Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  “And that plug I live with.”

  “What about him?”

  “He gave me a book once.”

  “What was it?”

  “Book about how to fix home appliances. The dishwasher was broken. Then he bought me a screwdriver. This really nice screwdriver.”

  “Well.”

  “I fixed the damned dishwasher. Took me two days.”

  “Would you like to go to bed now?”

  “No,” Christie says, “not yet.”

  Not yet! Very happily, Bishop pours more wine.

  Now he’s sweating, little chills at intervals. He gets a sheet from the bedroom and sits in the kitchen with the sheet draped around him, guru-style. He can hear Katie turning restlessly on the couch.

  He admires the way she organizes her life—that is, the way she gets done what she wants done. A little wangling, a little nagging, a little let’s-go-take-a-look and Bishop has sprung for a new pair of boots, handsome ankle-height black diablo numbers that she’ll wear with black ski pants . . .

  Well, he doesn’t give her many presents.

  Could he bear a Scotch? He thinks not.

  He remembers a dream in which he dreamed that his nose was as dark and red as a Bing cherry. As would be appropriate.

  “Daddy?”

  Still wearing the yellow sheet, he gets up and goes into the other room.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Talk to me.”

  Bishop sits again on the edge of the couch. How large she is!

  He gives her his Art History lecture.

  “Then you get Mo-net and Ma-net, that’s a little tricky, Mo-net was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma-net was the one did Bareass On the Grass and shit, his colors were browns and greens. Then you get Bonnard, he did all the interiors and shit, amazing light, and then you get Van Guk, he’s the one with the ear and shit, and Say-zanne, he’s the one with the apples and shit, you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures, you get my man Mondrian, he’s the one with the rectangles and shit, his colors were red yellow and blue, you get Moholy-Nagy, he did all the plastic thingummies and shit, you get Mar-cel Duchamp, he’s the devil in human form. . . .”

  She’s asleep.

  Bishop goes back into the kitchen and makes himself a drink.

  It’s five-thirty. Faint light in the big windows.

  Christie’s in Seattle, and plans to stay.

  Looking out of the windows in the early morning he can sometimes see the two old ladies who live in the apartment whose garden backs up to his building having breakfast by candlelight. He can never figure out whether they are terminally romantic or whether, rather, they’re trying to save electricity.

  Financially, the paper is quite healthy. The paper’s timberlands, mining interests, pulp and paper operations, book, magazine, corrugated-box, and greeting-card divisions, film, radio, television, and cable companies, and data-processing and satellite-communications groups are all flourishing, with over-all return on invested capital increasing at about eleven per cent a year. Compensation of the three highest-paid officers and directors last year was $399,500, $362,700, and $335,400 respectively, exclusive of profit-sharing and pension-plan accruals.

  But top management is discouraged and saddened, and middle management is drinking too much. Morale in the newsroom is fair, because of the recent raises, but the shining brows of the copy boys, traditional emblems of energy and hope, have begun to display odd, unattractive lines. At every level, even down into the depths of the pressroom, where the pressmen defiantly wear their square dirty folded-paper caps, people want management to stop what it is doing before it is too late.

  The new VDT machines have hurt the paper, no doubt about it. The people in the newsroom don’t like the machines. (A few say they like the machines but these are the same people who like the washrooms.) When the machines go down, as they do, not infrequently, the people in the newsroom laugh and cheer. The executive editor has installed one-way glass in his office door, and stands behind it looking out over the newsroom, fretting and groaning. Recently the paper ran the same stock tables every day for a week. No one noticed, no one complained.

  Middle management has implored top management to alter its course. Top management has responded with postdated guarantees, on a sliding scale. The Guild is off in a corner, whimpering. The pressmen are holding an unending series of birthday parties commemorating heroes of labor. Reporters file their stories as usual, but if they are certain kinds of stories they do not run. A small example: the paper did not run a Holiday Weekend Death Toll story after Labor Day this year, the first time since 1926 no Holiday Weekend Death Toll story appeared in the paper after Labor Day (and the total was, although not a record, a substantial one).

  Some elements of the staff are not depressed. The paper’s very creative real-estate editor has been a fountain of ideas, and his sections, full of color pictures of desirable living arrangements, are choked with advertising and make the Sunday paper fat, fat, fat, fat. More food writers have been hired, and more clothes writers, and more furniture writers, and more plant writers. The bridge, whist, skat, cribbage, domino, and vingt-et-un columnists are very popular.

  he Editors’ Caucus has once again applied to middle management for relief, and has once again been promised it (but middle management has Glenfiddich on its breath, even at breakfast). Top management’s polls say that sixty-five per cent of the readers “want movies,” and feasibility studies are being conducted. Top management acknowledges, over long lunches at good restaurants, that the readers are wrong to “want movies” but insists that morality cannot be legislated. The newsroom has been insulated (with products from the company’s Echotex division) so that the people in the newsroom can no longer hear the sounds in the streets.

  The paper’s editorials have been subcontracted to Texas Instruments, and the obituaries to Nabisco, so that the staff will have “more time to think.” The foreign desk is turning out language lessons (“Yo temo que Isabel no venga,” “I am afraid that Isabel will not come”). There was an especially lively front page on Tuesday. The No. 1 story was pepperoni—a useful and exhaustive guide. It ran right next to the slimming-your-troublesome-thighs story, with pictures.

  Top management has vowed to stop what it is doing—not now but soon, soon. A chamber orchestra has been formed among the people in the newsroom, and we play Haydn until the sun comes up.

  Affection

  HOW DO you want to cook this fish? How do you want to cook this fish? Harris asked.

  What?

  Claire heard: How do you want to cook this fish?

  Breaded, she said.

  Fine, Harris said.

  What?

  Fine!

  We have not slept together for three hundred nights, she thought. We have not slept together for three hundred nights.

  His rough, tender hands not wrapped around me.

  Lawnmower. His rough, tender hands wrapped around the handles of the lawnmower. Not around me.

  What?

  Where did you hide the bread crumbs?

  What?

  The bread crumbs!

  Behind the Cheerios!

  Claire telephoned her mother. Her mother’s counsel was broccoli, mostly, but who else was she going to talk to?

  What?

  You have to be optimistic. Be be be. Optimistic.

  What?

  Optimistic, her mother said, they go through phases. As they get older. They have less tolerance for monotony.

  I’m monotony?

  They go through phases. As they grow older. They like to think that their futures are ahead of them. This is ludicrous, of course—

  Oh oh oh oh.

  Ludicrous, of course, but I have never y
et met one who didn’t think that way until he got played out then they sink into a comfortable lassitude take to wearing those horrible old-geezer hats . . .

  What?

  Hats with the green plastic bills, golf hats or whatever they are—

  Harris, Claire said to her husband, you’ve stopped watering the plants.

  What?

  You’ve stopped watering the plants my mother always said that when they stopped watering the plants that was a sure sign of an impending marital breakup.

  Your mother reads too much.

  What?

  Sarah decided that she and Harris should not sleep together any longer.

  Harris said, What about hugging?

  What?

  Hugging.

  Sarah said that she would have a ruling on hugging in a few days and that he should stand by for further information. She pulled the black lace mantilla down to veil her face as they left the empty church.

  I have done the right thing the right thing. I am right.

  Claire came in wearing her brown coat and carrying a large brown paper bag. Look what I got! she said excitedly.

  What? Harris said.

  She reached into the bag and pulled out a smeary plastic tray with six frozen shell steaks on it. The steaks looked like they had died in the nineteenth century.

  Six dollars! Claire said. This guy came into the laundromat and said he was making deliveries to restaurants and some of the restaurants already had all the steaks they needed and now he had these left over and they were only six dollars. Six dollars.

  You spent six dollars on these?

  Other people bought some too.

  Diseased, stolen steaks?

  He was wearing a white coat, Claire said. He had a truck.

  I’ll bet he had a truck.

  Harris went to see Madam Olympia, a reader and advisor. Her office was one room in a bad part of the city. Chicken wings burned in a frying pan on the stove. She got up and turned them off, then got up and turned them on again. She was wearing a t-shirt that had “Buffalo, City of No Illusions” printed on it.

  Tell me about yourself, she said.

  My life is hell, Harris said. He sketched the circumstances.

  I am bored to tears with this sort of thing, Madam Olympia said. To tears to tears.

  Well, Harris said, me too.

  Woman wakes up in the middle of the night, Madam Olympia said, she goes, what you thinkin’ about? You go, the float. She goes, is the float makin’ us money or not makin’ us money? You go, it depends on what happens Wednesday. She goes, that’s nice. You go, what do you mean, you don’t understand dick about the float, woman. She goes, well you don’t have to be nasty. You go, I’m not being nasty, you just don’t understand. She goes, so why don’t you tell me? Behind this, other agendas on both sides.

  The float is a secret, Harris said. Many men don’t even know about the float.

  To tears to tears to tears.

  Right, Harris said. How much do I owe you?

  Fifty dollars.

  The community whispered: Are they still living? How many times a week? What is that symbol on your breast? Did they consent to sign it? Did they refuse to sign it? In the rain? Before the fire? Has there been weight loss? How many pounds? What is their favorite color? Have they been audited? Was there a his side of the bed and a her side of the bed? Did she make it herself? Can we have a taste? Have they stolen money? Have they stolen stamps? Can he ride a horse? Can he ride a steer? What is his best time in the calf scramble? Is there money? Was there money? What happened to the money? What will happen to the money? Did success come early or late? Did success come? A red wig? At the Junior League? A red dress with a red wig? Was she ever a Fauve? Is that a theoretical position or a real position? Would they do it again? Again and again? How many times? A thousand times?

  Claire met Sweet Papa Cream Puff, a new person. He was the house pianist at Bells, a club frequented by disconsolate women in the early afternoons.

  He was a huge man and said that he was a living legend.

  What?

  Living legend, he said.

  I didn’t name the “Sweet Papa Cream Puff Blues” by that name, he said. It was named by the people of Chicago.

  Oh my oh my oh my, Claire said.

  This musta been ’bout nineteen twenty-one, twenty-two, he said.

  Those was wonderful days.

  There was one other man, at that time, who had part of my fame.

  Fellow named Red Top, he’s dead now.

  He was very good, scared me a little bit.

  I studied him.

  I had two or three situations on the problem.

  I worked very hard and bested him in nineteen twenty-three. June of that year.

  Wow, Claire said.

  Zum, Sweet Papa Cream Puff sang, zum zum zum zum zum.

  Six perfect treble notes in the side pocket.

  Sarah calls Harris from the clinic in Detroit and floors him with the news of her “miscarriage.” Saddened by the loss of the baby, he’s nevertheless elated to be free of his “obligation.” But when Harris rushes to declare his love for Claire, he’s crushed to learn that she is married to Sarah. Hoping against hope that Harris will stay with her, Sarah returns. Harris is hung over from drinking too much the night before when Sarah demands to know if he wants her. Unable to decide at first, he yields to Sarah’s feigned helplessness and tells her to stay. Later, they share a pleasant dinner at the Riverboat, where Claire is a waiter. Harris is impressed to learn that Sarah refused to join in his mother’s plan to dissuade him from becoming a policeman. Claire is embracing Harris before his departure when Sarah enters the office. When Harris is caught shoplifting, Claire’s kid sister, terrified at having to face a court appearance, signs for his release. Missing Sarah terribly, Harris calls her from New Orleans; when she tells him about becoming chairwoman of Claire’s new bank, he hangs up angrily. Although they’ve separated, his feelings for Claire haven’t died entirely, and her growing involvement with his new partner, Sarah, is a bitter pill for him to swallow, as he sits alone drinking too much brandy in Sarah’s study. Sarah blazes with anger when she finds Claire in the hotel’s banquet office making arrangements for Harris’s testimonial dinner, as Sarah, her right leg in a cast, walks up the steps of the brownstone and punches Claire’s bell, rage clearly burning in her eyes.

  Sarah visited Dr. Whorf, a good psychiatrist.

  Cold as death, she said.

  What?

  Cold as death.

  Good behavior is frequently painful, Dr. Whorf said. Shit you know that.

  Sarah was surprised to find that what she had told Dr. Whorf was absolutely true. She was fully miserable.

  Harris drunk again and yelling at Claire said that he was not drunk.

  I feel worse than you feel, she said.

  What?

  Worse, she said, woooooooorrrssse.

  You know what I saw this morning? he asked. Eight o’clock in the morning. I was out walking.

  Guy comes out of this house, wearing a suit, carrying an attaché case.

  He’s going to work, right?

  He gets about ten steps down the sidewalk and this woman comes out. Out of the same house.

  She says, “James?”

  He turns around and walks back toward her.

  She’s wearing a robe. Pink and orange.

  She says, “James, I . . . hate . . . you.”

  Maybe it’s everywhere, Claire said. A pandemic.

  I don’t think that, Harris said.

  This is the filthiest phone booth I’ve ever been in, Harris said to Sarah.

  What?

  The filthiest phone booth I have ever been in.

  Hang up darling hang up and find another phone booth thank you for th
e jewels the pearls and the emeralds and the onyx but I haven’t changed my mind they’re quite quite beautiful just amazing but I haven’t changed my mind you’re so kind but I have done the right thing painful as it was and I haven’t changed my mind—

  He remembered her standing over the toothpaste with her face two inches from the toothpaste because she couldn’t see it without her contacts in.

  Freud said, Claire said, that in the adult, novelty always constitutes the condition for orgasm.

  Sweet Papa looked away.

  Oh me oh my.

  Well you know the gents they don’t know what they after they own selves, very often.

  When do they find out?

  At the eleventh hour let me play you a little thing I wrote in the early part of the century I call it “Verklärte Nacht” that means “stormy weather” in German, I played there in Berlin oh about—

  Claire placed her arms around Sweet Papa Cream Puff and hugged the stuffing out of him.

  What?

  What?

  What?

  What?

  By a lucky stroke Harris made an amount of money in the market. He bought Claire a beautiful black opal. She was pleased.

  He looked to the future.

  Claire will continue to be wonderful.

  As will I, to the best of my ability.

  The New York Times will be published every day and I will have to wash it off my hands when I have finished reading it, every day.

  What? Claire said.

  Smile.

  What?

  Smile.

  I put a name in an envelope, and sealed the envelope; and put that envelope in another envelope with a spittlebug and some quantity of boric acid; and put that envelope in a still larger envelope which contained also a woman tearing her gloves to tatters; and put that envelope in the mail to Fichtelgebirge. At the Fichtelgebirge Post Office I asked if there was mail for me, with a mysterious smile the clerk said, “Yes,” I hurried with the envelope to London, arriving with snow, and put the envelope in the Victoria and Albert Museum, bowing to the curators in the Envelope Room, where the wallpaper hung down in thick strips. I put the Victoria and Albert Museum in a still larger envelope which I placed in the program of the Royal Danish Ballet, in the form of an advertisement for museums, boric acid, wallpaper. I put the program of the Royal Danish Ballet into the North Sea for two weeks. Then, I retrieved it, it was hanging down in thick strips, I sent it to a machine-vask on H. C. Andersen Boulevard, everything came out square and neat, I was overjoyed. I put the square, neat package in a safe place, and put the safe place in a vault designed by Caspar David Friedrich, German romantic landscape painter of the last century. I slipped the vault into a history of art (Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1980). But, in a convent library on the side of a hill near a principal city of Montana, it fell out of the history of art into a wastebasket, a thing I could not have predicted. I bound the wastebasket in stone, with a matchwood shroud covering the stone, and placed it in the care of Charles the Good, Charles the Bold, and Charles the Fair. They stand juggling cork balls before the many-times-encased envelope, whispering names which are not the right one. I put the three kings into a new blue suit, it walked away from me most confidently.