David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

No, I said, I came into town on the last load of turnips.

Well, fuck you too, she said.

Now this is promising, I said. I pinched her ring between my thumb and forefinger. Let me ask, I said, did you take that off for verisimilitude?

She yanked back the hand and said, Who are you again?

Oh, I said, some aging longhair putting the moves on you.

I’d managed to figure out that much, she said.

Ooh, I said. Cruel.

Is that what you like? she said.

Actually, no, I said. I like ’em simple and loyal. Big chest if possible. I said this because she was on the small side, which was really what I liked.

Then it’s good I’m married, she said. I don’t think I’d quite do. In any respect.

Ah but I’m not, I said. This had been true for a year.

Oh, see, I automatically assumed you were, she said. Most men aren’t this blatant if they can really follow through.

Whew, I said, I need to look at that one when it stops spinning. Get you a drink?

Good, that’ ll piss my husband off, she said. That’s him. The black T-shirt.

Huh, I said. Very Ted Hughes. So why does he let you go to parties if you’re not allowed to drink with strangers?

You wouldn’t get it if you’re not married, she said. It’s like normal life except you always go home with the same person.

Actually, I was married, I said.

She dropped her mouth open.

Fuck you too, I said. What are you drinking?

Eventually the husband came over to break it up, but I’d already gotten her email out of her, to send her a piece I’d read by some guy riffing about The Tempest and his woodstove and his marriage breaking up.

She emailed back to thank me, and I emailed back to ask how about lunch? No, no lunches, no can do, but she forwarded another group email about a screening, at another bar, this one in Williamsburg, of a video that had been shot during that summer production. And a note at the top: Want to see me act up a storm?

Since this isn’t theater criticism and who cares anyway, let me just say it was mostly shitty actors with a decent Prospero, who was black, either to make you think complicated thoughts about colonialism or because he was the best guy they had, sort of a James Earl Jones being aware that he was being a James Earl Jones. I decided not to mind the rasta Caliban either: I-man mistress showed I-man dee, and dy dog, and dy bush . Her Daisy Mae shtick was so mannered you couldn’t tell if she was good or not. She showed lots of leg, and a couple of times a panty flash. She did a toss-her-head thing, a twirl-her-hair-on-her-index-finger thing, a tug-down-the-back-of-her-skirt thing, the last of which might have been unconscious. While flirting with Ferdinand, who had Harry Potter glasses, she ran a finger down his arm, which I think I thought was good, and that bothered me since I was looking for weak points.

When I went up to her afterward, she said, God, you too . I can’t believe I sent that out to all these people. Did you get a good look at my underwear? I think I need to get very drunk.

I greatly enjoyed your underwear, I said. I was assuming you’d calibrated every little glimpse.

I did not , she said. I was exploited . I mean, I sort of was. Will you make sure I get very drunk?

Why am I elected? I said. Did your husband stalk out when he saw your unmentionables?

He’s in California, she said. Thank God . If you don’t want to—

No no no, I said. Nothing would make me happier. Well that’s not true. Should I spirit you out of here right now?

I can’t not speak to people, she said. Can we in a little?

I brought two Jamesons and slipped one into her hand without interrupting her conversation with a tall henna redhead, whose arm she kept touching in what looked like supplication. I took a stool at the bar and watched her move from person to person, clapping her palm to her forehead, her palm to her mouth, shaking her head no. When she came back to me her glass was empty. Could you wait for me outside? she said.

She came out before I’d finished my cigarette. I’m parked over there, I said. So where shall we go?

Oh, you’re such a smoothie, she said. She plucked my cigarette out of my mouth, took a drag and tossed it. How do you keep the fly bitches off your dick?

I stopped at a liquor store where you bought through a Plexiglas window, and we passed a bottle of Jameson as we drove back to my place in the Village. After we fucked, she wept, then went into the bathroom. She ran water, but I could hear her vomiting, then gargling. She came out and kissed me, tasting only of my Scope. We fucked again, neither of us could come, and she started putting on clothes. She refused to let me walk her to a taxi. I pulled on jeans anyway. She said, You really don’t listen, then pushed me onto the bed. We fucked again. I walked her to a taxi, our hands in each other’s hip pockets.

—

She’d gone to high school in one of those Greek-name noplaces in Ohio, where of course she’d played Marian the Librarian though she couldn’t really sing—which wasn’t true, because one night I heard her lilting wordlessly while brushing her hair to go home to her husband and I thought, Man, you are in too fucking deep —and what’s-her-name in Our Town . Couldn’t wait to get to NYU, and had made herself into such a New York person that she now talked about Ohio in order to seem exotic. What’s round on both ends and high in the middle? she’d say, and nobody knew. She’d wanted to be a serious Shakespearean and went to study in London for a year, but she could never even work up a Brit accent that hung together. So now she supported herself and Ted Hughes by doing commercials. In one, she was a satisfied bank customer; in another, she and some actor threw snowballs at each other. I taped them off the television—she refused to give me copies—and during the months after I got out of the hospital I used to watch them to make myself feel like shit, which was no great achievement. I’ve still got them somewhere. No, that’s a false note: they’re in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet, five feet from where I’m sitting.

I was about to say I don’t know where the time has gone since then, but of course I know, since I’ve taken to keeping a journal: time of getting up, time of hitting hay, progress on the porch I’m building onto the cabin, stuff done to keep money coming in, people who come to visit. (That last item is a joke. Though see the very end of this story.) My son, who’s now in film school at UCLA, his mother having raised him right, will find the notebooks in that drawer when this place becomes his, or that’s the plan. Nothing in them either to embarrass or enlighten him, just a record of how the days went. This isn’t part of that: you might call this the story of how the days began. But we don’t want to hit the woo-woo note too hard. I’ve also taken to smoking weed—can you tell?

—

We were lying in bed, in this very room, looking out at the bare treetops against the moonlit sky, when a string of yelping geese flew over, apparently heading south over into Plainfield.

My God, it sounds like dogs , she said.

’Tis new to thee, I said. Let’s see if we can see them.

I got up, naked, and went to the window, and she came to me, naked. There, I said.

I pointed and cupped her rough-skinned buttock with my other hand. A wavering V, moving across the sky. Her flesh eased into my side, a breast against my rib cage. The cold air had made the nipple hard—you see I don’t flatter myself.

That’s them? she said. They’re so high up. We must not be hearing them in real time. Do you ever have dreams where you fly?