Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

If I walk uptown on this avenue, which is north, the chances of stopping someone I know in proportion to the number of people on the street will be much less than if I walk downtown, which seems to get more crowded the further south you walk, just as the streets seem to get less crowded the further north you walk. The chances of stopping someone I know in proportion to the number of people on the street would be greatest if I walked back to my block and kept walking up and down it and especially on my side of it, but I don’t like going over the same route so soon after I came off it. I could cross the avenue and continue west along this same numbered street. But partly out of personal reasons, which I won’t go into, and because the chances of stopping someone I know in proportion to the number of people on the street would be no better walking west than walking uptown, west seems the least likely direction to go except if I didn’t want to stop or be stopped by someone. I could, of course, create many other routes other than just walking straight in one of the four principal directions. I could go north four blocks, then west till I hit the river, or south three blocks and east one and then south again till I get to the heart of the city; or south two blocks and east three and across the park and continue east till I hit the river that runs along the other side of the city, and so on. But I think the best chance, without going back to my side of my block and walking up and down it, of stopping someone I know or being stopped by someone I know or don’t know but who says he knows me, is to walk downtown on the avenue I’m on.

So I walk south. I see no one I know on this avenue and am not stopped by anyone. I keep walking. Chances get less with each step that I’ll meet someone I know or don’t know but who says he knows me. I walk five blocks, six. Chances get even less, and after four more blocks, almost nonexistent. Then I’m so far away from my neighborhood — sixteen blocks — that I feel if I want to talk to someone now, and I think I do, the only way would be if I stopped someone I don’t know, and chances are almost nonexistent here that he’d know me, and start up a conversation with him despite my dislike or reluctance or apprehension, or whatever it is, in doing so.

First person I see on the street, and I’m now twenty blocks from where I live, who I think I’d like to stop and talk to is a man. Not because he is a man. Though maybe because I’m a man I prefer to stop a man stranger to a woman, since I think a man would be less alarmed at being stopped by someone he doesn’t know and feel more willing to talk to a stranger than a woman would, though I could be wrong. Are women less likely to be bothered or frightened by women strangers who stop to talk to them than by men? I’d think so. And what about men in regard to women strangers who stop them because they want to start up a conversation, or even for other reasons, like asking change for a dollar, let’s say, or asking for a handout, or a donation of some kind? I’m not sure. But this man. I might now know why I prefer stopping a man I don’t know, to a woman, but I’m less sure why I think I’d like to stop and talk to this man out of hundreds I’ve passed. It could be his clothes. One reason. He’s dressed in a sports jacket and slacks, boots, big wide-brimmed western hat, and is carrying a closed umbrella and flat package, and has an overcoat over his arm. But closer I get to him from behind, more I think the flat package is a thin book and the jacket and pants are a suit made of a heavy fabric and the overcoat is a parker and the umbrella a black cane. When I get right up behind him and then am walking alongside him on his left, keeping in pace with him now, I see that the flat package is a book, on cytohistology, its cover says, another word, if I remember it and remember to look up, I should look up at the library one of these days. The other was what? I forget, though it came to me today and could come back. The cane’s the closed umbrella I originally thought it was, but beige rather than black. Boots are western and well polished and recently heeled and have intricate stitching on them that looks like a lot of lassos. Parker is several djellabas that I supposed he’s taking to a store to be cleaned, though that’s a wild guess. His hat is still a Stetson-type, though leather instead of felt. Shirt’s almost the same color as the suit and seems to be made of chamois cloth, while the suit’s suede. Brown suede. Light brown. Darker brown leather buttons in a hatched pattern. Flap pockets. Same kind of buttons on the pockets. Or at least the left flap pocket has that button; the right one could be different or have come off, for all I know. A tie. Red. Stickpin. Gold. Cuff links. Just initials or one word: DAD. Or at least the left cuff link has those initials or that word; the right one could say MOM, for all I know, and also gold. “Hello,” I say.

He stops. “Do I know you?”

“No. Do I know you?”

“Not as far as I know,”

That’s what I should have said. Not ‘No.’ But ‘Not as far as I know.”

Then we definitely, or almost definitely, which could be undefinitely but not nondefinitely, don’t know each other as far as we know, could that be right?”

“As far as I know it can’t be ‘We undefinitely don’t know each other,’ but on the other one you’re right. Now as far as knowing each other, my memory does fail me sometimes. So we could still know each other. If we do, I’ve forgotten, and I’ll have to leave it up to you to remember.”

“My memory does fall short of me also,” he says. “No, that’s not the word. The words. My memory does fail me also, as far as I’m concerned. And that’s not the expression. My memory occasionally fails me also, as it does everyone, but I’m almost sure I don’t know you. Years ago I might have. But there comes a time when I have to say about someone I knew long ago but since then haven’t spoken or written to or heard from in any way, or seen, and if I did see him, didn’t recognize him, that I don’t know him now.”

“So we could have known each other once, you’re saying?”

“Possibly,” he says. “But our faces could have changed so much since then that we don’t recognize each other now. And our eyesight, in addition to our faces or apart from them, and to a lesser degree as a recognizing factor, our voices, mannerisms, appearances and clothes. Anyway, to boil it down to the minimum: if I once knew you, I don’t recognize you in any way now. How about you?”

“Same here all around. So how are you?”

“Do you mean, since I last saw you, if I ever did see you, or last spoke or heard from you, if I ever have?”

“Yes.”

“I’m fine, since we last spoke, wrote or saw each other, if we ever did. And if we didn’t, I can still say I don’t think I’ve had a bad day that I can remember since I was born. That’s not to say I haven’t. My memory again. What it does say is that as far back and as much as I can remember, I haven’t. Had a bad day, I’m saying.”

“I can’t say that.”

“Well, it’s over now, whatever it was, isn’t that right?”

“I can’t say that either.”

“Broken love affair? Family tragedy? Professional or affinal crisis? Illness? Malaise? Something you read in the newspaper? Got in the mailbox? Witnessed, from your window? Saw in the street? Personal experience or experiences? Is one of those it, or are some to all of those them, and which can’t be broached, right?”

“Personal experience, yes.”

“A woman?”

“Can’t be broached, yes.”

“Yes, a woman?”

“Can’t be broached.”

The woman? The subject?”

“Can’t be broached, can’t be broached.”