Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

They return the next day with about a dozen American and Chinese soldiers and three other Americans. The three new civilians present themselves as diplomats with the embassy in Beijing and ask me to come out peacefully as I’ve no reason to be afraid. Everything’s okay in China again, they say, but this hill has to be surveyed for a road and housing development that are going to be built on it with American help, and I’ll be amply compensated for my house and land which are directly in the builders’ way.

We’ve been so happy and healthy up here, and now I don’t even know why we brought another child into this world. But I have to act quickly before they come into the woods and corner us and break up my family and send me back to the States to stand trial, and Lin, Chu and Sun Goddess to live without me in that ugly emptiness out there for the rest of their lives. I give the signal and we start to run, Sun Goddess light and laughing in my arm and Lin and Chu right behind me, running fast as we can. We dart around the soldiers, who don’t seem able to make more than lazy attempts at trying to block us, and after a long sprint we stop to catch our breaths, and hear the diplomats shouting down to us. “You’re making a grave mistake, buddy — you’ve no idea what you’re doing. If it’s a psychiatrist you think you need, well, hey, we have all that free for you now also — free for everyone in this country, including the Chinese. Come on back, pal, as there’s just no reason to run.” But we’re already a third of the way down the hill, safe and free from them for the moment, and they’re not going to get their hands on us without one good hell of a chase.

She called and said “Can I stop by?”

“Sure, what’s up, how are you?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there, all right?”

“Of course, see ya, goodbye,”

and two hours later she rang from downstairs

and I buzzed her up,

my room cleaned, floor washed down but not ammoniated,

as I didn’t want to give the scent I was doing

it for her.

New sheets — fresh, I mean, and bed, which is also

my couch, remade twice till it was right,

most of my books out of sight or in place in my

one bookcase,

books on my table and desk turned cover-side down

so I wouldn’t seem pedantic,

everything on my desk stacked and aligned,

my new eyeglasses opened on top of my typewriter.

If she asks “Those yours?” I’ll say “Yes, for reading,

and only nineteen ninety-five at Cohen’s, Delancy and

orchard, and that includes the eye examination,

bathroom and kitchenette cleaned too and everything put away.

Two croissants bought in a run so I’d have time

to do all that cleaning and tidying up,

old clothes thrown into the closet,

but what should I wear?

I had that thought: Which turtleneck jersey, blue,

green or black? They’re all clean,

and which pants of the five pairs I found in a pile

on a garbage can on the street the other day

and washed in the Laundromat down the block,

even the gray wide-wale corduroys that said

Dry Clean Only,

all of them my length and waist and no cuffs,

the way I like mine.

Shoes and sneakers and flipflops paired and lined

up at the end of the short hallway by the door,

bedspread flattened out again in my only room.

“Your tomb,” she’d said a number of times,

but not for a while.

Then my face shaved, hair brushed back,

anus, genitals and underarms cleaned with a wet

washrag, the washrag then folded neatly over

the bathroom towel rack.

She might comment approvingly of my new headhair

curls which have formed in the two weeks since I

last saw her, painting on the wall also picked up

on the street since then: large studio oil of chair

turned upsidedown on a studio cloth with many folds,

draped sidetable with teapot, several birthday

candles in their holders and can of Ajax on top,

and she might say “Where’d you get that

— off the street like most of your furniture?”

and I’d say “Yes, a studio portrait, appropriate

for my studio apartment, and the chair sort of

symbolizing my life right now,

and also the way I acquired it:

that somebody would just toss it out.”

“You writers,” she might say, or something like,

if the conversation came to that.

So she came — knocked on my door and never mentioned

the painting or my hair — and tells me what I knew

she would and had prepared myself for,

and I told her why I hadn’t called her the

last two weeks and that I’d been thinking the

same thing: “We just don’t click together anymore

after almost three years. And it’s not that I

don’t love you, but—

Actually, I do love you, but like a croissant and

some tea? The croissant’s fresh.”

“I’d love to but I haven’t time and am meter-parked.

I’m glad you’re taking it this way and not getting

angry as I thought, and was a little anxious,

you might. But you know, I’ve always said,

from the first time we met, that I needed a complete

year of freedom, for I went from my first husband,

and that was for ten years, right to you,

and because I was so young, he was the first

man I knew. Let’s face it: I just haven’t done

what I’ve wanted with my life — you have to understand,”

and I said “I do.”

“So that’s it. Nothing more needs to be said,

I think. And you never know what the future

will bring. Gigi”—a good friend of hers—“broke

up with her boyfriend once — severed their relationship

irrevocably, as she put it — and two years later

they resumed, though a few months after that she

broke it up for good, but anyway, we’ll see,”

one arm in her coat sleeve—“Why’d I even take

this off? The boiling heat in this apartment”

— other arm trying to shove past the lining of the other sleeve.

“By the way,” she said, “the camera I left here.

Can I have it back?” and I said “Bottom drawer

on the right, under the T-shirts, to perhaps forestall it being burglarized.”

“You New Yorkers. I’m so glad I don’t live here.”

She stood the whole time, even when she laced her

shoes right after she came in.

She found the camera, briefly looked at her face

in the small Mexican mirror above the night table

— something I’d also found on the street — checked

her permed curls—“I wish mine were natural like yours,”

she once said — flicked the front ones with a finger

and said “Don’t get up. I’ll see you,” and blew me a kiss and left.

I was still on the bed, and after she left, I said

“Okay, I won’t get up if you insist.”

We’d pecked lips when she first came in.

She didn’t try to dodge me or anything like that,

so I thought it was a good sign. When I’d pressed

down harder on her lips, she pulled back and said

“No, that’s enough. Things are different now.”

Shortly before she left I asked if she’d read anything

interesting lately, and she said The selected letters

of Joyce — it recently came out and was reviewed,”

and I said “Oh? Me too. The one with lots of heretofore

unpublished erotic if not masturbatory letters between

Nora and Joyce when they were still fairly young,

right around your age. What a coincidence.”

“Not much of one. You got me started with him

— I’d always resisted, thought he’d be too difficult