Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“Tell him I had an intuition,” she said.

“A what again?”

“Here, give me it. Ken?”

“What’s going on there?”

“I was only telling Warren to tell you I was feeling slightly intuitive tonight.”

“About what?”

“Ask your son.”

Warren stuck out his hand for the receiver.

“What in the world’s that supposed to mean?” Ken said.

The phone, Mom, the phone.”

She mussed up his hair — he grabbed the receiver while she still held it to her ear — and said “Wait till I’m finished and I’ll call you to it,” and pointed to the door. He shook his head, slapped his hands against his sides when she continued to point and smile, and slammed the door behind him.

“Now you made me get him mad,” she said.

“Get who mad — Warren? What the hell were you two doing there, talking riddles?”

“All I said before is that you should ask your son because he knows. In fact, he knows too much already for an eight-year-old.”

“You know, I don’t want to appear dense — it’s a very unattractive pose for a man my age — but you’re really making a lot of sense to me, you really are.”

“What I’m saying is that if you don’t want Warren to know too much about our difficulties, well, then I don’t have the solution. Maybe we should get a housekeeper or maid — somebody, at least, who will occupy him during his more restless moments and occasionally answer the phone. It’s just every time I’m left alone with him or the phone rings when I’m in the shower, let’s say, he uses answering it as a pretext for barging into our room and asking me a lot of embarrassing questions.”

“So slap him down then, that’s all.”

“Brilliant. No, I think the nanny idea is the best one.”

“What nanny idea? You might not believe this — you probably never thought you had such a schnook for a husband — but I think I lost a little of what you’re saying.”

“It’s all quite simple. What I want is for us to have someone look after Warren weekday afternoons and to answer the phone when I can’t, or maybe the alternative is to get a phone extension in the kitchen.”

“Why an extension?”

“So Warren can answer it there and then tell me I’m wanted on the phone, without him having to come into the room to answer it. We can call it Warren’s personal phone — something he’ll like.”

“His personal phone — right, I see.”

“But it’s important, Ken.”

“I know it’s important, but enough’s enough, agreed?”

“But it sounds as if you don’t think it’s important. You’re not worried about the extra charges for the extension, are you?”

“Now don’t start up on me again, Bobbie, and I’m not kidding anymore. And let’s stop all this silly jibberish, as I’m just not up to it now.”

Then I don’t know, Ken. If we’re ever going to get any privacy around here with that boy…I mean, the only way I can see his personal questions and overcuriosity letting up on us is if we—”

“Okay. For the seventeenth time — I heard, I agree. You say you want a nanny for the kid, fine, you’ll get one. We’ll bring her all the way from Ireland if we can’t find a good one here, and not steerage, but good accommodations on a plane or ship. And what else was that — an extension? You want a phone extension? Fine again, great, even two or three or as many as you think we need, and all push-button Princesses if you like, and any color you want, even pink. But now, you going to listen a moment as to why I called?”

“I’m listening, dear, I’m listening.”

It was a beautiful day, clear and dry, the orchards soaked by the early-morning downpour and smelling of fallen fruit and fresh buds. Life fantastic, I thought, when something hard was shoved into my back and a voice said don’t turn around.

“Don’t turn what?” I said, turning around and seeing a man holding a handgun.

“Didn’t I say not to?” and he split my head open with the gun butt, and while I lay on the ground howling for help but not sure if my words were coming out, and trying to divert the stream of blood running into my nose and mouth, he shot me twice in the stomach and once in the head.

I woke up. Usually when I have dreams like this I’m somehow able to startle myself out of sleep before the bullets come, though not before I’m clubbed. But this morning I was awakened by the sounds of a sanitation truck being fed garbage. My wife stirred on her side of the bed and asked what time it was, though she knew as well as I that the city sanitation truck made a punctual seven o’clock visit to our apartment building every weekday.

“Seven,” I said, and she said “Oh,” and shut her eyes for another ten minutes. Then we got up, washed and dressed and started preparing breakfast.

“I had an incredibly creepy dream this morning,” I said at the table as she set before me my Wednesday breakfast of poached eggs on buttered toast and half a tomato. “A man hit me so hard that it feels as if my head still aches.”

“Sounds like the dream you had two nights ago, or was it three?”

Three. But this time I was shot. Twice in the stomach and once in the head.”

“Ug,” she said, “I’m glad I sleep peacefully,” and wrapped my lunch sandwich in aluminum foil and stuck it in a paper bag with an apple and lots of vegetables. “You’ll be late.”

I kissed her on the lips goodbye. “Be careful,” she said. “And please don’t run for the local again. I don’t want you getting another heart seizure, as this place gets very lonely without you.”

I was sort of hustling like a marathon walker to the subway entrance when a man said “Like to win a free ticket abroad just by answering a few questions, sir?” I stopped and this well-dressed young man approached me carrying a briefcase. “I’m with the Transiberian Travel Service,” he said, “and we’re conducting a very essential poll.” I told him I was in a hurry to get to work, but remembering my wife’s advice on the subject and curious about the free trip abroad, I told him I could spare only a minute. “Wonderful,” he said, and reached into his briefcase for what he said was his short question and answer sheet concerning potential intercontinental travelers and transoceanic flights and pulled out a very rusty Luger.

“In broad daylight?” I said, and he said nobody was around but if someone did come by before I stopped stalling and handed over my wallet, he’d be forced to shoot me. “You can’t do that; this is supposed to be a civilized society. Hasn’t there been enough violence in the world already?” Just then a woman turned the corner and headed our way. I quickly reached for my billfold to give the man, but he said “Too late.” He pulled the trigger; the bullet grazed my arm. I begged him not to shoot again, but a bullet tore through my throat. The man ran off. I was on the ground, dying, no doubt. A few people kneeled and stood above me, first asking me and then one another what they could do to help. Then two hands stroked my head and the voice belonging to them said that someone had gone to call for an ambulance. “Don’t worry,” she said, “you’ll come out of this alive. I’ve witnessed three street shootings this year and the victim has always lived,” and I passed out.

The radio alarm buzzed. It was 7:50—fifteen minutes later than I usually got up. “Jan,” I said, “it’s 7:50. You set the alarm for too late again. Get up; I’ve barely a half hour to get out of the house.”

“I think you were the one who said it,” she said, turning over and shutting her eyes.

I touched her back; she felt so soft and warm. I snuggled into her from behind and fondled her backside.