Donald Barthelme - Paradise

A: She was quite circumspect. Asked me what business I was in. I said I was on a kind of sabbatical.

Q: Which one was this?

A: Dore.

Q: Then she gave you the story.

A: It came out piecemeal. About the agency thing blowing up in their faces and how they had no place to stay and no money.

Q: So you said what?

A: I said I had a lot of room but that the place was kind of bare.

Q: And she said?

A: She said that didn’t matter.

Q: And you said?

A: I said I didn’t know what we were going to do for beds.

“So tell me about Fort Lupton,” Simon says to Dore.

“It’s between Brighton and Platteville. Basically a wide place in the road,” she says. “But pretty wide. We even had crack.”

“Did you.”

“We had crack very early, before the rest of the country.”

“Why was that?”

“Some pioneer cowboy chemists. As a matter of fact I was married to one of them for a while. Guy named Paul.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the pen. Got four more years before he can even think about probation.”

“I’m sorry.

“I’m not. Guy cut me in the face one time with a linoleum knife. He was explaining himself.”

Simon doesn’t understand how anybody could do this. “What was he mad about?”

“He’d been fired a lot, from various jobs. Usually he got fired the first week. He was good at getting hired but he was a genius at getting fired. I was in a shelter for battered women for six weeks. They didn’t let anybody know where it was.”

“All of you been married?”

“Not Anne. She’s never found the right guy.”

“Your husband was the right guy?”

“Well he seemed nice in the beginning, Simon. He gave me an off-the-road vehicle for a wedding present. Those are big in Colorado.”

Veronica is fiddling with a shirt button. They’re in the sitting room.

“What was your first sexual experience, Simon?”

He thinks for a moment. “I was about ten. This teacher asked us all to make little churches for a display, kind of a model of a church. I made one out of cardboard, worked very hard on it, and took it in to her on a Friday morning, and she was pleased with it. It had a red roof, colored with red crayon. Then another guy, Billy something-or-other, brought in one that was made of wood. His was better than mine. So she tossed mine out and used his.”

“That was your first sexual experience?”

“How far back do you want to go?”

“How old’s your kid? Sarah, is it Sarah?”

“Sarah. She’s nineteen. When she was little she used to sing ‘I’m proud, proud, proud to be a cow.’ That’s something the cows sing on Sesame Street.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Of course.”

“What does your wife want?”

“More fun.”

“What’s the matter with that?”

“Not a thing in the world.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a lawyer in Philadelphia. A deputy mayor, at the moment.”

“You straight or gay?”

“Historically, straight.”

“Me too. Nothing wrong with being straight.”

“Right.”

“Great twat out there on the streets you want some of it?”

“Only in principle.”

“You like young twat, go after it. Onward to the merry hunt. You ever live and love in a garage apartment?”

“Never have.”

“They’re kind of snug. Especially if it’s a three-car garage. Up in the trees.”

“Must be nice.”

“Depends upon who you’re cohabiting with. Dore has a hatpin. Six inches of cold steel.”

“To discourage creeps and weirdos.”

“You got it.”

“Has she stuck anybody with it?”

“Not in New York State. I’ve been reading in the paper about these rabid skunks.”

“They’re getting closer.”

“You wouldn’t think you’d have to worry about them in a city like this.”

“It’s a great city. We have everything.”

“The mayor seems like a clown.”

“He’s a great mayor. He’s got it down exactly right. Couldn’t be better. He’s what we want.”

There’s a funny chirping noise. It’s the smoke alarm.

“What the fuck is that?”

“The smoke alarm.”

“What’s it trying to say? There’s no smoke.”

“Telling us that the battery’s wearing down.”

“Well disconnect it for Christ’s sake.”

He does so, standing on a chair, my God how cheap can plastic be? feels like paper —

“You’ve got a good ass Simon.”

The Times is spread all over the bar in the kitchen.

“This one I like,” Simon says. “Death May Haunt Calcutta’s Streets, But Teeming City Throbs With Life.”

“Unbeatable,” says Anne. She’s making a salad.

“Although —”

“What?”

“Slain U.S. Major Had One Exploit.”

“A one-exploit man.”

“Rather like having only one —”

“That was lousy Tex-Mex last night.”

“Better than no Tex-Mex at all.”

“True.”

“What’s that weed you’re putting in there?”

“That’s Venetian marigold. Tastes like mint.”

“Oh. Looks funny.”

“It does, it does.”

She’s slicing a big radish with rapid Japanese strokes.

“Anyone who sees Parsifal twice is a blithering idiot.”

“You mean the movie.”

“In any form. Land, sea, or in the air.”

“Well I won’t take you. You have my word.”

“Thanks. This salad is going to be good. I guarantee it. Let me have the lemon-pepper.”

“Here. You using the fancy olive oil?”

“Extra-virgin. Just like me.”

Six o’clock in the morning. He’s awakened by voices from the back of the house, from outside. A woman laughing.

He gets out of bed and walks to the big second-floor windows overlooking the garden below.

In the next garden, separated from the one beneath him by a high wooden fence, a man and a woman are stretched out on the flagstones, making love. The fence slashes them in half diagonally. The woman lies on top of the man, her dark-red skirt bunched about her hips. Simon can’t see the color of her hair.

He rubs his eyes and goes to the refrigerator. Reaches for a bottle of white wine which sits, corkless, in the refrigerator door. He pours wine into a tumbler, tastes it, makes a face, and walks back into the bedroom for his cigarettes.

Behind him the man’s voice says “Hey, hey, hey.”

Six o’clock? And the flagstones can’t be wonderfully comfortable. Ardent lovers must these lovers be.

The building he’s living in is one hundred and seven years old. The window wall in the back has separated from the party wall and light can be seen between them.

Simon, early in the morning, stuffs spackle into the opening, and, two hours later, sloshes a little white paint over it. Not bad for government work, he thinks.

The big closet has a large jagged hole in the ceiling, little tufts of insulation floating at its edges. He decides to do nothing about this; he won’t be here forever. He’s been told not to use either of the fireplaces because the chimneys have not been cleaned for years.

He closes up his paint can and washes out his brush. Now, breakfast. Popovers from the deli with rare cheeses.

On his way out to the deli to get the group breakfast he hears giggling from the front room. Did you sleep well? And you? And you? Outside, on the street, someone’s screaming.

Peering from the front window he sees two men beating a cop with a nightstick and fists. The cop is a black woman, slight of build. There’s blood on the back of her head. Simon throws open the window and yells “Hey!” — a prodigious shout, the shout that kills. The astonished men look around, then take off in two different directions. Simon runs out the door and rushes down the stairs.