Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“It’s not that I don’t want to. I’ll do all the other things you want.”

“You can sleep with twenty men in succession in one evening — that’s true — that’s maybe an exaggeration — so you can’t do this for me once?” He was getting angry again. “Please, dear — what’s your name?”

“Gerta.”

“Please, Gerta, be nice. You said you’d be very nice, And you had the face of a nice girl, which is also why I chose you. So you do it once in your life. What’s that? Once, and it’s done. What is it even having it done to you once? And after, you can run to the bathroom without making an excuse. I don’t ask for this all the time, I swear. Now, I’m ready.”

He put his head face down into the pillow. I got over him again. “It might take time,” I said.

“All the time you need.” His head was now right below my behind. A funny thought I had was that I suddenly felt like one of his bombers circling over an enemy town. His head was the town center — the primary target, where the enemy’s command post and warworks were, and maybe I sprayed it and a little of the town’s outskirts before with my urine like bullets. If I told him this now, would he laugh? No — no jokes. Serious business with him, bombing, and I better get serious too. But a town eager to get bombed — pleading for it, in fact? Enough. Must concentrate. I tried. Nothing. His head turned a little to the side and one of his eyes was now visible and looking up.

“How are you doing?” he said.

“Soon.”

“Good. If you need another glass of wine, take one. Take two.”

“I think I’ll be all right without it.”

“Better to take it, and fruit.”

I drank standing up on the bed with him still flat below me. Poured myself another glass and drank that one down too. I reached over for a pear, bit into it and threw it back into the bowl, but I missed and it fell to the floor. He didn’t stir. I got over him again.

“I think you should be ready,” he said.

“I just about am.” It came. First direct hit on the town center, and he moved his face back into the pillow. He made noises like a man making noises during the sex act rather than at the end. Then it was over. The enemy town was totally destroyed. Mission accomplished and with a first strike also, or whatever the expressions are that air force people use. “Excuse me,” I said.

“I understand.”

He was still on his stomach with his face in the pillow, though you’d think he’d want to get out fast too. I got off the bed and went to the bathroom and cleaned myself. I looked in the mirror. Hitler, I thought. Nobody would believe it. Or rather: for my own sake, nobody was ever going to have a chance to believe it. He didn’t have to tell me that. The woman he lives with: she does it to him too? Has he always done it this way and only with young women? She isn’t that young. Nice figure, though: I don’t know about her behind. But he said no—“I swear,” he said, “not all the time.” But that girl who cracked up after being with him. Having someone like him plead for you to do such a thing must have been too much for her to bear. Suppose she once worshipped him. She might have been to rallies or at least seen newsreels of rallies with him speaking to half a million cheering people. If only she could have been like me. I’m not tough but I’ve been around long enough to take the healthy way; in many respects he’s inferior, a crazy pathetic pervert, simple as that.

I left the bathroom. He was gone. And the soiled linen was gone and a perfume had refreshened the room. I dressed and left. The commanding officer was waiting outside the door.

“So everything went well?” he said.

“I think he was satisfied. He didn’t complain. I treated him as nice as I could, just as you said.”

“If the report back from him is a good one, then I hope we’ll see you again.” He snapped his fingers. The same two guards came over.

“Drive her home in an officer’s car or to wherever she wants to go.”

“Home,” I said. “And thank you.” We shook hands. The guards and I walked to the elevators. “Wait,” I said, “there’s something else. Hitler said I could have all the sandwiches in the room.”

“Forget the sandwiches,” one of the guards said.

“But he said I should ask your officer for them.”

He ran back and knocked on a door. The officer came out. “She says he told her she could have all the sandwiches in his room.”

Then get them for her.”

“You must come with me, sir. I’m not allowed in unless with you.”

They went into the room I was in with Hitler before. The guard came out carrying the tray of sandwiches and gave me it. The officer went back to his room.

“But it’s silver and belongs to the hotel,” I said. “Hitler only said the sandwiches, nothing about the tray.”

“If my officer says it’s what I should give you, nobody will mind.”

I held the tray, offered each of them a sandwich as we rode down in the elevator. They each took one. I thought maybe one of them would ask me what Hitler was like in the room. As a test of my silence, perhaps. Or maybe because of his curiosity on the subject concerning such a man, he might lose his head for a moment and ask. If one of them did, I’d say “I’m sorry, it’s something you know I can’t talk about, and if you insist, I’ll have to report you to your officer.” That would be the right answer. I also thought that maybe one of them, if he didn’t know what Hitler was like in the bedroom, would want to pay to be the first one to make love to me after Hitler. But, that too, neither of them asked.

“Help.”

Lenny said it to himself, though for a moment he wanted to say it out loud.

“Help,” he said softly. He looked around the Student Union cafeteria. Thank God nobody had heard him. His voice was normally deep and resonant and carried much farther than he liked.

A novel was opened in front of him on the yellow table. Underneath it was a cup turned upside down, as a prop. He was getting a headache. He was astigmatic and had broken his glasses a month ago, but hadn’t replaced them because Student Medical Service didn’t cover eyeglasses and a new pair would set him back thirty dollars. He gently massaged his eyes through the lids.

He’d been on the same sentence for the last five minutes. For sure, he didn’t want to read. He looked through the all-glass wall to the outside: there were no windows in this ultramodern room, which was about the size and as brightly lit as a big city’s airline terminal. The moon was nearly full tonight, and low, so low it seemed caught in the eucalyptuses in the distance like a helium balloon. If he were with someone now, he’d ask why.

“Question,” he’d say. “Why is the moon so frigging low tonight?”

This person could tell him it had to do with the time of year or the vernal equinox or something. But a simple answer, which he should have known and this person might have picked up in a high school or college general science course. People remembered so many more things than he. He wasn’t a well-informed person in anything but literature, and even that, mainly twentieth century fiction.

“Question,” he’d say to this person beside him or even a group seated around the table. “What do you say we go to the Dunes for a burger and beer?” The Dunes was the most popular off-campus hangout. There you could get dark or regular beer in huge pitchers and a real California hamburger, which was grilled and came on a warm sesame roll with tomato slices, onion slices, shredded lettuce, relish, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, spices and a bag of tortilla chips or garlic-flavored potato chips on the side. Lenny was from New York and was used to having his hamburger broiled and stuck on a cold bun with only a single pickle round on top.