Stanley Elkin - Van Gogh's Room at Arles

“Dickerson,” Schiff said. “Dickerson didn’t even call me.”

“Possibly he was nervous about catching you at a bad time, or that he was interrupting your dinner, or that he hates bothering you at home. In any event,” Ms. Kohm said, “there’s no reason for you to call the scholars. Everything really has been taken care of. The PGPC is on top of it.”

“The Political Geographers Party Committee,” Schiff said, exactly like a moderator of a news show identifying a reference for the audience.

“Exactly,” Ms. Kohm said, exactly like a panelist.

“Listen,” Schiff said, “what you and the others in the seminar have done is very kind. Really,” he said, “ very kind. And I appreciate it, I do, but to tell the truth, I don’t believe I could even handle a party just now. Be a guest at one, I mean, never mind its host. I don’t much enjoy playing hearts and flowers, Ms. Kohm, but it’s been a pretty rough day, I’ve a lot on my mind, and the last thing in the world I’m up to right now is a celebration.”

“Jack, let me give you some advice: the worst thing someone like you can do at a time like this is to feel sorry for himself.”

Jack? Jack?

“Negative energy, particularly for someone in your condition, has devastating effects.”

In his condition? In his condition?

“Let me tell you something, Ms. Kohm,” Schiff said, “unless they’re referring to alternative fuels or to how they’re feeling, I’m always a little suspicious of, and embarrassed for, people who use terms like energy.”

“Jack,” she said, “I know you’re upset, that you’re just sick with worry about Claire, and, incidentally, I shouldn’t think she’s in Portland.”

Claire? Claire?

Where did this woman get off? (Or would she stop at nothing?) Was she drunk? She might be drunk. She looked like a drinker, had, he meant, a drinker’s dramatic, slightly hysterical expression, and her makeup, fixed in place like cosmetic surgery, might have been a drinker’s makeup, something planted on her face for emergency, like a name sewn into her clothing.

Still, he didn’t know which bothered him more, the dignity he’d leaked through his mean outburst about her use of language, or the dignity he lost through her (and he could only assume everyone’s) general knowledge of his business, how it was between him and Claire, how it was between him and his condition.

“I know,” she was saying, and Schiff, who’d tuned out for a couple of moments, once for his indignation and once again for the regret he felt for permitting himself to give in to it, knew he’d missed something, perhaps even something important (maybe she’d gone on to say what the thinking was in political geography regarding Claire’s whereabouts), “things are pretty much up in the air just now, but, you’ll see, they’ll come down, they’ll settle. It isn’t the end of the world. Oh, I grant you, when these things happen, one always thinks it’s the end of one’s world, and, occasionally, even frequently, one’s often right about that. After all, there’s no arguing with a judgment call, but I wouldn’t count myself out just yet. The consensus now is that three things may still happen, Your wife could come back. Two, time heals all wounds. And, three, you could make an adjustment, discover not only that you don’t really need her but that, if you make the adjustment, become more independent, you might even be better off without her.”

The consensus? The consensus?

“You’re right that she could come back,” he told her, “but it’s a long shot. Even about three — though it’s iffy, improbable, the odds are against it — that I might adjust. But that, two, time heals all wounds, is out of the question.”

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds?”

“Only if there’s time,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t underst—”

“Well,” Schiff said, stinging her, hoping to anyhow, hoping she’d take it back and pass it on to the consensus, “aren’t you forgetting my condition?”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “you bet.” Then, while he had her on the ropes, following through. “But my real objection to a party this year is that I couldn’t possibly clean up afterward. My ‘condition’ militates against it.” Forgetting about the PGPC and realizing his mistake at once. And — perhaps something to do with his hand eye coordination, his cripple’s slowed reaction times, just the merest piece of a beat off but a miss as good as a mile and except in horseshoes close didn’t count for diddly — Ms. Kohm, losing no time, all over him.

“Did you forget what I told you? That you won’t have to lift a finger? That we wouldn’t permit it even if you could? Listen,” she said, “this isn’t even a committee thing. I mean no one’s been assigned to wash, no one’s been assigned to dry. No one’s been named to empty the ashtrays or run the vacuum over the rug in the living room. This is an area where everyone pitches in. Should someone see anything out of place, he or she straightens it up. This party will be a strictly straighten-up-as-you-go party. Will that be all right? Is that good enough for you?”

“Well,” Schiff said.

“Will it?” she asked. “Is it?” she teased.

“Well,” said Schiff. “Do I have your word? That no one leaves the house until it’s neat and clean as when they came in?”

“Neater and cleaner,” Ms. Kohm said.

“All right,” Schiff said. “Look, I’m sorry I’m such a tightass, but really,” he said, “unless everything’s just the way you found it … I’m going to let you in on something. I try to live by the cripple’s code.”

“Yes?”

“One must never do anything twice.”

“Oh, what a good rule! That’s a good rule even for persons who aren’t physically challenged.”

“Actually it is,” Schiff said.

“No, I mean it,” Ms. Kohm said.

“Okay, all right. We’ll try having the party.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“No. Is it late?”

“Twelve thirty-seven.”

“Thirteen,” Schiff said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Schiff said.

“Well,” said Ms. Kohm, “it’s been a long day. Tomorrow’s the party. Tonight, actually. Better turn in.”

“I will,” said Schiff.

“Me, too,” said Ms. Kohm. “Well,” she said, “see you tomorrow night.”

“Tonight, actually,” he said, and both laughed and hung up, and Schiff, too tired to try to make it into the bathroom, took up the pisser and peed within a cc of his life.

He slept like a baby. He didn’t dream. He didn’t once wake up. And, in the morning, it was like being roused from a trance, awakened, like someone from the audience, on stage, in the middle of a hypnotist’s act, come to life after a surgery in a room one can’t remember. Even, in those first several blank-slate seconds, experiencing what was not joy, not hope, not peace or patience, curiosity or wonder or even pleasure, so much as a sort of passivity, even obedience, something almost theological, some deep trust, almost— and here’s Schiff’s brain kicking in, and here’s Schiff — he supposes, like faith, like a perfect numb composure, Schiff detached and poised as an angel, like one of those rare dreams — and here’s Schiff with the slow, ever-so-gradual beginnings of self-consciousness — where he dreams himself moving, walking, running, pleased with the smooth point- to-point of his compliant synapses. And here’s Schiff. Tumbled from grace like a man overboard. Alert, alive, aware of the facts, passed sudden and roughly from one condition to the next like a clumsily transferred baton. Here’s Schiff. All at once the phone is ringing, his bladder is bursting, virtually screaming, “Do something, do something, will you, before I wet your pants all over you, your blankets, sheets, and pillowcases, your carpets and furniture and upholstery, before I take matters into my own hands and leave what used to be your dick jumping around every which way, loose and as out of control as a live wire spraying indiscriminate voltage like a hose in the street,” and his bones and body are stiff, filling up with pain in every cavity like air stretching a balloon, and — here’s Schiff, here’s Schiff now— he pulls himself up in bed to sit on its side and he reaches for his pisser but the son of a bitch is filled to the top — the job he did on it before retiring last night — and somehow he has to get into the toilet without — there’s no time to put them on — his shoes with their footdrop braces standing up in them like long shoehorns, and which permit him to put his feet out in front of him without kicking a foot into the carpet, smashing his practically hammertoes, tripping and stumbling the length of his body headfirst into the floor. So, here’s Schiff landed back in Farce, his homeland practically, and he pictures himself falling arse over tip down the stairs shoved tight against the aircraft and diving, face down, nose to the tarmac, which he kisses as if he’s finally come home after a long exile.