Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  Boy, do I have to give it some skips.

  But there she is when I get there—hitchy walk, hair, book—she's there, she's there!—already around the corner and heading downtown.

  So I'm skipping to get into better position with regard to a civilized distance behind her when, boom, I hear this like hissing—mister mister mister.

  It's this person.

  It's this person I told you about.

  It's this, you know, it is this Mrs. Holiday Burn, B-U-R-N, which I have been mentioning to you so far over the course so far of this particular experience.

  Did I say wheelchair, wheelchair?—hissing mister mister mister at me like this crazy person pinching at me from this crazy-looking wheelchair.

  You know something?

  Can I tell you something?

  It made no sense for me to pay her any mind.

  Anyway, like I says to you, the woman needs a, you know, a type of lawyer on the house.

  By no later than this Tuesday at the latest.

  She says it's 531-0051, her number.

  Or you can call me at 348-6443 if you spot anybody with light-looking hair like that.

  She probably always has it, you know, always on her head on her all piled up.

  So are you a lawyer?

  So now you know what to do if you are a lawyer.

  And the walk, the walk, it's like it's like a limp.

  Anyway, that's that.

  Like the fella says—easy come, easy go.

  And did I even get up close enough to her for me to tell you which book?

  But I bet it was about doing it.

  How much you want to bet me it was probably all about all of these terrific new ways all of these young people nowadays have for them to really, you know, for them to really get you in the mood for getting down in the filth with them and doing it?

  Never mind.

  I got the Easter cards all mailed to all of the ingrates everywhere on time, didn't I?

  From sea to shining sea?

  Right now, I'm sorry—but I have to tell you I am right now probably feeling pretty emotionally depressed as far as the emotions of my feelings, okay?

  That's right—crouch.

  So sue me.

  I'm sitting here waiting for you to sue me.

  Oh, for crying out loud!

  PEOPLE REALLY TAKE THE CAKE AS FAR AS HER

  BEEN TO BED WITH HER. Been around town with her. Been into some pretty steamy talks with her. Been most of all, most of all, been doped up with her. Which is what I am telling you only insofar as telling you you think you know a person, you think you have been down there down into the darkest depths of this person, you think man oh man is there any knowing anybody any better than knowing them when they are stoned out of their mind with you and they are fucking out their gourd with you and they are letting you scoot around down there down inside them down there in the darkest depths of them? Which is what I am telling you only insofar as setting the stage for you for me to tell you people really take the cake as far as her. In fact, tell you what—I just decided this is exactly what I am going to call the title of this story—I am calling it "People Really Take the Cake As Far As Her." Like remember when in school they'd give you these paragraphs where you were supposed to read the paragraph and then they would give you after it a bunch of these various different titles for you to pick from for you to pick the title which you would decide goes best with the paragraph itself? Well, fine—this is the title I am picking for this one even though it is not any multiple choice I am getting or anything. I am picking "People Really Take the Cake As Far As Her"—because this is what it turned out tonight as far as her. Hey, it really bowled me over. I am not kidding, you could have come along and bowled me over with a feather when this happened, which was just tonight—I'm serious—which was just this very night tonight, you know? I mean she says to me what say we go get us some dogs and some frozen custard after. So I says to her swell, I says to her sounds swell as far as me, dogs with kraut on them and get some frozen custard after. Dipped she says. I says yeah, yeah, dipped—maybe even double-dip, what do you say? So she says yeah, great, great. So off we go, but wait, wait—because all of the way there we are going along along the street, it was like this one amazing crazy thing right after another—like it's a sideshow or something. Freaks. This whole life-sized selection of freaks. You know, your homeless and your hopeless and your average city savage—they are all of them out there, these people, in the doorways and up against the storefronts and falling over all across the curbs. It's like there is this exhibition they all got together to go put on of crimes against the human race. I remember—because I am the kind of an individual that is really pretty incredibly sensitive—I remember I am saying to her don't look, don't look, especially when, Jesus, there is this terrible-looking rabbi-looking guy leaning out this window with like no forehead in his head and just this rag in it with like this colored seepage in it. Because, you know, people are going to go eat, right? So, you know, so I am doing my human best with her for me to keep her from looking at anything which is going to turn out to be too stomach-turning for her—but where can't you not see it? Go tell me where is there not this whole horrible like showcase of all of these, you know, like these horrible-nesses not all showing you how much misery loves company? It's like it's just a night in August and it is all of it all crawling all out of the woodwork at you to let you get a good look at it and make you heartsick from seeing it and have to feel lousy. But wait, wait, this is nothing, this is nothing!—because we get to the place on the corner and we get us the dogs and we are lolling around there with them because they give them to you too blazy hot for you, and so I says to her, I says so okay, so what say we like take us a stroll around the corner on over to the Mister Softee truck and we'll take us a gander at the possibilities as far as flavors and we will get us a bead on what the possibilities are as far as flavors and meanwhile the dogs will cool down enough to eating temp and then when we get there we can start on the dogs and we can meanwhile be making up our decisions as far as which flavors of frozen custard we want—in other words, we take our time and take ourselves a good look at what the various different possibilities as far as flavors which Mister Softee is featuring are while we are meanwhile scarfing down the dogs—and so she says to me jake, she says sounds jake, she says to me I would say it sounds pretty jake to me, and so okay, so off we go, we're, you know, we are cutting around the corner and the dogs are meanwhile getting themselves all cooled off and so okay, so I am starting to get going on mine and like I can see out of the corner of my eye she is like, okay, doing ditto, she is starting to get going on hers, and so then before you know it the next thing you know there we are, we are standing there looking at the various different Mister Softee possibilities on the side of the Mister Softee truck, and so she says to me, she says I am sticking with vanilla and double-dipped, and so I says to her, I says it's dip, and so she says to me yeah yeah yeah yeah, aren't you the one, which is when I figure time to look at her for me to see how far she has made it so far as far as her dog so far so I can figure how much leeway we have got for ourselves before I have to, you know, before I have to go step up to the hole in the truck and explain to the Mister Softee man up inside of the truck please, two vanillas, please, make them both two double-dip ones, please, and I see shit, shit!—you know what the bitch is doing? You want for me to tell you what I see this bitch is standing there in the street with me doing? Because this bitch, she is eating the dog like people would eat a row of corn or something! You know what I am saying to you like a row of corn or something? I cannot the fuck believe it. I went and gave myself to this bitch. I did, I really did! I mean, I did it with her, I did it with her—I mixed my soul all in there in together with hers—whereas meanwhile no shit, no shit!—the creep, the weirdo, the bitch is standing there big as life on the street with me scarfing down her dog with me like a person sits down and eats a corn on the, you know, on the cob or something—wher
eas meanwhile the Mister Softee man, the man is meanwhile screaming at me from the hole at me you want something, you want something, or all you out there for is for getting good at being in my frame of reference?

  My God, I'm sitting here shivering.

  You hear me?

  Reference?

  I'll give you frame of reference!

  ACT

  TELL YOU WHAT I SPEND THE MOST TIME doing is comparing sadnesses. No, not comparing—didn't mean to say comparing—comparing, they say, is invidious, and if there is one thing I do not want to get caught doing it is doing anything which looks to people like it is invidious—but picking, meant to say picking, not comparing, but picking, as in the worst sadness among all the sadnesses. But I don't mean sadnesses agreed upon by people but sadnesses seen and deemed sadnesses by me—sad scenes seen and deemed so just by me—the saddest of the sad scenes seen by just by me. Or I suppose you would have to say the greatest sadness instead of the worst sadness, the greatest sadness out of all the great sadnesses felt by me when I saw a scene of something I saw as sad. This does not necessarily mean it was actually sad, does it? It just means I saw it as sad when I saw it. So I spend a lot of time—I probably spend most of it, my time—looking them all over in my mind and seeing which one I can honestly say to myself Gordon, there wasn't anything you ever saw that made you feel as sad as this thing did. But which one is it, which one? Because I can't decide—I can never decide. And besides, just because it is the saddest-looking scene to me, this does not mean it would be the saddest-looking scene to anybody else, does it? On the other hand, my idea is no two things seen can be equally sad-looking, can they? I mean, face it, can any two things seen be equally anything? And what about when you compare between looks? In other words, you look this minute and then you look the next minute, but who is supposed to come along and say to you okay, these two times you looked are equal in the way they make you feel about what you were looking at? What's even more invidious to me is the fact that the number of times can't ever be just actually two times, can it? I mean, if you think about it, even if you look at something just once, even if you are thinking about it in your mind and you think okay, you are going to look at this thing you are looking at just once, you actually didn't, did you? Because, come on, face it, didn't the look you gave it divide itself up into all of these millions of billions of little tiny looks all piled up? In the sense that, you know, one look is made up of so many of these little teeny tiny looks you can't even count them all, can you? So seen in the light of like this dialectic of mine, how do you go about saying like this little teeny tiny look is sadder-looking than that little teeny tiny look was? Or to be really scientific about it, not the look, not the look you looked, but the thing you saw? Because it's the thing, the thing—isn't it the thing itself we're talking about? Because we're not just sitting here jawing about just your various different infinities of looks, are we? I think this is Hegel. I don't know the first name that goes with this—but, you know, I'm positive it's like Hegel. Anyway, this is what he said he was thinking, wasn't it? I read all these people. It is this habit I have, always reading these books by these people. I walk around with these books of theirs always showing everybody. Like if somebody asks me what do you have there which you look like you are reading there, I show them. Some persons with books would not do it. I am not casting any aspersions on any of these persons, but some of them wouldn't. I think you know this. I do not think I have to marshal an argument or go work it out as a theorem for you. Some persons with books, you ask, they are only too happy to hurry and show you. Other people, forget it. It's human nature. All you can do is chalk it all up to, you know, human nature. Myself, I show. This is my nature. You have to go along with your nature. Like I once was sitting on these steps waiting for this movie to open and there is this book I have with me for just for this occasion—in essence, waiting. The movie was a little way away and I was there, oh my God, so way early for it, which, granted, is another thing in the framework of my nature as a human, me always being there, wherever it is, so way early for whatever it is—so okay, so I get my ticket, so I go to the box office and I hand over my money and I get myself my ticket, and then I go with it like, you know, like down the block or up the block, depending on which way you have this way of thinking about this conceptually-wise as a relation, that is—so okay, so I have gone and got myself my ticket and go sit on the steps in front of this building like waiting and everything.

  Waiting.

  With my book.

  Hegel probably.

  Like some Hegel probably.

  So people keep coming along on the sidewalk and asking me what book?—and there's not this least little unhuman hesitation in me, you know? I don't care. They want to know what book, do I care? Here, this book. I just hand it right over and say, "Here, this book." And they look it over and hand it back over and off on their merry way they go and who's not happy?

  Everybody's happy.

  Hey, I just remembered something.

  Ted Lewis.

  Remember Ted Lewis?

  Guy who wore this broken-down top hat.

  Entertainer guy—drawly singer guy, band-leader guy, a little, you know, cane-play and soft shoe.

  This was what he used to say, Ted Lewis.

  He used to say to everybody is everybody happy?

  In this kind of voice he had.

  Like hey, is evv—ree—bod—dee—hap—pee?

  All drawn out, all elongated and drawly.

  And drawn out.

  And tap his top hat on the top.

  Jaunty.

  Jauntily.

  With fingertips.

  Give his cane a hike and say is evvvvvvvvvvvv.

  Like that.

  Which made me, I don't know, sad. Or see that he was. Because Ted Lewis kept having to do it all of the time, kept having to do this act of his all of the time—always come out there where they could see him singing a little bit and dancing a little bit and leading his band for them and walking around for them and then, just at what he must have decided was the one special particular undividable point for him to do it, hike his cane a little and beat on this beat-up top hat of his a little and say hey, is evvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv?

  It was pretty sad.

  It was sadder by far, I say it was a lot sadder to me by far than this terrible white van that comes up to the sidewalk that says Ozram Trans on the side of it over facing over to my side of things where I am sitting over on the side with the book on the steps—and I say even still sadder by far than when there are these people which start getting out of it and which keep coming out of it—I counted, I counted—ten morons in all, all together it's ten morons in all, and the driver.

  Who went up the way with them or down the way with them and must have got tickets for them.

  So you think they have a moron rate?

  Because I get in on my own two feet.

  That's Hegel for you.

  IN REALITY

  Some many years ago I brought out a story I called "The Psoriasis Diet." It shows up in the collection What I Know So Far. What I knew about psoriasis and diet was this—that the only scheme tying psoriasis to diet in a plausible relation was eating your heart out looking for a cure. For as long as I am able to remember, searching for a method to manage the psoriasis that assails me has occupied the major fraction of my experience. Time and again I have had to take my life into my hands in an effort to keep psoriasis from forcing me into a hospital bed. I mean by this that I had been seeking relief in therapies as risky as X-ray, Grenz ray, ACTH, arsenic, aminopterin, and methotrexate. About six weeks before this book was slated to go to press—this would place us in the fifty-sixth year of my taking treatments for psoriasis—it was recommended I try something known as Skin-Cap, marketed in a cute little canister whose contents one sprays on oneself where lesions are. It worked—with stunning dispatch. I set to buying Skin-Cap by the ton, stockpiling canisters against the frantic imagining of a future when so
mething altogether too good to have been true would be snatched away from me as capriciously—or is it as inexplicably that I should say?—as it had (pop!) popped into view. For one could purchase Skin-Cap without prescription. Indeed, this was the best of it, wasn't it?—that the canister declared its only active ingredient to be zinc pyrithione. Mere zinc the cure for psoriasis? Too wonderful, too wonderful!—very like discovering a thorough washing with a strong soap dissolves malignancies. I told my son Ethan. He has psoriasis. I told Updike. He has psoriasis. I tried to tell Nicholson Baker. He has psoriasis. I called all my friends to tell them all to all call all their friends where there might be among them those who have psoriasis. For six weeks Skin-Cap—which is formulated abroad and which is shipped into the United States and which is sold at pharmacies with no more restraint than would be imposed upon the sale of a roll of adhesive tape—was the acoustical event to stand me up against the world. Hold back the conditions with the right word? This was the right word!—the pair of them—and, apropos of my insistent horseplay, they're, hey, hyphenated, are they not? Then tonight—just after midnight, and two days shy of the day for the printing and the binding of this book—I am the one who gets a call. It is from George Andreou, friend and former colleague at Alfred A. Knopf. Andreou reports CNN reporting there is some rogue component in Skin-Cap that can kill you—run, Lish, drop everything, cry havoc, head for the hills! Why give this account here—at the close of a book of fictions? How on earth does any of this bear on the matter of fiction? Well, it's a story, is it not? And if it isn't, then what—as far as I could possibly be earnestly concerned—is? Oh, but you must not tell me art is the art of the insincere.

  Who could sleep? I could not sleep. I turned on the television to see if I could catch the CNN item, and there it was, coming around again on the 2 A. M. cycle: murder, murder, sound the alarm, People of Exudation, your miracle is no miracle! I telephoned my doctor. I telephoned all my doctors—to leave word with their services for an emergency callback first thing in the morning. Then I went back to watching CNN in convinced anticipation of a still later headline counseling all Skin-Cap users to forget it, the dawning of any perspective with the dawn, and instead for them to quick bite down on their cyanide pills and be saved from the gray flora of quaintnesses to come. I had the window wide open. The heat was ghastly. This was August in the city. A man is steaming in his juices, his chickenheart blast-frozen in the runoff onto a bedsheet soaked in oil of Lish. What next? Why this seeming afterthought I am seemingly striving to get seamed into this last word here at the last? Pay attention—there is a bug buzzing, wings beating, a great dry thrashing just west of the corner of an eye—and I whack at it in reflex—whack eins!—whack zwei!—both times on this super orbital thing we all of us human beings have, it not occurring to me, not even after the initial bit of bone-crushment inflicted—dolt, dolt!—your hand, it's got the remote gadget in it, you idiot!—and the second time you do it, the second time you whack, you had better be looking to be lying here bleeding with blood all over your face. Which is what I did—bleed—and which was what I was still doing importantly well into the dawn's, this one's, early light. Now this—yes, this twistiness, curtains from a cunning foreign spritzer toppled by a silly boo-boo on the head—you are indeed, I cannot flinch from conceding, most vexingly correct—for, yes, is it not this that story consorts with a yen for story to be? With a fraud made by accomplices, with a swindle enacted between friends.