Stephen Dixon - Fall and Rise

I put my pen and notebook into my pants and coat pockets and head home by way of this street west and then left on Sixth to the quicker Seventh Avenue subway, approach, pass and start back to a bar I’d been to with May a few times over the years when it had a pianist playing mazurkas, polonaises and études, which the overturned stand-up sign outside still says it does, and go inside for old times’ sake and such but more realistically or whatever I should call it to dry off and have a coffee or beer.

Not the same. Lot less light. Piano music though piano covered and keyboard cover locked. Before the place always so jammed. One customer at the bar and behind it a barmaid with her mouth right up to the mirror picking her teeth with a toothpick. She reams, she digs. Got it her face seems to say throwing the toothpick away. Before when there probably wasn’t so much rain. When there was and we were down here we’d get a cab or on a subway and go to either of, or a bus if we didn’t mind the long ride, our apartments to be dry. To drink wine or shot of warming this or that and maybe a snack and maybe read awhile or watch — or do both — part of a television movie in our undies or nude. Or one in her or his undies and the other nude, depending if the temperature outside was mild and if it wasn’t then if the heat inside was still up. And chances are one or the other of us after we’d fooled as May liked to say with one another would climb — but stop. On top of the other and get not climb or side by side each other or both of us on our knees facing one of the bedboards. But why bring all that back? I don’t know. You can try. “Lost like a dog, dark like a roach, dumb like a goat and almost half as hot as a cat it’d be too rudimental and simplistic to say, those are four of the foresown fates of man — Hasenai, it’s not safe: grab your son and bone and race back to your flat!” he says in his poem “Autumnal Ordinal Poems.” And disinfecting smell from the john, music from the jukebox. Not jukebox but whatever those big blinking modern record-playing machines are called and which I don’t think was here before. Debussy I bet.

“Debussy,” I say to the barmaid, walking over bobbing my head at the jukebox as she turns puckering her lips from putting on lipstick in front of the mirror, but not taking a seat.

“Could be. Like something from the bar?”

“Sounds it. The little piano tinkle. Like rolling leaves, like falling trees. I mean rivers and leaves. The high keys. Rivers rippling, little leaves flipping in the air or on the ground briskly tripping. And ridiculous those descriptions. Not descriptions but likenesses or pictures of whatever they sound like or are depicting. Maybe depictions. But you probably know music so do you know…?” snapping my fingers. “By the same composer. Not Le or La Mer or The Valse . No, that was someone else. Piano pieces all in a series by Debussy that sound like this and maybe is. I bet the pianist knows. He on his break?”

“Vacation.”

“Oh, vacation, lucky stiff. But I bet he’s playing twelve hours a day on a resort ship or at a Nassau hotel or one on one of the Keys. Say, that’d be the right spot. But the sign outside — Never mind. I’m not nosy and I’m sure you have your good reasons.”

“You’re not very thirsty either and the reason for the sign is it’s not my idea. The reason is it’s my boss’s. To keep music lovers coming in while the pianist’s away. You see what luck we’ve had. Sure, the freaky weather, but people are a lot smarter than he thinks. And the wind which keeps knocking it over could be God’s way of saying don’t pull the wool over the public’s eyes too much.”

“You believe that?”

“If I just said ‘politics and religion,’ you’d like a light know what I meant.”

“Go ahead. I never get upset over those two subjects.”

“But you should or you’re not human. If you were a Jew and I called you a Red kike, you wouldn’t mind? Anyway, you still don’t want anything to drink if you never did? False advertising, so I’m not holding you to stay here.”

“No, I’ll have something.” I take off my raincoat and hang it on a wall peg. “My sweater.”

“Yes?”

“My sweater. No wonder I was so cold. I was at a party before and left it. Ah, it’s too ratty for anyone to take.”

“People will do that at them — leave things. I’ve done it plenty. Once even my year-old baby.”

“You have a baby?” sitting at the bar.

“Now she’s not.”

“What happened?”

“She grew up.”

“At the party I mean, and I didn’t mean anyone would take my sweater at mine. She was later taken home and raised by someone else?”

“I went back for her after I got halfway home without.”

“And, fretful the whole trip back, found she was the life of the party when you got there.”

“Close. She couldn’t even walk a step then but was dancing without holding on in the middle of the room. People don’t believe that when I tell them. She never knew I was gone, so it had no lasting effect on her, and now she’s old enough to have a baby herself.”

“I know I’m supposed to think I’m supposed to say this, but it doesn’t seem possible she could be that old.”

“If she was like me at her age she’d have had her first by now and leaving it at wild parties too — but with her brains, forgetting where to go back for it. Fortunately, I’ve kept her a child.”

“Probably a good idea. I’d both love and hate to be a father today, maybe something else I’m supposed to think I’m supposed to say.”

“Why? And you were never a father?”

“Did I say that? Even if I did, it’s true. And you’re about to say something like how I’m missing the best—”

“You are. And if you were a father but the right kind, you’d have it with someone else to help bring it up, which I never had the luck to have. And unless you’re ten years younger than you look, you shouldn’t wait.”

“You’re right, I will. The right woman, she gets proposed to right away, no time-wasting, from me and our future child.”

“If you’re laughing to yourself, you’re making a big mistake.”

“I’m not. I’ve just about made up my mind. No, I’ve made it. This second. All my women and no women before — the heck. I’m getting too old. I’m beginning to taste the grit between my teeth. I don’t know what that means. But yes, I met a girl — a woman — I’m sure she’s a good seven or eight years younger than I — tonight — at that party — one with the left sweater — left and right, both sleeves — that, who I’m going to pursue to try to marry and have a child by. I will. The woman. Will and try.”

“You could be a little high now, so don’t jump to quick decisions. Girls still say yes to marriage proposals even if they keep their maiden names, and get depressed if the man suddenly backs out.”

“No, I’ve decided. I’m tired of living alone. Being — etcetera, and getting old, gritty teeth. I want a kid under my feet. By my feet with a little silky head to pat and a wife sitting on the floor with her arms or head on my knees or lap, all while I’m seated in an easy chair, or any but some hard wooden chair, just enough lamplight over my shoulder so as not to coarsen the scene with its glare, and a rug so my wife doesn’t bruise her knees while reclining beside me and my child doesn’t get hurt when it falls. I mean it. Carpet or rug. And me even in a hard wooden fold-up chair if that’s what it has to take to succeed. I’m game. So done.” Same piano piece comes on after a half minute being off. “You didn’t have a jukebox before. Not a jukebox. What’s that machine called again?”