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

A man they called Mike smoked a maduro and he had a urine stain on his trouser fly. He was very attentive to the host and to his wife Melissa.

“Stop!” his wife cried, but he’d done it already — tipped the ashtray he’d used — the dimpled copper bowl — into the grate behind the fire screen. The ashes fell down nicely, sparsely. There was still some dark, sticky stuff leftover in the bowl.

The host called, “Kids! Mike! Dad and Mom!” He called these copulators to come in to dinner. In fact, this group represented a predictable array of vocations — including hard workers, worriers, travelers, and liars — defecators, of course, urinators and music makers.

“She just can’t hop over the ocean. She has small children,” Petra said.

“I didn’t think you even knew what Ethelind looked like.”

“I saw her up front. I thought you saw her. Let’s go see Tim.”

“I don’t want to see Tim. Why would I want to see Tim? Who is Anita? I want to thank Anita.”

“Dale, is that you?” a woman called. It was Tim who turned, thinking that someone had mistaken him for Dale.

The damage from that misunderstanding was irremeable and Tim felt that he was standing up only on his hind legs, shaking hands with a forepaw. It was kind of rough for Tim while wearing the pair of trousers, his belt, and the shirt with the collar.

Anita took hold of Tim’s necktie. “Come on, tell me that bug story again,” she said. She was satisfied that nothing of much depth or subtlety would ever occur to her again.

Tim pushed her hand off of his necktie. “Where do I know you from?” he said.

Dale led the way into the dining room. He can’t stand the situation — this branch of the activity.

Imogene inquired, “What was her name?”

That was Jasmine, who deals sensibly with everyone.

These are people who, owing to curious regularities, maintain high, trusted positions. They have acquired love, wealth, and fame, but they don’t think they’ve gotten enough reward for all that.

“Gunther should show up and act as if he’s learned something,” Rohana said. “But he has a very good situation where he is — I am sure. I don’t know why he’d want to come back here.”

Gunther had died young and she thought he visited the house whenever she traveled. This was her explanation for why a five-hundred-pound mirror had fallen off of the wall when she was in Cannes. Gunther was to blame. And his pet dog Spark — long dead too — had trotted out of the boxwood to greet her upon her return. However, unlike Gunther, the ancient Airedale had chosen to stay on.

Aunt Rohana offered me my favorite — her red porridge specialty — a compote made from berries and served with heavy cream. “You can always cheer me up!” she said.

And, really — wasn’t this a lavish new world with new and possibly better rules? — so that I would no longer be sitting along the curbing. And, I thought Rohana loved me, whereas my own mother, her sister, did not.

I tried not to pry my thoughts away from my new surroundings, because I had been left alone for a few hours — and I was almost successful.

As I was a young woman without a sexual partner — awareness of the deprivation was not half the battle — I was thinking about sex and at the same time I was moving my attention to the furniture, the fireplace — the walls and all of the doors that bore oak carvings in art nouveau.

Then I saw Gunther! — or he could have been a replica of the lost original. A small bent male figure was on the threshold of my room, close by a tripod table.

He slouched toward me and there was something that was not eager in his eyes. But nevertheless, he looked determined.

“Why don’t you speak?” he said.

He was zipped into a fur-trimmed anorak — and not at all dressed properly for the hot summer season.

He kicked the table.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Dead,” he said. He made his way into the kitchen and the dog Spark and I followed him.

He put two hands on the sink rim to begin the maneuver and next he pivoted on his heels. He pushed in the upper dishwasher tray that had been left out and was overhanging.

The dog gasped behind me. I turned — and when I turned back around Gunther was gone.

My memory is that Rohana had run an errand that day to get a chicken to roast, a box of soap, and a ball of twine.

“Oh, God! What do you want me to say?” she said, when I told her.

I stayed at Rohana’s another day or two before I went home with a new backbone for my plodding along.

Sudden sounds didn’t frighten me and I didn’t mind the sense of being stared at when I was alone.

Rohana has a nerve condition now, such that if she sits still and doesn’t move her left foot, she is fine. Otherwise she needs to take a lot of pain medication.

And as Gunther has done — I have shown up in certain places with a bang. And when I come into rooms, it’s surely a relief to one and all that I am helpful.

I feel there is so much yet to explore about how people experience a “pull” toward anyone.

She bears the problems inherent in her circumstance that are not suddenly in short supply and she sways while guessing who really looks at her impatiently while she faces all of the faces — the multiple rows of the pairs of persons — the prime examples in the train aisle.

She has her shoes back on, because she had to get up to dispose of her lunchtime detritus. But fortunately she did not fall onto the passenger next to her, that man, when she returned.

They are passing through a city center with turn-of-the-century-style lanterns and ice skaters who put their feet down, somewhat decisively, all over a rink!

Some of their legs are bowed and there are the curvilinear, stylized profiles of their legs exemplifying natural organic forms, but they’re none of them hobbling.

This woman’s foot was recently injured and many weeks’ rest were required before she had the rapture of standing on it — in strict accordance with the doctor’s instructions.

Oh, cover my mouth! — she thinks, as her wet nose, while she coughs, finds her forearm. And although she is usually an irate parent, she has her share of lovesick feelings, especially during intervals of freedom from her toddlers, such as this one.

She feels the onset of arousal, of genital swelling that is triggered by no one in particular and she has the inability to think normally.

What’s still to come? — a warm flat landscape? — a shallow swimming pool? — the complete ruin of her health? — her absolute devotion to anyone?

The top of the woman’s foot is still puffy and she has had quarrels at home every day this week and she goes to sleep distraught.

With dexterity, she had managed the bundling of her lunchtime cardboard tray, some cellophane and the napkin and a waxy cup.

Children, who belong to another woman three rows up ahead, are singing a duet — two boys — in unison, and then in contrary motion. They offer their share of resistance to you name it! — in a remote and difficult key, and in poor taste artistically.

“For a blue sky, that blue’s a bit dark, don’t you think? And the sea’s a bit too choppy,” I said, “for that dog to be dashing into it.”

“You mean the man threw something into the water?” my son said. “That’s why the dog jumped in?”

An hour passed. Why not say twenty years?

In the Green Room, I had fortunately ordered Frenched Chicken Breast — Chocolate Napoleon.

And at a great height — up on a balcony, as I readied to depart — a pianist began his version of Cole Porter’s “Katie Went to Haiti.” I waved to him.