Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

He offered her a sleeping bag on the floor and she said that was exactly what she needed for her rotten back. They went to bed. “Hey, look,” she screamed, “I can see the moon. It’s getting a little past the half stage. My God, it’s being eclipsed by the earth — our earth. What do astrologers say about eclipses of the moon? Are they special nights, do any of the signs undergo any change? I bet you’re a Gemini. Geminis are the worst. Yes, I’m sure you’re a Gemini. Well, I’m a Taurus, we’d never get along, and my name’s Cynthia Devine.”

The room was very dark when he awoke a few hours later to Cynthia talking about her magnificent view of the totally eclipsed moon. He put his hand on her knee and she felt his chest. “You have a very interesting heartbeat. I’ve never slept with a man with such a rapping heart.” Her hand moved down his body and she said “Ooooh, now I know why it’s rapping so fast. But stop, will you, because then I can say tomorrow that it was a lot better sleeping here than in jail. There I got a crummy mattress on a wooden plank with no privacy. I wasn’t even allowed to see daylight till they traipsed me across the yard for a health exam. The doctor gave me these pretty blue antibiotic pills and blood-red capsules for what he said was my venereal disease. I told him ‘Vaginal infection, Doc, not V.D. A vaginal infection I’ve had for a month,’ and which I still have now, till he finally apologized. Prison doctors are always trying to stick you with the worst. But he was fairly nice, all told. And Sheila, the matron, wasn’t half bad, either, when she wasn’t trying to get into my pants.”

Someone knocked on the door. “You get your share of telegrams,” the deliverer said. “When this one came this morning, I was sure it was my fault because you didn’t get the two I slipped under the door and this one was trying to find out what was wrong.”

“I started out this evening,” Chrisie wired from San Luis Obispo, “and then returned home. Let me know if you think I should really come. Call. Love.” And her phone number.

He walked Cynthia down the hill, to show her where the public phone booth was and to cash a check at the drugstore for himself. “Goodbye,” she said, shaking his hand. “I think we — no, I’m glad we didn’t — oh, maybe it would’ve been fun if we had, as it’s always a crazy farce with somebody new, though it’s also nice sleeping peacefully, for a change, without someone’s hands tearing into me. I’ve got to call some guys I know. They were staying at a flat around here before I got busted, and if they’ve already split, then I’m truly screwed. Maybe I could phone my dad for cash. I can get him at business now, just after he’s returned from a three-martini lunch. He’s really quite beautiful when he’s smashed, and thanks.”

The druggist smiled. “You made the year 1968 on your check instead of 1969.”

His 85-year-old landlord was pulling out weeds from around one of the fifty or so signs he’d painted and then erected in the front yard. The sign read: Stop Being An Accessory To The Crime Of Fratricide — Don’t You Know All Wars Are Silly? “I’ve just come from distributing my peace pamphlets downtown,” Mamblin said, “and you wouldn’t believe the wonderful reception I received from so many of our courageous lads. ‘Peace first,’ I told them—‘love, learn and grow. Jewish and Christian wars must end,’ I said—‘gardens, not battlefields. A mental revolution, not a physical one.’ One young man from Santa Monica, of all places, said that after listening to me, he would think about resisting the draft. He said I was a man of God, which I disproved scientifically — a walking institution to peace, he tried to make me, which was nearer the truth. But I’ve unfortunate news for you also, Dirk. Mrs. Diboneck dropped by much too early this morning and complained that you’ve been coming in at all hours of the day — playing the radio too loud, waking her. Having wild parties, orgies, she said, and that you’re also running a hippie haven in your apartment downstairs. She’s old, a good woman, knew my wife, been here close to twenty years. And you know I had trouble with the tenant before you, he being a bit queer with men in a sexual manner and shooting out all my lovely leaded-glass windows and causing a mild heart attack for Mrs. D. But what do you think of my latest sign?” He pointed past a couple dozen older ones to a new one with gold-painted letters bordered by red; I Have Arisen From The Dead. “Did it yesterday, after a long stimulating conversation with a young Welsh lady who happened by while I was weeding. It has no Christian significance, of course, other than its possible mockery of mythological Christian belief — but the symbolism’s what I like. I have arisen from ignorance, mediocrity, mindlessness, myths, lies, half-truths, superstitions — I have arisen from the deaf, dumb, blind and spiritually dead. And being you’re one of the truly good people in this city and a disciple of mine, I think — I don’t precisely know what to make of you yet, though you’re being carefully studied, Dirk, phrenologically and every other way, so be on your guard — why don’t you work matters out with Mrs. D. yourself? I only don’t want her waking me up again before nine.”

Mrs. Diboneck’s typewritten note in his mailbox read: “I would appreciate if you would not slam the door so vigorous. It shakes everything and scares me to death. I accomodated your wish last week ago by using my T.V. and Radio allmost never. So be a Gentleman and hang on to the doors!! Thank You.”

Using Magic Markers, he made a quick small drawing of the view from his room. Red towers of Golden Gate Bridge, gold spires of St. Ignatius Church, green park, blue bay, yellow ocean, purple sky, brown, black, orange and pink hills and mountains of Marin County, and rolled it up and was about to stick it into Mrs. Diboneck’s mailbox when he saw her watching him through one of her lower door panes. She stepped onto the sidewalk, clutching her house dress together at the chest. “I’m sorry I complained to Mr. Mamblin before, Mr. — but what is your name? But the noise, dear Lord, one would think a children school down there directly below with what I hear and you make. Why, why? I ask myself an old woman without any answers, and the radio, so loud I can’t hear myself phone talking when it isn’t waking me out of sleeps and naps I need and all such things, or is it your TV you own? But is it not possible, may I ask, that people live in this building, too? I don’t want to speak about it more than now and never again to Mr. Mamblin if I must, so be reasonable, please, a nice young man and your blond boy so sweet, and we will remain kind friends. Otherwise, I must one day call the police if Mr. Mamblin does not, which to me even with my illness seems cruel but no matter can I help taking this being forced by you,” and she dropped a small bag of trash into the garbage can standing between then and returned to her apartment. He put the drawing into his billfold and went to the post office.

“Five cents a card is still quite the bargain,” the clerk said, “what with all the other postal rates raised and the cards staying the same. A two-dollar bill? Where you been hiding it? And a John Kennedy for your change.” He made a drawing on one of the cards of a laughing man running through a forest followed by a galloping sixtailed five-horned four-eared three-tongued two-nosed one-eyed horselike creature called The Multimal and addressed it to his son in San Jose. Beneath the address he wrote “Attention: Love to you and Mommy,”

“I arrived at the exact instant this thing was being delivered,” Chrisie said, holding out a telegram, as she and her girls cautiously walked down the long steep rickety flight of outside wooden stairs.