Stanley Elkin - Van Gogh's Room at Arles

He’s up on his walker now, skedaddling to the John before he bursts, Schiff’s version anyway, his modified skedaddle, distracting himself, thinking, Push, Step, Pull (on “Push” pushing his walker out in front of him; on “Step” stepping out with his right foot; on “Pull” pulling his left foot up almost even with it), though even as he thinks Push, Step, Pull, he’s wondering if it wouldn’t be better to change his mantra to Push, Step, Drag, because times change and a chap owes it to himself to keep up with his disease. (And because the effort is so great. He should, he thinks again, have been an event in the Olympics.) What, it occurs, are these tears in these eyes? Because suddenly he can’t remember the last time he walked without having to resort to these diversionary tactics and gambits, when he didn’t have to think of his walker as a plow, or his floors as fields, when he didn’t have to break down his progress — progress, hah! — into tiny, divisible bits like so much sovereign acreage or, just to keep himself from going nuts — walking was so difficult now, required such concentration; this was how he concentrated on it — providing a running — running, hah! — commentary on it, like some kid muttering the play-by-play in his head as he throws a rubber ball against a stoop. The pressure on his bladder is driven by its own terrible, gathering momentum. Schiff, still pushing the walker, concentrating, but switching over to alternative modes even as he begins to feel a little, a little, not much, leakage— I think I can, I think I can! Or “Schiff not out of the woods, yet, ladies and gentlemen, though even if he pees now, at least it won’t be on the Berber. Because once that stuff gets on wool, it’s yech, and watch out, it’s time for the Home! Over to you in the crapper, Jim.” “Thanks, Dave Wilson, but you’ve just about told the whole story. Schiff, as you say, had begun to feel a little moisture, but, fortunately, this was just about the time he was swinging his walker around, dropping his drawers, and already lowering himself onto the toilet seat. Maybe I can get him to give us a comment. Jack, Jack, it’s Jim Johnson, You do much damage?” “No, Jim, I don’t think so. There’s a phrase in Ward Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ that best sums it up, I think. Something about the ‘evening dews and damps.’ I don’t think anything actually got on the tile though there may be some small humidity in my pants, however. In any event, I’m chucking them into the laundry basket on my way out.”

Which made him think about laundry. Which, Jesus, gave him a jolt. Because, really, with Claire gone, how was he ever going to handle that one? He didn’t know if they even still did laundry service, couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen a laundry truck. Claire, Schiff thought, you’re the rat and I’m the sinking ship! And where, he wondered, had his mild hope for the day gone? Those few seconds or so of respite he felt when he’d first waked up? That perfect, numb composure?

On his walker again, returning to his room, so caught up in his analysis of where he was, letting his fans know — he’s beaming his coordinates back to the PGPC — the long row he’s yet to hoe—“Technically I’m still in the bathroom, though the wheels of the walker, and even its two hind legs, are over the threshold and out in the hall, heading south, my right foot on Steppp, my left, huff puff huff puff, on Draaaag. And I’m in the hall too, now, in the hall and making my adjustments, shifting my trajectory, handling the walker, raising it up off the carpet and swinging it east, bringing my body into alignment with the walker. All right. All right. Just about ready to move on. From here it’s a fairly clean shot east to the bedroom, where I’ll have to hang a north, then jockey from there northeast to the bed. You know something, folks? I’m not saying it’s a blessing or promising rose gardens, merely mentioning in huff-puff passing that this disease could have done worse than chosen to be trapped in the body of a political geographer”—that he realizes the phone is still ringing only after he’s back in bed, that probably it hasn’t stopped since it first began eleven or twelve minutes ago. It has to be Claire, he thinks, it has to be Claire. Anyone else would have hung up after eight or nine rings, ten rings tops. When he realizes this he wonders if he should pick up at all. It’s Saturday. She knows he has to be home, that except for Tuesdays and Thursdays when he teaches his classes, unless she’s there to take him somewhere, he has to be home. Sure, he decides, let Claire ring the phone’s ass off, let her ring and ring until she pictures him dead. Then she’ll be sorry, then she will. I’m a grown fucking man, for Christ’s sake. And he picks up the phone.

“Claire?”

“Harry Ald, buddy. Boy, you really are crippled up. I’ve been on the line fifteen minutes waiting for you to answer. I direct-dialed, for God’s sake, but the long-distance broad broke in anyway, wanted to know if I ‘wished’ to place my call later. I told her no, let it ring, I had this stiff-in-the- joints pal took his own sweet damn time coming to the telephone. Breaks in again in five minutes, tells me, ‘Sir, please place your call later, you’re tying up the lines.’ I say, ‘How can I be tying up the lines, I’m not even connected.’ Miss Priss offers it’s some satellite thing, very technical. I go ‘Oh yeah?’ She’s gonna disconnect me, she says, if I don’t hang up, and I shoot back that that’d be a violation of the First Amendment, but I see where she’s coming from and tell her, all right then, charge me for the goddamn call, you can count from the time I first began dialing. You know what she does, Schiff? You know what she tells me? She says to hang up and call person-to-person collect. I ask how that would change anything, I’d still be tying up the line, wouldn’t I? ‘Oh no,’ she says, ‘collect, person-to-person calls go through on a different circuit, that’s why we have to charge the customer extra for them.’ ‘And all the time,’ I tell her, ‘I thought that had to do with greed and operator assistance, so-called,’ which is when she starts giving me this you-can-talk-to-my-supervisor crapola. Well, do I have to tell you, there’s nothing in the world worse, or more boring and futile, than talking to some telephone-company operator broad’s supervisor. Fortunately, as it turns out, however, I didn’t have to because that’s just when you finally decide to pick up. So how are you? D’ja hear anything from Claire?”

He could be making this all up, Schiff thought. Claire could have put him up to it. He could be Claire’s beard, or decoy, or special agent, or whatever. She could be sitting beside him (even lying beside him) right now, for goodness’ sake, or listening in on an extension. It wasn’t proof she still loved him or anything, but after as long as they’d been married she was vested. Well, they both were.

“Nothing,” Schiff said, “not a word. Did you?”

“Me? God no, Jack. Anyway, you know what would happen if Claire ever did show up here?”

“What?” He felt like a straight man.

“We go back you and me, but we ain’t seen each other in years. We probably wouldn’t even recognize each other in the street.”

“What are you saying to me, Harry?”

“I’m a different person, Jack. Just like you’re a different person.”

“I’m not a different person,” Schiff said. “I’m the same person I always was.”

“Jack, you used to do the hundred in split seconds, you used to go out for the long ones.”

“Those are physical things,” Schiff said.