Stuart Dybek - Ecstatic Cahoots - Fifty Short Stories

I’d wondered why he stopped to give me a ride — out of kindness or because he’d mistaken me for a woman alone, or to have someone along who could push, in case we got stuck. I recalled a Chekhov story from a Lit class called “Grief,” about a horse-cab driver who on a freezing Moscow night tries to tell his story to every passenger he picks up, but rather than listen, each person tells him his own story instead. Finally, near dawn, as he unharnesses his pony, the cabdriver tells the story he’s been trying all night to tell — that his little daughter has just died — to his pony. Lino was driving with a story to tell, not about grief or love or even male vanity. It was about luck, and he needed someone to hear it.

“What you going to do?” I asked him.

“What am I going to do? I’m going to call her! She’s hot, man. She’s waiting. She wants me. It’s a sin if a woman wants you and you don’t go. You ever had anything like this happen to you? What would you do?”

“Probably worry about what to say for openers.”

“You could recite a poem. I got the perfect line, man. I’m going to ask her: What did that guy whisper to make you roll your eyes? See, that’s what I meant about destiny. I already know what to say.”

“You know her answer?”

“Man, that’s the fun part. I know she’ll answer, but not what. I know we’ll kiss, but not how she kisses, I know she’ll give me some tit right off, but not what kind of nipples she has — some guys are tit-men, I’m a nipple-man — or what perfume she wears, or what her name is. I know she’s probably home by now waiting for the call, but I won’t know till she picks up that phone what her voice sounds like. Just one little scrap of paper, and a lifetime history of questions. You can’t really tell nothing from her handwriting. Let me see that.”

“I gave it back to you,” I said.

“No, man, you didn’t give it back.”

“Yes, I did. I handed it back when you turned the overhead light out, right before you flicked the headlights out. I handed it back to you blocks ago.”

“You didn’t, man, you never gave it to me.”

“Check your pockets.”

He checked his shirt pocket and the pockets of his topcoat. “I wouldn’t have put it in my topcoat, man, you still got it. Empty your jacket pockets, cabrón .”

I did as he asked. There wasn’t anything but white petals from one of the roses Hana must have slipped in a pocket. She did things like that.

“What you trying to pull, my friend? This is how you repay me for saving your ass from the cold? If you think that babe is going to be a slut for any jerk who calls her up you’re crazy. You ain’t ready for a woman like that.”

“I didn’t take it, man.”

He braked hard and the car swerved and came to a stop in the middle of the street. He flicked the overhead light on. “Get up, cabrón , maybe you’re sitting on it.” I rose in my seat and so did he. It wasn’t on the seats. “Check the floor.” We looked on the smeary floor mats and felt under the seats. “Check the bottom of your shoes.”

“It’s got to be here,” I said.

“I’m going to ask you polite one more time, you going to give me that phone number?”

“I gave it to you. Why would I take it? I got my own girl. She insisted I wear her scarf.”

“I thought you said you were drinking with the Bears. More bullshit, huh? Listen carefully, cabrón . Last fucking time — a simple yes or no.”

His droopy brown eyes stared hard into my face. I said nothing. He unscrewed the flask and drained it. “Excuse me, man, I want to put this back.” He reached past me, popped the glove compartment, and I was out of the car, running up Sheridan in the headlights he flicked on, bounding drifts, zigzagging along the sidewalk, hoping I’d be a harder target to hit. I could hear the tires whining behind me. He’d probably tried to give it gas and run me down and now the car was stuck. I could hear it grinding from a block away, and stopped to look back. He was trying to rock it from reverse back to drive, but just digging it in deeper. I actually thought of going back and saying, Look, man, you were kind enough to give me a ride, would I have come back to push you out if I’d stolen your phone number? It was a nice thought, but one that could get me killed. Instead, feeling light on my frozen feet despite the drifted sidewalks, I jogged four more blocks up Sheridan Road, checking at each corner to make sure he wasn’t following me. The snow fell more slowly and the wind had let up some, but I could barely see his headlights five blocks back in the haze of snow when I turned onto my street.

* * *

In my studio apartment, I kicked off my loafers, stripped off my frozen socks, and, not bothering to remove my jacket, I sat in the dark on my one stuffed chair, clutching my soles in my palms and watching the snow gently float in the aura of the streetlight visible from my third-story window. The surge of lightness I’d felt running down Sheridan had left me shaky. Zero at the bone. Finally, I felt recovered enough to switch on the lamp and slip off my jacket. I’d promised to call Hana. She’d be asleep with the phone under the pillow beside her, so that its ring wouldn’t wake anyone else. What time is it? she’d ask in a groggy voice, and I’d say getting on to one, and she’d say she worried about me getting home, and I’d tell her Córdoba was easy next to tonight. I’d thank her for the loan of her scarf. I’d have frozen without it.

It wasn’t until I unwound it from around my neck that I noticed the scrap of paper caught in the chenille. I unfolded the note and there was the kiss and the phone number in eyebrow pencil.

I sat in the stuffed chair, my feet wedged under the cushion, dialed, and when the phone began to ring, I flicked the lamp off again and watched the snow. It rang several times, which didn’t surprise me; I didn’t expect anyone to answer. The surprise came as I was about to hang up, when someone lifted the receiver, but said nothing as if waiting for me to speak.

“I hope it’s not too late to call?” I said.

“That all depends,” a woman’s voice answered.

“On what?”

“On who you are and what you have in mind. Coming over?”

“I can’t tonight. The city’s shut down. My car’s stuck in a snowdrift.”

“Then why did you bother to call?”

“I wanted to hear your voice. To see if you’re real?”

“That’s a strange thing to say. Are you real?”

“No,” I said, “actually, I’m not.”

“At least you know that,” she said, “which puts you ahead of the game. Most unreal men — which is the vast majority — don’t know they aren’t, and those few that do usually can’t bear to admit it. So there’s still a chance that hopefully some night years to come, you’ll have a different answer. Good luck with that.” The phone clicked.

I listened to it buzz before hanging up. If I rang again, I knew she wouldn’t answer. I sat with the soles of my feet in my hands, rubbing the warmth back into them, waiting to call Hana, thinking of all the years to come, still young enough to wonder who I’d be.

She stands before the full-length mirror that’s framed by the bedroom door, observing how her nipples, navel, and the delta of copper hair, which has grown back at the confluence of her thighs, shimmer in the dusky light. Her reflection dimples and ripples like the surface of a pond where fish rise to feed on a mayfly hatch. Imagine his wonder when in the years to come he’ll realize that she was not to be confused with ordinary nudes — not some nymph frolicking along the shore, or goddess ascending from sea foam, or ballerina poised to wade into her morning bath. Those photographs she let him take, kept in a drawer, beneath his underwear as if hidden in the depths, will age as she does.