Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“You feel so soft and warm,” I said.

“Can I sleep another five minutes?”

“You can if you let me lie close to you like this. In fact, sleep for another hour. I’ll make sure Frilly’s all right and get out of the house by myself.”

“You’re a love,” she said, and made a kissing sound. I lay close to her for a few minutes. Then I got up, checked our baby and saw she was safe and asleep, made two poached eggs on buttered toast, a dish Jan always complained was too much trouble making for breakfast — and after sticking a container of yogurt and dietetic cookies into my attaché case for lunch and again peeking into the baby’s room to see that she was all right, I left the house.

I started down our quiet suburban street to Charlie Ravage’s house at the corner, as this was his day to drive us to town. “Say, Mr. Greene,” a man said, signaling me from the passenger seat of an expensive new car, “do you remember me? I used to be your next-door neighbor in Lumpertville — old fat man Sachs.” I walked to his car and told him his name was as unfamiliar as his face, but maybe he’d gotten a little thinner since the time I was supposed to have known him.

“I’ve actually gained twenty pounds.” He opened the door and pointed at me what looked like a sawed-off shotgun and invited me to step inside the car for a business conference, “No fuss,” he said, “and you’ll be able to leave with your good health intact.”

“How’d you know my name and where I used to live?” I said, sitting beside him when he moved over.

“Oh, Mr. Greene, I’ve watched you numerous times coming out of your garish pink house, all fresh with your darling wife’s adoring smells still on you and with your low-caloric breakfast in your gut. I know all your history and comfortable habits, especially the precise time you leave for work every day. Eight-fifteen, am I right?” and I nodded and asked what he had in mind doing with me. “You’re the vice-president of the town’s most prominent bank, aren’t you?” and then described the relatively simple bankrobbing plan he’d devised. He would drive me to town, I’d get the bank guard to open the front door, he’d follow me in, disarm the guard, I’d open the bank’s safe and in a matter of minutes and before the bank officially opened, he’d be gone with about fifty thousand dollars in untraceable cash. “Not bad for a half morning’s work, wouldn’t you say?”

We drove to town. I was let in the bank, George the guard was disarmed, bound and gagged. I opened the safe, the man took all the paper cash in it and then bound and gagged me. I could have set off one of the many hidden alarms before I was tied up, but the chance of saving the bank thousands of insured dollars and getting a bonus if not a promotion wasn’t worth the risk of being shot. Just as the thief was about to leave through the only side door, George freed himself and ducked behind the tellers’ counter. The alarm went off; the entire bank lit up, and customers waiting outside for the bank to open began banging on the windows and door. The man tried the side door, but because of the alarm all the exits were automatically locked from the outside. He shot out a window and was about to leap through the opening when a police car pulled up in front. He reloaded the gun, said This is what you get for hiring loyal but dumb bank guards,” and while I pleaded for him not to shoot by shaking my head from side to side, he pulled the trigger and in an instant it seemed I’d lost my chest. Someone ungagged and untied me, through darkening eyes I watched the man gassed out of the president’s office and taken away; then I was lifted onto a gurney and slid into an ambulance. I was given blood, and just before an oxygen mask was put over my face I asked the doctor if she thought I would live.

“No question about it,” she said, but by the tone of her voice and the look of the attendant next to her, I knew I’d never reach the hospital alive.

“Dad,” someone said — my son or daughter. “Dad, get up.” It was Ford, my six-year-old son, who since his mother died four months ago when some madman seated behind her in a movie theater shot her, woke me up every morning. “It’s past eight. Dad, and you’re going to miss your first class.”

“Eight? Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”

“My alarm didn’t go off. You set it wrong again last night. But Frilly’s already making your breakfast.”

Frilly, my ten-year-old daughter and a lookalike for her beautiful mom, kissed me when I came into the kitchen. My regular workday breakfast was on the table. Two five-minute eggs, just as I liked them, not boiled for five minutes but spooned into the saucepan and covered after the gas under the boiling water had been turned off, and corn muffins that Frilly had made the previous night. “Get your math homework done?” I said, and she said “Math’s a snap. I can whip through it in the short ride to school.”

The school bus honked twice, and the kids kissed me goodbye, I walked them to the bus, told them I hoped they’d have a gloriously happy day at school and that tonight we were going to dine out fancy for a change and later catch the concert at Civic Aud.

“Morning, Mr. Greene,” the driver said, and I said “Morning, Will; great day out,” and waved at my children waving at me till the bus was out of sight. I got my briefcase, which Frilly had laid out for me with my lecture notes and a bag lunch inside, and rode to campus on my bike. The air was chillier than I was dressed for and I was sorry I hadn’t taken a sweater, which I usually throw over my shoulders and tie the sleeves at my chest.

“Cooler today,” Sam Rainbow said, cycling past me from the opposite direction and wearing a sheepherder’s coat.

“Hiya, Professor Greene,” one of my former grad students said, a pretty, intelligent young woman in a short skirt and high boots. She had such gorgeous legs. I stopped, said “How are you, Roz? Magnificent morning, isn’t it? Listen, if you’re not in a hurry, how about a quick coffee with me in the campus lounge?” and she’d just said she’d love to when I heard a barrage of gunshots and she flopped to the ground.

“Oh, no,” I said, “not again,” as people were dropping all around me, some hit by bullets, others dodging behind bushes, cars and trees. Roz had been shot in the head, part of her brains on my sleeve. There was nothing I could do for her, and I was still out in the open. I ran for a car parked about thirty feet away, but the sniper in one of the top floor windows of the Arts and Sciences building cut me down with a bullet in the foot, and while I was crawling the last few feet to the car, another bullet in my back. I regained consciousness after the shooting had ended. “We got him,” a man told me. “Some overpressured poly sci student who went nuts. Don’t know how many got hit, but that dead bastard sure’ll serve a good lesson for anyone else thinking of using a repeater against innocent people like that. And don’t fret about yourself, Professor. Doctors here say you’ll be up and walking again in a matter of weeks,” which, when I began heaving blood and feeling as sick as I ever felt in my life, I knew was a lie. “Have somebody pick my kids up at school,” I said, and he said “Sure, sir, anything you wish.”

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Daddy, happy birthday to you.”

That was what I woke up to this morning after all those disturbing dreams. My wife and two kids singing the happy birthday ditty on my fortieth. Thank you,” I said. Thank you one and all for reminding me what I most didn’t want to be reminded of. And now, if you can bear with more of my impoliteness, I have to hurry and get dressed.”