Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

"But why are you suddenly so quiet?" I said. I said to the editor of this book, "Didn't you just hear me say to you why are you so quiet?"

"I'm thinking," she said.

"What?" I said. "You're thinking what?" I said.

"Why downtown?" she said. She said, "How come downtown? Why not uptown?"

"What?" I said, "Downtown, uptown, what?" I said.

She said, "The little stupid thing you just recited. The two women on the bus."

I said, "Behind me on the bus?"

"That's right," she said. "Why downtown on the bus? Why not uptown on the bus?"

"Suit yourself," I said. "You're the editor," I said.

"Then make it a trolley," she said.

I said, "Street car."

She said, "Too suggestive. Too pointed. Besides, it's been done to tatters — street car, strassebahn."

"Roller coaster," I said.

"Please," she said. "Where's your tact?"

I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute!" I said, "Do you think you could go for like in a theater or something? How about like in a theater? Let's say I'm sitting trying to watch this movie and there's these two women behind me and one of them, I hear one of them say, ‘Well, she was offended,' and so on."

"Make it two men."

"Fine. Okay. Two men."

"They're sitting in back of you in an airplane."

"Right. Swell. You got it. In an airplane."

"The first one says, ‘Well, he was offended' and the second one, the next one, the other one says, ‘Of course, of course, aren't they always offended, was there ever a time when they weren't always offended, name me once when you ever came across a one of them who was not prepared to claim he was offended.'"

"Right, right!" I said. "I really honestly like it," I said. "These two fellows on an airplane and I'm sitting there in front of them and I'm listening, I'm listening, and I hear one of them say. ."

"Hang on," she said. "That's plenty," she said. "That's enough," she said. "One ellipsis is more than enough."

"You mean I'm adequate?" I said. "There's been adequation?" I said. "You said yes, you said no?"

"Filled the bill," she said.

"Pages," I said. "Taken up enough pages?"

"From three-seventy-one to three-seventy-four," she said.

"Oh, baby," I said, "edit me, baby — please!"

Thing you have, list you have, running account you keep in order that you be kept in the company of items for you to attend to, you good about keeping it cleaned out of the never-attended-to? Entries that don't in due course get drawn off into experience, they get erased, or do they, in your case, get themselves collected down there as the deposit from an earthward drift of them getting all silty and then stony at the bottom of it? — of this list, call it, you have; of this what-have-you, call it, you have — like this sediment of clotted deferrals you better come take, from time to time, a chisel to, or a jackhammer to, or — better, better! — TNT.

Because that's me.

To a T.

I'm not kidding.

Stuff gets to be like a stratum of indifferences down there, an impaction of inutility — errands once in mind, ideas once in mind, reminders you once had what you thought was a very pressing need for you to remind yourself of — notions you notionally stacked the deal for and then let drop to the unexploitable region of the underside of the deck.

Which is why I am doing this.

Mix some metaphors and get the line bled out.

Off-load it all.

The whole sludgy gob of it.

Apropos of which, here's the first bit of it.

"Consider yourself kissed."

So how do you like it? — "Consider yourself kissed."

It's what my mother used to say to my sister.

Which is maybe why my sister once woke up once and then went ahead and swallowed more sleeping pills than I guess she guessed she was ever going to be able ever again to ever wake up from.

Anyway, this is the first bit of it — pick-axed at it for you for a little bit—"Consider yourself kissed."

Actually, now that I look, isn't it a lot of what the whole geology of it is — speech I'd hear and think, "There — that's the thing! — stick it in some scribbling, they'll never know what hit 'em!"

Like "First it not ripe, then it ripe, then it rotten."

Or like prelude, interlude, postlude, right?

Okay, here's "Las Brisas! Las Brisas!" — that of, for a switch, of the nonutterable category. Anyway, name of eating establishment once went to with woman once was once going with once.

So there's this swell-looking waitress waiting on us. Have my eye on her and have the thought she has hers on me, but you tell me by what caddish-free art I might get it across to her for her to please not go waitressing anywhere else until I can hurry up and get back to Las Brisas uncompanionated?

So make myself a mental note of it—"Las Brisas! Las Brisas!" — and then make myself a written note of it — of "Las Brisas! Las Brisas!" — just like, just as I just sat here and showed you.

But never did.

Go back to it — not make note of it — no, never did.

Well, on other side of town. Long walk or complicated ride — from here to there — to get back, that is. But guess you could say my heart was never enough in it. Yet neither was it enough of it in it in getting this it-ness of it nixed off of my list-ness of it either.

Las Brisas! Las Brisas!

Jesus.

Then there's "metaleptic."

So what does it mean, metaleptic? Because I scribbled it down for me to see it scribbled down for me to know the reason it's been scribbled down is for me to get up and go look it up, metaleptic.

Well, I didn't, did I?

Speaking of this, look at this—"Janet: 431-4909."

Never followed up on this one, either.

Neither did I ever do anything about "Dad."

Impulse, was it, to sit here and type up something about some kids who are all of the time going around in the ordinary course of things all of the time bearing around with them this like little teeny tiny father of theirs up under their arms with them, like all of the time up under their arms in a grip with them, or shifting him from grip to grip with them, the old boy sometimes getting himself hiked up over onto a shoulder with them, hefted over from child to child with them, him not dead yet but just all of the time logy and dozy and woozy and indefinite, but not at all unthrilled for him in the meanwhile to be borne forth on the bodies of his own.

Then there's — or here's there — this one.

"Brown barn."

What it has to do with — or what it had to do with — didn't it have to do with me and with her? — with wanting to memorialize the way it once was with us once — the two of us passing past a barn while driving along?

Her saying, "Oh, how brown I am."

Her saying, "Oh, so brown," in this, you know, in this barn-style of a voice she said it in.

I thought, "It's her to a T."

I thought, "That's her to a T."

What's next?

Uh-oh.

Here's one I don't know what to say about it.

It's, yikes, it's the look they give you, the wasting-away ones — the ones who are sitting there where they're sitting and wasting away from it ones.

Ever notice it?

This is how it looks as an entry written not to you but to myself.

"How they look — or don't."

But, okay, put it off for later — and, besides, who isn't, who doesn't, is there anybody who doesn't look like this to somebody else? But please, please — too distressing for me to sit here and just this minute let myself get into it.

Oh gosh, talk about a change of pace — this one, oh boy, this one'll slay you.

Get this.

Amsterdam.

Judson.

Stuyvesant.

Trafalgar.

Longacre.

Lackawanna.

Circle.