Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

WE WERE ALL OF US FELLOWS FROM EIGHT.

Everybody on Six, I think we probably were all of us former fellows from Eight.

And don't think they had anything anything like a piano up there on Eight — because they didn't.

Nor not on Seven, either.

They didn't have anything for you on Seven and they had even less of it for you on Eight, except for maybe in the closet one extra big-sized camisole for you for when you gave them the idea you wanted to try it out with two of them on you, like with one camisole yanked on and laced up plus another one done up on you on top of that.

No sir, music wasn't anywhere close to getting anywhere into the picture for anybody, lest you got them to let you try out your head out down there on Six.

That's where the piano was — down on Six — good old gateway halfway back out to the outside again, good old musically inclined, musically involved Six.

Boy, you should have heard them when they thought out loud about Six.

You want to take a minute and hear the fellows thinking out loud about Six?

"Crikies, when I get to Six."

"Don't you know it's something on Six."

"You name it, that's Six."

"Hear they got them a pool table on Six."

"Pool, hell — they get tail in for everybody on Six!"

But I don't think any of the fellows was ever all that amazed for themselves if they ever got down there to it and saw it turning out different.

Well, there was only just a piano on Six.

It was just this beat-to-shit piano on Six.

Must have been about a million people who had come along and who had sat themselves down at it beating the shit out of it, and every one of them just as geniusly loony as the next.

Probably among them were some pretty fair players of it, don't you believe. Probably, when you think about crazy people, you could probably among them count some pretty fair players of things you can't even think of, don't you believe.

But I'll bet there wasn't all that many of them who could have come along and have sat themselves down at that piano of theirs and given it anywhere near the run for the money your old Bobby Cholly by God did.

BUT, HEY, WHAT THIS IS ABOUT is not just about your old Bobby Cholly, you remember — but about that other crazy psycho too.

God, was it scary!

The loon, the loon, the poor crazy bastard — he'd go catch himself sight of Bobby Cholly getting himself ready to go get himself situated there at that piano, here he comes hustling himself right on over, hangs that hand of his out there onto the wood, hollering, "Come on, boy, goddamn it, boy — you play that tune there of yours — that, you know, that ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?' you hear?"

Oh, land, there's Bobby Cholly sitting there — you could see it, you could see it! — fixing to have kittens.

But would the crazy psycho quit?

Not Bobby Cholly, I don't mean that crazy psycho Bobby Cholly, but the other crazy psycho — him, I mean him! — the singer.

Him always with this sad ratty robe of his on — and, you know, these awful beat-to-shit slippers — never actually in his rightful shoes but just these awful beat-to-shit slippers of his.

I tell you the poor sad psycho is hollering?

Because the poor sad psycho is hollering!

With this hand of his hung out there onto that piano like he's come to have the recent knowledge it's like family for him or something.

Hollers, "Come on, boy, you go be a pal for us, boy! You go play us that, you know, that ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?'!"

You wanted to run.

You wanted to get all of the way out of there away from there quick.

Because the thoughts that came to you no matter how batty you were, they were look out! here comes carnage! here comes mayhem! here comes death!

Plus, isn't the whole floor going to get itself packed right up off its feet and packed right off back up in camisoles back up to Eight?

Whereas it never happened, did it?

Whereas, no sir, sorry to break your stride for you, that old Bobby Cholly of ours, I never saw him go ape-shit over this nor anything else, neither.

Not that there is any factual information that he ever played that tune which that loon kept calling for him to play nor even if Bobby Cholly even knew it.

No sir, as far as Bobby Cholly, buggy son of a bitch — buggy! — he's just sitting there with his two ragged hands laid there in this dilapidated lap of his doing this, you know, this slow burn.

Except oh no, oh no, this never comes close to slowing down this other old psycho boy, now does it?

Who's keeping this hand of his hung out there like he's back outside hugging the whole family with it again, ratty old robe dropped open on him, rocking up there on his toes in those sad silly slippers of his, other arm flung out all of the way out to all of the fans way out in the back in the back seats, sad little pizzle screwed back into him like it's been handled too hard and broke, all the while meanwhile belting it right on out there to them to the paying customers up there in the box seats — like really fucking, you know, fucking screaming the thing, you know — but never, I notice, never not once more — never, I notice, ever not once other than just this little one bit of it, don't you know — which what it was, which I think it was, was, you know, was this crazy thing called lovvvv.

SHE SAID TO ME, "Don't cry."

But I had not been crying.

She said to me, "Now, now — you mustn't."

But whatever made this creature to have claimed such a thing? Was I not being perfectly myself?

She said, "Why cry?" She said, "Stop it at once." She said, "I am not going to stand here and be a witness to you doing this to yourself — do you hear me, do you hear me at once?"

But I did not know what she was talking about. I swear it to you on my mother's grave — that there was not a tear in my eye, that there were no tears in my eyes — where were there tears?

Until she reached her hand out to me and touched her hand to my hair with her hand to me — and then, I admit it, yes, I stood there and cried out my heart out.

And have been doing it — elaborately, unflaggingly — and, of course, not unprofitably — ever since.

I just thought time to tell, time to tell — tell anybody who's come this far back to the back of the book with me — tell her name. But oh how she knew how to touch me to be with me — there, is this not the mystery in it for us — and therefore the fiction?

THEY FURNISHED, WITHOUT FURTHER FEE to you, coffee in the morning and milk in the morning for what you had paid to them for the day for the room. There was, as well, a kind of juice given, derived, it seemed to the man, from an angry fruit. Yet, hungry as he was, and as dependent as he had become upon the inventive conservation of his dwindling resources, he had nevertheless not been drinking the juice the mornings that he had thus far been a guest at this hotel, so disruptive a gustatory future did his initial sampling of this obscure beverage promise.

There was a bread that was not to his liking, a rather dark and granular creation, the slice you reached in and extracted from the package and were to put onto your plate and take with you to your table confected of a substance that promptly collapsed into disconcertingly haphazard sections under the pressure of butter being spread upon it with a knife.

The butter was good, though.

And there were also the routine packets of preserves. These he also refused, since not to do so was to impart to your fingers the sensation of there being a certain residue on them, in mute but implacable answer to which unpleasantness no water was permitted you in the place where the courtesy of the complimentary breakfast was fulfilled.