Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  Lou Gehrig's disease.

  But what I want to tell you about is about another experience in eating and about other persons—and about, please remember, the pince-nez.

  Which last I had taken from the top drawer of Barbara's chifforobe in order that I might feel I was in prospect of holding my own—as a full-fledged participant—in the company of Lentricchia and Ozick the night of the dinner I am remarking.

  I took them with me, the pince-nez, for just that reason—or for no reason that I can honorably say.

  I don't know.

  Say that I had been in all day, been in for days, had not been out of the house—not at night, anyway—for weeks and weeks—and had certainly not been out for anything social in months, months, months.

  Lentricchia and Ozick, Ozick and Lentricchia.

  They—one or the other of them—phoned, said come out to dinner with us, said come meet us in an hour at The Grand Ticino, said come look for it just north of Bleecker on Thompson.

  I said yes, yes, oh yes, hung up the phone, went with tears in my eyes—it's crazy—to the bedroom, to the chifforobe, took out the pince-nez, got my shoe trapped under one of the canulas or catheters or electric cords everywhere underfoot, got the shoe loose, went to the bookshelves, took down Ozick's Bloodshed, took down Lentricchia's Ariel and the Police, went to the kitchen, made out a note for the nurses then on duty and for those to come on at ten, said I'd be back no later than eleven, added the telephone number where I could be reached, and went, left, fled, took myself out into the street in the temper of one released.

  Now to the little joke in this.

  What I know I called a memoir but can now see will never accumulate itself into anything so grand, and God knows into nothing anywhere on speaking terms with something traveling under papers as a literary one.

  It's just a bit.

  I can tell it to you, the whole bit, in no time flat.

  They were late.

  I sat there being exasperated with them.

  Why were they late?

  Wasn't I on time? What right did they have to be late when there I was—right when they said I should be—right on fucking time? And what right did they have to make it up between them that we, that the three of us, would come eat at The Grand Ticino when—fuck, fuck!—doors away, also just north on Thompson off Bleecker, was Porto Bello—where with Bloom, with Donoghue, where with Ozick and Lentricchia—where all the years with Barbara, goddamn it!—I had had such good times, such happinesses—releases to, not releases from.

  I tried thinking of topics.

  Then I was glad of it, glad for it—glad the dirty fucking rats, the bums, were late.

  Because I did not have anything to talk with them about—no topics, not a topic—did not have anything to say for myself, did not feel anything in me sufficient in worth to swap for the gift of anyone's time with me—except to hand these people my tears again in thanks again for their thinking again to ask me to come out with them for eats again.

  I had one topic.

  Barbara.

  Barbara dying.

  So I sat there being exasperated a little bit, and weeping a little bit, and being pleased with myself for the pince-nez hanging zanily from my neck and for the copy of Bloodshed and for the copy of Ariel and the Police I had thought to pack along with me for no motive I could state to you with any more good sense backing it up than I could summon in defense of myself for my getting myself primped up with the pince-nez.

  I thought: Tell them I'd just made up my mind my favorite sentence is Edward Loomis' "Mary Rollins was born in a high white frame house shaded by elms."

  I thought: Tell them I am getting ready to make my second-favorite sentence "The icepack has melted, and the American River is running fast."

  I thought: Do I tell them it's mine, this sentence—ah, shit, compound sentence!—or tell them instead that all I really did was steal it from where it was scribbled up on some wall somewhere?

  I thought: Tell them I've got money in my pocket and I'm going to get bad drunk and then get on a bus, get on any bus, so long as it's going away.

  I thought: Tell them I'm pretty damn burnt-up they didn't deal me in when they didn't settle on good old Porto Bello.

  I thought: Tell them they're my first- and my second-best friends?

  I sat there thinking.

  I sat there thinking, sat there waiting, sat there making believe I was actually reading the books I had laid out in my lap when I had pushed back my chair back away from the table when the waiter had come and had put a cup of espresso in front of me and had filled the bread basket with some great-looking bread in it for me and had poured out for me a little dish of olive oil for me, and had, in every ordinary thing the fellow had done for me, in every conventional ministration the waiter had enacted for me, that the man had—the strictness, the covenant with protocol—got the tears to come from me again, carried me into a sort of small weeping again—so that, sure, sure, I guess I could not actually have sat there reading anything even if I had actually been trying to.

  I sat there thinking: Hey, what do they make of me, the other people back behind me in this place, me, this pose-taker I am, this show-person sitting here, the ridiculous specs stuck to the nose, the broad black grosgrain ribbon swagged martially across the chest, the legs arranged at an important three-quarter torque, the auspicious-looking books laid out in the lap, the chair shoved back away from the table in an exhibition of a sort of magisterial, expansive remove?

  I sat there thinking: Where the piss are they, the dirty stinking rats, not to be here now, not for them to see me looking like this now, not for them to be right this instant coming up on me from the back of me seeing me looking like this now?

  I'm ready! Please see me now—I'm ready!

  But are the bastardos here and ready for them to do the fucking viewing?

  I sat thinking: Tell them about how on my way downtown I spotted on Broadway between Twenty-second and Twenty-first a store called "GORDON" with a sign saying something like, wasn't it, Sells Tricks, Sells Novelties, Sells Disguises?

  I thought: Tell them they are the both of them both my first-best friends as friends?

  I thought: Tell them they made me cry?

  I thought: Tell them everything makes me cry?

  I thought: Tell them I put on a dirty movie when Barbara was sleeping or when I thought Barbara was sleeping and there was a girl in it getting it from all sides in it but who never once looked at any of the ones giving it to her in it but who instead was only always looking off somewhere away from where everything was going on in the holes in her as if—in a gaze, in a gaze!—where she looked off to was paradise?

  I thought: Tell them, of the three chairs, that of the three chairs, that I, Gordon, was the first one here first but that I, Gordon, of the three chairs, that I took the one chair facing to the back, took the one chair facing to the kitchen, because what wouldn't I, Gordon, not do for my two first-best friends if not eat shit for them, if not face the kitchen doing it for them?

  I thought: Tell them I took the pince-nez when Barbara wasn't looking, tell them I never told Barbara I was taking them, tell them I couldn't really read with them, tell them I wasn't really reading with them, tell them they didn't have anything but just plain glass in them, tell them I am not going to be ashamed of any of this, tell them I am not going to be ashamed of anything anywhere to do with any of this, tell them no, no, not if at least, not if I, Gordon, can at least be somewhere on time at least when I am goddamn told to be at least and they—the bastardos!—can't!

  In the midst of which consideration I take up a big piece of the bread up from the bread basket and tear off a little piece of it from the big piece and put the little piece down into the little dish of olive oil and soak the little piece of bread with olive oil and then take up the salt shaker and salt the oiled bread with salt and put the little piece of salted, oiled bread into my mouth and start chewing and keep chewing and then take up the cup
of espresso and take a sip from the cup of espresso and sit chewing and sit posing and sit making believe I am sitting reading but sit really actually just thinking—fuck, fuck—this fucking bread here is pretty fucking good bread here, this bread here at The Grand Ticino is pretty fucking good bread here—and just getting more bread, getting it all salted, getting it all oiled, getting more of the coffee into my mouth, getting the whole glob of it all good and chewed and soaked and mashed, thinking: Tell the bastardos what, what?

  I think: Tell them there are Mercy Persons coming to us from Saint Firmus, tell them there are Mercy Persons coming to us from Saint Eustatius.

  I think: Tell them there is no person merciful enough coming to anyone from anywhere.

  I think: Proust! I think: That's it, Proust!

  What a topic, Proust—the bum, the bum, the stinking dirty rat, forgetting the cookie, and whose damn cookie is it but the braggart's own damn cookie!

  Tell them the filth can't even remember to remember his own damn cookie, can't even damn remember to remember not even three little pages hence concerning naught but remembering, can't even, goddamn it, remember it's the two of them, that it's the totality of the two of them, that it is the totalitarian unicity of the blend of the savors of the two fucking two of them that authorizes the emancipation of anything, that it's the tea and the cookie, that it's the tea now and now the cookie now, that it's the both of them now, this reciprocation goddamn it!

  Tell them I think.

  Tell them the instant they show up that I think.

  And then I think Holy God Jesus, how about asphyxiation for a topic!

  Because it is all of a sudden fucking occurring to me I am fucking sitting here in fucking The Grand Ticino fucking strangling!

  I mean it, I mean it!—I have gone and got a lump of oily salty coffee'd-up mush that's gone and got itself caught halfway down and will not go anymore down than halfway down anymore because there is laid out beneath it this swag of big broad black grosgrain ribbon I somehow got caught in under the bread when I was sticking the fucking bread in my mouth and then got the ribbon halfway swallowed down under the bread and it's hung up on me halfway down, like this bundle of it, like this terrible bag of it, and it won't, the whole killing sack of it, it will not come back up because it has gone too far down for it to come back up and it won't go all of the way down because my neck has got it by a rope and won't let go.

  And I think: Idiot, idiot, quick, quick!—act fast before you have actually suffocated yourself!—either give it a yank and rip out your teeth or see if you can swallow your head!

  That's the thought I thought.

  I don't know for how long.

  All I know is, hey, Barbara knows.

  Legs still crossed in imperious pose, books—books!—still exhibited upon my person—while death hurries to do an honest job of it from the props bullshitting has furnished.

  Okay, so that's the literary part.

  The memoir part is did I or didn't I sit here and not forget that it was all of them, all?

  Coffee, salt, oil, ribbon, bread.

  Six, actually—actually the components constituting the effect, don't they all come, all in all, to six?

  The swift convergence, fluent—calamity!—everything in your gullet at once—I can count at least to six.

  And what about eyelet?

  And vanity?

  And canula?

  But it is swell by me if you and the critic and if you and the novelist want to take the list anywhere off into your first-best schemes and rhymes and figures and portents.

  I mean, hey, as the fella says, reim dich oder ich fress dich, you got it or you got it?

  Except just don't go accusing anybody of ever pulling anything too Prousty on you, deal?

  I said it, my darling—didn't I?

  Didn't I just—him, your husband—just say deal?

  PHILOSOPHICAL STATEMENTS

  SHUN NEGATIVITY. Eschew negativity. Send down negativity. Turn a cold shoulder to negativity. Never know the name of negativity. Make yourself the assassin of negativity. Befriend negativity not. Let negativity not enter in. Keep negativity out. Go away from negativity. Take flight from negativity. Rid thy house of negativity. Be free of negativity. Tear up the taproot of negativity. Throw off the garment of negativity. Eat not of the nutriment of negativity. Worry negativity. Usher negativity out. Shut your door to negativity. Spurn negativity. Scorn it. Smite it. Never call to the servants of negativity. Hate this negativity. Never to summon negativity's jinn. Unlearn negativity. Do unto negativity as you would the unclean. Let not your mind be near to negativity. Keep your mentation denegativized. Murder negativity. Trample down negativity. Negativity is catastrophe's furrow. Let it be unraveled, that which negativity had raveled up. Strangle negativity. Stop up your ears against negativity. Be wary, here comes negativity. Negativity is the goiter, the nevus, the milk leg, the whites. Never negativity. Go without negativity. Be not the mount for negativity's assault. Negativity moves in with beetles in its reticule. Negativity vexes, exasperates, peeves, itches. Negativity spoils. Have you negated negativity? Push away negativity? Push negativity off. Defy negativity. Expose the agents of negativity. Fear negativity's errand, mission, putrid device. Negativity has a plan—steal it, thrash it. If negativity nurses its child, let the nipple beget a worm. Negativity's song has a long, pale throat—does your axe not see its course? Negativity asks to eat at your table. Negativity wants to be your supper. Negativity leans in when the coverlet you raise up. Negativity prepares your dream, imagines your existence. Negativity watches, waits, is in no hurry. Look to proportion. Invite proportion. Follow proportion. Snatch at the skirt of proportion. Entice proportion's eye. Bend to proportion's purpose, curve to her languorous wile. Let proportion sweep your floor. Lead proportion in, heap honey onto her plate. Oh, sweet proportion, come quiet this perfidious heart! Proportion goes without corsets. Whisper not against proportion. Repeal proportion's torment. Where proportion is, mischief is not. Witness the grace of proportion. Proportion's impeachment struggles on club feet. Be the pretty child of proportion. Enact proportion's business. Good light is proportion's work. Open your lips for proportion's kiss. Here soars proportion, all else plummets. Let proportion be your consort, your shepherd, your bride. Marry proportion. Wed proportion. Lift proportion onto your back. Inscribe nothing if proportion be not your instrument. Vehemence lies twisted in the bedclothes, proportion slumbers in oblivious repose. Proportion is content. Proportion is wise. Proportion's husband is rich. Where proportion walks, the path is forever sure. Next to proportion stands prosperity in shoes. Proportion abides. Proportion fits. Proportion adds up. Proportion knows the score. Proportion is no dope. Proportion is not an imbecile. Proportion is a smart cookie. Seize opportunity. Grasp opportunity with both hands. Opportunity's departure is never not punctual. He who would chase opportunity must begin not a day late, not a thought late, is even now late. Opportunity does not masquerade as a loiterer. Opportunity is fugitive. Latch the gate when opportunity wanders within. Opportunity's warder cannot rest. There goes opportunity. Opportunity shouts no one's name. Children, children, to suffice is enough. He who is sufficient is sufficiency's master. She shall have sufficiency come hem her white gown. No tailor a thimble lends to sufficiency's sturdy wife. Sufficiency lets down her hair to harmony's warrior. Arise, darlings, for princes do dance at the well! The water is chaste. Dark is the apron of the stable boy not unbusy at his rounds. Be not lazy, be not known to rue. Heaven's bed is always made, its quilt mended and proud. Descend, sovereigns—they would the banquet begin! Where fame goes does villainy not hasten ahead? Be cautious, be not a father. Stay home, Young Albert! Edward's cat is fat, Mary's duck is lost! Be merry, go by the book. Be merry, go by the board. If the rat today, then not the martingale tomorrow? Curry the badger, fasten the saddle. Reap not the fruit of the windwillow tree if Lately's daughter you would have pretty your couch. Larder on Monday, goose for the sabbath. Toil behind the lee hors
e, feed before bed on soup. Happy is the fool, sorry struts his teacher. Sweetmeats, quoths the thief; needles and pins, weeps the bailiff. Marry the seamstress, dead in a fortnight. See a blind cobbler, starve the fox, catch the hare, tie the dog, choose the maid, bind the owl, pick the wool, tame the yarn, lock the box, bother the ox, spin the top, buckle the shoe, cool the pie, render the fat, scald the milk, dip the cream, rack the butter, iron the collar, scald the stew, take the broth, turn the fire, thicken the sauce, tether the goat, ask the cow, the carp, the dove, the hasp, the pan, the pot, the cheese, the chair, the hinge, the rag, the spoon, the fork, the button, the thread, the cake, the stocking, the candle, the cough, the curd, the grave, the dish, the hen, the bucket, the hook, the stick, the yoke, the belt, the stone, the salt, the rope, the cloth, the rake, the sleeve, the paste.

  The paste?

  If the paste, then not Tarski?

  If Tarski, then not then Kripke?

  All to say Giorgio, to say Agamben, to say hip hip hooray—which is not to have said hurray.

  A PARTY OF ANIMALS: IN LESS THAN THIRTY MINUTES

  YES. GOOD. YES. RIGHT. All right. The record. To make the record. To create the record. To record it. To record the record of it. All right. The final record of it. An exacting record of it. An exactitudinous record. Exactly. The conclusive record. A conclusive record. Account! The concessive, a concessive account. Consecutive account. To make the consecutive, to give the consecutive, to give a consecutive account. To make the record of the consecutive account. A sort of recordation of it—yes, yes. Consecutively and concessively. Concedingly. To concede to it. To concede to do it. Giving in to it. A sort of, a kind of giving in to it. A sort of summing up of it. A sort of summing it up. Offering to, conceding to sum it up. Consenting to sum it all up. Being willing to do it. Being willing to consent to do it. Fine. Good. Right. Yes. All right. I say yes to it. One says yes to it. One says an emphatic yes to it—yes, yes, all right to it! Very well to it—all right to it. Very good. High time, too. High time I did it, too. About time one did it, too. It's about time one did it, summed it up—all of it up. One's ready at last to make one's last summing up of it up. One has prepared oneself for a last summing up of it. One has made one's peace with it, with doing it, with saying it. One most emphatically has! So. One is ready to say one's piece. So. One is at peace with the occasion now upon one, now thrust upon one, now pressed upon one—to say one's piece. At last. So. Good. We shall be about it, then. Shall we not be about it, then? And say it? Let us be about it, then, and say it! In summary. In sum. Fully and amply but exactly. With exactitude. With unassailable, with unimpeachable exacting exactitude. Very good. Exactitudinously—but humanly and truly. Gordonly. As Gordon, then. As, then, oneself! As, shall we say, oneself! In the manner of one's very self. Without adornment. Without ornament. Plainly but plenteously. Plainly but with plenitude. Good. To be plentiful, to be bountiful, but to be plain—though bounteous. After a fashion. In a fashion. I was, one was—after a fashion. One was in pursuit of a fashion. One pursued a fashion. The thing was fashion. The very thing was fashion. Fashion was the thing of it. One was glad to be in fashion. My father, Father, was a hatter and therefore, and thus, emphatically, as a man, in fashion. As was Mother, my mother—a millinery model herself. A model of millinery herself. A model—it goes without saying—of ladies' millinery, of millinery worn by ladies. Of headwear worn by women. Of women's headwear, then. So. Mother, my mother, modeled—for the trade—women's headwear, whereas Father made it. Made women's headwear. Well, he is gone. Father is gone. So also, so too—well—so also, then, is Mother. Mother and Father—are gone. Leaving—leaving me, then, only I, then, myself, then, therefore naught but oneself, then, to make the record of it, to give the account of it—to furnish it, to be the furnisher of it, of the history of it—of their burden, of our burden, of—well—of myself. But as to Henry first. But first as to Henry, as to Mickey, as to Jackson, as to Fred. Henry, then. So. Henry first! Henry was acquired largely, principally, it seemed to me, for the cage, because of the cage. The motive, the motive force was—the cage. The family fancied—for a certain site, for a certain station on the premises—a certain cage. So. The bird—it was given the name Henry. A cage for Henry—and a Henry for the cage. A triller, a warbler, a roller—bird. Nicely named. Not an unpretty name for a bird. Trilling, warbling, etc.—this sort of thing. Song. It sang. A songster of sorts. Henry, the songstering bird. Now quite song-less, of course. Gone quite completely silent, of course. Quite dead, quite dead. Dead Henry. Gone. A goner. Deceased by reason of bathwater collecting excessively where he, Henry, stood. Where stood Henry impressively—for that matter. Where stood Henry quite stolidly, actually—quite impressive in the stolidity of his standing, actually—bathwater meanwhile collecting itself into a portion enough, bathwater meanwhile pooling at the ankles—pooling, you understand—mounting, ever mounting—waterously deepening the moral depth taken when Henry took his stance. So. Henry had taken his stance. Henry had positioned himself, had taken, or had taken up, a position so as to position himself. So as to be in position for come what may. Well, Henry was in position. Had composed himself thus. Steady on—on unsteady ankles. Unlike Fred. Not anything like unto the manner of Fred. Henry passed, passed away, drowned, was drowned, etc. Bird lung, etc. Some sort of balloonish affair adequate to the purpose, one supposes, but compromised not with great impediment. Whereas Fred, for his part, disappeared. Fred. So. Appearance, disappearance—and so forth. Actually, a sort of philosophical thing. Well, mail-ordered to the premises. In accordance with instrument, one imagines, not uncommon among approaches broached to situate hermit crabs in domestic circumstances. But enough of Fred. Fred—disappeared. Was lifted from habitat, was snatched up from the habitual bowl—oh, the bowl!—for a walk. For an evening's turn about the premises. A stroll for Fred! This sort of thing. So. Not even the dainty ankle for good old Fred. But enough of Fred. Fred's gone. Fred went. What about Jackson? What about Mickey? This is the thing—Jackson and Mickey. Because concerning Jackson, Jackson barked. Concerning Mickey, Mickey scratched. Now I ask you, speaking strictly as their victim, I ask you—did one not have ears? One had, most emphatically, ears. And until one were in longies, until one were within reach of the dispensation of wearing longies, was one not—wasn't one not in short pants? All right. Good. Point, yes? Points, actually. And concessive even. Even with a certain conceding quality in evidence even. The recordation of it, I mean. This summary, I mean. But meant, of course, no more than Gordonly. Yet what—in the whole wide world of the behatted and of the unbehatted—isn't?