Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

Helen was in the living room, dressed and groomed meticulously in a floor-length harem suit, different from Chrisie, who in less than two minutes had washed her face and brushed her hair and ran a wet washrag over her armpits, and thrown a wrinkled paisley smock over her body, with nothing on underneath but sheer panties she could hide in her fist. “So this is Sophie,” Helen said, and took her from his arms and kissed her nose. “She’s a darling, a dream child,” and held her high. “She should be on television, promoting very pure white soap. She looks nothing like you, Dirk, except for her thin hair.” Chrisie’s uneasy smile failed; she looked weakly defensive, sullen, said nothing; they were all handed drinks by Ken.

“Special,” he said. “Drink this and two more magically appear in its place.”

“Why’d you come, Dirk?” He had gone to the bedroom to get their coats. The party was dull and the children’s presence was annoying the host and guests. “Why’d you come, or does it matter? You knew this’d be an adult party. If you came with Chrisie alone, I’d say fine, big deal, you’re fully out of my life now and I think it’d be wonderful for you if you ended up marrying her and possibly even hilarious. She seems nice, quiet, down to earth, attractive, and good to the girls, though expressionless. She has no expression. I could never understand that in a woman. Ken says she looks like a wasted hippie. Surely, you didn’t think Roy would be here. Because if you did, and he was, what kind of message would you be trying to send him? Oh, well.” She put the headset back on to listen to the music being piped in from the living room stereo. “Unbelievable. The Chamber Brothers doing Time Has Come Today . Like having the speakers built into your brains — four big beautiful spades coming on like Gang Busters in your skull. Want to hear?” She gave him the headset, he sat beside her on the bed. She got up, shut the door, got back on the bed and stretched out on her stomach. He felt her thigh, she laughed and turned over and stroked his neck. She said “Roy’s being baby-sat at Donald’s by this wild old Russian countess, if you’re interested.” She said “Donald’s in this super cutting room downtown, editing his totally insane flick, if you’re interested.” Drank from her drink, his drink. Said his tasted better, sweeter, would he mind if they exchanged or just shared? Touched his waist, said she thinks he’s lost weight. “It looks good; you’ve been getting much too heavy. You look best when you’re slim,” Signaled she’d like the headset back. When he put up his hand for her to wait awhile more, she said she thinks the host has another set. She left the room, returned with the second set, plugged it into the jack, lay beside him, both on their backs, listening to Time , which must run for around twenty minutes. She asked if he could do it quickly; she could. Donald’s way above par, and all that, but he’ll be editing film all night and she wants to fuck, does he? “And then, you’re still my quasi-legal husband till June and such, but no rationales or threats, can you do it quickly? I can.” He helped her kick off her panties, she helped him unbuckle his belt. He got on top of her and both moved to the group’s howls and the beat of “time…time…time…” Their headsets got in the way when they kissed. He tried throwing off his set and got one earphone off and was prying out the other phone cord still wedged behind his ear, when the doorknob turned, the door was being pushed, Helen’s wrist was pressed to his mouth and her teeth clenched tightly when Caroline yelled “Dirk,” as they came together, “I’m tired, Dirk, and Mommy wants for us to go home.”

“We don’t often accompany each other that high and far,” Helen said, as she took off her headset. “Did they make your ears hot too?” She kissed his forehead, slipped into the room’s bathroom. He unlocked the door, gave Caroline her coat, helped Chrisie on with her sweater, took a sleeping Sophie in his arms, shook Ken’s hand and waved to the host, who seemed delighted they were going, said from across the room “Nice to meet you, Dick; nice to meet you, Chris; come back again real soon.”

“Did you two make love?” Chrisie said during the drive home.

“I thought that’s what you were doing and didn’t want to bother you in the room. It was Caroline who insisted we go. And when Helen opened the door and came over to the bar asking for a second set of earphones, I had some crazy idea you were going to do it with those things on. What was it like? You smell like a marriage bed now. I wish we could do it with sound ourselves.”

In the apartment, the children asleep, he and Chrisie began to make love, stopped, she said it was usually better when he was hard, she’d understand if he couldn’t or didn’t want to right now but she felt it was something more. “Feel like it, Dirk, that’s an order, or almost an order. No, no order at all; it was nothing, maybe a confession, forget I said anything. But even if talking about the act usually kills it, I still feel I’ve got to do it at least once before I leave. My femininity’s at stake, my whole well-being’s in peril, the children’s futures are in jeopardy; besides, we haven’t done it in half a year and you were usually so good at it before; do you mind? Strange how things change.”

Chrisie and the girls were in the car, Dirk on the sidewalk. “Will you be coming to Obispo?” she said. Though I suppose I should continue coming here, what with Blaise and a rabidly uptight father and a mother who’s always spying by for butter and mommy-sissy chats and demanding to know who painted those erotic watercolors. No, I’ll come here, or maybe we should just start living together. Blaise would love that. He honestly would. He wants to be alone also, so you two could sort of switch. And you cook better than him. I like to cook also, but you cook so well I’d let you run the kitchen. And your sandwiches. I think I’ll fly up and get us all killed next time, just for your sandwiches. You ought to open a sandwich shop. Just make sandwiches any old way you like and I’ll be your only waitress. We could retire in ten years and live for as long as we liked on the Costa del Sol or any one of those other Costas or Sols. But you do make delectable sandwiches, Dirk, and thank you for buying me two front tires. I didn’t know the old ones were bald. I didn’t know that people got blowouts from bald tires. I thought that even new tires could get blowouts. Goodbye, Dirk.” He stuck his head inside the car window and they kissed. “Goodbye, Dirk,” Caroline said. He opened the rear door and kissed her. “Goodbye, Dirk,” Chrisie said. He extended his head over the front seat and they hugged, cried, kissed. “Goodbye, Dirk,” Caroline said, and he laughed, kissed her cheek again, closed the door, keeping his thumb pressed to the handle button, to make sure the door stayed locked, “Goodbye, Dirk,” Chrisie said, and he stuck his head through the window and they kissed. Caroline was still flapping her toy bunny at him as their car entered the freeway on ramp. During all these words, embraces and gestures of departure, Sophie had remained asleep in her child’s car chair hooked over the back seat. What, he thought. What, he wanted to say, what is all this?

Suddenly, one of the front windows broke and a fire started at number-three cash register and I knew right away what had happened. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window. Because just before the smell of fire and smoke had covered over every single smell in the store, there was this smell of kerosene that had flashed in and out of my nose.

“Hey, I’m burning, I’m burning up,” Nelson Forman said, first very surprised to see his clothes on fire, then running from his post at number three with flames coming out of his back.