Stephen Dixon - 14 Stories

They go in.

“You turned down something like that?” Henry says. “If you can then I shouldn’t feel so bad about your turning me down before. She’s one of the hottest. If I could get her name a dozen times today I’d get it and tomorrow and the next day too.”

“I’ll give you her old letters to me if you want.”

“They have her signatures on them?”

“Several with her first name. Mostly with her nick and pet names. Lots of O’s and X’s though and sometimes very spicy stuff. Highly commercial. She’s a good writer too.”

“I’ll just take the parts where her signatures are. I’ve my reputation also and don’t feel like branching out. Have any of those? First and last names both?”

“With dates. Canceled checks. Duplicates of old income-tax forms. Legal documents with both our names, I’m afraid. Marriage license. Divorce decree. They ought to be worth a bundle to you.”

“Send them to me and I’ll give you fifty cents apiece for them and I’ll pay the postage.”

“I told you I’d give them away.”

“Come on, you could use the money. And this will inspire you to dig up them all. Been with any other famous people where you have their signatures with dates?”

“Few.”

“Anything you got. Same fee goes all around. For the blurred ones I can only give a quarter. Here’s my address. And ten to fifteen cents for Galivanti’s handwritten first or pet names with or without the letters attached. Though to save postage you should scissor the signatures off, but leaving as much blank space around them as you can.”

“Anybody ever ask you for your signature?”

“Another collector once. Young. Thought I’d be famous for what I do. I’m the best at this, but that doesn’t rate me, though he didn’t have the head to know. Want to sign up now for the future?”

I sign.

“Date too.”

Today’s date.

“And don’t go into my trade, you hear? You’ll kill me off.”

“It’ll be interesting to see what value my signature has for you in the next twenty years.”

“You’ll know.”

I go. He stays.

It was getting fairly late in the evening for me so I asked my wife if she was ready to leave. “Just a few minutes, love,” she said, “I’m having such a good time.” I wasn’t. The party was a bore, as it had been from the start. Another drinking contest taking place in the kitchen, some teachers and their husbands or wives turning on in the john, Phil somebody making eyes at Joe who’s-it’s wife, Joe trying to get Mary Mrs. to take a breath of fresh air with him as he said while Mary’s husband was presently engaged with someone else’s sweetheart or wife for a look at the constellation she was born under, and I felt alone, didn’t want to turn on or drink another drink or walk another man’s wife through the fresh air for some fresh caressing. I wanted to return home and my wife didn’t as she was aching to turn on or drink with some other man but me and most especially to walk in the fresh air with Frank whatever his name was as Frank’s wife had just taken that same stroll with Joe after Joe had learned that Mary had promised herself tonight to the dentist friend accompanying her and her husband to this house, so I decided to leave.

“Goodbye, Cindy,” I said.

“Leaving now, love?”

“Leaving now, yes, are you going to come?”

“Not right this moment, Rick, though I’ll find some way home.”

“Take your time getting there,” I said, “no need to rush. Even skip breakfast if that’s what you’ve mind to — I’ll see to the kids. Even pass up tomorrow’s lunch and dinner if you want — things will work out. In fact, spend the weekend or week away if you’d like to — I’ll take care of everything at home. Maybe two weeks or a month or even a year would be the time you need for a suitable vacation, it’s all okay with me, dear,” and I kissed her goodbye, drove home, relieved the babysitter who said “You needn’t have returned so early, Mr. Richardson, as the children never even made a peep. I like babysitting them so much it’s almost a crime taking money for the job.”

“So don’t,” I said, and Jane said “Well, that wasn’t exactly a statement of fact, Mr. Richardson,” and pocketed her earnings and started for the door.

“Goodnight,” I said on the porch, “and I really hope you don’t mind my not walking you home tonight. I’m really too beat.”

“It’s only two blocks to the dorm, though I will miss those nice chats we have on the way.”

Those nice chats. Those tedious six-to-seven minute monologues of Jane’s on her boyfriends’ inability to be mature enough for her or her inability to be unpretendingly immature for them or more likely she telling me about her schoolwork, no doubt thinking I’d be interested because I teach the same subject she’s majoring at in the same school she attends. “Tonight,” Jane said, “I especially wanted your advice on a term paper I’m writing on the father-son if not latent or even overt homosexual relationship between Boswell and Johnson, since it’s essential I get a good grade on my paper if I’m to get a B for the course.”

“Bring it to the office and I’ll correct and even rewrite a few of the unclearer passages if you want.”

“Would you do that, Mr. Richardson? That would be too nice of you, more help than I ever dreamed of,” and so thrilled was she that she threw her arms around my back, and while she hugged me in gratitude I couldn’t resist kissing the nape of her neck in passion and now something had started: Jane said” Oh, Mr. Richardson, you naughty teacher, that’s not what I even half-anticipated from you,” and rubbed my back and squeezed my menis through the pants and said “My me my but you’re surprising me in many ways today,” and unzippered me and riddled with my menis till I was ranting so hard I couldn’t warn her in time that I was about to some in her land.

“What funky rickety gush,” she said. “Do you have a hanky?”

“I’m sorry. And I think I also spoiled your pretty skirt.”

“This dinky old thing? Here, let me clean you off properly.” And still in the dark of my porch she squatted down and wiped me dry with a hanky and then wobbled up my menis and before I could say anything rational to her, such as this was an extremely indiscreet setting for a young woman from the same college I didn’t as yet have tenure at to be living read to the man whose children she just babysat for, I was on the floor myself, her south never letting go of my menis as I swiveled around underneath her, lowered her panties, stack my longue in her ragina and began rowing town on her also, slowly, loving the gradually increasing pace we had tacitly established when Jane said “Go get the flit, Mr. Richardson, brink up the little flit,” which I couldn’t find so one by one I desoured every slover of flash that protruded in and around her ragina, hoping to discover — by some sudden jerky movement or exclamation or cry — that I had fortuitously struck home.

“That’s it,” she said, “right there, that’s the little devil, you’ve got him by the nose,” and after several minutes of us both without letup living read to one another, we same at precisely the same time.

“Now for the real thing,” Jane said, “though do you think we’re in too much light? Screw it, nobody can hear us, you and Mrs. Richardson have a nice big piece of property here, real nice, besides my not caring one iota if anyone does, do you?” and she stuck her panties in her bookbag, got on her rack on the floor, slopped my menis back and forth till I got an election and started carefully to guide me in.