Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“All I ask is that you sleep on it.”

“No. It’s the wrong time to say this now, but I’ve definitely made up my mind. No more.”

I slam my hand with the cast on it against the hospital wall. She runs away. I’m screaming at her from the floor to never come back, while trying to hold my hand.

I do everything he told me to. Then there’s nothing more for me to do. I check over what I did and it seems good as I can get it. I wait. I get up, sit down, look at the clock, walk around. Where is he? And she? Where are they? How long do they expect me to sit, stand, look, walk around, wait for them like this with nothing to do? They say they’ll be back in an hour, why does it have to be three? If I could go to sleep or take a walk outside and step in for coffee someplace, it wouldn’t be so bad. But if one of them caught me sleeping or not here when they got back, it would. They’d think I always slept or went out when they weren’t here. Hell, I’ve waited long enough. I’m taking a walk and will live with the consequences if they find out.

Going down the stairs, I see them coming up. “Where you been?” I say.

“And where you going?” he says.

“I waited so long, I decided to take a walk. Waiting tired me out, and I need some exercise like walking to pep me up.”

“Now you don’t have to wait any longer, and you’ll get plenty of exercise working, so come on back up. We still got lots to do, which you could’ve started doing before we got back here.”

“Like what? I finished what you told me to do and checked it to make sure it was done right. And you didn’t leave instructions for anything else to do because you said you’d be back before I was through.”

“You could’ve cleaned up the place.”

“Cleaning’s not what I was hired for. I left that kind of unskilled work for better pay and more demanding work like what you hired me to do.”

“But that’s how you could’ve spent your time. You should’ve thought of that. Anything can be cleaned. Ten minutes after you clean something it can be cleaned. Soap can even be cleaned. And cleaning or anything like that would’ve been more productive than getting bored and irritable waiting for us or going out for a walk.”

“Maybe for you it would’ve been more productive, but for me it would’ve been the opposite. It would’ve been going backwards from something I worked myself up to be, which might’ve ended with my being even less productive for you.”

“Look, you’re wasting our time talking. Let’s get to work.”

“I’m still so restless from waiting that I’ve got to take a walk.”

“Walking’s not what I’m paying you for except when you’re doing it for me. You want to keep your job, you come upstairs now and work,” and they go upstairs.

I think it over and go upstairs. They’ve already started working and I join in. Later he tells me what else I should do. Later she does too, tells me, and I do it. At times we’re working on the same thing together. Other times we’re working on separate things or the same thing but in different parts of the room. Sometimes two of us are working on the same thing and one on another thing. Other times one of us is in the restroom or on the phone or making coffee for us all and two are working on the same thing or separate things in the same or different parts of the room, and so on. Then it’s all done. I even worked an hour longer than I’m being paid for and there’s more work to come. We put what we worked on into boxes, tape and address the boxes and bring them to the post office and send them off.

That didn’t take too long,” he says.

“Long enough,” I say.

“About as long as I expected it to,” she says.

“But we did it quicker than I thought we would is what I’m saying,” he says.

“It might not have been quicker but it would’ve been sooner if both of you had come back earlier.”

“Anyway, we got it done and we’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.

“About tomorrow,” I say to him. “If you’re both not there or don’t plan to be by the time I get to work, could you leave instructions for me if you’re going back now or phone them in early tomorrow so I can get right to work rather than waiting around for you?”

“If we’re late,” he says, “and I haven’t left instructions or phoned them in or she hasn’t phoned them in for me, then just clean the floors a little, wash the windows. They’re all dirty, the floors especially. Tidy up the place a little is what I’m suggesting, scrub down the restroom and all its parts. If we’re really late and neither of us has phoned in your instructions and I don’t send them in with somebody else and you’ve cleaned the entire place where it really shines, give a little paint job to the ceiling and walls. The paint, brushes, turpentine and ladder are in the back closet. One coat. If we’re really very late and never got instructions to you and the paint’s dried, give it two coats, but no more than two.”

“I don’t see how I could do more than two coats in one workday. You said turpentine, which means the paint has an oil base. Oil paint takes a long time to dry. I doubt I can even put on a second coat in my scheduled worktime tomorrow if you have me do all those cleaning chores besides.”

“So put in a couple hours extra.”

“For money?”

“Do it because you like the job. Show me that. And that you want to keep it. Because you complain too much. You ever hear her complain?”

“I’ve complained,” she says. “Plenty of times.”

“About me you’ve complained. That I’m not nice enough to you after work. That I don’t take you out enough, show you enough attention and give you enough nice things. About those you complain a lot, but I’m talking about at work.”

“About work you’re right. I have no complaints. Pay’s good and hours aren’t too long and work’s not too hard.”

“So if neither of us is here tomorrow when you get in,” he says to me, “and I haven’t left or I don’t send any instructions to you, clean up the place, scrub everything down, and just don’t sweep the floor but mop and wax it. And the windows and every shelf — really get this place into tiptop shape. Two coats of paint. And if you later have nothing better to do but sit around, put a few extra hours in painting the doors and window frames and all the furniture and shelves.”

“I’ll have to get overtime for that.”

“I don’t pay overtime.”

Then I can’t give you free overtime anymore. I did it today and plenty of other days for months after you promised you wouldn’t keep me beyond my normal workday, but no more.”

“You only worked nine hours today.”

“But I was here for twelve and a half — my half hour for lunch and those three hours waiting around for you.”

“You rest at home, you rest here. No big difference, and for all I know the office might be a nicer place to rest than your home, and it’ll be even more so after you clean and paint it.”

“But it isn’t my home. No overtime pay, no more extra hours after my regular workday.”

Then I’ll have to let you go,” and he asks for my keys to the office, I give them, she waves goodbye and they head toward the park and I go the other way. I turn around when they’re a block away and I yell “You bastard!” Neither of them turn around. People walking past look at me and seem to wonder what I’m yelling about and to whom.

That bastard,” I say to people who pass. That one over there. Well, now he’s gone, went into the park. But he is a bastard. A slave driver. Let him get another sucker to work overtime for nothing, but not me.”

These days you’re lucky to have a steady job,” a woman says. “He fired you?”