Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

Roland started City College two years after Gould but they graduated together. He got out in three years while two of Gould’s five years were in night school, though they were around the same age, as Gould finished high school at sixteen. He was a tall handsome guy, lanky or wiry — you never saw him with his shirt off or in any garment that sort of stuck to his chest — sought after by lots of college girls, it seemed, praised and encouraged by his teachers to go on to graduate school but thought of by most guys Gould knew at City as a smart aleck, stuffed shirt, and pretentious bastard. He paraded his intelligence, was intolerant of anyone’s point of view if it differed with his, was bitingly witty and sarcastic, had no time for small talk, joking around, or even smiling, won every intellectual argument because he was such a good speaker, knew his subject so well, and never got emotional when he spoke, and also something about the attentive way he listened and focused on you without ever interrupting no matter how long you rambled on, and maybe the longer the better, for you to lose what you were thinking; cold-shouldered just about every male student unless he stopped you to ask your opinion about a particular topic that had been engaging or perplexing him lately, as he put it, waited till you were done or fed you some questions or lines to keep you stumbling and then decimated everything you said in the order you said it, often enumerating your points. He hadn’t changed much in any way a few years later when Gould moved into the apartment building. Jesus, not on the same floor too, he thought, since there were few people he liked less and no one he had felt more threatened by every time they had met. (Later he thought, What if I had lived next door to him? I doubt he would have written me the suicide note. But he would have knocked on my door sooner and I might have been able to save him by doing the same things I did. Then would he have moved back? How would he have reacted to me after that?) Usually Roland ignored Gould’s automatic greeting and smile, when they passed each other on the street or in a store or at the mailboxes downstairs, or would just grunt a morose, “Yeah, hi,” if they were waiting at the elevator, and then remain silent during the ride, lost in what seemed like a profound thought — eyes closed and head raised or head face down and hand covering his eyes — or reading a book he was obviously deep into and didn’t want to be taken from. Though occasionally Roland would ask a question in the elevator or the lobby — start it off with something like, “I was mulling over something and considered you the perfect person to discuss it with, if you have a minute”—about a subject (politics, religion, history, philosophy, literature, metaphysics) Gould knew nothing or little about, and if he knew more than that or even a lot and allowed himself to talk about it — usually he’d say, the five or six times this happened, “Really, I’d like to discuss it but I just can’t think straight now” or “I’m honestly in a rush”—Roland would still always end up ridiculing him, or not “ridiculing” so much as challenging Gould to prove what he said wasn’t shallow or softheaded, sentimental, commonplace, uninformed, “pilfered from a recent Times editorial,” just plain wrong, backing the challenge with quotes and facts and aphorisms and lines of poetry and Latin and French maxims, making Gould wonder about his own intelligence compared to Roland’s (not about himself personally compared to him, since he knew he was a nicer and more likable and maybe even more compassionate guy and would never treat someone’s opinions like that or inveigle anyone into a discussion simply to show off his mental prowess and range or to humiliate or discomfit that person), and how it’s unlikely he’ll ever think profoundly and speak that articulately and succinctly and formulate his thoughts so methodically or even be able to justify and defend well his simpler notions and arguments, and that as far as the so-called life of the mind’s concerned he’ll never be more than a half-baked intellectual with minimal perceptiveness, limited erudition, and few original ideas. All this was especially disturbing, since there was nothing he wanted more and worked harder at than to be a deep thinker.

What also annoyed him about Roland was that if he saw you with a pretty woman — riding up the elevator with her, for instance — he’d shoot her a look that said, Listen, drop that jerk and step out with me. In other words, Give me a signal you’re interested, and I’ll take it from there. So: a come-on — and once one of the women Gould was seeing and liked did drop him, saying it’s impossible for things to ever really work out between them since she knows she can never feel strongly toward him, and about a month later he saw her walking out of a neighborhood movie theater with Roland, his arm around her, her face close to his and looking as if she was going to close her eyes for a kiss. He didn’t want to interrupt her, wrong time to, but said, “Hello, Beca,” and she said, “Oh, Gould, hi, did you just see this picture too?” and took Roland’s arm off her waist. “I know you two live in the same building and I think you’re even on the same floor, but this is New York so I feel it necessary to ask, do you know Roland Meese?” and he said, “Do I know him? No, only since college,” and Roland said, “That’s right, we were in the same graduating class, or yours was the one before mine. How are you doing? Like a cigarette?” and Gould said no and Roland lit one and looked away, admiring the sky or something in it while he blew smoke straight up. “Well, nice to see you both,” Gould said, and walked ahead of them, not knowing how they first got together or when, but it was obvious she was stuck on Roland, though he couldn’t tell by Roland’s expression or anything how he felt about her. One day if he ever sees her again he’ll tell her, if she doesn’t know already, since they lasted only a few weeks or so together — once, when he saw Roland getting off the elevator, this popped out, “How’s Rebecca?” and Roland said, “Beca Kahn? Beats me; haven’t seen her for months. I didn’t know you knew her”—what happened to him: “Killed himself, I’m not kidding; arsenic, though soon after he took it he wanted to live, banged on my door for help; it was so strange: mine, which just shows how desperate he was, since the only thing I was good for before to him was dating girls, which means bringing them into the building, that he later went out with. But what a sight: his mouth foaming, gums and nostrils and tongue coated black. And a hellish stench coming out whenever he tried to speak and then suddenly no stench to my sensory apparatus when from about twenty feet away people on the floor were complaining about it,” and then say, “By the way, how did you two ever first get together? I’d just like to know. What’d he do, secretly get your number when my back was turned or you were leaving the building without me, or did you, without his even asking, slip it to him?” No, he won’t. Couldn’t hurt someone intentionally like that. He’d just say, “Did you hear about Roland?” and if she said no, he’d say, “Sorry I have to be the one to tell you. He committed suicide: poison, what a pity, guy so young and bright.”

The name of the woman who didn’t reciprocate Roland’s feelings for her is Naomi. He finds this out from a tenant on the ninth floor. “Learned anything new about our poor Roland?” she asks in front of the building, when they’re both going in. “Because I heard you were good friends,” and he says, “We knew each other, not well, paths crossed, that sort of thing, and no, nothing about him for a while other than what everybody else knows; the same things get repeated endlessly,” and she says, “What I heard the other day, and no one else seems to know it except the person who told me, so it must be new, was that the great love of his short life — you remember, there was something about this mysterious no-name woman in his suicide note to 7-J — and one of the main reasons he killed himself was Naomi somebody — last name starts with an S —that gorgeous tall dancer on the third floor … or she used to be there; someone said she moved a few days after to somewhere else around here, just too upset. But you couldn’t have missed her if you ever saw her, she was so striking. Actually, she probably escaped a lot of people’s notice because of her odd working hours and that she walked up rather than wait for the elevator that never comes. She could do that, only on the third floor. In fact, with her physical condition and youth she could probably run up fourteen flights twice a day without a sweat.” He says, “I’m trying to place her … the third floor?” and she says, “Don’t tell me. Long black shiny straight hair combed down to her waist when it wasn’t in a bun or braid, and maybe six feet, and legs about half that length? An absolute standout by anybody’s standards, and gifted too — in the corps de ballet of the New York City Center ballet company, if that’s what it’s called, and with a promising career going — this I knew before the recent chatter about her part in Roland’s death. Once — someone here said he saw her in it and she was terrific — a solo role or maybe only part of a pas de deux or trois: a Todd Bolender ballet, this person said, a protégé of Balanchine? He I know of, but this Todd choreographer I don’t, do you?” and Gould says, “Yeah, I’ve seen something he did with an American western or Shaker theme, I think. He’s very modern, very good, lots of crazy hand and leg and neck movements.” Gould had seen Naomi a few times. Her looks were ordinary — not gorgeous for sure, as this woman said; he even thought her a little homely — and she seemed private, always alone, gangly in a way and guarded and usually in a hurry to get into the building and up the stairs or to Broadway, and with that toes-bent-in walk he’s always associated with dance students rather than professionals, so he figured she was a dancer but only studying it, but a dancer also because of her hair and cheekbones and big forehead that was always showing and her posture and makeup and dance shoulder bag she carried. But she didn’t seem someone Roland would go nuts over — take his life, he means, or even fall in love with. Roland seemed to have his choice of women he went after, and most were a lot better-looking than her and some were true beauties and with more voluptuous — so to Gould more attractive — bodies, since she was small-chested and slim and much too bony, though of course she probably had the perfect body for dance and must have had beautiful legs — from what he saw of them below a skirt and could make out through her slacks, they were. “So what do you think?” the woman says, and he looks at her and she says, “Where’ve you been? I’m saying you think this Naomi Sugarman, I now remember the S was for, is the mysterious Miss No-name of Roland’s suicide note?” and he says, “I wouldn’t know. Based on your description of her, I never saw them together or her alone on my floor, though an image does come up that she lived in the building … I seem to see her”—closing his eyes—“going in or out. What’s the difference anyway?” and she says, “Oh, good time to tell me, after I spent the last few minutes telling you everything. I think you know more than you’re saying — what is it?” and he says, “Nothing, honestly. He came, he went — I’m talking about to and from the building and our few words to each other over more than a year, though we had gone to college together but I knew him there mostly from reputation and sight. He was a ladies’ man and considered one of the academic comers. But if you want to know, from what I could make of him he wasn’t a guy I ever especially admired for his character. He could be caustic and contemptuous, and his was a screw-you-I’m-for-me attitude—’you got a girl I’ve eyes for, I want her; you’re enjoying a book I didn’t like, pardon me while I dump on it’—though otherwise he was fine and admirable and with enviable brains. And outside of that one time, which was perfectly excusable — I’m not complaining, I’m saying, and I also probably never should have said the lousy things I just did about him, but you asked for honesty so that’s what I decided to give — he never caused any commotion or scene on our floor.” “Maybe that should have been in the New York Times obit of him if there had been one — you know, the ones with photos, not just put in by the close survivors,” and he said, “I no doubt said it wrong, excuse me. He’s gone and they’re right, what they say (or those Latin maxims do) about the dead — to forgive the deceased and no bad words about him and so on, if the guy didn’t do something really despicable like rape his little sister or murder someone other than himself.”