Stephen Dixon: What Is All This?: Uncollected Stories

I make myself a breakfast of two eggs and toast. I make a pot of coffee and drink two cups of it. I drink a glass of water. I go to the bathroom. What I do there is my business. I dress. I leave the apartment. On the stairway going downstairs I tell myself now’s not the time to stop. On the ground floor I repeat to myself now’s not the time to stop. In the building’s vestibule where the mailboxes are I tell myself I’ve made it this far this time I might as well try to see it through to the end. On the stoop leading to the sidewalk I say to myself I’ve made it outside at least but now where will I go? On the sidewalk I’m about to say something else to myself or repeat one of the things I just said to myself when a woman approaches. I raise my hat to her. She smiles. I set the hat back on my head. She passes. I look up. The sun’s trying to break through. I look down. Still plenty of puddles on the sidewalk and street. The puddles will dry up faster if the sun does break through. That’s elementary, I think. What’s also elementary, I think, is that the puddles will increase in size and depth and possibly spill over to form secondary puddles if it soon rains as hard as it did the last two times. What isn’t elementary, I think, meaning I’m thinking and have been thinking what is and isn’t elementary to me, is to think about the mathematical proportions of sun and rain in relation to puddles, secondary or otherwise, and how much water would be lost in relation to water gained or something like that if it rains again, though if the sun comes out real strong before it rains. Meaning, if the sun comes out real strong, or is really just a sun of normal intensity and warmth for this time in this area, before it rains as hard as it did the last two times or just rains an average rainfall. Oh, better to forget it than try to explain it. I’m not a scientist, mathematician or meteorologist. A weatherman, let’s say. To me rain is rain, puddles are puddles, the sun’s the sun.

Standing in front of my building I tell myself I can head up or down this street, toward the avenue with buildings and stores on both sides of it or toward the avenue that borders the park. Both avenues are at the end of my sidestreet and have a subway station three blocks south of the corner, though only one has a subway station seven blocks north of the corner, as the station on the park avenue is a terminus. But all that would only be important if I wanted to take a subway, and if I did, if I wanted to go north or south on it, none I want to do.

I walk toward the avenue with buildings on both sides of it rather than the avenue with only luxury apartment houses on one side of it that face the park. The sun’s broken through. Most of the clouds have disappeared. I suppose the puddles have begun to dry up. And now it’s beginning to rain. A sunshower. I used to love them as a boy. And the rainbow that would come soon after the sunshower. Both of which I still love as a man. But quick. Under cover. Before my only street clothes get soaked.

A woman walks by holding an opened umbrella. I raise my hat. She raises the umbrella. I get under it and hold the umbrella rod right above the handle while she holds the crook. She came from the avenue with stores on it. We walk toward the avenue that borders the park. It’s a woman’s umbrella, brightly colored and with a thin leather handle and strap, but the canopy isn’t wide enough to protect two average-sized adults walking a foot apart from each other, so we move closer till our hips touch. Then our arms holding the umbrella and next our elbows touch. Her hand moves a few inches up the rod, folds over mine and brings both our hands back to the crook. I switch hands on the umbrella so my arm closest to her can go around her waist. She takes her hand off the handle so she can curl that arm around my neck, Now almost the entire one sides of our bodies touch. Even the timing of our strides are changed so when we move our inside legs forward our thighs touch.

We stop. Our cheeks touch. We close our eyes. I don’t know if her eyes stay closed but mine do as we kiss. She licks my chin. I suck her lips. She sticks her tongue in my mouth. I press my tongue against hers and then try to reach its roots. We start walking. It’s now pouring. The sun’s out. Our mouths are still joined but our tongues are back in place. We walk into a lamppost. We laugh and shake our hurt toes. One rung of the canopy’s crushed. We’ve reached the avenue, cross it and enter the park.

She leads me to a spot right behind the park’s peripheral stone wall. She takes my hand off her waist and puts it on her breast. My other hand continues to hold the umbrella above our heads. She puts her hands on my back and chest and slides down my body that way without letting go of me till I can no longer reach her breast. Then I can’t even reach the top of her head without crouching over her. She’s taken her slicker off and is sitting on it on the ground. She pulls up her skirt to her waist, points to herself down there and nods her head. I shake my head. She closes her eyes, opens her mouth wide and keeps it open, puts her arms around my ankles and squeezes them tight. I get down on the coat. It lightnings. It thunders. The rain’s coming down harder. I unzip my fly, pull myself out, the way we do it I won’t say, though I never stop holding the umbrella over us and not one part of our bodies gets wet.

The rain stops. The sun never left. I hear cars and buses passing and blaring on the other side of the stone wall. Commercial traffic isn’t allowed on the park avenue but I hear what sounds like a huge trailer truck. A parks department worker appears on a small hill nearby raking leaves. He sees us and leans with his chin on the tip of his rake handle and whistles. I wave him away. She winks and waves at him to come. He walks down the hill, drops the rake with the teeth part sticking up and unbuckles his belt. I’m through anyway. I get up. He gets down and takes my place but in a different way. I close the umbrella and make sure I don’t step on the rake head as I start out of the park.

There are many more puddles on the streets and sidewalks than before. I’m sure the new process of their beginning to dry up has already begun. I cross the avenue. I feel and hear drops on my hat, which I only now realize I never took off. I look up. It’s raining. The sun’s gone. I open the umbrella. It starts teeming. I think about the park couple probably getting wet. I run to my building, but the wind or whatever the air pressure against the inside of an open umbrella is called that keeps one from running as well as he’d run if the umbrella were closed, slows down my running to a walk and then a standstill and then begins pulling me back across the avenue as if I were attached to an opened parachute. I close the umbrella. I run to my building and into the vestibule, and after checking the mailbox for mail, run upstairs. I unlock my front door, go inside, lock it, stand the umbrella against a wall and take off all my clothes and hang them up on the clothesline above the bathtub and put my shoes in the tub. I wash, make a lunch of canned soup and two cheese sandwiches, eat them and drink a glass of milk and get into bed. After all the running about and such just before, I’m sure I’ll have a good nap. The umbrella. It’s probably leaking along the floor and maybe through the floor cracks to the apartment below. I get up. I bring the umbrella to the bathroom, open it and stick it in the tub. I think of taking a hot bath, but there are too many things dripping into or drying off in the tub. I get back in bed. I think of that woman. I’m glad I went out. But I still have her umbrella. Will she be on the street next time I go outside where I can give it back to her? I should have got her name and phone number to return the umbrella, or at least her last name and address so I could send it to her by messenger or mail.