Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  In either version, X and Z get Y's bed.

  Or were about to, that is.

  For it would first be necessary for Y to give X a set of keys and a caution, which latter was this—to vacate the premises before a certain hour, there being a cleaning woman and a delivery person scheduled to put in appearances at Y's at that hour in the first case and shortly thereafter in the second.

  Did X understand?

  He did.

  It was not difficult for the teacher to be instructed by the student since, apart from the writing of stories, X appreciated he had everything to learn. On the other hand, this wasn't much—since, for X, very little stood apart from the writing of stories, the major exceptions being X's wife and now, of course, Z. And besides, Z only counted in what Z did for X's hair.

  In X's opinion, both before and after this story, he wouldn't have had any of it if it hadn't been for Z.

  Now, in a good story, the reader would be entitled to know why. What was it that lay at the root of X's unlucky hair? Didn't X have a lady without a letter to massage his scalp for him, finger it with enriched shampoos?

  He did.

  In one version, this very question occurs to X himself-—and in the same version, he is unable to answer.

  In a second version, the wife is absorbed by her interests as much as X is by his, typing being the only one of them that seems evident in persisting in her.

  True enough, it was a means of supplementing the meager income produced from X's teaching. And anyway, didn't his wife type also for X—his lecture notes, his comments to students, though never a story he'd made up?

  X did not have to make up stories. Those of them that were written for him to read and to hand back were, in his opinion, quite enough as to the category of stories.

  "BE OUT BY TWO SHARP," Y warned. "Because the cleaning lady comes right when I told you on the dot."

  "Good God," said X, unimaginative as usual, "you certainly don't expect me to let her in."

  Y sighed in weariness with expectation coinciding with event.

  "Of course not. She has keys," Y said.

  "Two o'clock?" said X, wishing to make certain he was not uninstructed as to fact.

  "Um," Y said. "She promised to be there in time to let the delivery in."

  NOW TO THE GOOD PARTS.

  Z was undressed.

  Naked.

  Not a stitch on her barber's body.

  And she had carried it all into the bathroom to urinate and to place into position her device.

  X, for his part, sat on the bed, his hair-deprived being quivering with desire—too, it must be admitted, with spasms of anxiety set astir by what X now sees showing in the space between the floor and a certain closed door. Through the crack a red light glows—a red light in a closet? A light lit? Even an ordinary light would have been something to wonder about—and X's brain went to work, invoking its powers to proliferate fictions, imagine revisions, get scared.

  A hidden camera? Maybe even some sort of sound-recording mechanism, too. Yes, of course! It's a setup. Y, Y, Y! It's revenge for all the criticisms, for "Very good—except, you know, for the snake."

  X BETOOK HIMSELF and leapt off the bed.

  "Stay where you are!" X called to Z. "Don't be alarmed," he counseled manfully, "but I think there's something up," and with this X crossed the tiny apartment to view the source of the luminosity from within.

  X would have screamed had there been any breath in him to do it with. He threw his shoulder against the door and shoved as strenuously as a man with too little hair could. But the thing had its nose against the bottom of the door. When it came to pushing it back in, X was no match for what was pushing its way out.

  It lumbered sluggishly toward the center of the floor as X flew back to the bed, hopped up on the mattress, and threw himself against the wall in defeat.

  THAT'S HOW the cleaning lady found them—Z locked in the bathroom and X trembling against the asylum of the wall. It was she who got the thing back into the closet, where its feed was and where its bowl of water was and where the infrared bulb did its best to simulate the temp of its natural habitat. She just shooed it back in there with a broom, more startled of course by naked, glabrous X (a bit of diction X would have deplored, would have shunned, were this composition to have been his composition) and by the small shrieks borne from the bathroom than by the giant lizard slumbering heavily in the middle of the apartment floor.

  "IT'S CALLED A MONITOR LIZARD," Y told X years later at a cocktail party celebrating the publication of Y's first collection of stories. "Dead now—couldn't take the climate. African, you know. Largest of the land lizards."

  "I thought the Komodo was the biggest," said X, trying to put the best face on things.

  "Well, you know," Y said, and turned to greet another ardent bearer of admirations, leaving X to doubt even the little he dared to claim.

  THAT STORY ENDS HERE. But this one goes on for a bit.

  In this story, the end has different versions.

  In one version, the delivery was a manuscript, and the person making the delivery was Y's typist—who is, of course, X's wife, and who arrives in time to see the cleaning woman gathering up the clothes anticipated by the man who is standing on the bed. In another version, we have Y inscribing a copy of his book for presentation to his old, valued, indispensable teacher, X.

  Y writes: Things always work out for the best. With affection and appreciation, your grateful student and collaborator.

  And then there is the date—and the city.

  And the author's name.

  SOPHISTICATION

  THE MAN WHO STOOD, who stood on sidewalks, who stood facing streets, who stood with his back against store windows or against the walls of buildings, never asked for money, never begged, never put his hand out. But you knew that's what he was doing—asking, begging, even though he made no gesture in your direction, even though all he did was fix you with his eyes if you let him do it, and, as you passed, made that sound. It was doobee doobee doobee—or it was dabba dabba dabba. It was always the same, just the one or the other, but you never tarried long enough for you to hear if there was more to it.

  He was wearing high-heeled shoes the first time I saw him. They were women's shoes, or they were women's backless high-heeled slippers. I don't remember which. Yes, I think they were bedroom slippers—pale blue, furred, little high-heeled slippers.

  I saw him the first week I moved here. I always saw him after that—it did not matter what the weather was. He was here in every kind of weather, backed up against a wall or against a store window—doobee doobee doobee or dabba dabba dabba.

  He worked my neighborhood.

  He did what he did in my neighborhood.

  I gave him a dime the first week. He took it. If he was not begging, then he was taking money. But I never gave him anything after the one time.

  I was angry about giving him that dime. I felt it marked me as a sucker. I don't think I would have felt that had the man not shown up again the next day, the next week, every day of every week of all the weeks after that.

  Every time after that first time I always passed him by—doobee doobee doobee or dabba dabba dabba, oh so very softly—angry that the man was there, a witness to the fool I was.

  That dime should have saved his life, gotten his back off public construction, sent him away to another neighborhood, changed his song.

  But he's gone now. He hasn't shown up for weeks.

  It's a relief. I feel better about living here now—but it's not on account of that dime, not on account of the shame that I gave it and shame that I never gave another one after giving it.

  It's terror his absence relieves me of.

  It's the worst fear I ever had.

  IT WAS WHEN the snows came this winter that I got very afraid of the man.

  I want you to know how, I want you to hear how, the man made me so afraid.

  I'd gone to get my son home from a playmate's house after dark
. It wasn't that many blocks there and therefore not any more back. But the snow was at its worst and there was no one on the streets, not all of the way there and almost not all of the way back.

  We were just a block from home, my boy and I, and the man was on that block, standing on the corner, his back to the wall of something. There was no way for anybody to get home without passing him. So I got my boy tight by the hand and took him out into the street to do it.

  The man just stood there—no gesture, no hand reached out. He didn't get me with his eyes because I wouldn't let him do it. But there was no not hearing the man crooning doobee doobee doobee or crooning dabba dabba dabba—just always a whisper and never not loud.

  A car came skidding along the street. My boy and I were moving up it now and the car was moving down it, skidding, sort of careening, a reckless driver playing with the calculus of skating his machine in the snow.

  I have such a childish imagination.

  I thought: "He'll hit us, that driver." I thought: "My son will be hurt." I thought: "There will be no one to help me, no one but the man I always passed."

  I saw myself kneeling over my son. I saw myself begging the man for him to help.

  I heard him answering—doobee doobee doobee.

  Or dabba dabba dabba.

  But this can't happen now, can it?—not now that I have had the thought.

  TWO FAMILIES

  THERE IS NO STORY in the sentences I will write, no program to make matters come out. If matters do come out, then it is a resolution they accomplish all by themselves. No help is needed from me, nor is any solicited from you. All I am going to do—as briefly as fair play will allow—is give evidence. Everything else, if there is anything else, will take care of itself. In my opinion, it already has.

  This concerns two families.

  Families are families, and in this way are alike. But in every other respect, the two families that I have in mind, and all other families, have nothing in common. Of course, I issue this disclaimer mindful that its issuance disables it or anyhow makes of it a folly.

  I cannot help what cannot be helped. It is what squats malignantly between writer and reader. But I have nevertheless done what I can to warn you away from speculations that will uncover nothing at all—though the caution will doubtless inspire the effort.

  I want to answer this last, but I am out of time.

  IN ONE FAMILY, there was a divorce. In the other, there was not. There was, however, in the latter case, a murder—whereas in the former, there was an attempt at one.

  Let us begin again.

  In one family, one spouse planned to murder the other. When the endangered spouse discovered the plan, he fled. He fled from one coast to the other and got a divorce. But up until that flight, he had stayed put. He said he had stayed put for the children. It was a good reason. There was proof of this when the children showed up damaged. They were very damaged. It will seem excessive to say it, but it is what both spouses themselves said.

  "The light in them will go out."

  When the spouses said this, they must have had in mind the radiance of children. But who knows?

  I was never a parent.

  THERE WERE TWO CHILDREN in each of these families. As regards the amplitude, or the relative fall-off therefrom, of the light in the second set of children, the evidence isn't all available for the recording of it yet.

  But here is some that is. It is the declaration of the spouse that worried about the light.

  This is what he said:

  "My boy came to me, the younger one. The older one already knows. I never told him, of course. But he figured it out. Now the younger one has too. I love the older one more. I can admit that—it is all right if I do. Loving the younger one less makes it harder, however—harder about what he said when he came to me. He said:

  " ‘I know.'

  "I said, ‘What do you know?'

  "He said, ‘I mean about him.'

  "I said, ‘Him?' I said, ‘What do you mean, him?'

  " ‘Why don't you kill him?' my boy said.

  "That's when I knew he really knew.

  "But I said, ‘He's our friend.' I said, ‘What a thing to say!'

  "My boy said, ‘That's what a man would do.'

  "I don't know where that boy of mine got that from, but my boy said that.

  "Then he said, ‘You're afraid. You're afraid to kill and you're afraid of him. It's because he's stronger.'

  "My boy said that, the younger one. My boy said all of that, the one I love the less."

  This spouse was afraid. He was afraid of the things the boy said he was. His boy knew that. His spouse did too. This is why she was not afraid to do what she was doing. This is why the man she was doing it with was not afraid, either.

  They all knew whose the fear was—especially did the spouse who had it.

  But now it was worse. That father was afraid of that boy. He was even more afraid of that boy than he was of the other two things he was afraid of.

  I think it was because he loved that boy the less.

  There was fear in the first family too. The spouse who ran away was afraid. That is why he did it.

  The two children were afraid when the father ran away. They thought everybody would run away. Well, this was when the light in those children began to go out. They were turned down, turned out, both parents were willing to agree.

  They agreed on there having been some loss of light. But they did not agree whom to blame for this. So the spouse who wanted to murder in the first place set out to try it again. She would have to go from coast to coast to try it. But considering the greatness of her aim, the journey seemed no tall order.

  She wanted to get to the one who would know the most about the loss of light. You can see how she would.

  She set out by car to do it.

  MEANWHILE—meanwhile in these sentences, not meanwhile in these events—the father of that boy called that boy back to him.

  "I want to explain," that father said.

  "You're a coward," the boy said.

  "Give me a minute," that father said. "Don't be so quick to call a man a coward. I want to make one last appeal to you. May I make one to you?"

  "That's what cowards do," the boy said.

  But perhaps the boy knew this father loved him less than this father did his other son. Children so often know. It happens when they say their prayers and must give a sequence to those they number in them.

  "It takes a strong man to go along with a sadness," that father started off. "It takes a very strong man to stay put. It takes the strongest man for him to be a coward if this is what his son, in a father, has to have."

  How this came out of his mouth was not how that father had wanted it to. It was hard to get his point. He knew he had one, but what you just heard was the best that father could do.

  "It takes a strong man to kill," is what that boy said, and it took him no time at all for him to say it.

  The boy was not all that young. But he was too young for the idea the father thought he had in mind. That was when the father had another one.

  He went to the man his son said was the stronger. This is what the father said to the man:

  "You're stronger than I am. Your body is stronger. Your mind is stronger. I am going to tell you something. My boy knows. The older one knows, but now the younger one does too. It's okay about the older one—because I love him the more of the two—and I think it is all right for me to say that. But because I love the younger one the less is what makes it really bad for us. I can't do what I'm doing anymore. I have to do something else. But am I strong enough to do it? You know I'm not. But you are. Tell me if you are following me so far."

  "I'm way ahead of you," the man said. "You have to do something, but you can't do it. So you want me to be the one to do it for you, check?"

  That father liked this. He said, "What proof that you're the stronger! You see the point? Kill her for me. What is your answer?"

  "I don't min
d," the man said.

  "You owe it to me—don't you think?" that father said as fast as he could, already compiling the sentences that would turn over his sly purpose to the son he loved the less. It would test that father to postpone the tale of his irony. But that father was very strong. He could wait.

  "I like it," the man said, "that complexity of reasoning. It's strong."

  That father was at the mercy of utterance. He said, "But you're complexer for knowing it."

  SHE TOOK THE CHILDREN with her. She planned everything—the same way she had planned it in the first place. But now she had to use a map—for where was her navigator, for where was he indeed?

  She marked off intervals, the mileage each person in the vehicle would have to drive for the driving to come out even-steven. But the family was one fewer than it had been. This is how come the younger boy got the wheel in Utah instead of in Idaho. He said his prayers when he got it—then drove under a truck with twenty-four tires.

  FOR RUPERT–WITH NO PROMISES

  I DON'T THINK I would be writing this story if the facts did not force it. Actually, it's publishing this story that I do not think I would be doing unless I had a very pressing—really an irresistible—reason. It is probably necessary for me to say that I always imagined such a reason would one day come along. But I imagine many things—and why this one has caught up with me and most of the others have not is only the way it is with luck.

  Not too much should be made of it, I suppose. My brother's, actually—his bad luck. But I believe that when I arrive at the end of what I want to say, I might also arrive at seeing the bad luck mine too. This is what comes of imagining things. It is also what comes of making promises you never intend to keep—or, worse, which you do not keep but which you try to convince somebody (even yourself) you have.