Stephen Dixon - Fall and Rise

“You still don’t believe I’m a dance instructress? No, we went over that.”

“Champagne?” the waiter says, pouring more champagne into my empty glass.

“Not for me thanks, really. Take it away.”

“It’s a wedding reception. Drink, be gay. It’s luck for the bride and groom if you do. You don’t and then he and next everyone here, this’ll all go to waste. It’s paid for and the barmen will hide the unused bottles as if they been drunk.”

“That’s the wedding couple’s problem,” Arthur says, “—the mother.”

“It should be ours too. Sophie should know.”

“Don’t tell her I told,” the waiter says. “Anyhow, it isn’t so. I only said it to get you to drink. Tell folks something’ll only go to waste and they stuff their faces with it, but nothing like a happy occasion. I love it when all my people I serve get drunk. They get zonked enough — hey, they don’t see me knocking down some too. Not serious. Yours?” he says to Arthur.

“Why not? Any one of these glasses. In fact, I’ll drink hers, mine and yours.”

“Hooo, bad guy — candy from babies. But it’s people like you who make for great parties.” He fills all the glasses on this side of the dais, says to Arthur “Persuade her,” and goes.

“Crazy guy,” Arthur says, downing his glass. “So, after all that, what do you do?”

“Really, it’s all sort of boring to me now, my work. But you’re so interested in learning what I do — no, this won’t make any sense — Hi, Soph, dance a jig, kid, ‘cause tomorra you’ll be broke. Not serious, as the waiter says. I’m not — Oh God, what did I say? — Sorry, Soph, but it’s your champagne. It’s too good,” and I try to roll my eyes while I roll my head. She waves, puts her fingers to her ears that she didn’t hear, foxtrots to the middle of the floor with Sven, people crowd around them clapping in unison, Dorothy taps Sven’s shoulder and cuts in to dance with her mother and the clapping crowd cheers them. “I’m so embarrassed. To bring up the cost of this overpriced garish party. And the cake hasn’t even been wheeled out yet. I’m supposed to — how am I going to? — stand beside them while they cut it, with its three different-colored tiers and the edible naked couple standing on top right down to the pink nipples, detumescent penis and Dorothy’s dark and Sven’s yellow pubic hair. Arthur, I’ve got to be crocked, or close to it. Say something that will make me think I wasn’t that crude to Sophia or that she really didn’t hear.”

“I don’t see how she couldn’t’ve.”

“Great help.”

“What do I do did you start to ask me before?”

“Right — good. I was. Then I don’t know what. Just answer. Pay no attention to what I say.”

“Lawyer. Tax law. Might sound boring, but it’s fairly exciting if you’re interested in psychology and people and petty — and, you know, right on up the ladder — thievery.”

“Doesn’t sound boring. Doesn’t sound too exciting, but everyone has to do something. See how smart I am? Ready for more painstaking cerebration and fancy wording? It’s nice to make a good living. I’m sure you do or enough to leave reasonably well on— live on.”

“I don’t complain.”

“I do because I don’t make enough to leave or live on. But I’m not really complaining either, even if it might seem, with my comment about how I can complain — forget it. Anyone for tied-up tongue tonight? Not quite on the menu. I don’t know why I even unconsciously suggested it, since I get paid well enough for what I do in the time I do it in. Yes I do, and health insurance, and I love my kids.”

“You’re married?”

“What do I do do you mean to make such an uncomplaining living and have such good kids? I teach. American literatures and languages. That was supposed to be amusing,” when he looks mystified. “Russian literatures and languages?” Still doesn’t get it. “Romance?” He smiles. “Ah, la love you understand. And maybe there is such a department in some university — American L and L — but I’m not aware of it — Hi, Sven. Do her the big dip again.” He does. Dorothy waves to me as her hair brushes the floor, then is upended again and I blow them a kiss and they each blow me one back. What will he think when he sees his pubic hair on top of the cake? Dot got it at the Erotic Bakeshop as a surprise for him. Good thing Sophie talked her out of having the couple recline postcoitally in bed, but I hope he scolds her for being so goddamn New York magazine.

“Dance with us, Helene,” Dorothy says.

“Too many bubbles. I’ll fall on my face.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do at a wedding reception,” Sven says.

“And that’s what everybody’s been telling me to. But I have to grade papers and write a review the next few days, so I need that face. I’m enjoying myself just fine from here. And I danced on my face before just fine with Arthur.”

They dance away. Rock music’s been playing for thirty minutes straight. Flowers. Smell of so many of them makes me think of summer, Cape cottage, student-free.

“I’m really not a good dancer,” Arthur says, “but you simplified it for me. However much you say the alcohol affected you, you danced as gracefully as I said. Not like a gazelle, mind you, with dancing shoes on, but one without them. You carry well.”

“I carry well?”

“You let me carry you well, the few times I held you, and lead you well too. It felt, those times, as if I were dancing with a feather — it’s true.”

“Did I tickle you? Sorry. So, tax law, huh? Actually, my father used to be one. But just a plain lawyer.”

“You’re kidding. This is unbelievable. On his own or in a firm? Where, New York? Hey, we were made in heaven, and what’s your original last name?”

“In Vilna before the war. He was too weak when they got here to study for the bar, and the piddling hard jobs he took to keep us alive quickly did him in.”

“He died?”

“He didn’t, no, just got very disconsolate and sick.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Not that he got sick, and I didn’t mean to pry. But he was a lawyer — well, let’s say he eventually recovered and went back to it or was very successful in anything he did. Champagne,” picking up two glasses of it. “Moments like these we need it, as the beer commercials say.” He offers me one, I shake my head, he drinks it down and sips from the other. “You do forgive me?”

“Whatever for? Depression, the rest — I’d blame the Germans again ten more times before I ever would you. But then, hadn’t been for them, my parents never would have fled to the Soviet Union and met in a camp. So now I’m going to say something I’ve thought a lot about and really feel about the order of life. Never—”

“Helene,” a man says. I turn to him. Don, Ron, non — Lon. “Lon Friedensohn?”

“How are you, how are you, how are you? Haven’t seen you since Diana’s birthday party around this time a year ago. Schopenhauer, Stradivarius — remember? If I’m not stopping anything, would you like to dance? I love this number. From sixty-six. The Stones. Beggars Banquet . An abominable rendering of it — or was it sixty-seven?”

“Got me. And I’d like to but I’m exhausted. Too much champagne besides. Besides that, other things. I’ll collapse the moment I’m out there.”

“You’re expected to. Minimum of five times for everyone under thirty-five or the wedding’s not been sanctified. It’s in the Talmud — look it up. And all night I’ve been dying to dance with someone who’ll collapse with me to the floor and then just lie there laughing. Dance with me, Helene, dance with me, dance with me,” he sings as he dances in place.