Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

"Oh," he says.

"What's the matter?" I say.

The window-shade man says to me, "Go home and look it over and get your agenda straight before you come in here with things like this for me when you are obviously so obviously ill-prepared to go ahead and do business with me as your preferred window-shade tradesperson in the neighborhood." The window-shade man says to me, "This is not a criticism. Don't take this as a criticism. It is not my policy here to stand here and offer criticism." The window-shade man says to me, "I am giving guidance. I am giving counsel. Do not take it as a rebuff. Do not take it as a reproof. First go see what's your setup as far as the specifics is so you can come in here unencumbered and act freely like a human being unfettered by the conditions."

So I say to the window-shade man, "Look, believe me, I am here on your premises in good faith and am ready and able to do business with you with a clear conscience as a fully endowed citizen in complete possession of his wits as well as his teleology."

"Yeah," the window-shade man says to me, "but I'm not arguing, it's not an argument, no one here is standing here endeavoring to take issue with you as far as an argument, but the brackets," the window-shade man says to me, "your qualification with the brackets is they go this way or they go that way, which is not for one minute to say they can't go up and get screwed in either way which you want them to, but once they're in on whichever side which you screw each one of them in on, everything devolves from that fact and therefore develops the repercussion of which way the window shade rolls, does the window shade roll in or does the window shade roll out. So you understand what I'm saying?" the window-shade man says. "Devolves or debouches."

"How could I not understand what you're saying?" I says. "I understand what you're saying," I says. "But I'm just saying myself," I says. "So this makes sense or not?" I says.

"Stay with me with this," says the window-shade man. "You mention cuff. I heard you mention cuff. Okay, cuff. Talk to me, talk to me — you want the cuff you can see from the inside or you can't — which or which?"

"Right," I says, "right." I says to the window-shade man, I says to him, "This is the question," I says, "and the answer to the question is I don't know if I can answer this question with an uncluttered mind. I mean, now it's all cuff-wise."

"Well, it's your brackets," the window-shade man says. "It all goes back to your brackets," the window-shade man says. "We're getting nowhere with this until we get a better grip on your past setup as far as brackets," the window-shade man says. "But," the window-shade man says, "this is where your age-old question as far as volition comes in. Plus, you know, plus ataraxy."

"You mean at home," I says.

"Check," the window-shade man says. "So what you do is you turn around and you go home and you get home and you look up there at the top of the window and you see what your situation shapes up like on a current basis as far as shall I say the sidedness of your brackets and then you turn around and you come back here to me here and you talk to me and the two of us will do business or not do business, but first we got to know what we are talking about as far as what is in the wall as of now and is it to continue on in it on the current basis or be reversed."

I says, "You want me to go home and look."

He says, "That's it — you go home and you look."

I says, "Right, right, but like what am I looking at?"

"Where you stand with the brackets," says the window-shade man. "What your setup is as far as the brackets," the window-shade man says. "What's what as far as the current sidedness when you get up on a stool and you inspect each respective bracket constituting the totality of your brackets non-dereistically."

"And that's it?"

"Providing we don't come to an aporia as far as the cuff and so forth," he says.

"But no grommet is what you're telling me no matter what, an affection for dereism notwithstanding."

"No matter what, you get no grommet for the pull, not here. What you get here for the pull is you get this screw-in thing we give you instead. See? Like a button. It's like a button with this like screw-in thing it's got on it sticking out going one way. Whereas what you already got yourself here on this one, it's a grommet. See this? This is a grommet. But me, when you do business here in this place with us as your window-shade people, it's exclusively this button treatment which I give you — lucid yes or lucid no?"

"Definitely, definitely," I says to him. "But so I should like go home, you're saying to me," I says to the window-shade man.

"Go home," the window-shade man says to me.

"See what the setup is."

"The situation," the window-shade man says to me.

"Check it out," I says.

"Check out the brackets," the window-shade man says to me. "Then you come back here and we get down to cases with a grasp of what the score is. Or you go up the block. Because you can always, you know, go up the block. There is always the freedom of you go up the block. Because with some people it's grommet and the question of the cuff is secondary or even absent."

"It's not a factor with me, I don't think."

"The grommet's not."

"The way I feel about it now at this stage of the game, the grommet is a non-issue."

"I know this," the window-shade man says. "I appreciate this," the window-shade man says. "I have every confidence," the window-shade man says.

"I can go with the screw-in," I says to him.

"The button," he says.

"I can definitely go with it," I say.

"Go home," says the window-shade man. "Get up on a stool. Take a look. See what your situation is. Look at it honestly. Take an honest look. Then if there is something for us to discuss as business people, I promise you, we will go ahead and discuss it."

"As people doing business," I say.

"Ah, yes, caught Homer at his nodding, did you? Yes, of course — as you say, as you say — as people doing business," says the window-shade man.

"In his nodding, I would say," I say.

"In? Yes, yes — in. Or caught out at, of course," the window-shade man says.

"So I go home?" says I to the window-shade man.

"That's it," says the window-shade man. "Unless it is your wish," says the window-shade man, "for us to linger over any of these imponderables of ours."

"Perhaps upon the occasion of my return," say I.

Says the window-shade man, "Should you choose for there to be one, that is. For there is the shop up or down the block," says the window-shade man.

Says I, "But it goes with me or stays here?"

Says the window-shade man, "You mean this window shade here. You mean while you go elsewhere, do you leave this window shade here."

"Home," says I. "Home only," says I. "Not elsewhere at all," says I. "But ascertain. Verify. Scope it out."

"I don't know," says the window-shade man. "It is for you as a person of reflection to resolve," says the window-shade man. "There are difficulties I cannot resolve for you," says the window-shade man. "Pretty multitudinous ones."

So I says to him, "But it's decidable, you think."

The window-shade man says to me, "I think — yes, I think. But now I think no — from your point of view, it's maybe going to turn out to be too apophantic for you."

So I says to him, "Yet mustn't something be done one way or the other?"

"You're saying this to me as conjecture?" he says.

"Am I conjecturing?" I say.

"You want to determine if you are actually, in saying what you said, formulating a conjecture," he says.

"Absolutely," says I. "But at another level, you could lock the door. You could bar me from the topos."

"I could come to believe business hours had come to their end," says the window-shade man.