What Is All This? (2 page)

Paul walks to the point. When he was here two winters ago he wrote a story about a writer who came to a similar village to get over a woman in New York City who had stopped seeing him.

In the story and real life she was an actress who was portraying an actress on a daytime television soap opera who was in love with a writer of soap operas who couldn't give up his wife for her.

One night, in the story and real life, she told Paul she couldn't see him anymore as she was in love with—and thinks she'll be marrying—the actor who plays the writer on the show.

In the story and real life he had to sit down for fear of falling down and she said he was beginning to look and sound like one of the more unconvincing morose characters on her soap.

The writer you're in love with?” he asked and she said “Abe would never act so callow or doleful in real life or on the show.” She asked him to leave and he said “Not yet.”

“Do I have to call the police?” and he said, “Please, let's go to bed one last time and then I swear I'll go.”

Both in real life and the story she said “You've got to be even crazier and wormier than I first thought you were when I met you and then, for some stupid unself-protective reason, changed my mind.”

He slapped her face, pushed her into her bedroom and told her to take off her clothes.

In the story he had to pin her arms down and sit on her while he removed her clothes.

In real life he didn't pin her arms down and he thinks she took off her clothes while she sat on the edge of the bed.

In the story and real life she said if he was so intent on physically overpowering her, then she wasn't going to fight back, as she could get hurt even worse that way. “Irreparably, even,” she said in real life.

He doesn't remember using that last line in the story; he thinks he felt it would have sounded too banal to be believed. Now he'd use it, and he makes a note in his scratch pad to add that line to the story if the line he might have written in place of it isn't a better one and if this one can seamlessly be worked in.

Both in real life and the story she pleaded again for him to leave, and he said he wouldn't. When she cried because she was frightened of the harm he might do her in bed and later, out of self-reproach, when he was through, he broke down, in real life, said he must have been temporarily insane to have threatened her like that, and left.

In the story he held her down, got on top of her and tried making love.

She said something like “As I said before, Perry, you don't have to force me as I'm not about to resist. I don't want to risk rupturing my vaginal walls and maybe as a result restrict my childbearingness and facility for having sex unrestrainedly with other men.”

The act was physically painful and difficult for them both.

In real life, a month before that night she said “It's sleeping, Paul; let's wait.”

In the story she later said that rape or whatever he wanted to call it, it could have been pleasurable for her if he were the man she was in love with but for her own reasons didn't want to make love with tonight while he most demonstrably did. “But you're not. In every possible way you're unattractive and hateful to me, no more now than before.”

He said he could make her attracted to him and she said that was only his insufferable hubris speaking in him again. He said hubris was one of a dozen or more words he'd looked up at least twenty times in the last ten years and would still have to look up again when he got home.

In the story he looked up the word when he got home and gave the definition.

In real life now he doesn't know what the word means and writes it down in his scratch pad and underlines it.

In the story and real life he made an evening call for her from the phone booth on this point a week after the incident in her apartment.

In the story and real life he said something like I'm calling from this point, which is on an icy peninsula a mile out to sea, and where I can hear the sounds of buoys, gulls, bells, waves, fishing boat motors from nearby and far-off, the clinking and pinging of the halyard against the flagpole at the point's tip, and somehow it's the maddest and saddest and happiest and sappiest and sanest phone call I've ever made. For you see I'm both speaking to you while at the same time so totally alone and now being covered like everything else out here including the mouthpiece and coin slots and telephone wires and poles with snow.”

In the story she said “I hope you get buried to death and die,” and hung up.

In real life she said he sounds awful and there's nothing she can do for him, and hung up.

He phones her and says “Storm, hi. I'm calling you from that peninsula point phone I last phoned you from and which I never would have done if it wasn't around the same time and so soon after seeing some of the same people and the same sea and shore sounds couldn't be heard and the point wasn't as deserted as it was when I phoned you in what a few fall months will be two winters ago.”

“If it's snowing,” she says, “I hope you freeze your balls off and die, goodbye.”

“And if it's raining or let's say the meteors are showering as they are now but weren't then showering? Or the sun's thundering and mountains are lightninging and stars and moon are closing in and the earth's fissuring and oceans are tidalwaving and this village and your city and our country and countries and continents are disappearing worldwide? Day the earth ended—a time-torn title for a short story but a workable theme for one I'd work on if I hadn't used it twice before. Remember the husband and wife archeological team? The last two people on earth who seek shelter in the cave they've been exhuming for years? And just as the cave's crumbling with them in it they discover an intact skull and complete skeleton and enfaced slate and stylus that are probably a million years older than the oldest bones and writing materials ever found of protohuman American, and also the skeleton's digging and cooking utensils that are very much like our own. And what about old Philly Worstwords, who's awakened from a series of dreams of the successive loves of his youth and artistic successes of his middle age, to find his top floor apartment walls collapsing and all the surrounding buildings plummeting? And from that hospital bed in his now towering wall-less single room, observing the dissolution of his neighborhood and then the entire city and countryside beyond. ‘Why me?' he kept asking—remember that, Storm? ‘Why me, why me, why me?'”

It's raining. The rain stops. The puddles dry up. The night falls. The day comes. It's raining. There's thunder. Lightning can be seen by those who can see or who see it or those who remember it when they saw. Something like that. A master I'm not. I get out of bed. It's time. The rain stops. I suppose the puddles are beginning to dry up.

I wash and shave. I've come a long way. Last night I was asleep. Tonight I'll most likely be asleep. The night after tonight, or tomorrow night as they say, I'll probably be asleep too. And maybe one time during the day of these days I'll be asleep in what's called a nap. But still asleep. A sleep that might last for about an hour. That's about the length of my naps. Though some have been as long as two hours. One nap I had lasted three hours I believe. A long time ago. And one lasted so long that it could no longer be called a nap. But I should get going. I've come so far this time that I feel I want to continue.

I make myself a breakfast of two eggs and toast. I make a pot of coffee and drink two cups of it. I drink a glass of water. I go to the bathroom. What I do there is my business. I dress. I leave the apartment. On the stairway going downstairs I tell myself now's not the time to stop. On the ground floor I repeat to myself now's not the time to stop. In the building's vestibule where the mailboxes are I tell myself I've made it this far this time I might as well try to see it through to the end. On the stoop leading to the sidewalk I say to myself I've made it outside at least but now where will I go? On the sidewalk I'm about to say something else to myself or repeat one of the things I just said to myself when a woman approaches. I raise my hat to her. She smiles. I set the hat back on my head. She passes. I look up. The sun's trying to break through. I look down. Still plenty of puddles on the sidewalk and street. The puddles will dry up faster if the sun does break through. That's elementary, I think. What's also elementary, I think, is that the puddles will increase in size and depth and possibly spill over to form secondary puddles if it soon rains as hard as it did the last two times. What isn't elementary, I think, meaning I'm thinking and have been thinking what is and isn't elementary to me, is to think about the mathematical proportions of sun and rain in relation to puddles, secondary or otherwise, and how much water would be lost in relation to water gained or something like that if it rains again, though if the sun comes out real strong before it rains. Meaning, if the sun comes out real strong, or is really just a sun of normal intensity and warmth for this time in this area, before it rains as hard as it did the last two times or just rains an average rainfall. Oh, better to forget it than try to explain it. I'm not a scientist, mathematician or meteorologist. A weatherman, let's say. To me rain is rain, puddles are puddles, the sun's the sun.

Standing in front of my building I tell myself I can head up or down this street, toward the avenue with buildings and stores on both sides of it or toward the avenue that borders the park. Both avenues are at the end of my sidestreet and have a subway station three blocks south of the corner, though only one has a subway station seven blocks north of the corner, as the station on the park avenue is a terminus. But all that would only be important if I wanted to take a subway, and if I did, if I wanted to go north or south on it, none I want to do.

I walk toward the avenue with buildings on both sides of it rather than the avenue with only luxury apartment houses on one side of it that face the park. The sun's broken through. Most of the clouds have disappeared. I suppose the puddles have begun to dry up. And now it's beginning to rain. A sunshower. I used to love them as a boy. And the rainbow that would come soon after the sunshower. Both of which I still love as a man. But quick. Under cover. Before my only street clothes get soaked.

A woman walks by holding an opened umbrella. I raise my hat. She raises the umbrella. I get under it and hold the umbrella rod right above the handle while she holds the crook. She came from the avenue with stores on it. We walk toward the avenue that borders the park. It's a woman's umbrella, brightly colored and with a thin leather handle and strap, but the canopy isn't wide enough to protect two average-sized adults walking a foot apart from each other, so we move closer till our hips touch. Then our arms holding the umbrella and next our elbows touch. Her hand moves a few inches up the rod, folds over mine and brings both our hands back to the crook. I switch hands on the umbrella so my arm closest to her can go around her waist. She takes her hand off the handle so she can curl that arm around my neck, Now almost the entire one sides of our bodies touch. Even the timing of our strides are changed so when we move our inside legs forward our thighs touch.

We stop. Our cheeks touch. We close our eyes. I don't know if her eyes stay closed but mine do as we kiss. She licks my chin. I suck her lips. She sticks her tongue in my mouth. I press my tongue against hers and then try to reach its roots. We start walking. It's now pouring. The sun's out. Our mouths are still joined but our tongues are back in place. We walk into a lamppost. We laugh and shake our hurt toes. One rung of the canopy's crushed. We've reached the avenue, cross it and enter the park.

She leads me to a spot right behind the park's peripheral stone wall. She takes my hand off her waist and puts it on her breast. My other hand continues to hold the umbrella above our heads. She puts her hands on my back and chest and slides down my body that way without letting go of me till I can no longer reach her breast. Then I can't even reach the top of her head without crouching over her. She's taken her slicker off and is sitting on it on the ground. She pulls up her skirt to her waist, points to herself down there and nods her head. I shake my head. She closes her eyes, opens her mouth wide and keeps it open, puts her arms around my ankles and squeezes them tight. I get down on the coat. It lightnings. It thunders. The rain's coming down harder. I unzip my fly, pull myself out, the way we do it I won't say, though I never stop holding the umbrella over us and not one part of our bodies gets wet.

The rain stops. The sun never left. I hear cars and buses passing and blaring on the other side of the stone wall. Commercial traffic isn't allowed on the park avenue but I hear what sounds like a huge trailer truck. A parks department worker appears on a small hill nearby raking leaves. He sees us and leans with his chin on the tip of his rake handle and whistles. I wave him away. She winks and waves at him to come. He walks down the hill, drops the rake with the teeth part sticking up and unbuckles his belt. I'm through anyway. I get up. He gets down and takes my place but in a different way. I close the umbrella and make sure I don't step on the rake head as I start out of the park.

There are many more puddles on the streets and sidewalks than before. I'm sure the new process of their beginning to dry up has already begun. I cross the avenue. I feel and hear drops on my hat, which I only now realize I never took off. I look up. It's raining. The sun's gone. I open the umbrella. It starts teeming. I think about the park couple probably getting wet. I run to my building, but the wind or whatever the air pressure against the inside of an open umbrella is called that keeps one from running as well as he'd run if the umbrella were closed, slows down my running to a walk and then a standstill and then begins pulling me back across the avenue as if I were attached to an opened parachute. I close the umbrella. I run to my building and into the vestibule, and after checking the mailbox for mail, run upstairs. I unlock my front door, go inside, lock it, stand the umbrella against a wall and take off all my clothes and hang them up on the clothesline above the bathtub and put my shoes in the tub. I wash, make a lunch of canned soup and two cheese sandwiches, eat them and drink a glass of milk and get into bed. After all the running about and such just before, I'm sure I'll have a good nap. The umbrella. It's probably leaking along the floor and maybe through the floor cracks to the apartment below. I get up. I bring the umbrella to the bathroom, open it and stick it in the tub. I think of taking a hot bath, but there are too many things dripping into or drying off in the tub. I get back in bed. I think of that woman. I'm glad I went out. But I still have her umbrella. Will she be on the street next time I go outside where I can give it back to her? I should have got her name and phone number to return the umbrella, or at least her last name and address so I could send it to her by messenger or mail.