Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

The other time, or only other time he remembers, was over a girl. They’d been sleeping together and he wanted to marry her: she had her own apartment and was studying to be a stage director; he was twenty-two and just out of college and didn’t know if he wanted to go to grad school for something — law, journalism, art history, international relations — or try to get into some profession; and she said yes but not to tell anyone yet, she doesn’t want people getting excited and making plans for a wedding before she’s had time to adjust to it, and then a few weeks later she said marriage was the worst idea imaginable for her, what could she have been thinking of? good thing they kept it to themselves, they’ll of course continue going out with each other, but she’ll se.’ about marriage with him in three to four years, if they last that long and no reason they shouldn’t; it’s not that they don’t love each other as much, is she right? and he said sure, what does she think? there’s no one else in the world but her — though for the time being she still doesn’t want him to move in with her, she has too many things to do first and wants to continue being totally on her own for at least another year, but since he spends almost every night at her place anyway and seems to buy most of the food and wine it’s just a formality that one half of the bedroom closet isn’t designated his and his name isn’t on the mailbox — but grew cool to him almost immediately after that and soon broke off with him, saying something’s happened the last two weeks, she can’t explain it but she doesn’t feel the same to him, it wasn’t anything he did and it isn’t another man, but she thinks it’d be best — no, she’s sure of it — that they stop seeing each other completely; is that going to make him very upset? And he said no, if that’s what she wants, it’s not what he wants at all but he knows from experience not to push somebody when he knows they don’t want it and he thinks he can get used to it, and they didn’t see each other for a month, then got back together; he called — well, he’d been calling every other day or so, just to see how she was, what she was up to, and so on, though really just to hear her voice and with the hope she’d say she wanted to see him — but this time asked her out to dinner, made up an anniversary: “It’s almost fifty weeks to the day we met and to me fifty weeks constitutes a year — I prefer round numbers — so what do you say?” and she said one dinner can’t hurt them unless they get food poisoning, and they saw each other almost every day for a month, then she broke it off again — it got too close, she said, when she thought they could keep it casual — though after this breakup they went out to dinner about once every three weeks and slept together that night — she said this was good for her and the way she wanted it, seeing him just as a friend and in addition getting rid of some of her pent-up sexual tensions and same for him, right? — and he said, “You won’t get me to disagree on that; it’s fine as is, and if it gets better, that’s okay too, though you’re telling me you haven’t slept with anyone else since our last big break?” and she said she can’t say that, and he said, “Well, that’s okay too; I wouldn’t expect you to only hold out for our once-a-monthlies. Do what you want; you’re a free bird,” and she said she doesn’t need him telling her that, and he said, “I know; I’m sorry,” till she said one morning, “Really, this is getting ridiculous and even a little humiliating and pathetic and painful and everything,” and he said, “What is?” and she said, “Don’t play the fool with me. Seeing each other and occasionally sleeping together when I don’t want to, especially the last part. I don’t want to sleep with anyone. Forget what I said about pent-up sexual energy and tension getting released. I have to be on my own completely — do you remember that old tune? I’ve school, I’ve assistant directing work to get after school, I’ve lots of things to do and no time for you. Besides, we’re not working out. We’ll never work out. We have to cut it off for good because it’s too obvious that continuing as just friends and sporadic bedmates isn’t working, and I don’t need or want it to,” and he said, “Okay, message coming in loud and clear. What’s that you said, darling? No, only kidding. So if that’s what you don’t want or need — all of what you said you didn’t — then it’s over once and for all and for good, forever, okay?” and she said yes and he said, “Fine,” and took home all his things for the third time in a few months, and when he called her after that she said, “I meant it, goodbye,” and then, “Stop calling, will you?” and then she wouldn’t talk to him: she’d hang up after she said hello and heard his voice or would only speak to him a few seconds—“Can’t talk now, busy”—and finally: “Listen, I said it’s over, so it’s over, so why are you still calling? Try to understand that I don’t want to hear from you again and I don’t want to try and make you understand that again. I no longer love you. You didn’t ask, but I said it. I in fact like you less each time you call. And because you have called so much when you knew I didn’t want you to, by now you’ve hit the lowest level yet with me and I have only the most unfortunate feelings for you. Whatever good feelings I once had for you have been entirely erased by your recent actions. It’s futile and hopeless to call me. It’s also downright stupid, do you hear? I’m not going to change my mind about seeing you or being in contact in any way with you, and the more you try to contact me to change my mind, the less chance there’ll be that I’ll ever even want to acknowledge your existence if we happen to bump into each other in a few years. Now, if that isn’t sufficiently unequivocal and unarguable and all those other adjectives that mean indisputable and nonappealable and unconditional, let me just say—” and he said, “No, it is, thank you”—though later thought, Thank you for what? — and hung up, and after the call, when he knew there was no chance at all of changing her feelings toward him and that she would never want to see him again or not for a long time — years, as she implied, and even then she wouldn’t assent to seeing him, they’d have to bump into each other accidentally as she said and at the most it’d be from her a “How do you do, you’re looking well and nice to see you, goodbye”—he thought of jumping off a bridge (interesting, he thought, always jumping off something: the Brooklyn or George Washington because you’re allowed to walk on them); and about a week later, after being miserable it seemed every single waking minute — pulling his hair, tearing at his face, banging his fists on tables and against walls, crying — he went downtown to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (he didn’t know where to get onto the George Washington) just to see what he’d do on it and also to scout it out for a possible jump some other time, though if the impulse to jump suddenly came today or built up while he was walking across he just might do it, he just might, but when he came out of the subway station he thought closest to the bridge — he found out which one by looking at a subway map in the station he started out from but came up one stop short — he went into one of the many Chinese restaurants down there and at the counter had some dumplings and a beer, something he’d never done before alone, having wine or beer with food in a restaurant (at least not in the States, and he doesn’t mean free bar food with your drinks), and ended up ordering what amounted to almost a full meal: rice with it, bowl of sweet-and-sour soup before, and after it an appetizer dish he’d never had and which he ordered because it was cheap and he was still hungry and the counterman seemed to say in his broken English that it was filling — a scallion pancake with some strangetasting thick brown dipping sauce. The whole thing’s awful, he thought, and he’s tremendously depressed and doesn’t know how he can go on living without her but he’s got to do it, that’s all, just day after day not call or write or try to see her or spy on her apartment building from across the street or stare up at her side window from the alley it looks over or anything like that, as he’s been doing and thinking of doing more, and it should work out; in a month or two he should be over it and maybe even before.