhaps this explains everything. Because something had better explain.

  He was a lucky man before he died. I am thinking of the things he saw—the bones of the woman from top to bottom, the eyes swimming, the chestnut hair without the barrette in it, the pleated effect unformed.

  What a lucky man, I thought.

  This is what I was thinking while the woman was speaking—even when she mentioned the funeral and allowed as how she had rather enjoyed it.

  THE SECOND THING was the head in the subway car.

  This happened on my way home, one stop still to go.

  I looked up from nothing in particular and saw it coming from the far end of the car, a wheelchair and a small colored man behind it, pushing.

  I know I took a good look right from the very start. It was because of the wheelchair. It was because here comes a wheelchair through a subway car. But what kept me looking was the absence of someone in it. It was just an empty chair coming down the aisle, a little man behind it, pushing.

  I thought, He pushes that thing in here. He gets you to look at him doing it. I'm his client if I look.

  Then I saw the head. It was sitting perfectly upright in the chair. I mean it—a head, right in the center of the seat.

  It was a colored man's head with a bit of a colored man's beard, and there was a neckerchief at the bottom of it sort of rakishly flared.

  You will say I am not to be trusted. But I know I am. I saw. I heard. I saw the mouth in the head open up wide just as the train came in to my stop. I know what I heard before the door behind me was shut.

  It was full-throated, deep-chested.

  Only one line, but good and loud.

  Way down upon the Swanee River. . .

  Very thrilling, very theatrical.

  The son of a bitch was a baritone!

  THE THIRD THING was I went home.

  IMP AMONG AUNTS

  I THREW ONE AWAY just before I started this. I tried and tried. But it wasn't any use. This one here has the same title that that other one had because that other one had had it. In that other one, I was telling the truth, which is why it wasn't any use. Whereas this one, I'm already lying my head off with the thats and the hads in this one, not to mention the residuum masquerading as an honest title.

  But I don't want you getting off on the wrong track until that's where I want you getting. So just for the record, I did have aunts, I still do have some of them, and I was always as much of an imp among them as I could manage.

  They called me one, for that matter—the aunts did. Or they called me bandit or Mr. Mischief or rascal.

  Bandit was actually bondit, which is another language and which maybe doesn't in it mean bandit. But I always thought it did, even though the aunts put all their stress on the second syllable.

  Can you hear it—how it sounds?

  Well, I always thought so many things.

  I was trying to get one of them declared in what I was writing and gave up on. But I just couldn't not tell the truth in it, it being something about Aunt Helen.

  Here's what I was doing.

  I started off by naming all the aunts—like this: Ida, Lily, Esther, Dora, Miriam, Sylvia, Pauline, Adele, Helen, with Helen coming last, just the way you see it here.

  That wasn't a truth but it was the beginning of one.

  Then it got worse. Or I did. For pages and pages, saying something bizarre about each of them—about the aunts—only nothing about the one aunt who really mattered.

  I'll give you an example.

  I said, Take Dora. I said, Dora makes brisket and then goes to all the windows. There's Dora, I said, standing at each window, looking out of each window, going oy at each window.

  Just listen to her as Dora goes oy.

  Like this.

  Oy.

  As for Helen, I was getting to her. Helen's hard. She's my mother's side. Helen's on my mother's side. I am getting nervous from thinking about getting to Helen on any side.

  Helen could get you nervous.

  Here's what Helen looks like.

  Chinese-y eyes. Silvery hair. In a bob.

  Helen was a spy without leaving a desk. Helen broke codes. Helen ran the cryptanalysis unit at somewhere so secret you could die from it even if I didn't tell where.

  This is true.

  I went to see her once. If I told you even the state she was in, it could get us all in trouble. Of course, I don't mean state like emotional. State geopolitical is what I mean. Helen was never in a state emotional. This is the thing about Helen—and it still is.

  The place wasn't much, the apartment Helen was in. I suppose she was in it to be near where she did he
r spying on what all of the people in the world were or are saying.

  There was a buzzer, not a bell. This'll give you an idea of how crummy Helen's was.

  The door comes open this little bitsy crack.

  "Yes?"

  "Aunt Helen live here?"

  "Aunt Helen who?"

  "My aunt Helen."

  "Stand back."

  I stand back. Door gets opened a bitsy bit more.

  "Who are you?"

  "Her nephew. Are you Aunt Helen?"

  "Say her name."

  "Helen?"

  "Say yours."

  "Mine?"

  "It's okay!"

  THAT WAS HELEN CALLING, that last thing you heard. You would know it in a flash, her voice, scratchy and exasperated-sounding, a little teasing, a little taunting—yes, Chinese, Chinese-y, that would be Aunt Helen all the way.

  The woman in the W.A.C. uniform had a heavy automatic pistol stuck down into a holster strapped to her at her waist.

  That's true—except it wasn't really stuck down. It was sort of sitting in there—loose-ishly.

  Aunt Helen stayed right where she was, which was back behind the blocky woman at a pink Formica table with a pencil in her hand. When I got up close enough, I could see it was a crossword puzzle that Aunt Helen was working on—slanty eyes, bobbed hair, everything colored, her success colored, the color of polished steel.

  Oh, Aunt Helen!

  She just picked up and left it all. I mean, in 1938, she just picked up and went away from everybody—from husband, from child—to go be a code-buster and bust the codes of the world.

  But I don't know another thing about her.

  Aunt Helen's not talking.

  Why should she?

  I wouldn't.

  Working at a pink Formica table, go ahead and tell me it does not speak unfurtively for itself!

  I JUST SAID THAT to throw you off. Her name's not even Helen, if you want to know the truth. Neither is anybody's, Miriam included.

  I just thought of a good name for Aunt Helen's bodyguard.

  Mr. Mischief.

  Since I just made her up.

  Mr. Rascal.

  Since I just make things up.

  IT'S WHY they called me that.

  Bondit.

  I bet it's why.

  I am such an imp.

  Every inch a nephew.

  All nephew.

  Oy.

  Go ahead and break it.

  Here it is again.

  Oy.

  THE PSORIASIS DIET

  I DON'T KNOW about your first lesion, but let me tell you about mine. It was just itching when it started, just a tiny itching region, a little dot is all. My mother said it was the sting of like of an insect or like of something like that which made it itch. It wasn't. Everybody said it was something like that which made it itch right up until the time it got as big as a dime, and then they all after that started saying after that if only it was the size of a dime again. Because it wasn't long before it was a quarter and a bigger quarter and then a half-dollar they were all saying it was the size of.

  It was money.

  It was psoriasis.

  Psoriasis.

  I've seen worse words. Besides, it got me an education, being as how I took up an interest in language right after psoriasis got going divvying me up.

  I started with all the pee-ess words and just kept on going after that. There was no stopping me, I can tell you. There was no stopping it, either. They did everything, my mother and father. You can't say they didn't try. They tried all the things the neighbors knew about. Then they sent away for things the neighbors never heard of. I put them all on. But you had to have a lot of stuff, being as how it was everywhere now, being as how there was nowhere it wasn't.

  I was twelve.

  I stayed home—working, as you can see, on the dictionary. I just went on from all those pee esses in it to the rest of the trick spellings. I liked the old words too. Here are some of my favorites. Pinguid. Pilous. Anachorism, which I'm always getting corrected on. But which I swear it to you, I swear it—this is the one which isn't about time, but what it's about I'm not telling!

  You can't make me.

  I don't have to.

  I WENT TO DOCTORS when I had to go somewhere. They got the duds off me and took a look. They didn't like it, I can tell you. They were probably doing their best not to let on, but they didn't, I don't think, like it one bit.

  I didn't either.

  I'd get a jar to go home with. It wasn't enough for the whole thing, of course. But they said the idea was for me to try it out on a little spot of it to see how a jar of it goes.

  The thing of it was, there wasn't any one little spot of it for you to try it out on, being as how it was all one big one now. Who could pick a place for you to stop at? I mean, where did you draw the line? It was the same thing with the dictionary, I noticed. You start with paraplegia and you go right to paraselene. It turns out to be all one big spot of it—the dictionary, your skin, probably everything.

  I WOULDN'T WANT to tell you what they tried.

  They probably tried it on you too, and it didn't work, did it?

  I just went from one age to another age—by which adulteration, it did too. You might say the psoriasis and me, we reached our growth together. It was isochronous, you might say. That's if only you had a vocabulary as powerful as what you see. Or is it that you hear?

  I was on my own by then. I can see how this was best for all concerned, being as how my folks could just not bear for them to look at it in order for them to get a look at me anymore. To tell you the truth, I didn't, couldn't, either.

  I guess you know all about that part of it—the cathexis you get for always looking parallax to a mirror or not looking at all. Everything is askance, the way you see it. You keep getting stuff from a jar, but never can look for you to see where any of it's going.

  But I'm not here to bellyache. What I am here for is for me to give you the cure.

  It's a diet. It's what cured me and it's what'll cure you—so long as you follow directions to the letter.

  Here goes.

  Eat your heart out, sucker!

  IF YOU WANT COPIES of this diet for your afflicted friends and relations, just remember I am protected by the copyright laws. It took me a lifetime to adumbrate my diet and I can't just go giving it away to every fool for free.

  But maybe you don't want the cure. Maybe you really don't crave salutary skin. Maybe you would sooner sit there and be lonely but not without what you got. Maybe it gives you a conversation piece. Or maybe you just knocked wood that you didn't come down with Siamese twins.

  I can understand this. Some people just don't want to be worse off. I didn't, either, until I decided I was.

  Not anachronism.

  Anachorism.

  All your life, anachorism, anachorism!

  Look it up.

  HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL

  FIRST MAKE SURE you have enough time. It is crucial that you have enough time to make things up. Myself, I do not have time enough for anything like that.

  But I'll just tell you what's what. It will not be hard for you to follow me doing it.

  Just listen.

  Just watch.

  I'm composing these instructions on an I.B.M. Selectric. I got it back in 1961. I did not buy it. I finessed it or I finagled it or I stole it.

  The person who is the unexpressed indirect object of one or the other of these verbs was rich. He said you can borrow this thing, use it for a while. Then he stuck his other thing in my wife's thing. They still have their things and I have this thing and I'm not giving it up.

  It's given tip-top service. I really loved it when I first saw it, and I still love it just as much.

  I never cover it over with anything. I don't cover it over with anything like a cover or anything—because I like to look at it—the shape. I.B.M. is good at giving a thing a nice shape. I always look at the shape of things before I snap off the light i
n a room.

  I think 1961 was the Selectric's first year.

  I talk to engineers whenever I get a chance. I don't mean the kind that build bridges. I mean the fellows that service things. Those are the engineers I talk to.

  You know what one of those fellows once told me once? Buy the first of whatever it is! He said buy the first one of whatever it is because the maker of it is never going to knock himself out like that again—making, you know, all of the others after that. That's why this one's still going fine after so many wonderful, wonderful years.

  The same goes for the Polaroid camera I've got. I've got the oldest one there is. You know how old it is? Here's how old it is. It's called, they call it, the Polaroid Land Camera.

  That's how goddamn old it is!

  No shit, it was a first one—it was the very first Polaroid the Polaroid people made!

  You want to see pictures? Look at these pictures! Tell me when in your life you ever saw in your life pictures as sharp as these pictures!

  Because they're this big when I start out with them. You see how big? Next to nothing, right? But then what? But then I go get them all blown up as big as life! See them? Look at them all over the walls if you don't know what I mean!

  That's resolution for you, isn't it?

  Well, that's my second wife, okay?

  They're framed all over the place.

  People come in here and then they look at them and then they smack their heads.

  My God, they say, such pictures!

  I say, original issue, a maker knows his game.

  FEAR: FOUR EXAMPLES

  MY DAUGHTER CALLED from college. She is a good student, excellent grades, is gifted in any number of ways.

  "What time is it?" she said.

  I said, "It is two o'clock."