Stephen Dixon - 14 Stories

On our way to my building she says “Incidentally, what is your name?” “Name.” “That’s your real name.” “My real name is Name.” “Then so is mine.” “That’s a coincidence,” I say. “And I like your name,” Name says. “I like your name too,” I say. “I not only like your name but I like you, Name.” “I like you too, Name.” “This is really unusual. Because there probably aren’t two people with the same name as us and feeling quite like us about our names and each other anywhere in the world right now.” “I don’t know why you assume that.” “You don’t think there’s a reason?” “No.” “I do.”

Two people stand on the street corner. Or rather she stands on the corner. He’s gone into the corner store. She looks up. A jet plane passes. She waves at the plane and laughs. She looks at the cars passing on the avenue. A bus. She waves at the people in the bus. A young boy in the bus waves back. She sees me waiting at the bus stop. She smiles. I smile. The man comes out of the store. He holds out a package he didn’t seem to have when he went into the store. She takes the package and puts it in her pocketbook and runs. He walks after her. She sees him walking after her and runs faster. He starts jogging after her. She sees him and begins to run as fast as she can. At least it seems like that. She’s sprinting. He’s now running after her. She turns around as she runs and sees him gaining on her. She seems to try to run faster than she was going, but she can’t. She’s in fact slowing down. She’s getting tired. The pocketbook she’s holding might be heavy. I’m running along the avenue behind both of them. People turn as we run past. They look at the couple and then me as if I know what’s going on. I don’t. As if I’m part of a threesome — this woman, man and I — but I’m really not. I was just watching them on the corner. Then just the woman on the corner. Then the man leaving the store and holding a package out to her and the woman taking the package and putting it in her pocketbook and running away with it and the man following her, and now he catches up. He tries to take her pocketbook. She pulls her pocketbook back. I stand and watch this from about fifteen feet away. Other people watch. He pulls the pocketbook from her. When she tries to get the pocketbook back, he pushes her. She falls. A man steps over to them and says something to the man who pushed her and holds out his hand to the woman and pulls her up. The man with the pocketbook tells him to mind his own business. The helping man steps back but continues to watch them while sitting against a parked car. The man he’s watching pulls the package out of the pocketbook and puts it in his side jacket pocket. The woman reaches into the pocket. He slaps her hand. She slaps his face. He punches her in the face. She falls, this time on her back. Her head hits the ground hard, and she seems unconscious. The helping man rushes over and begins arguing with the man who hit the woman. The man swings the pocketbook at him and catches him in the face. The woman was only stunned or maybe unconscious for a few seconds. The helping man has a cut on his cheek from the bag. He pulls out a knife. The other man tries to knock the knife out of his hand with the pocketbook, but the strap breaks and the pocketbook drops to the ground. The woman takes a handkerchief out of the pocketbook, presses it against the back of her head and stands. The two men are facing one another and shouting, the helping man waving his knife in the air, the other man his fists.” Use it. You just try and use it,” he says to the man with the knife. Several people come over, and others from across the avenue, and almost all of them crowd around the two men and the woman, though giving them plenty of room to move around. I still haven’t moved. The crowd forms quickly and so densely around the trio that I can no longer see what’s going on. I hear screams. From women and men. One woman turns around from the crowd with her wrist to her lips and looks at me and walks away. Her space is taken immediately, so I still can’t see what’s going on. I go over to the crowd, try to get a place in the circle by squeezing between two people, then look over a couple of shoulders to see what’s going on inside. The man who tried to help the woman has his own knife in his chest and is lying on his back. The woman is lying on her front, her face on its side. Blood frames the back of her head, though it could be from the second fall that I saw. The man who hit her then is on his knees. Blood seems to be blotting his dark shirt around his stomach where he’s holding himself.

“What happened?” I say to a man.

“Don’t you see?”

“But how’d it happen?”

“What’s the difference how? It’s happened.”

“Someone should go for the police.”

“Good idea. You go.”

“And the people there should be helped.”

“That’s what someone else said. You help them.”

“How can I if I’m going for an ambulance and the police?”

“That’s true. And an ambulance. You’re right. They need one.”

“Will someone please go for an ambulance and the police while I try and help these people?” I say.

“I’ll go,” a girl says. She doesn’t look older than eight.

“Someone older?” I say.

There are about twenty people around the trio. Nobody responds to anything I say with even a head shake. I push through the crowd. The man’s shirt is soaked now and he’s groaning. The man with the knife in his chest looks dead. The woman is still bleeding from the head.

“Will someone please go for the police?” I say.

“Let the girl go,” a woman says.” I know her. Know her mother, I mean. She’s a smart girl. Rather, her mother says she’s smart”

“She’s smart,” another woman says. “Go, girl. Call the police.”

“I need the money,” the girl says.

I put my hand in my pants pocket. Everyone watches me go through all my pockets for change. I look at the crowd nearest the girl. “I thought I had change,” I say.

“Sure,” a man says. He gives the girl a dime.

“Give her two,” a woman says. “She might lose the first.”

“I won’t lose the first,” the girl says.” I know who to call and how. I dial. I put the dime in.”

“You put the dime in and then you dial,” the woman says.

“I know, I know. I only need one dime.” She goes.

I get down on one knee. I don’t know whom to help first. Probably the woman. The knifed man looks dead. If the knifed man is dead, and he didn’t by some accident fall on the knife himself, then the man who stabbed him would seem like the last person to help. I’m not sure about that. All I know is someone has to be helped first. So I pick the woman. Maybe because she is a woman. Though if she’s the one who stabbed the man, then I probably should first help the man who I thought stabbed the man in the chest, though only if I’m sure the stabbed man is dead. If he isn’t dead, then I wouldn’t know which man to help first — that is, if the woman is definitely the one who stabbed the man, but not out of self-defense. If she stabbed him out of self-defense or to protect the man who chased and hit her before, then the last person to be helped would be the stabbed man, dead or not, and the first would be either the woman or the man holding his stomach.

“Who stabbed who?” I say.

“Who stabbed who?” a man says.

“Who’s responsible for all this?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“I did,” a woman says.

“Who stabbed who?” I say.

“Why you want to know? You a cop?”

“No. I just want to help these people.”

“You a doctor?”

“I’m a passerby, just like you.”