334

by Thomas M. Disch

  5. Richard M. Williken (2024)

  They would sit together in the darkroom, officially the bedroom of his son. Richard M. Williken. Jr. Richard Jr. existed for the sake of various tiles in offices about the city, though upon need a boy answering to the name could be got on loan from his wife’s cousin. Without their imaginary son the Willikens could never have held on to a two-bedroom apartment now that their real children had left home.

  They might listen to whatever tapes were being copied usually since they were his specialty to Alkan or Gottschalk or Boagni. The music was the ostensible reason, among other ostensible reasons such as friendship, that she hung around. He would smoke, or doodle, or watch the second hand simplify another day. His ostensible reason was that he was working, and in the sense that he was copying tapes and taking messages and sometimes renting out, for next to nothing an hour, his fictitious son’s bed, he was working. But in the sense that counted he was not.

  The phone would ring. Williken would pick it up and say. “One-five, five-six.” Shrimp would wrap herself in her thin arms and watch him until by the lowering of his eyes she knew the call wasn’t from Seattle.

  When the lack of some kind of mutual acknowledgment became too raw they would have pleasant little debates about Art. Art: Shrimp loved the word (it was right up there with “epithesis,” “mystic,” and “Tiffany”), and poor Williken couldn’t leave it alone. Despite that they tried never to descend to the level of honest complaint, their separate, secret unhappinesses would find ways to poke up their heads into the long silences or to become, with a bit of camouflage, the real subjects of the little debates, as when Williken, too worn out to be anything but serious, had announced: “Art? Art’s just the opposite, true heart. It’s patchwork. It’s bits and pieces. What you think is all flow and force— ”

  “And fun,” she added.

  “—are an illusion. But the artist can’t share it. He knows better.”

  “The way prostitutes aren’t supposed ever to have orgasms? I talked to a prostitute once, mentioning no names, who said she had orgasms all the time.”

  “It doesn’t sound very professional. When an artist is being entertained his work suffers.”

  “Yes. yes, that’s certainly true,” brushing the idea from her lap like crumbs, “for you. But I should think that for someone like—” she gestured toward the machinery, the four slowly revolving mandates of “From Sea to Shining Sea” “—John Herbert MacDowell, for instance. For him it must be like being in love. Except that instead of loving one person, his love spreads out in every direction.”

  Williken made a face. “I’ll agree that an is like love. But that doesn’t contradict what I said before. It’s all patchwork and patience, art and love both.”

  “And passion? Doesn’t that come in at all?”

  “Only for the very young.” Charitably he left it for her to decide if that shoe fit.

  This went on, off, and on for the better part of a month, and in all that time he indulged in only one conscious cruelty. For all his personal grubbiness—the clothes that looked like dirty bandages, the skimpy beard the smells—Williken was a great fusspot, and it was his style of fuss (in housekeeping now as it had been in art) to efface the evidences of his own undesirable presence, to wipe away the fingerprints and baffle his pursuers. Thus each object that was allowed to be visible in the room came to possess a kind of heightened significance, like so many skulls in a monk’s cell: the pink telephone. Richard Jr.’s sagging bed the speakers, the long silvery swan-neck of the water faucet, the calendar with lovers rumbling in the heavy snows of “January 2024.” His cruelty was simply not changing the month.

  She never said as she might have, “Willy, it’s the tenth of May, for Christ’s sake.” Possibly she found some grueling satisfaction in whatever hurt his reminder caused her. Certainly she gnawed on it. He had no first-hand knowledge of such feelings. The whole drama of her abandonment seemed ludicrous to him. Anguish for anguish’s sake.

  It might have gone on like that till summer, but then one day the calendar was gone and one of his own photographs was in its place.

  “Is it yours?” she asked.

  His awkwardness was sincere. He nodded.

  “I noticed it the minute I walked into the room.”

  A photograph of a glass half full of water resting on a wet glass shelf. A second, empty glass outside the picture cast a shadow across the white tiles of the wall.

  Shrimp walked up close to it. “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Williken said. He felt confused, insulted, anguished. “Usually I don’t like having my own things hanging about. They go dead on you. But I thought—”

  “I like it. I do.”

  6. Amparo (2024)

  On her birthday, the 29th of May, she had realized that she hated her mother.

  Her eleventh birthday. It was a horrible realization, but Geminis can’t deceive themselves. There was simply nothing about Mama you could admire and so much to loathe. She bullied herself and Mickey mercilessly, but what was worse were the times she’d miscalculate her stupid pills, slime off into a glorious depression and tell them sob-stories about her wasted life. It was, certainly, a wasted life but Amparo couldn’t see that she’d ever made any effort not to waste it. She didn’t know what work was. Even around the house she let poor old Grummy do everything. She just lay about, like some animal at the zoo, snuffling and scratching her smelly cunt. Amparo hated her.

  Shrimp, in the way she sometimes had of seeming telepathic, said to her, before the dinner, that they had better have a talk, and she concocted a thin lie to get her out of the apartment. They went down to 15, where a Chinese lady had opened a new shop, and Shrimp bought the shampoo she was being so silly about.

  Then to the roof for the inevitable lecture. The sunshine had brought half the building up on top but they found a spot almost their own. Shrimp slipped out of her blouse, and Amparo couldn’t help thinking what a difference there was between her and her mother, even though Shrimp was actually older. No sags, no wrinkles, and only a hint of graininess. Whereas Lottie, with every initial advantage on her side, had let herself become a monster of obesity. Or at least (“monster” was perhaps an exaggeration) she was heading down the road lickety-split.

  “Is that all?” Amparo asked, once Shrimp had produced her last pious excuse for Lottie’s various awfulnesses. “Can we go downstairs now that I’m properly ashamed?”

  “Unless you want to tell me your side of the story?”

  “I didn’t think I was supposed to have a side.”

  “That’s true when you’re ten years old. At eleven you’re allowed to have your own point of view.”

  Amparo grinned a grin that said, Good old democratic Aunt Shrimp. Then she was serious. “Mama hates me, it’s as simple as that.” She gave examples.

  Shrimp appeared unimpressed. “You’d rather bully her—is that your point?”

  “No.” But giggling. “But it would be a change.”

  “You do, you know. You bully her something dreadful. You’re a worse tyrant than Madame Who’s-It with the goiters.”

  Amparo’s second grin was more tentative. “Me!”

  “You. Even Mickey can see it, but he’s afraid to say anything or you’ll turn on him. We’re all afraid.”

  “Don’t be a silly. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Because I say sarcastic things now and then?”

  “And then and then. You’re as unpredictable as an airplane schedule. You wait till she’s down, completely at the bottom, and then you go for juggler. What was it you said this morning?”

  “I don’t remember anything I said this morning.”

  “About the hippopotamus in the mud?”

  “I said that to Grummy. She didn’t hear. She was in bed, as usual.”

  “She heard.”

  “Then I’m sorry. What should I do, apologize?”

  “You should stop making things worse for her.”
<
br />   Amparo shrugged. “She should stop making things worse for me. I hate to always harp about it, but I do want to go to the Lowen School. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not as though I were asking permission to go to Mexico and cut off my breasts.”

  “I agree. It’s probably a good school. But you’re at a good school.”

  “But I want to go to the Lowen School. It would be a career, but of course Mama wouldn’t understand that.”

  “She doesn’t want you living away from home. Is that so cruel?”

  “Because if I left, then she’d only have Mickey to bully. Anyhow I’d be here officially, which is all she cares anyhow.”

  Shrimp was silent for a while, in what seemed a considering way. But what was there to consider? It was all so obvious. Amparo writhed.

  At last Shrimp said, “Let’s make a bargain. If you promise not to be Little Miss Bitch, I’ll do what I can to talk her round to signing you up.”

  “Will you? Will you really?”

  “Will you? That’s what I’m asking.”

  “I’ll grovel at her feet. Anything.”

  “If you don’t, Amparo, if you go on the way you’ve been going, believe me, I’ll tell her I think the Lowen School will destroy your character, what little there is.”

  “I promise. I promise to be as nice as—as what?”

  “As a birthday cake?”

  “As nice as a birthday cake, absolutely!”

  They shook hands on it and put on their clothes and went downstairs where a real, rather sad, rather squalid birthday cake was waiting for her. Try as she might, poor old Grummy just couldn’t cook. Juan had come by during the time they’d been on the roof, which was, more than any of her crumby presents, a nice surprise. The candles were lit, and everyone sang happy birthday: Juan, Grummy, Mama, Mickey, Shrimp.

  Happy birthday to you.

  Happy birthday to you.

  Happy birthday, dear Amparo.

  Happy birthday to you.

  “Make a wish,” Mickey said.

  She made her wish, then with one decisive gust, blew out all twelve candles.

  Shrimp winked at her. “Now don’t tell anyone what it was or you won’t get it.”

  She hadn’t, in fact, been wishing for the Lowen School, since that was hers by right. What she’d wished instead was for Lottie to die.

  Wishes never come true the way you think. A month later her father was dead. Juan, who’d never been unhappy a day in his life, had committed suicide.

  7. Len Rude (2024)

  Weeks after the Anderson debacle, when he’d last been able to assure himself that there’d be no dire consequences, Mrs. Miller summoned him uptown for “a little talk.” Though in the long-range view a nobody (her position scarcely brought her to middle management level), Mrs. Miller would soon be writing up his field summary, which made her, for now, a rather godlike nobody.

  He panicked disgracefully. All morning he couldn’t think of anything but what to wear, what to wear? He settled on a maroon Perry Como-type sweater with a forest green scarf peeking out. Wholesome, not sexy, but not pointedly not-sexy.

  He had a twenty-minute wait outside the lady’s cubbyhole. Usually he excelled at waiting. Cafeterias, toilets, launderettes—his life was rich in opportunities to acquire that skill. But he was so certain he was about to be axed that by the end of the twenty minutes he was on the brink of acting out his favorite crisis fantasy: I will get up, I will walk out the door. Every door. With never a word of good-bye nor a look backward. And then? Ah, there was the rub. Once he was out the door, where could he go that his identity, the whole immense dossier of his life, wouldn’t trail after him like a tin can tied to his tail? So he waited, and then the interview was over, and Mrs. Miller was shaking his hand and saying something bland and anecdotal about Brown, whose book had been decorating his lap. Then, thank you, and thank you for coming in. Good-bye, Mrs. Miller. Good-bye, Len.

  What had been the point? She hadn’t mentioned Anderson except to say in passing that of course the poor man ought to be in Bellevue and that a few like that are statistically inevitable for anyone. It was better than he’d expected and more than he deserved.

  Instead of the axe there was only his new assignment: Hanson, Nora/ Apartment 1812/ 334 E. 11th St. Mrs. Miller said she was a nice old lady—“if a little difficult at times.” But all the cases he was put on this year were nice and old and difficult, since he was studying, in the catalogue’s words, “Problems of Aging.” The one odd thing about this Hanson was that she had a sizable brood under her wings (though not as large as the printout had indicated; the son was married now) and would not seem to be dangerously lonely. However, according to Mrs. Miller, her son’s marriage had “unsettled her” (ominous word!) which was why she stood in need of his warmth and attention four hours a week. A stitch in time seemed to be what Mrs. Miller had in mind.

  The more he thought about it the more this Hanson woman sounded like an impending disaster. Mrs. Miller had probably called him in to cover herself, so that if and when this one went in the same wrong direction Anderson had gone, it would be his fault, not the nice old difficult lady’s, and not absolutely Alexa Miller’s. She was probably doing her memorandum for the file right now, if she hadn’t done it in advance.

  All this for two miserable dollars an hour. Sweet fucking Jesus, if he’d known four years ago what he’d be getting into, he’d never have switched his major from English. Better to teach assholes to read the want ads than be an emotional nursemaid to senile psychotics.

  That was the dark side. There was also a bright side. By the fall semester he’d have cleared up his field requirements. Then two years of smooth academic sailing, and then, O happy day, Leonard Rude would be a Doctor of Philosophy, which we all know is the next best condition to out-and-out freedom.

  8. The Love Story (2024)

  The MODICUM office had sent round an apologetic, shaggy boy with bad skin and a whining midwestern accent. She couldn’t get him to explain why he’d been sent to visit her. He claimed it was a mystery just as much to him, some bureaucrat’s brainstorm, there was never any sense to these projects but he hoped she’d go along with it for his sake. A job is a job is a job, and this job in addition was for his degree. He was going to the university?

  Yes, but not, he assured her at once, that he’d come here to study her. Students were assigned to these make-work projects because there wasn’t enough real work to go around. That was the welfare state for you. He hoped they’d be friends.

  Mrs. Hanson couldn’t bring herself to feel unfriendly, but what she asked him quite bluntly were they supposed to do, as friends? Len—she kept forgetting his name and he kept reminding her it was Len—suggested that he read a book to her.

  “Aloud?”

  “Yes, why not? It’s one I have to read this term anyhow. It’s a super book.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is,” she said, alarmed again. “I’m sure I’d learn all kinds of things. But still.” She turned her head sideways and read the golden title of a fat, black book he’d laid down on the kitchen table. Something OLOGY.

  “Even so.”

  Len laughed. “Fiddle-dee-dee, Mrs. Hanson, not that one! I can’t read that one myself.”

  The book they were to read was a novel he’d been assigned in an English class. He took it out of his pocket. The cover showed a pregnant woman sitting naked on the lap of a man in a blue suit.

  “What a strange cover,” she said, by way of compliment.

  Len took this for another sign of reluctance. He insisted that the story would seem quite commonplace once she accepted the author’s basic premise. A love story. That’s all. She was bound to like it. Everyone did. “It’s a super book,” he said again.

  She could see he meant to read it, so she led him into the living room and settled herself in one corner of the sofa and Len in the other. She found the Oralines in her purse. As there were only three left, she didn’t offer one to him. She began sucking complaisant
ly. Then, as a humorous afterthought she fit a premium button over the end of the stick. It said, I DON’T BELIEVE IT! But Len took no notice or else he didn’t get the joke.

  He started reading and right from page one it was sex. That in itself wouldn’t have upset her. She had always believed in sex and enjoyed it and though she did think that having sex ought to be a private matter there was certainly no harm in a candid discussion. What was embarrassing was that the whole scene took place on a sofa that was wobbling because one leg was missing. The sofa that she and Len were sitting on also had a missing leg and wobbled, and it seemed to Mrs. Hanson that some sort of comparison couldn’t be avoided.

  The sofa scene dragged on and on. Then nothing at all happened for a few pages, talk and descriptions. Why, she kept wondering, would the government want to pay college students to come to people’s homes and read pornography to them? Wasn’t the whole point of college to keep as many young people as possible occupied and out of jobs?

  But perhaps this was an experiment. An experiment in adult education! When she thought about it, no other explanation fit the facts half so well. Viewed in this light the book suddenly became a challenge to her and she tried to pay closer attention. Someone had died, and the woman the story was about—her name was Linda—was going to inherit a fortune. Mrs. Hanson had gone to school with someone called Linda, a dull-witted Negro girl whose father owned two grocery stores. She’d disliked the name ever since. Len stopped reading.

  “Oh, go on,” she said. “I’m enjoying it.”

  “So am I, Mrs. Hanson, but it’s four o’clock.”