The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  “Take a load off your feet. We Brazilians tend to be hunting-and-gathering peoples.” And the band was indeed now plucking burgers and drinks and platters of ribs from under the tables, from out of the waitress stands and light fixtures.

  “I never thought of looking there!” Patty said, astonished, but the chief was moving off with his band as they continued their hunt into the forests of the ever-expanding restaurant. “Wait,” she wheedled. “Please—I’ll get your bread and butter…” But the wonderful painted people who had paused so briefly in her sleep on their way off the face of the earth were disappearing through the trees. “Please don’t leave!” she cried loudly, waking herself up.

  “I’m here for you, baby,” Stuart murmured from out of his own dream.

  Baby! Patty propped herself up on her elbow and stared at Stuart’s pale, knotted face. Who in God’s name could Stuart be calling baby?

  “Stuart,” she said that afternoon over coffee. “I think I’ve let myself get sidetracked somehow.”

  “Hey, are you wearing some different kind of eye makeup these days?” Stuart asked.

  “No,” Patty said. “Listen, Stuart. It’s time for me to start doing something interesting.”

  “You are doing something interesting,” he said.

  “That’s not what I mean, Stuart, as you know.”

  “If you’re not careful,” he said, shaking a finger, “your wish will come true and you’ll wake up one morning shackled to some corporate cutthroat who cracks jokes about his interior designer.”

  “Slurp slurp,” she said.

  “Look, you’re too poorly informed to be familiar with the behavioral and attitudinal alternatives that are history’s legacy, but trust me, Patty. You’re at a crossroads here. We’re all soldiers in the battles between historical forces and you’d better look down at your uniform to see what side you’re fighting for before you do something you’ll be sorry about.”

  “Stuart, are you telling me that I ought to be a waitress for the rest of my life?”

  “It’s honest work,” he said.

  “Honest!” Patty said. “It’s funny. TV and books and movies are full of waitress jokes. But it’s extremely hard work!”

  “What do you think work is?” Stuart said. “What do you think people have been doing all these millennia? What do you think less privileged people do? Not less intelligent, not less attractive, not less deserving—less privileged. Just because history has tossed a bouquet to your weensy little culture, you think actual work is an ignominy, a degradation—”

  “You know”—Patty was not going to let Stuart outtalk her—“considering how…how entranced you are by the sanctity of toil, it’s a wonder you never indulge in any yourself.”

  “I’ve tried,” said Stuart, instantly in the right.

  “I know.” Patty held up her hand. “I take it back.”

  “I’ve tried waiting on tables, I’ve tried moving furniture…”

  “I know,” she said. “I know I know I know I know, never mind. Yaargh.” He had tried. It was indisputable. He had tried waiting on tables, but, being Stuart, was confined to low-income jobs in dingy coffee shops or delis, where he was fired before his first shift was out, having kindled, to his own perplexity and the manager’s fury, little feuds that sprang up like brushfires at the tables and in the kitchen. He had tried moving furniture—for three days he’d gone off in the mornings with fear in his eyes and returned in the evenings looking shocked and broken. On the fourth day his body had refused to raise him from bed and reproached him with racking pains. He would have tried, gladly, to drive a taxi, except that he couldn’t drive and no instructor would let him learn, and when occasionally Patty had insisted that they travel by taxi, Stuart wedged himself back in his seat, peeking through his fingers and gasping in such a way as to provoke the driver into a murderous bumper-car rage. “But you know what, Stuart?” Patty bore down on her powers of expression. “It seems to me that if it’s a foregone conclusion you’re going to fail at a given undertaking you might examine your own motives to see whether there’s something hypocritical about them.”

  “Hypocritical!” Stuart said furiously. “And you used to be nice.”

  “Caring—a word that makes you throw up! I used to be caring.”

  “Nice. You used to be pretty nice. Nice. A little, pretty nice glob of unformed humanity who couldn’t put two words together. Now, barely one year later, slimy sophistries drop from your lips like vipers and toads.”

  “Wait!” Patty said, standing. Because the most incredible thing had just occurred to her. If she was going to get on with her life, it was not only she who had to get a job—Stuart would have to be gotten a job as well! As things stood, he couldn’t possibly afford an apartment of his own, and she couldn’t just put him out on the street to starve. Even Marcia, after all, had left him provided for, and now it was Patty who had to help him, whether he wanted help or not. “That’s not what I meant, Stuart,” she said ingratiatingly. “I expressed myself poorly. I only meant why should you wait on tables or move furniture when there are so many other, better, things you’re suited for?”

  “‘Better.’” Stuart sniffed.

  “Better paid, then, if you prefer.”

  “Patty,” he said, “just what are all these things I’m so well suited for?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Stuart. How should I know? Why couldn’t you…write copy, for example?”

  “What is copy, actually?” Stuart said. “Is it anything like prose?”

  “Or be a reviewer again, for some publication. Or get something done with some of your poems? After all, you’re an artist, really.”

  “Yeah, and why don’t I rack up a bunch of grants while I’m at it, and have my picture taken for magazines? ‘Artist’—you know what you think an artist is, Patty? You think an artist is some great-looking big guy in a T-shirt, with a bottle in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, who has five hundred thousand dollars zooming around the stock market, and a car like a big shiny penis.”

  “Stuart,” Patty said patiently as she tried to inhibit a telltale blush, “please don’t be revolting. The point is that I have complete respect for your convictions, no matter what they might be. It’s just that I worry.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said.

  “Well, I do worry. And I’ll tell you one thing I’m especially worried about right now. The Nice Guys. Yesterday Mr. Martinez told me they want a duplex. And you know what that means. That means they’re going to have to get someone out—either us or Mrs. Jorgenson. And Mrs. Jorgenson isn’t going to go without making trouble. We’re an illegal sublet, Stuart. We’re not supposed to be here. Especially you. We could get Marcia evicted!”

  Stuart sighed. “I’m sorry, Patty. I know you want me to leave.”

  “Oh, Stuart,” she said guiltily. “I just want you to find something that will make you happy.”

  “But Patty.” He looked at her. “I am happy.”

  Patty, however, had stumbled upon a decision lying in her path, and during the next few days she treated Stuart with the solicitude due to the condemned.

  But when she called Donna, there was a bad moment. A minuscule silence preceded Donna’s first words. “Oh. Patty,” Donna said then. “Right.”

  So Patty judged it best to come straight to the point: she wanted to talk to Fletcher at the magazine. She was aching for an outlet for her talents. She had developed a feverish interest even in layout, which he could surely exploit. If there was nothing open in that line at the moment, perhaps she could meet him, in case something were to open up in the future. Or in case there was anything. Anything at all.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not the greatest timing,” Donna said. “Everything’s all sort of set up now.”

  “But if we could just meet,” Patty said.

  “I could give Fletcher your number,” Donna said.

  “And you know what?” Patty said. “My roommate’s a writer. And he’s had a lot of
journalistic experience.”

  “Well,” Donna said, “the problem is, Fletcher already has a lot of writers.”

  “I understand,” Patty said. She took a deep breath to clarify her mind. “Anyhow, it might not work out with Stuart. He’s like a lot of artists—very unpredictable, if you know what I mean. Kind of dangerous.”

  “Mmm…” Donna said. “Dangerous…”

  And when Patty finished talking (talking and talking) Donna said, “Well, we might as well all have dinner one night when you’re not working. At least we’d—at least we’d get a chance to, you know…meet.”

  “Patty,” Stuart said. “Why do I have to do this?”

  “You just have to, Stuart, you have to.” Oh, God, Patty thought. If she weren’t careful, Stuart’s suspicious nature might lead him to the conclusion that she was trying to market them both. “Donna’s asked me to do this, and I can’t go alone, because she’s just…finding her way around with this guy, who also happens to be her employer, and who, I understand, is a very serious and profound person, incidentally, so she wants to be with some people who are…pleasant. And…pleasant to be with. And, by the way,” Patty said, to change the subject, “you’re not planning to wear that shirt, are you?”

  “What’s the matter with my shirt?” he said. “I thought nerds were considered fashionable these days.”

  “Not actual nerds, Stuart. Just people who look like nerds.”

  “Patty,” he said. “I really don’t want to do this.”

  “Forget about the shirt, Stuart. However you’re comfortable. I just don’t want to walk in looking pathetic and desperate.”

  “Desperate about what?” Stuart asked shrewdly.

  To pacify him, Patty agreed to forgo a taxi. They picked their way uncompanionably in the steaming evening through a cluster of shapeless creatures who sat at the subway entrance, surrounded by bags that appeared to be stuffed with filthy, discarded gifts, muttering to themselves in garbled fragments of some lost language. Mrs. Jorgenson would undoubtedly be joining them—assuming Patty could protect herself and Stuart—when the Nice Guys got their duplex. Well, Patty thought, good riddance.

  Patty grew increasingly ill-tempered as she and Stuart sweltered underground, waiting for the shrieking train. And by the time they reached the restaurant her mascara was creeping downward and she was cross through and through. So this is it, she thought, looking around at the mirrors and linen, at the graceful sprays of freesia. So this was where everyone had been while she’d been eating Stuart’s barley-and-zucchini casseroles.

  Donna was already at a table with Fletcher—a man, as it turned out, of unparalleled presentability. “Hello,” Patty said.

  “Well, well,” said Donna, across whose face was written “I thought you said this guy was an artist.” But Donna was not one to let the failings of others cloud her mood, Patty knew, and by the time drinks had been brought she was mollified.

  Donna had buffed herself up to a high gloss in the months since Patty had seen her (nothing wrong with her mascara), and she was talking with Fletcher of matters entirely foreign to Patty. But strangely, Patty realized, Stuart could manage this conversational obstacle course strewn with technical matters peculiar to periodicals and the private lives of various people involved with them; Stuart knew how to join in.

  Obviously, however, Stuart participated entirely without pleasure. It was for her sake, Patty thought, because of her injunctions, and therefore the situation was—Heavens! The situation was dangerous!

  Just as Stuart began to fidget noticeably, a new waiter appeared, to deal out menus.

  “Oh—” said Fletcher, evidently startled to have been faced with someone as handsome as himself. “The pasta’s excellent, incidentally, but I’d avoid the fish.”

  Patty looked at him bleakly. Why were they all here? This wasn’t an interview; it wasn’t—it wasn’t—She couldn’t even think of what it was that this wasn’t. She looked at the prices on the menu, and she looked at Donna and at Stuart and back at Fletcher. Fletcher didn’t care what this was or wasn’t; he was just having dinner!

  Nerves had dismantled Patty’s appetite, and the menu seemed to be written in Esperanto, so when the waiter returned Patty simply tagged along with Donna and Fletcher. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll also have the salade panachée and then the perciatelli all’amatriciana.”

  The waiter turned and stared at Stuart. “O.K.,” Stuart said hopelessly. “What the hell.”

  “Certainly,” said the waiter with deferential contempt.

  “Who does that kid think he is?” Donna said as the waiter left. “He’s a waiter.”

  Fletcher continued the line of thought he’d been pursuing with Donna as the waiter returned with their salads. “So my point is that Jay Resnick is doing a feature series on Saffi Sheinheld for Dallas by Daylight. And Saffi happens to be the senior vice-president of SunBelt, Dallas’s biggest account. Now, I would consider that ethically questionable.”

  Ethically questionable—That fool, Patty thought. There’d be no holding Stuart now. “Hey, Stuart”—she foraged wildly in her salad—“this purple thing is a pepper.”

  For a while Patty struggled to match the fun bits of her salad with his, and although Stuart suffered quietly, he looked like a rag doll that had been thrown over a cliff, and soon Patty felt that she, too, was teetering on the brink.

  “Donna tells me you’re in graphics,” Fletcher said, flinging Patty a rope.

  “Terrific field.” Patty swung to safety. “So incredible, for example, how design, or even layout, can send these tiny, subtle signals. ‘Buy me,’ for example, or—”

  “Visual appeal,” Fletcher agreed, glancing up as the waiter arrived with their pasta. “Crucial.” The waiter smirked.

  “Is that bacon?” Stuart demanded, pointing at his plate.

  “It’s only a little pancetta,” the waiter said.

  “I understand you’re into film,” Fletcher said obliviously to Stuart.

  “‘Into’?” Stuart said. “‘Film’?”

  “Look,” Patty said, plunging into her salad and unearthing a greenish disk rimmed with hair. “I bet no one else has one of these!”

  “Or have I misunderstood?” Fletcher said to Stuart as if Patty hadn’t spoken.

  “Kind of,” Stuart said with an equability that made Patty’s heart plunge. “What I really ‘am,’ see, is mentally ill.”

  “Yes?” Fletcher was guarded but ready to be amused.

  “Yeah,” Stuart said. “Mental illness. An exacting mistress. It doesn’t leave me a lot of time for other things to be…‘into.’ Like racquetball. Or parenting. Or leveraged buyouts.”

  Patty looked down at the table, struggling against an untimely smile, and then looked meekly back up at Fletcher. But Fletcher had been enveloped, during the silence, by a glacier. His disapproval gleamed faintly out from behind centuries of ice, which Donna’s voice splintered like a hatchet. “I don’t think that’s very funny,” Donna said. “A lot of people actually are mentally ill, you know.”

  “Patty—” Stuart yelped.

  “All right, Stuart,” Patty said, getting to her feet. “Stuart, you didn’t eat any of that pancetta, did you? Stuart has a…a sensitivity to various additives used in pork products.” She was sick of this; she didn’t care how ridiculous she sounded; these people had never intended to help them. “And you can just never tell when it might—Listen, Stuart, we’d better get you home before you—Here, this should cover our share.” Stuart in tow, she made her way clumsily to the door.

  On the way back to Marcia’s in a taxi, Stuart was oddly tranquil. And it was he who, after minutes of silence, spoke first. “I’m sorry if I put a crimp in whatever the hell you were trying to accomplish,” he said quietly.

  Contradictory responses raced through Patty’s brain for expression, and clogged. “Give me a break, Stuart,” she managed to say.

  “I understand,” Stuart said. “Your better judgment’s been under a lo
t of pressure.”

  “Stuart—” Patty was gratified to find that indignation was the attitude forceful enough to distinguish itself from the mute tangle choking her. “Please don’t talk to me as if I were a criminal. Don’t talk to me as if I were a psychopath. I know the difference between right and wrong. It was wrong of me not to be more forthcoming with you. It was wrong of me to wreck a good opportunity through carelessness. It was wrong of me to waste all that money. I know that what I did was wrong, and I’m trying to apologize.” But Stuart just hunched over and looked out the window, where the lights were streaming by. “Stuart—”

  “Take it easy, Patty,” he said. “I’m not angry.”

  “Then don’t act like this,” she said. “Just criticize me, please. Give me a lecture.”

  But Stuart only patted her hand as if she were an overtired child, and it was when they got back inside the apartment that he himself took his things from the closet and packed them up. “Where will you go?” Patty said. “You don’t have anyplace to go.” And when Stuart took her hand and held it for a moment against his closed eyes, she might have been touching a fallen leaf or petal, or the wing of a chloroformed butterfly.

  After Stuart closed the door behind him it was very quiet. And then it kept on being very quiet. Patty had to force herself to stand up and go to the door.

  Outside, the evening trembled with threats of a summer storm, and the air was alive with residues of color. In the growing dark the sky was beginning to twinkle with a thousand little windows.

  Mr. Martinez smiled up at Patty from the stoop, where he sat watching a bunch of spindly, raucous, big-eyed children as they danced in some sort of circle game, playing with a violent urgency, competing against the approaching storm for what was left of the evening. “Hello, miss!” Mr. Martinez said.

  Patty smiled at him absently. How beautiful that restaurant tonight had been! And now, of all things, she was hungry. If Stuart hadn’t left, they could at least have gone someplace for a cheap bite. Well, it hadn’t been her fault that he’d left—it hadn’t been her fault.