Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

I said to the woman who gave me the hard look before “Come in here often?”

“What?”

“Do you come to this bar often?”

“What if I do?”

“I don’t mean to sound forward.”

“Anyway, I don’t.”

“You don’t mean to sound forward?”

“Funny, funny, funny.”

“Bull’s-eye,” one of the players said.

“She got a bull’s-eye,” I said. “Like to play?”

“No.”

“Any of you other ladies care to take me up on my challenge?”

“Got a bad arm,” the other woman who’d watched the game said.

“Had enough…. Game’s too slow,” the two players said.

“Might go faster if we teamed up and just one person watched,” I said.

“I think we’ve all had it,” the hard one said. “As spectators and playing.”

“Terrible drudge, darts,” I said.

Then why’d you want to play?”

“I’m very lousy at this talk.”

“What talk?”

This talk. Bar talk. This bullcrap bar talk. This get-together-and-say-something-to-meet-one-another and introductory-interrogatory male-female what-I’m-not-talking-to-you talk.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t try it then,” one of the others said.

“Shh,” the hard one said. They all looked at one another, were holding their laughs in. Screw it: they thought I was foolish or smashed or insane.

“Nothing,” I said. “Zero. Zip. Goose eggs. Blah. What am I doing in here? Excuse me.”

“You’re excused,” she said.

They all laughed.

“Oh, you’re all so dear,” I said.

“You’re right; we are, we are.”

“I know. It’s what I said. You’re all very dear. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye…Goodbye…Goodbye,” her three friends said.

I left. Went home and lay down on my bed with my shoes and clothes on and read, listened to the radio — a talk show, then music — drank, read, drank. I still wanted some ass. I didn’t know any women to fool around with except the two I called. Both I hadn’t spoken to in months. Where were the other women I once knew? Where were all my men friends? Married. With women. Gone. drunks. Fathers. Abroad. Big successes. A suicide. Turned bisexual. One put away. Another put himself away. Not friends. I didn’t know or want to continue to know just about anyone. Ass. That’s what I still wanted. There were other bars. Two others around here and both had prostitutes. So I’d pay. A prostitute cost more money than I could afford, but tonight I’d pay. I could get the clap. I didn’t care. I cared, but I’d take the chance. I never got it yet. I’d be very careful. The thought of getting it never stopped me before, and I could always get a shot. I put on my coat and left the apartment. “Nah,” I said when I reached the street, “I could also get arrested as a john or robbed and mugged.”

“I’m telling you,” Mr. Hyman said, “the baby’s beautiful. Just beautiful.”

“You really like him, Dad?” Sylvia said.

“Like him? My God, what do you think?”

“I mean, he’s really funny looking in his way, isn’t he?”

“He’s wonderful. A grandson like that is just wonderful.”

“Who do you think he looks like?”

“Well,” he said, glancing coyly at his son-in-law, “and remember, I only saw it from behind the nursery window, he looks like none of you. Tell me, Sylvia, who was the other guy?”

That’s a nice joke to make the day your only child has a baby.”

“Don’t get touchy. I was only kidding.”

“I know. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You want my seat, Hank? You must be exhausted.”

“I’m fine, Dad, thanks.”

“You think they’d give more than one chair in the room,” Mr. Hyman said, “even if nobody’s in the other bed.”

“I’m sure there was another and they took it out for some reason. I’ll just lean against this.”

“And you, my darling,” he said to Sylvia. “You look tired and pale. Place quiet enough to get a nap in?”

The hospital’s great, Dad — really. Good service and everything.”

“Food’s good?”

“It’s better than that. You get choices like I’ve never seen in a hospital. This afternoon, for instance, they let me have things my doctor ordered me to stay away from during my pregnancy. The aide comes in and says ‘Want this?’ and I tell her ‘Are you for real?’ Here — chocolates like this box you brought me? Well, before, never, because of some diabetic thing, but now I can eat them till I get sick. Take one, Dad.”

“No, thanks.”

“Go on. They’re just going to be eaten by the nurses and me if you don’t.”

“Okay, so you broke my arm.”

He picked out a round chocolate with a little loop on top, removed the paper holder and dropped the candy into his mouth, Splitting it in two with his back teeth and drawing out the juices with his tongue, he saw Sylvia and Hank looking at him, so he smiled, chewed more ambitiously than he normally would, and said “It’s good. Very good.”

“Whitman’s makes some of the best chocolates around,” she said.

This I didn’t know when I bought it. I just bought, that’s all.”

“So what time you think you’ll be heading back?” Hank said, placing the wrapper Mr. Hyman had put on the side table into the waste basket.

“I just came,” he said, laughing. “Let me at least look at my grandson again.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant — well, you know: tonight. Later. When we go.”

“Ohhh — twelve o’clock, maybe. Tomorrow’s no work, so it makes no difference when I get back.”

“Was it a good trip coming here?”

“It’s amazing, Hank. Four hours or a little more than that by bus, and that’s it. Red Carpet Service, Trailways calls it, with a real red carpet running down the middle of the aisle. Give you a mealy pillow, a real hostess to assist you, she said. I never knew such a bargain existed till a friend told me last week.”

“What’d you eat?” Sylvia said.

“Well, they don’t give you a real meal, but for eighty-nine cents more a ticket than regular fare, you can’t expect one.”

“But what was it you had?”

“A choice of deviled egg or ham sandwich. I had deviled egg plus some orange juice in the beginning and tea later.”

“But you never liked deviled egg that I can remember.”

This was pretty good, though, and I was hungry. Look, I was thinking I should see the baby again before they close the nursery.”

“Anything you want, Dad.”

“Like to come too, Hank?”

“I saw the kid plenty today. Thanks.”

He waved at them as he left the room, went down the corridor and stopped before a window with six babies behind it. Two of the babies were crying, one with a tag above its head labeled: C-25, Riner Baby — Male. He pointed at him and tapped the window and said “Hello. Hello, beautiful one. There, already with a mouth like your little mother, am I right? That’s the way she was then, crying, crying. But you’ll wake up everyone around you and they won’t like you, you know. Shh, shh. Go to sleep like something good. Everybody will love you if you do.” He made a few funny faces at his grandson and then waved and smiled at the other crying baby.

“So?” Hank said in the hospital room. “Do you have any idea what I’m supposed to do with him?”

“Something, I guess,” Sylvia said.

“What do you mean ‘Something, I guess’? Is that supposed to be an answer?”

“Just something, something. Anyway, he’ll be gone tonight, so what’s the big deal?”

“But it’s almost nine now, and I got to walk out of here when they close this place and think of something to do about him.”