Stephen Dixon: 30 Pieces of a Novel

He likes everything about her. He’s tried to find a profile or some part of her he could dislike, a bump on the nose, for instance, or not find faultless, but it’s all faultless: nose, lips, eyes, hair, teeth, legs, arms, fingers, nails (no crap on them and not choppy or uneven), breasts, hips, stomach from what he can make out, waist, rear … the name, though: Sage. Not faultless. Speaks well, big bright smile, pleasant personality, chipper, friendly, though no fake, doesn’t give them the bum’s rush, as his dad used to say — she has other tables, is obviously busy, yet stops to talk, listen, suggest, answer the kids’ questions generously, laughs a lot but not heehaw-like … it would be nice, moonlight, cool night, the whole works, just a comfortable unsticky night, the air — smell of it, he means; sounds of the insects — not the biting of insects, though; so you slap on some repellent — even the scent of that on her; especially that scent, perhaps — walking with her, that’s what he’s saying would be nice: after work, around the grounds, in town for a movie, whatever the town: Southwest or Northeast or Bar Harbor, or for pizza and beers anywhere, back to the rooms they stay at on the property, but now he remembers that server last year saying the staff quarters were a short walk off; sneaking into her room if you have to sneak to do it — the restaurant management might have some proscriptions about this. Doubts it, or not enforced; keep the help happy and wanting to stay past Labor Day. Holding her hand outside, kissing her outside, furtively brushing against her at work: “Need any help filling those water pitchers?” Holding and kissing and with no constraint brushing and touching every part of her inside the room or at some hidden spot in the woods. Falling in love, swimming at Long Pond or Echo Lake or some other warmwater place he doesn’t now know of on the island here. Just imagine her in a bathing suit: lying on her stomach on the sand reading, turning to the sun or him with her top off in a cove it seems only they go to, running into the cold water with him at Sand Beach on their day off if they get them on the same day. Forgot to ask the server last year if they get days off, but it’s probably a law that a full-time worker has to, once a week at least, and after a while he bets you can switch around your days off to where you and your girlfriend get them together.

“What are you looking at?” his wife says, and he knows she’s caught him staring at Sage passing their table and means, Why are you looking at that girl so openly? and he says, “Oh, our waitress? It’s just she reminds me of someone and I can’t figure out who,” and she says, “The girl of your dreams,” and he says, “You’re that girl, or were when I first saw you, and still are the woman of my dreams, day and night and during catnaps, now that we’re married and so on … but yes, sure, if I were younger? Oh, boy, you bet. I’m saying if I were working here when I was twenty or so, still in college, feet free and fool loose, hormones up to my ears, and you were working here too … that’s what I was mainly thinking of before: how come I didn’t meet you when I most urgently needed to and not so much when — no, this isn’t true, but I’ll say it all the same — my companionable and genital exigencies, we’ll say, didn’t have to be so imperially attended to? No, that didn’t come out right,” and she says, “If you were twenty, I’d be nine, and I think that sort of behavior’s not only prohibited here but may even be frowned upon,” and he says, “But you know what I mean,” and she says, “I think I do, and I think I appreciate some of your thoughts too, but I also think you are”—and this very low—“a liar,” and he says, “Me? Mr. Honesty?” and his older daughter says, “What are you talking of, you two, and why are you calling Daddy a liar?” and he says, “Your mother whispered that, which means even if you heard you’re not supposed to give any sign you did and certainly no words,” and his daughter says, “But why did she?” and he says, “Youth, youth, wunderbar youth, don’t lose it, enjoy it, employ it, but don’t destroy it — something.” “What’s that mean?” his daughter says, and he says, “Nothing, everything, some of what’s in the in-between … I’m in my confusing Confucian period right now”—stroking an imaginary long wisp of chin beard—“and also don’t flaunt it, I should’ve added,” and his wife says to her, “First of all, don’t mistake Confucianism with confusion, indirectness, and unintelligibility. Your father was only admiring our waitress, Sage. Or not admiring her as much as trying to recall a young woman he knew many years ago who looked like her,” and his daughter says to him, “Do you think she’s pretty? I do,” and he says, “Very pretty, and she’s very nice. One day, you know, you could get a job here … in who knows how long, nine years? Eight? Then I could come here and be reminded of another very pretty girl I once knew: you at eleven,” and she says, “I wouldn’t want to work all day waitressing,” and he says, “Why not? You’d earn money for college, travel, and clothes, and you’d make lots of friends and have this entire national park to live in,” and she says, “They live here?” and he says, “Yeah, I learned this from one of our waitresses last year: in dorms or their own rooms or ones they might have to share with another girl,” and she says, “Then I’d like it. I love it here, so clean and fresh and everything. But I’d hate getting sick of popovers. And if it’s the same thing that happened to you with ice cream, then for life,” and he says, “Ice cream’s different from popovers. And I’m sure, in a place like this, so fresh and clean as you said, customers don’t stick cigarette butts in them.”

Thinks of Sage on and off the rest of the day: car ride home, shucking corn, taking the clothes off the outside line and folding them as he stood there, little during dinner and then when washing the dishes, and that night, in the dark when he’s outside the house peeing, he imagines them standing and him holding her, face looking up at his from a height his wife’s would be until he changes it in his head so it’s even with his, then on a bed, side by side rubbing the other’s body, and then she turns over on her stomach so he can get behind her, then the two of them in the back of a car trying to find a comfortable position to screw in, both completely naked though he thinks they’d only be naked from the waist down, if that, no matter where they parked. He never did anything like that in a car — at the most heavy petting and not for some twenty years, the last time in front of the woman’s house in the front seat of her car, just as a joke: “You know,” he said, or something like this, and they’d been sleeping together for months, “I haven’t made out with a girl in a car for years, and never one behind the wheel, so is it all right if we don’t go in just yet and sort of futz around a little out here?” and she said, “Go ahead, I wouldn’t mind fooling around like that too; it’d be different.” But how does one go about having sex in a car? He knows, to do it half in and half out of a car, she’d sit off the end of the seat with her legs outside and of course the door open and the man would do it standing with her legs up on his shoulders or against his chest or somewhere around there, or leaning over her with her legs around his waist or hanging over the side. He once, in a New York state park years ago, walked past a young couple doing it that way or something like it. But entirely in the car with the door closed? Probably in the backseat with her sitting on his thighs and facing him. Or she could sit with her back to him and in the front seat too, he supposes, depending on the size car. Sage saying when she’s on top of him in his head, “I’m in love with you, I don’t care about the age difference,” with the same smile she had when she spoke of overindulging on popovers. It gets him excited. It’s almost black out now, no moon or stars and no other house or light of any kind for half a mile, he’s behind the unlit patio, door’s closed to it from the kitchen so he’s out of view, and he forces his penis back through the fly, zips up or tries to but has to push the penis down again before he can get the zipper up over the bulge, feels the last of the pee dribbling down his thigh, not just drops but a stream. Did it too quickly, should have shook more — why’d he rush as if he were about to be caught with his hard-on out? He might think of her later if he makes love with his wife, but only up to a point. In fact if he thinks anymore of her he’ll almost definitely make love to his wife even if she’s not at first in the mood to, simply through his persistence and the way he has when he wants to very much and various things he does and her willingness after a while or just resignation to it, feeling it easier to give in than resist if she wants to get to sleep, and she also knows he’ll be quick.