Stephen Dixon - Love and Will - Twenty Stories

“How do you know he leaped and wasn’t pushed?”

“You said jumped, so I thought you meant leaped, but I don’t know if he leaped, jumped or was pushed. Maybe he accidentally fell.”

“He didn’t. Did he say anything, this man?”

“No.”

“On the ground, in the air, from his apartment before he came out?”

“Nothing that I heard.”

“What was his expression when he was in the air?”

“He looked like a bird.”

“What expression’s that?”

“His eyes were open and arms were out and he seemed to have the expression of a flying bird.”

“I don’t get it. What is that expression? Happiness? Nastiness? Pride in his flying? Hunger, plundering, fear, what?”

“Disconcern.”

“You mean unconcern?”

“No concern. No expression. He was just flying. Face like a bird, partially opened beak. Not a calm face like a pigeon but just a face of no concern like a gull or tern.”

“To me the gull always looks nasty, and the tern I don’t know as a bird.”

“The tern looks like a small gull, and the man didn’t look nasty, so maybe he didn’t look like either of those birds.”

“Did he have the expression of someone who you might think had been pushed or thrown out of a window?” No. “You don’t live around here then, or not for long?” Wrong. “Where do you live?” I gave my address. Gave my profession. That was when he said he first noticed the slit in my cheek and asked if I’d like the doctor to see it. When I said no, he mentioned the possibility of my getting a scar.

He called over the doctor, who said “Let me see this famous cheek.” The doctor applied merthiolate, “just to lessen the chance of getting an infection. If you want that stitched we can have one of the police take you to the hospital too.”

“No thanks.”

“Getting back to the man,” the policeman said. The man was being strapped to a stretcher. He still seemed unconscious. Bandages had been wrapped around his face, hands and neck.

“Excuse me, what?” since we were both watching the stretcher being slid into the ambulance.

“Oh … nothing. I don’t have any more questions. What’s your phone, business or home, so we can reach you?”

I had none but gave him the hours and days I could best be reached at work and home.

“Oh yeah. What, and I don’t want to hold you any longer with that cut, were you doing when the man came through the window or seconds before? I have to get that down.”

“No problem. Tying my shoes.”

“Tying your shoes, good. Though too bad you didn’t think of tying them sooner or later.”

“Too bad also I wasn’t wearing sandals or loafers or those sneakers whatever they’re called with no laces which you can just slip on. I was thinking of buying a pair this summer.”

“Too bad you didn’t.”

“Why? I’m not sorry I was here when it happened. Sorry for the man, of course, but not for me. I feel lucky enough I wasn’t two feet closer in to the sidewalk, not that I’d ever be, since I always do my shoelace-tying by the curb so people can pass. By the way, what do you think, he’ll die?”

Can’t say so but probably no. They usually don’t.”

The auxiliary police had to clear an opening through the crowd so the ambulance could get through. “Let’s go, folks, help them out, help them out,” a policeman said, I suppose meaning the ambulance and man inside or the auxiliary police. Lots of people stayed around talking after the ambulance left. Nobody seemed to know the man. “At first I thought I did,” someone said, “but then knew I didn’t.”

“He did live there though,” a waiter from the bar patio said, still holding a cocktail tray. “That I’m sure of, as I’ve seen him coming in and out of that building around the same time at night for five years, though never once in the bar for a drink.”

“You’ve worked here that long, Chuck?” someone said. “I thought for one year, maybe two at the most.”

“That long, really. I don’t want to sound hackneyed, but it’s amazing the way time goes.”

“How do you stand it? I heard your boss is a bastard of the worst order.”

“Just between you and me and the whole city, he is, but what’s not that easy to get these days is a decent living.”

“Then you do all right? I wouldn’t’ve thought it.”

People passed, stopped, joined the crowd, left, most of those from the beginning or so were gone. Cars were allowed on the street now. The auxiliary police prevented everyone but the tenants from entering the building. Even these people had to show proof, or the landlady, or maybe she was the super sitting on the top step of the stoop, had to give an okay with a head sign or hand wave to the auxiliary police below.

“They’d never let people like that on the real force,” someone said, looking at the auxiliary police.

“You mean they’re not?” woman behind him said.

“Those four? Your first clue’s no gun, which our real cops have to have, on duty or not. They’d also never let them get like what is that big girl there, seventy to eighty pounds over-weight, and the tall skinny one in a uniform five times too tight and his hair a pigsty?”

“No gun, that’s true. Why do they do it then if they can’t even protect themselves?”

“They want to play patrolman, that’s why. They’re stupid, because they don’t even get paid.”

“They do a good job,” someone else said. “One of them was killed stopping a mugging this year just a few blocks from here.”

“That I didn’t know. I apologize for all the harsh things I might have said about them.”

Suddenly a young man ran up the block screaming “Ricky, Ricky, what’s happened to Ricky?”

“Get off that glass,” an auxiliary policeman said, holding his club lengthwise across his chest and moving to the man and stepping on the glass himself.

“Glass? Where?” He was right on it. “Oh Christ, I didn’t see it. I’ll get it in my feet.” He jumped around as if the glass was already sticking in him, smashing the glass under his sneakers even more.

“I said get off it, now get off,” and the young man ran into the street and around the glass there and tried to get up the building’s steps.

“You can’t go up there,” an auxiliary policewoman said, guarding the steps and holding the club across her chest.

“But my brother Ricky. Somebody said he got hurt. Look at his place.”

“He your brother? Excuse me, maybe you should speak to the officer. Officer Gulanus,” she yelled to the window.

A policeman stuck his head past the broken window.

“The man’s brother he says.”

“Come on up here, kid.”

The crowd had thinned out by now, but with the appearance of this young man, it grew to the size it was soon after the man had jumped through the window. “The brother,” a few people said.

“Of who?” someone said.

“The man who went through that window.”

“That what happened? I thought someone got mad at the landlord there and busted it out. The guy die?”

“From one story up ten feet to the ground? He more likely only got a sprained ankle and walked away.”

“That’s his brother all right,” the waiter said, coming over again, this time with no tray. “I’ve seen him around too. Mostly helping his brother up the stairs when his brother was dead drunk or high on drugs. I couldn’t tell which.”

“You should speak to the policeman there,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe what you said could be useful.”

“I got work to do and my own reasons for not talking to police.”

“What a neighborhood,” someone said to me.

“It has its moments.”