Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  Enough.

  That's enough for you.

  You don't deserve my brilliant stories.

  It's killing me, a broken heart, and you, you mobster, you are the last person who is getting himself exonerated just because you hate Jews or just because you hate jokes or anyway because you hate seriousness, seriousness, gravitas.

  Here, you want gravitas?

  I'll give you gravitas!

  The big novel I just read, the manuscript?

  Fourteen hundred fourteen pages long! Can you believe it, fourteen hundred pages long? Yet even with this lucky number, yet even with the lucky number, the joke-meister, the joke-meister, from laughter, from laughter, from genius, for Christ's sake—first he lived and then he died.

  BRRR

  YOU KNOW LIKE A READER? Make believe you're like this reader. And you, you know, you're, you're as a consequence, you're turning these pages. Like you've been turning and turning like all of these pages when they all of a sudden go suddenly go all blank on you. You know what I mean? Like suddenly you come to a page that all of a sudden goes suddenly all blank on you. Except it's like there is no actual all-blank page anywhere there in front of you, is there?—seeing as how there is always going to be like a little something everywhere, even if it is only like a clavus that is, or a nevus or a noma or the trace of where a nevus or a noma was.

  Or take a turbercle, take a papule, take a wheal.

  You ever hear of a wheal?

  One hears there's even bullas.

  (That's a plural, buddy.)

  These things can come drifting down out from up in the illeum and thereupon succeed in getting themselves lodged in some teensy crevice cleaving to the weft of your paper. Ask the writer who's been, life-wise, dependency-wise, bound up in the theory of health-giving irrigations. I refer your attention to the American enema, only him, silly case, the dope comes home with the rigamarole of the opposing gender. Yet his voice seems to call—print confects a beckoning—from across a vastation of postulated un-inkings—hey, back here, it says, out back here, I am back out here, it says, can you hear me from out back here, it says, because I sure could do with a hand back here back in the toilet back here—except, whoa, except don't come by way of the room with the sock rug in it, keep clear of the room with the sock rug in it, come instead through the room which has got like this carpet in it, only be a pal, please, and please take off your shoes.

  Hypothesized reader comes as counseled.

  Gets off footwear off, comes across floor covering, comes to backroom facility wherein writer—pocket-sized, battery-powered, brand-named radio gripped in thumb and fingers that also grip flow cock through which rubber tube makes its way from raging red bulging red douche bag (hooked, not for a lot longer, it looks to him who looks, onto, you choose, towel rack or towel bar) that makes its raging way down to plastic nozzle—has composed himself—writer, that is; would-be hi-colonicist, that absolutely is—in the usual really ridick-looking posture.

  Did you look any of them up yet?

  Clavus and so forth?

  Reader says, "Uh, anything left out—another mass, another form of abnormal growth?"

  Writer says, "Hey, jeez, thanks, jeez—pretty white of you coming all of the way back to me here in the back."

  As for the flimsy doodad by force of which the douche bag is for the moment momentarily suspended, would doohicky have done the better denoting? Well, twisted, twisting, it is anyhow about to go altogether kerflooey, this in the manner of the polymer modeled not to crack but to give.

  Lookit, what we've been thus far doing is we have, you and me, been interrogating together the mindedness of things—not to mention the ditto of prepositions and of mindedness itself. Further, there is the further matter of UV fatigue, pro and con, true or false. Finally, imagine a game of unimaginable finality—misnamed (what else?) on all counts.

  Brrr.

  Possible to ask you a personal question?

  Okay that you be asked a personal question?

  Bit just entered so impetuously into the text, so how come is it it is expected to communicate source of its utterance is complaining of being cold?

  I am cold.

  Writer says, "I am cold."

  Trembling.

  Metaphorically-speaking.

  Reader says, "We get us this toilet thing all set for itself all back to rights for you again, there any chance the two of us can maybe go light out for the room with the sock rug in it and go play us a round of, you know, of From The Carpet To The Wood?"

  (This sound bats to you?)

  (Like just between you, me, and the lamppost, conferring as far as one confederale conferring with another—so what do you say—too bats, too batty, too kookoo?)

  His mother made it.

  The sock rug.

  But not out of socks but out of stockings.

  You take the stockings and knot them.

  Then, from discardable mops, make fringe.

  Writer says, "Okay, the General Electric. So you want to know so how come the General Electric? So you think it's for company, the General Electric? Because nothing could be wronger, that anything of mine is anywhere here for company. I have to laugh when I hear anything in this household is in it for anything like company. Makes me crazy, everybody accusing me of making provisions for having company. But so you want to know so how come the General Electric? I answer you—it is not for fucking company! As in visitors!"

  Reader says, "One thing about things—hook or not, bag or not, pandemonium or not—they definitely do look as if they have one, don't they? Starting with, what do you call them, pronouns?"

  Writer says, "Smart-ass. Since when it is you who's, hey, the genius? Fucking interjective prick!"

  You say clamp, you say clasp?—jimjum which gets itself engaged and disengaged for writer to regulate flux of the influx? On the other hand, even if we were to accept suggestion radio is save for naught save news of onsetting snow, look how fellow's got nevertheless to manage—hand that hangs onto clasp, hand that hangs onto clamp, being also hand that has to keep nozzle from popping back out of his pease porridge hot, whereas further—further!—be hand that has to be on hand to keep hampling the thing into periodic rotation as far as compensation for driftibility in the directionality of, golly, of a specific station's signalation.

  Forget it. They either see it, what somebody is up against, or they don't—built-in aerials built in spitefully into things, hegemony of frequencies, broadcast and otherwise. Suffice it to say what is being said when suffice it to say is said and suffices. Tell you what—keep turning to keep tuning in word of the weather on the weather station which keeps swerving away in this.

  Writer says, "This getting to look to you like I am some type of a psycho or something?"

  Reader says, "Personal measures being enacted with respect to UV fatigue are personally as follows—handling books with the windowshade down."

  Writer says, "Try it without the definite article—plus, that's a measure, not a plural."

  Reader says, "There are these people, they act as if UV fatigue is like some type of a joke-type thing to them as far as, you know, table-talk or something. You want my advice? Take my advice. This is what they keep putting windowshades up everywhere for. People don't think. You know what's wrong with people? Go find even just one of them thinking even just the first thought. All I can say is this Congoleum-Naire of yours, there are a lot of things somebody could huddle with you in your bathroom with you and probably say about it to you, but one thing they could not do is look at the wreck of it that has ever been wreaked of it by any freaking UV ever getting anywhere in through any window anywhere in its freaking vicinity."

  Writer says, "Language, language."

  But who says cyst, says bleb, says polyp?

  Sorry, not thinking—God's bones, the reek in there, the reek in this! Brainless of me for me to've been so thoughtless about this when where was it anybody else who thought up this whole thing up? This is what hap
pens. You see what happens? It's disgusto, isn't it disgusto, what happens?

  Reader says, "Check me on these two fingers here."

  Writer says, "Those there?"

  Anybody ever say it seems to be shuddering—the falling snow, the snow as it falls?

  A) Power-stretcher.

  B) Knee-kicker.

  Tools used to lay the wall-to-wall—or is it lay it with?

  It's not, at all events, his customary smell.

  Which is what like consternates the reader.

  Not to mention the writer himself.

  The effect of something up there in him, animal-wise, flourishing, vituperative, alive.

  Fine, fine—what do you care?

  So here—so here his secret is.

  Two fingers made to stand up on their feet.

  Hop hop hop, skip skip skip.

  "Oh but who but you but would have come to me! You think anybody but you would have even tarried for me? Them, they would have called back to the back What what? Or, more malignant still, Him again, him?"

  Listen, forget the douche bag!

  To heck with the douche bag!

  Consider the calamity banished.

  Not one more peep concerning the ill-faring bearing of anything, let alone of the menagerie of language in the illeum.

  Great gracious sakes, can they be known, the lengths—the lengths!—gone to get us hopped up onto our fingertips and run all the way the whole uncrossable length from the can to the room that's got—hooray!—the game, our game!—the sock rug in it?

  As witness Master Littleness now straining to be the most daring of all in the fringe.

  To quote, unquote turn.

  Two-fingerly in it.

  Beholding behind himself the illimitable wood.

  The abyss of it with the blemish in it.

  A.k.a. the floor.

  O the derring-do of it!

  As he does and derrs on it.

  Skips and skips on it—referenceless.

  Brrr.

  And another thing—back there with the bullas it should have been "there're."

  Yes.

  No shit.

  Brrr.

  WHAT WAS GOING ON OUTSIDE OF 458 BROOME? OR, WHICH WAS IT HEMINGWAY HAD, PATIENCE OF A SAINT, OF A HUNTER, OF THE DUMB?

  DON'T YOU DARE SIT THERE and act like you did not hear me asking you what was it which was going on out there, because I am telling you something was going on out there, there was something which was definitely was going on out there, you cannot tell me there was not something which was not definitely not going on out there out in front of 458 Broome, the two of them, what the hell were they doing, the two of them out in front of 458 Broome, these two fellows which are standing out there on the sidewalk out there in this funny standing-around way which they had of standing around in front of 458 Broome, which means out in front of this door which has like 458 stenciled on it in these various different numerals on it, the one of them, the first one of them coming up to it and looking to me like he was pushing the door buzzer in front of it at 458 while I myself am sitting across the street on the comfy bench they have out there for their customers to sit on outside of the Broome Street store across the street called Henry's Fine Foods Emporium, although not to jump to any conclusions about me and Henry's Fine Foods Emporium, please, because no, no, I am not a customer of Henry's Fine Foods Emporium in any strict sense of the word which you could like go ahead as a person and write a check on it and go take it to the bank with you, no, although yes, I had gone into it, yes, I had gone into Henry's Fine Foods Emporium, yes, I had hitherto or thitherto to my coming to sit myself down on the bench they have outside of it for their customers to come sit themselves on it, yes, I had hitherto or thitherto to that, yes, had, yes, gone inside of Henry's Fine Foods Emporium, I freely and openly do acknowledge the fact that, yes, I had hitherto or thitherto to that, that I had been inside of Henry's Fine Foods Emporium, yes, had gone inside of Henry's Fine Foods Emporium for me to check out the situation as to the fancy olives they have in there in these like polyurethane buckets or like these little like ceramic vats which they have in there displayed in there in this fancy-foods section they have in there for like, you know, for like olives, but okay, forget it, forget it, because, you know, it turned out like there is this Henry's Fine Foods Emporium like, you know, like this store personnel guy which is, let's just say, hovering around it in there in this kind of call it like a kind of custodial way in there probably like checking it out himself in there for like his own personal on-the-house handful of sample olives, or olive samples—so fine, so I just as cool as a cucumber just wheel myself around and do a like an about-face and figure okay, fine, I will go back outside for the time being and will like cool my jets for a while while this Henry's Fine Foods Emporium personnel guy has like cleared the fuck off from there and left me like, you know, like a wide enough berth for me at them in there—the olives, the olives—so, you know, so I can go back inside again and go try for some sample olives of my own again, which is how come I happen to be sitting on the bench in front of Henry's Fine Foods Emporium and therefore spot these two fellows outside of 458 Broome, and am, okay, and am asking you, and I am asking you nicely, please, I am asking you perfectly politely and nicely, please—would you please tell me what the fuck it was which was going on out there outside in front of 458 Broome?

  Or do I have to bore us both to tears with like, you know, with like, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, with like, you know, with like describing it?

  God, I hate you and hate them and hate writing.

  It's only olives I love.

  Olives!

  When they come at once and for no cost at all.

  MARTIN

  ARE YOU A LAWYER? Do you have a degree in the law? Are you a doctor of the law or of the laws? Do you have a doctor-of-the-laws degree? Or a degree in ministering to people in the public? Or in good citizenship or in doing good works or in looking after old ladies in wheelchairs in the street? Because I just told Mrs. Holiday Burn, B-U-R-N, I would go get her somebody to. I just gave my promise to this old lady in a wheelchair who says to me her name is Mrs. Holiday Burn, B-U-R-N, that she can depend on me to come home and get on the phone and go get her somebody to hurry and come keep her from getting herself evicted. Mrs. Holiday Burn, B-U-R-N, says she is getting evicted. She says she has only until this Tuesday at the outside for her to keep herself from being put out in the street as an American patriot evicted. But just so you also know before Mrs. Holiday Burn, B-U-R-N, says any of all of this to me, she says to me mister, mister, mister, come give me some goddamn money. All this other conversation with regard to eviction, it only develops as something which gets itself involved in the situation when I express to this person my policy as far as this, which is say no money to nobody nohow regardless period.

  What happened was this.

  If you want to hear what happened, it was this.

  I was going out of the door out of my building heading for the corner for the mailbox to put some mail down into the mailbox when, boom, where's the marines, because what I notice is this very noticeable young lady I notice walking at me coming at me from the opposite direction going to the mailbox.

  Okay, so she is carrying a book.

  Which is like this five-alarm firehouse all-points bulletin going wonk wonk wonk wonk down inside of me on account of the fact that I myself am always going around carrying a book with me for the reason that I am always doing everything which I can do for me to entice to myself the attention of the kind of a young lady who would go ahead and give it to a fellow she sees going around carrying around with himself on his person a book with him.

  So this young lady, it's, you know, it's like this is a five-alarm firehouse all-points bulletin going off like wonk wonk wonk wonk down inside of me on account of the fact that, first of all, she herself has this book she is carrying around with herself, and second of all, the hair, which, okay, is this pile of light-looking hair piled up on her
up on top of her head, plus the final thing, which is this walk she has which is of, I would say, like of, you know, of an irregular-type nature.

  So can you take these each of these things which I just took for you and put them all together and go ahead and guess who is all in clover?

  No kidding, I am like the Easter parade.

  Because this is all it takes at my age for you to decide to make up your mind you are all set to go spend the rest of your life with such-and-such an individual, please God she should just turn out in her own right to be an intelligent and educated person.

  So I skip all of the way to the mailbox and get the mail put down into it and then I skip all of the way back trying to catch up with her enough for me to be not too far back behind her when the man named Martin in my building comes pedaling his big tricycle up along to me on the sidewalk from the different opposite direction and he says to me, "So, pray tell, is it hot enough for you today, Gordon?"

  Whereas I say to him, "Martin, you could already fry an egg on my head even if all I did so far was just only go to the mailbox with mail for it."

  So this man named Martin in my building says to me, "Oh, Gordon, believe me, I have experienced it plenty more terrible than this. You get to be an oldster as old as I myself am, you been through things a lot more terrible than this."

  So I says to him, "You said it, Martin." And I says to him, "You certainly hit the nail on the head as far as everything you just said, Martin."

  So this man named Martin in my building, he gives a pull on the crouch of his pants and he says to me, "So what is the word as to the little ones in your family from sea to shining sea?"

  Sure, sure, the little ones, the little ones, but meanwhile you think this discussion is getting a certain person any closer to his designated quarry?

  "Martin," I says to him, "excuse me, Martin darling, but I got to go see a man about a broken horse."