Diane Williams - Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

Yes, the flowers were cheerful with aggressive petals, but in a few days I’d hate them when they were spent.

The wrapping paper and a weedy mess had to be discarded, but first off thrust together. My job.

Who knows why the dog thought to follow me up the stairs.

Tufts of the dog’s fur, all around his head, serve to distinguish him. It’s as if he wears a military cap. He is dour sometimes and I have been deeply moved by what I take to be the dog’s deep concerns.

Often I pick him up — stop him mid-swagger. He didn’t like it today and he pitched himself out of my arms.

Drawers were open in the bedroom.

Many times I feel the prickle of a nearby, unseen force I ought to pay attention to.

I turned and saw my husband standing naked, with his clothes folded in his hands.

Unbudgeable — but finally springing into massive brightness — is how I prefer to think of him.

Actually, he said in these exact words: “I don’t like you very much and I don’t think you’re fascinating.” He put his clothes on, stepped out of the room.

I walked out, too, out onto the rim of our neighborhood — into the park where I saw a lifeless rabbit — ears askew. As if prompted, it became a small waste bag with its tied-up loose ends in the air.

A girl made a spectacle of herself, also, by stabbing at her front teeth with the tines of a plastic fork. Perhaps she was prodding dental wires and brackets, while an emaciated man at her side fed rice into his mouth from a white-foam square container, at top speed, crouched — swallowing at infrequent intervals.

In came my husband to say, “Diane?” when I went home.

“I am trying,” I said, “to think of you in a new way. I’m not sure what — how that is.”

A fire had been lighted, drinks had been set out. Raw fish had been dipped into egg and bread crumbs and then sautéed. A small can of shoe polish was still out on the kitchen counter. We both like to keep our shoes shiny.

How unlikely it was that our home was alight and that the dinner meal was served. I served it — our desideratum. The bread was dehydrated.

I planned my future — that is, what to eat first — but not yet next and last — tap, tapping.

My fork struck again lightly at several mounds of yellow vegetables.

The dog was upright, slowly turning in place, and then he settled down into the shape of a wreath — something, of course, he’d thought of himself, but the decision was never extraordinary.

And there is never any telling how long it will take my husband, if he will not hurry, to complete his dinner fare or to smooth out left-behind layers of it on the plate.

“Are you all right?” he asked me—“Finished?”

He loves spicy food, not this. My legs were stiff and my knees ached.

I gave him a nod, made no apologies. Where were his?

I didn’t cry some.

I must say that our behavior is continually under review and any one error alters our prestige, but there’ll be none of that lifting up mine eyes unto the hills .

One got an erection while driving in his car to get to her. Another got his while buying his snowblower, with her along. He’s the one who taught her how to blow him and that’s the one she had reassured, “You’re the last person I want to antagonize!”

The men suspect her of no ill will and they’ve stuck by her.

She’s enjoyed their examinations of her backside in her bed.

And although there’s no danger, one of the men had a somewhat bluff interest in her. He was handsome with dim-lit eyes. She liked to joke with him.

While she bent forward to her comfort level, at her sink, without holding her breath, she kept her mouth open. He applied himself against her and she allowed his solution to gently drain from her.

The paper she’d gathered together, and added to several times — to dry herself — was unfairly harsh — so often, such a number of times, regularly, usually.

But something more. Another man, when he stopped by, noted that things had become almost too satisfactory. He saw copies of old masters on the wall, not obvious to him on his previous visits.

“Is something wrong?” the girl asked.

As a rule, she blamed herself — for yet another perfect day.

Her salesman had hair like a fountain on top of his head, and then it came down around at the sides of his head to just above his shoulders. He had a boy’s physicalness, yet his mustache was gray and he never thanked her for the big sale.

No one would ever say of him — He has such a nice face or that he looks like such a nice man, but he had not intended to misuse her.

After all, hadn’t he tried to stop her from buying one of the heaviest mattresses that she surely will regret purchasing.

That poor decision of hers is well past her now as she presses her paint roller from here to there and back while she is uttering little grunts that sound reasonable as she shifts her ladder.

The ceiling turns terra-cotta — the walls will be red, the door cerulean blue, the sills and window sashes kelly green. There’ll be a turquoise mantel — and, for her dinner — more pleasure and change. She’ll cook a strong-juiced vegetable, prepare a medley salad with many previously protected and selected things in it.

The salesman, at his home, empties a pitcher of water into a potted plant that has produced several furred buds that he’s been studying and waiting on — courting, really — but it’s as if these future flowers intentionally thwart him. He assumes responsibility for their behavior.

Also, he thinks he doesn’t know how to get people to do things.

He takes a cloth and wipes the greasy face of his computer. He checks his mustache in the mirror to see if it is trimmed properly.

He asks himself, What do you want to ask me? Will you look at that?

To begin with he thinks he’s had enough of chewing on his mustache. The next thought after that is — What a lot of wild sprouts there are above his mouth — and he assumes responsibility for their behavior. The step after that is to get his hairbrush and the scissors and to approach the real challenge, which is to steady his oscillating hand so he can aim it at the appropriate section of his face where the offensive hairs are. Then he brushes the mustache to see how unevenly he’s cut it, and then it depends on how much time he has, not enough. Should he adjust the one side to match the other side? — because there is a limit. He may end up cutting off his entire mustache.

He presses his face closer to the mirror. He could not make it out, could not recognize the opportunity for bewitching himself.

There had been the guest’s lavatory visit — to summarize. She did so want to be comfortable then and for the rest of her life. She had been hiking her skirt and pulling down her undergarment, just trying not to fall apart.

Once back in the foyer, she brought out a gift for her host. “I tried to find something old for you to put on your mantel, but I just couldn’t. I tried to find something similar to what you already have, to be on the safe side, but I couldn’t.”

It was difficult for the guest to comprehend easily what the other invitees were saying, because she wasn’t listening carefully. One man happened to have a son who knew her son. He had learned something of importance about her son — about his prospects. Something.

But the guest interrupted him, “I don’t agree that there is a comfortable space for each of us out there and we have to find it. I think this is so wrong. It assumes there is a little environment that you can slip into and be perfectly happy. My notion is you try to do all the things you’re comfortable with and eventually you will find your comfortable environment.”