Fall and Rise

CHAPTER TWO. The Park

I go back in, squeeze past some people by the door, push my way past some people a little ways past the door, try to squeeze and push my way across the room to get to one of the two windows overlooking the street, someone says “Excuse me” as if I should have been the one to say excuse me to her, and she’s right, someone says “Excuse me” as if it’s his fault the room’s this crowded and he’s in my way when I push past him, I say “Excuse me” to several people including the few who for various reasons said excuse me to me, one man says “I’ll say,” another says “Have a heart, commander, that’s my only back,” a woman says “Louis, you made me spill my drink,” and he says “No, it was he,” till I reach the freest window.

It’s snowing, though lightly, not sticking except on the grass and a little on the tops of parked cars and trees, actually looking more like sleet. I want to open the window and look down to see Helene leaving the building and walking down the stoop or already heading some way along the street, but I know it’ll be too cold. I could make up excuses to whoever’s near me. “It’s very stuffy in here,” “So much cigarette smoke I can hardly breathe,” “Maybe some people would appreciate a little cool air in the room because of the congestion and heat,” and I say to the three people talking together next to me “Mind if I open the window?”

“Might be a bit drafty,” a man says.

“The temperature’s supposed to be dropping rapidly tonight,” the woman says to him.

“If you do open it,” another man says, “what do you say to only a tinkle?”

“No really, it’s very stuffy in here, I can hardly breathe because of the congestion and heat. I’m serious. Too many cigarettes going. You can barely see the food on the food table being contaminated by the smoke. And I’m allergic to cigarettes that are lit. Not only my respiratory track but for some organismic reason or another, they also in heavy doses make me irritable. I’m sure some other guests must be suffering the same discomfort and so won’t mind a momentary jolt of fresh air.”

“I’m really not sure,” the woman says. “But if you are going to, give me a chance to get to the other side of the room?”

She pardons her way past several people with one of the men behind her holding her hand the European way while I pull the bottom part of the window all the way up and stick my head and chest out and look down, feeling that by now Helene will be at either end of the block. She’s standing on the top step having trouble opening her contractible umbrella. She gives up trying to open it by hand and bangs the handle end against the iron railing a few times and the umbrella pops open. She walks downstairs with the umbrella over her head. I want to call her name. She reaches the sidewalk and goes right. I think don’t, it’s stupid, but yell “Helene.” She stops, looks around at eye level: stoops, first stories of buildings, both ends of her side of the street.

“Helene Winiker — up here.”

She looks across the street as if I’m in one of the taller park trees.

“You’re getting warmer, but wrong direction. Turn around a hundred eighty degrees to your left or right and look — no, now about ninety degrees to your left or two-hundred seventy to your right and look at the wet snow snowing or sleet sleeting past the red brick building you came out of and then at the middle window of the apartment you were in three flights up, which is the only top floor apartment of that building facing the street, and if your eyesight’s all right and you can also see past the snow or sleet and remember who I am, you’ll come to recognize me. Mr. Krin.”

“It’s very cold,” a man says.

“Freezing,” a woman says. “Could you lower the window, sir?”

“Yes, that’s a terrific idea,” another woman says. “Don’t you think you should listen to it?”

“Hey, what’s going on there, shut that window,” a man says. “My wife just got over a bad cold.”

“Who opened the window?” Diana says from across the room. “Even if no one did, could someone please close it?”

Helene’s looking at the window now. I wave and smile, then take my glasses off and wave them at her and smile. She shakes the umbrella in my direction, didn’t and doesn’t smile, walks on.

I close the window, rub the lenses of my glasses against my sleeve till they’re clear and dry, put the glasses away and stare outside. Give what you did time to subside before you turn around, but why’d you do it? Little high, feeling good, really am quite stupid, meeting a new desirable woman who also might be a potential mate could have had something to do with it. I want to ruin all good things from the start? Yes, yes, no, maybe, absolutely not. I’ll phone her later next week. Don’t see why by then I shouldn’t be able to explain it. If her number’s not in the book it could mean she never intended to speak to me again, which might have stopped me before but now I’ve this other reason to call. “Something came over me. Was so unlike me. I needed some air, threw open the window, saw you and thought what the heck. Oh hell, it was just an expression of joy.”

I turn around. “Opening the window so high really was a foolish thing to do, wasn’t it?” I say to one of the women who complained.

“It’s over.”

“Actually, though, contrary to what a lot of people might think, an open window, even if the air is cold, is a much better way of preventing colds and other virus-caused illnesses in a crowded room than a closed window. The viruses thrive in the warmth and some other reasons I read in the Times Science Section one of these previous Tuesdays. Keeps the viruses circulating, the cold air does, and breezier the better, and also more engaged in staying warm and alive than attaching themselves to us.”

“If that is the case,” a man says, “then I’d think a shivering tired virus would want to hide inside someone’s warm suit or up a sultry orifice than just faint to the floor with a death of a cold and nobody inclined to help it.”

“That could be true. It was the lead article and long and I tend not to finish them in that section. And I do apologize for making you so cold,” and I look around for Diana. She’s across the room, stacking used plates and laughing to herself. “Diana.”

“Was it wise opening the window that far?”

“Sorry. Got carried away though have since made my apologies to the respective parts, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You want to know more about Helene.”

“I’ve known you for nearly five months. I speak to you on the phone about fifteen minutes every other week. We’ve had four to five cheap Chinese and Greek restaurant dinners since we’ve been back and ate at the same table upstate every evening for a month and we’ve almost always talked about a lot more than what’s new, who’s who, movies are phoo and whew, and the rising price of cottage cheese and beef, so how come you never told me about Helene?”

“I never told her about you either and I’ve known her for years and speak to her about twice the times and double the durations as I do you, even if I at the last moment at the door lost my head and said I’d introduce you. You’re not suited for one another, that’s what I thought. Or I didn’t think it though do now. But I’m busy. There’s ice to untray, trayed food to unrefrigerate, glasses and plates to wash or throw away and replace, more bells to answer, opened windows to tell people to shut, and everyone wants to talk. If you do while you’re helping me, be my guest.”

We go into the kitchen. “Besides,” she says as she takes food platters out of the refrigerator and removes the plastic wrap and I empty a bag of ice into a bowl, “though I’ve kept it a stately secret from everyone we both know, I was vaguely interested in you myself. Why give away a relatively good thing, or till someone comparable but more attracted to me comes along? I was never that generous even as a girl. And that ungenerous spirit goes back to my months as a fetus, if you can believe me and I can believe my mother, when I more than most overgrown embryos wouldn’t let her eat, sleep and make love and as a result was more than any one thing instrumental in wrecking their marriage. And because I lived with her and hardly saw my father, I created my own abject dependence on male acceptance and affection and till recently loathed my mother, who I thought was the one responsible for driving my father away from me at such an early, impressionable age. Overfill the bowl with ice so I won’t if you’re not around have to send someone else to refill it so fast. But now that I see you’re not interested in me and probably never were except for perhaps the first few minutes after we met, nothing I can do about it. Besides, I’m inchoatively drunk, so don’t believe most of what I say other than overfilling the bowl and later if you see it empty or low, getting more ice. I mean a bit tipsy, not inchoatively, and liable to say ridiculous tipsy thinks like ‘inchoatively’ and ‘tipsy thinks’ and that I was interested in you once, all of wish would be a thundering lie. You’re okay and amusing to be around but to me not that attractive. I just never thought of Helene and you as a twosome. Not even as two people to talk together for any extensive length of time.”

“We didn’t.”

“There. So forget her. If you can’t talk from the beginning, you’re through from the start — that’s my motto or somewhat. I also know she prefers men a lot more established, stable and scholarly than you.”

“More stable and established? I almost never leave my apartment or for that matter my desk seat. And there must be a couple of people who’d consider me scholarly. Geez, I speak the Emperor’s Japanese without ever having been to the Ryukyu Islands or Japan. Who in this room even knows of the Ryukyus or at least its most recent cession and if they do then the exact date when, or can read, speak, write and translate almost flawless Japanese without in fact ever having seen the Pacific?”

“There’s a Japanese weaver here and his potter wife who are visiting the city for a year. They can do all those except say they’ve never seen the Pacific and translate Japanese into near perfect English and the reverse, though he does have a profitable sideline translating Japanese plays and verse into Korean and Chinese.”

“Oh yeah? Where? I should speak to him. What’s his name?”

“Don’t and let’s not mention his name or allude too loudly to him till they leave. He doesn’t like your translations and introductions. He specifically requested I not think it appropriate for you to meet. It’s his opinion, and one he says shared widely in the Japanese literary world, denoting a fame I never knew you had, that you’ve done more harm than anyone in any English-speaking country to stop English-speaking people from appreciating modern Japanese poetry.”

“Oh, I see him, unless you have other Japanese friends here. I should corner him and do what I can to change his mind. But nuts to him, not that I won’t defend my right to object to his beliefs. First tell me about Helene.”

“What’s to tell?”

“Is she married, and if so, living with her husband? And if not, how long’s it been since the trial separation or divorce? And if so, living with any male now in a faithful relationship? And if not, so serious with any male now that there’d be no chance of a nonmarital separation or divorce?”

“She was, once, maritally tried and divorced, and currently unattached but not loose and teaching American literature in a college upstate. She also has a book coming out not from a university press but a real live and hearty trade publisher that actually gave more than a five-hundred-dollar advance on the short stories of twentieth-century American writers. She believes, something I scolded her for because of the counter reaction it might start against my literature professor friends, in brief plain-speaking critiques and short un-gossipy biographical sketches with plenty of humor and active verbs and few adjectives or big words or discursive turgid sentences. It’s her objective — I think because she was brought up hardworking and poor where every morsel, minute and cent meant something — to say in ten thousand words per author what most scholars manage to do in a hundred thousand or two, which could put a few of them out of business or force them to reduce their paragraphs, sabbaticals and requests for grants. She’s also very sweet, decent, modest, sensitive, even-tempered and with the most thought-out high virtues and lived-out public and private morality of anyone I know, besides being one of my best friends. Is any of this coming through to you?”

“All. It’s everything I like. If she asks, you’ll slip in a good word for me, and if she doesn’t, you’ll volunteer?”

“The truth is you’re not good enough for her. For me, yes. I prefer single-hood and no kids and my minor escapades that don’t interfere with the well-paying fulltime work and month-long vacations I love, so I’ll accept much less. But she needs and can maintain while carrying on her other major pursuits an equally right-minded child-wanting youngish dean of a highly regarded semiexperimental college who also teaches a freshman writing course twice a week and is adored by all his students, envied by most of the faculty, sought out by the most prestigious eleemosynary institutions and do-gooding organizations for his intellect, integrity and class and who also sails, skis and runs besides owning a woodsy home with fireplaces in every kitchen and den and a green thumb, bluish blood, purple passion, red background, pink glow and lots of lustrous hair-locks and stylish tidy clothes. Something of that agglutination, but you just won’t do, which she’ll let you know soon enough if you’re still so foolish to pursue her, since she’s also intently though unbrutally frank. Please put the bowl on the bar before the cubes dissolve and try to stay up till midnight when the party starts to end and a group of us is going to eat Chinese, compliments of a Soviet-supported Russian poet on tour whom I think I just heard resonate through the door.”

She leaves without the platters. Some have to be heated and I light the oven, hold the platters over my head to see if they’re ovenproof, and stick them inside. I take the ice to the bar, pour another vodka, take the cold food platters to the table, see the poet, buoyant and big-voiced and coat over his shoulders, thick cowlick falling over his cheek which he keeps remedying with a quick hand sweep or flip of his head, go back for the heated food and two hot plates and potholders and serving spoons, bring them to the table, potholders on the platters’ ends so the first people to take from them will know they’re hot, look around for someone to talk to, forget where I left my drink, elderly man in tweed and scholastic keys whom Helene had talked to, say hello and he says “How are you, sir?” and I say “Fine thanks, but weren’t we introduced?” and he says “That could be true in so rowdy a room, but my memory’s still tolerably good, so I doubt it. Wheeler Smith’s the name. Do you also work alongside Diana on that unlucid magazine?” and I say “No, strictly on my own, not that I’d snub an article-writing slot with free medical insurance if I could land one. Daniel Krin.” I extend my hand and we shake. His is mostly meaty and cold and when I glance at mine when I take it away I see it has ink stains on it from this afternoon or maybe from a memo I wrote on the train. “Nice party,” and he says “That it is, Mr. Krin.”

“Daniel or Dan. Diana gives them a lot?”

“Once a year around Thanksgiving, give or take a Friday. I often think it’s the one good thing I’ve to be thankful for around this time, not being a fancier of sugared cranberries and dried-out turkeys and parades promoting Macy’s and the advent of frenzied Christmas buying.”

“So you know Diana for a while.”

“If I were an artfully addled old man I’d say for how long. I was her dissertation director when she was finishing the city’s youngest Ph.D. in fifty years. You’re a pleasant new face here so I’ll conjecture you met her at that colony I’m a trustee of.”

“We lived in footboard to footboard rooms and shared the same bathtub and can of Ajax. I noticed you talking to Helene Winiker. You direct her too?”

“Wish I had. She wasn’t the youngest but without question was one of the brightest, aside from being an aesthetic and colloquial treat. Seeing and speaking to Helene here is the second entry I’ll put on my list of things to be thankful for this time of the year. But you haven’t said what you do, Mr. Krin. It could be your work was sent to me last spring and I voted on your colony stay.”

“I translate.”

“I only get fiction in the original. One of the Slavics?”

“Japanese, and if I have some help from a sinologist, a bit of Chinese.”

“An admirable underpaid profession and if you could excel in the latter language you’ll be in the coming wave. Well. Seems the line to Gurygenin has declined so mind if I say goodbye for the time being to attend to the amenity of shaking the great man’s hand?”

“Is it?”

“Surely the shaking one is if that’s the hand he writes with. If I were a speculator in men’s fortunes and careers I’d say he’ll receive a Nobel in the next ten years if his country can keep its nose relatively clean.”

“Then I’d say someone a lot more deserving would be out about two hundred thousand dollars for better world politics.”

“I doubt you’d think that if you translated Russian. Much success to you, Mr. Krin.”

Gurygenin sighs when he sees him and kisses his cheeks and says what seems like a ribald remark in Russian in Smith’s ear. They laugh. Some people near them laugh when Gurygenin repeats the remark in English, which I don’t wholly hear. Something about old appetites and young women and the time it takes to complete the feast and how when a man is young and just as hungry he would pass up a steaming savory-smelling four-course supper for a cold snack. I look around, no one I know, see my glass, dump the vodka into a large glass and add tomato juice to the top, see a woman Helene had said hello to spreading caviar on a cracker. I go over, slice a piece of brie, hold it up between two fingers and say “Ah, just as I like it: boiled for two and three-quarter minutes and then quickly rolled over ice and rushed to the diner’s plate,” and she says “Leave it to Dee.”

“For Diana? And Helene. Is she H?”

“You know Helene? I was in the bathroom scrubbing my ugly face and looking forward to a chat with her when all of a sudden she disappeared.”

“Went to a wedding. Had a previous commitment to it for months.”

“Anybody I might know? And listen, stop me if you see my arm reaching for another chunk of food. Anything here but the lettuce garnish — clip me on the wrist, even, okay?”

“I will. And I’ve been sworn not to say whose wedding it is. The bride doesn’t want any gate crashers or some reason like that Helene said. Or any gates crashing. That was it. Too much noise. She doesn’t want the ceremony disturbed. Because suppose the groom later contends that the wedding should be nullified because he didn’t hear all the nuptial words being said. Because at the precise moment the bride was saying ‘I do’ or whatever they say today that legitimates the marriage contract, the gates were crashing away. No, that can’t be, since the wedding was this summer. Helene never said anything to me except that she was going to the reception.”

“Is that so.”

“Of course she said a few other things. ‘How come fall’s falling so fast?’ ‘If you’re going to the bar, could you take back my glass?’ But you seem dubious of my even saying why Helene’s not here.”

“I shouldn’t be, and for several good reasons, the best of them being that you didn’t stop me from stuffing myself with more food?”

“Actually, I only met Helene tonight. Right here. No, over there where that man and woman smoking black cigarettes are standing, though our positions by sex reversed. I came over and said. She looked at me and said. Later I said and she said and then she mentioned the reception. Didn’t the crashing. Did the bride, though would a bride after so many months still be a bride if the reception’s her wedding’s? Never said a word about gates. Yeats, yes. Maybe also mates. Traits and fates only just conceivably when we got into a hot conversation about weddings and receptions, but about beddings and conceptions, nothing. You know, I never till now realized how effortlessly so many words come to mind that rhyme with gates and also relate to it. Sates. Straits. Grates and greats, the last with an e-a-t because of Yeats, and even that e-a-t now I see relates to the ate in plates and pates if you want to pronounce and spell pâté that way, besides the past tense of eat and so on. But yes, let’s. No, you won’t allow me to allow you to, though I’ll have some more.” I hold a knife over the brie and my expression says “Would you, despite your not wanting to, like me to slice you a piece?” She shakes her head, squeezes what doesn’t seem like a lot of flab on her waist.

“May I ask your name?” she says.

“It’s one I’d like to forget tonight.”

“My, you’re feeling sorry for yourself. That the reason you’re acting the bizarre way you are? The wordplay gibberish? The Helene gate business ridiculousness? If it’s the drink, you shouldn’t. Not my affair and far be it from me to try to stop you when you didn’t my nervous eating, but you really shouldn’t drink anymore tonight even if it isn’t the drink. It can’t make you better. I know. You’re looking at a former walking bottle of alcohol. Walking? Hah. And I like a slight amount of seriousness with those I speak, so if…”

“Ten thousand years,” and I clink her soda glass on the table with my glass and drink down my drink. “That’s banzai in Greek.”

“That’s not funny in any language.” She takes her glass, breaks off a couple of blue-cheese crumbs and puts them in her mouth and says “Really, at a party I love nothing more than to schmooze around, so it’s no shun if I say I’ll see ya?”

“Wait, you’re right. I am feeling sorry for myself tonight and I didn’t just say that to agree with you. I’ve been going on also. Running. The mouth. I’m not always like this. Rarely. Sometimes I’m even self-effacing, deferential and shy. I’ve made potential enemies here. I must be self-destructive. Just using the word ‘made’ instead of ‘encouraged’ and ‘enemies’ instead of ‘adversaries’—or more accurately have said, since the examples I gave make little sense, ‘I caused or prodded people to be hostile to me’—maybe illustrates that fact. Someone once said that about me. About being self-destructive. Someone? I can be a liar too. Meaning that that’s what I can also be — I didn’t mean you. Several said it. All women I was very attached to, though I doubt it was ever as evident as now, and not my attachment to them but my self-destruction. Look. I think I felt I had nothing to say before so wanted to make up clever and controversial things to say so I’d seem interesting. That sound true? I might have just said it to seem interesting, but I don’t think I did and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Excuse me. Still running. That I wasn’t even able to give my name to you? Saying and doing all those socially asinine things I don’t feel proud of I can tell you. Even what I’ve just been saying: this uncappable self-spill. At my age, coupled with my inferior income and no security, to be such a schmo sometimes is hard sometimes for me to believe and take. Oh fuck. I acted and am still acting the way I did because I don’t relate, or for those or additional self-destructive reasons think I don’t, to anyone here except maybe the host. So I’m provoking and annoying people and saying ridiculous and wretched things just to what? Don’t go yet. That can’t-relate feeling-sorry-for-myself outcast and — classed self-destructive argument I guess, though ‘argument’ not used in any contentious sense but in the manner of reasons induced and concluded I think, wouldn’t you say, or am I now being self-destructively unclear?”

She’s been doing other things but looking at me most of this time. Studying a wall hanging, snapping her wedding band, looking at the food, biting a live cuticle. Now she says “Then go home if you feel you don’t belong here and work it out some other day. That’s what I’d do,” and picking what I suppose is the chewed cuticle off her tongue, she touches my shoulder for me to step aside. I do and she passes.

“Diana,” I say, going over to her while looking at my shoulder to see if the cuticle was left there. It wasn’t, or fell off, and Diana’s introducing a Czechoslovak novelist to Gurygenin. Now his work I like and I wouldn’t mind talking to him. “Pardon me,” I say to the men. “I don’t mean to bust this up, but may I plunder Diana for a moment and then maybe return with her?”

“Sure,” the Czech says, “go ahead. But don’t — what did he say? — plunder her to the point of making it not possible for her to come back to us to stay. This poet man. He may not have something to say with me and then I’d be bored to stand here.”

“Speak English,” Gurygenin tells him. “We’re among friends.”

I take Diana by the arm and walk her to a free corner. “You needn’t explain,” she says. “I overheard enough of what you said to Sally and another guest told me much of the rest. What’s wrong with you? These are nice people. Intelligent, some of them gifted, and my friends. You’re my friend also, so I’m trying my best not to say that if you want to stay my friend, as well as at the party, and I’m probably going too far with that to a friend, don’t insult anyone else here to his or anyone else’s face. I also think you’ve had plenty to drink already, and now I know I’m going too far with a friend, but okay?” and takes the glass from my hand.

“I am feeling a bit too self-pitying for one jerk tonight and deservedly disliked. In a way it’s related to you-know-who.”

“Oh please. Let me go back to my friends.”

“You know so many people. I don’t know how you do it.”

“I work at it, not against. Take a lesson from me. That’s what my mother said to me when I was a wearisome kid and what I’m passing on to you. Be tolerant, be kind, be warm, and if others can’t get along with you, they’ll be in the wrong. Now as far as Helene’s concerned—”

“From what I can tell, just someone like her is what I meant, but because of some ineluctable eternal puke in my nature I can never get. Would I try to be getting away with too much if I said can’t we just say I’m drunk and be done with it and start anew? Nah, because I know I’ve screwed it up entirely with you and all your friends, haven’t I?”

“I wouldn’t know. And you haven’t been listening. And didn’t we run through this before? And why make everything sound worse by allying yourself with puke and the eternity? And are you sure you used ineluctable right? And these days everyone in everything has to settle for less. And really, come nearer…you’re behaving so intemperately besides nonsensically besides in the most mawkish pea-brained way that I don’t know if I care anymore. If it’ll make you feel any better, and this will be my last heroic act, sleep it off in the bedroom till the party’s over, though keep half the bed free for the cat, and maybe we should forget about eating Chinese.”

“No, got to go.” I kiss her hand, start to leave. “Hot fool, hot fool,” I say, pushing through.

“Dan,” she says behind me. I’m out the door. Collect my umbrella and coat and put it on and umbrella under my arm and wait for her a few seconds I’m not sure what for and go downstairs. Young man just buzzed-in and running upstairs says “Party breaking up so fast?” and I say “An international star-cast of nyet.”

“Tar cast of net?” and I say “Sorry, I meant yep, yep yep, yep yep yep.”

“Hey, watch it with your umbrella,” nearly speared, dodging past.

I look back and see him and then only his banister hand rounding the staircase. “Zeke,” Diana shrieks, “you old son of a Z, where have you been, my big man?” and their lips smack.

“Who was that guy I—” before I’m out of range.

Outside I don’t know whether to go right or left. I go straight. Wind and cold feel good and clear. Through the park on a path. Man sitting on a bench says “Excuse me but is there any way possible you can help me to get something to eat?”

Snowing. Covered his hair, shoulders, shoes, bench. Snow’s on the ground. Dog tracks. Someone not long ago slipped a few feet or intentionally slid: Yippee, look at me. Several lampposts away a figure’s cutting across the grass on skis. “By God it’s snowing,” I say, feeling my hair and accumulated crunch.

“I know and I believe I froze,” still with his head leaning over his knees and staring at his feet.

“Seriously?” His eyes close. I look around. Nobody’s around. Snow’s become sleet and light rain. I open the umbrella, touch his hand. “Still warm, almost hot,” holding the umbrella over us. “Maybe that’s a sign of frostbite — the first, only and last. But what do I know about frostbite? That if the affected skin stays hot but you can’t feel it — can you or my touch?” Eyes stay shut. “Then probably is or close and you should get to a hospital for it. Get into some cover at least. Don’t just keep your eyes dry. And gloves. You have to see to yourself. You could also lose your nose.”

He puts his hands into his jacket pockets and says “Excuse me but is there any way possible—”

“Stop repeating yourself.” Rain’s become sleet and then sticking snow and I close the umbrella. “Not that I don’t appreciate that you at least saw to your hands, and your polite tone. No, that sounds flossy and patronizing. But craziness — this is what I’m driving at — isn’t going to get or keep you well. You’ll catch cold. Pneumonia. Don’t let me be your mother. Here.” I take some change out. “All my change, token’s in there too.” I hold it out. It’s already wet from the rain. I open the umbrella and hold it over us. “Take it, I have to go.”

I try to take one of his hands out but it won’t move. Around the wrist I touch is one of those hospital identification bands with a clamped clasp. I drop the coins into that pocket. Snowing. “Thank you,” he says, body same way.

“Yes, I’m a terrific son of a bitch, aren’t I?”

“I own thoughts, sir.”

“Then get cover. Listen, for all the money I shelled out I’ve the right to bark orders. So arf. Arghh arf arf. That means shelter, health, gloves.” Doesn’t look up. “All right, just remember the change is in there and a token, and take it easy.”

I turn around, lit storm clouds eclipsing the top of Empire State, start out the park way I came in. What’s this? Feel sick, stomach cramp and cold head sweat and chills, rest against a lamppost, try to close the umbrella, can’t, try, too weak to and it drops out of my hand, I didn’t let it go, wind drifts it a few feet off the ground a few feet, lets it go, rolls on its rib tips along the path several cycles, off it to I-can’t-see-where when I hear its handle hit up against a tree trunk — if that’s it. My nose itches and I close my eyes, open my mouth, suck in air, can’t sneeze. Cramps, chills, sweat and weakness are gone. Feet freezing, shoes and probably socks steeped through, turned-up cuffs caught some snow. I empty them. Strange night. Helene, my divisiveness, this weather, my seventeen-second flu. Jogger. Sloshing past in tank top, cap and shorts adding his or her part to it. Wouldn’t be surprised to look up and see the sky full of stars and unfettered moon. Un what? Where these words come from sometimes? I suppose I meant of clouds and unfetid might be better. Must have picked it up from one of the hundred or so Hasenai love poems I went over the last two days. Unchalked, unmoved, unrefined, storm cloud. Those last two lines weren’t it and I’ll change “storm” to “rain” and would now or maybe to “snow” if my notebook wouldn’t run, but close enough to be the source. And my divisiveness tonight? Some other time.

I look up, grateful to be well again. Snow that stops right before my eyes, a last flake, which I blow at to keep aloft. Then rain. I go after the umbrella. For the use it’ll give me after the time I find it, weighed against how much wetter I’ll get during the search, it’ll be worth it. But must have been blown farther in or annexed in neutral territory, since it’s not where I thought I heard it land. “Anyone around here—” No, nobody would say for a variety of reasons. It was a cheap umbrella, bought in front of a subway kiosk during a torrential downpour, May waiting inside for me to rescue her and bring her home partly dry, better or different days. Oh dear, so many women, so many girls, such a long life with them and most times just servicing for us while being one of their boys. I don’t know, but got about a dollar thirty-five a year use out of it and May’s great smile and approbation for being a sport. But get home and to bed or at least to a—

“Pardon,” gray beard, man says, hand out, no hat, also soaked and unseasonably clothed and by the sound his feet make against the water running off the path, though I don’t want to look, barefoot.

“Sorry but I already have with my last change to that guy on the bench there and I’m feeling a bit sick besides.”

“A dollar would help.” Oh would it my answer looks. “Thought it being around Thanksgiving time—” Sympathy my head shakes. “What’s a buck these days anyway and I’m awfully hard up.” A buck’s something to me my finger points. “No problem,” and as if it isn’t raining and hasn’t been and sleeted and snowed, walks into the park, is barefoot but on the other just a sock, stops at a trashcan, picks around, I don’t want to watch anymore but my mind walking away with me sees him digging deeper till out leaps a rat with cocked teeth.

Pay phone at the corner. Now I can say with some authority as they say why most of the street booths have been removed and can assume that all will be replaced with these reasonably soon. Only enough cover under this one for one’s head and hands and I run to it, thinking I have to have a dime or its nickel equivalent somewhere, but don’t. Do a dollar as a woman passes, plus the napkin with pâté. “Excuse me,” wrapping the napkin tighter and putting it in my side coat pocket, “but can you change a dollar bill for me?”

“No,” keeps going.

“It’s very important. My child in the hospital. I have to see about him. We’re split, my wife and I, and my kid who lives with her got hit—”

Has slowed down, stops, pauses, turns around, starts back.

“By a bicycle.”

“I’m sorry. A bike might sound like a comical thing to get hit with but I know it can be bad. I bet it was going the wrong way.”

“No, my son was, but the bike was going very fast and never stopped.”

“Hit and run? That could also be a joke if nobody had been hurt.” She’s dressed right for the rain, sleet and snow though all have stopped. Feels inside the quilted coat pockets while I look around for a trashcan nearby for the pâté, unsnaps a pocket off the coat and shakes it out into her palm. Keys, coins, candy or antacid mint and three tissue-wads roll out. “Didn’t think I did and I seem to have lost my little koala bear keyring. Here’s a dime.” Throws the mints into the street and turns the pocket inside out and back again. “Darn. In fact take both dimes in case the phone company bungles your first call or you need to talk more.”

“Take the dollar.”

“No thanks.” She resnaps the pocket to the coat with the keys and wads back inside. “My good deed and all that and maybe it’ll get back my bear.”

“Then what’s your name and address so I can repay you, in just stamps.”

Smiles. “Think I’m crazy?” Crosses the street, seeming from behind in her raised attached hood to ankle-length hem like a jaywalking sleeping bag or sleeping jaybag or some converse figure of speechlessness, though neither of those. I dial Information, give Helene’s borough and name and last four letters in it and get her number, think I shouldn’t, won’t, but can’t help myself tonight which true is a flimsy and untruthful excuse, but go on, what’s the harm? might even help in several unexplainable ways I haven’t time or mind to try to explain right now why I think they’re unexplainable or even why I haven’t time or mind right now, dial Information and give the same information and say “By the way, that’s Stuyvesant Place she lives on, right?” and he says “I’ve only one Helene Winiker and it’s on West a Hundred-tenth, still want it?” and I say “That’s right, she moved,” get the number, repeat it once to him and several times to myself, dial and a woman answers with the last four digits I dialed but combines them into two numbers, something I should have done to simplify memorizing the whole number.

“Ms. Winiker’s answering service? Or Mrs.? Miss?”

“Winiker will do. Any message?”

“She’s no doubt out. I don’t know why I invariably say that to answering services. Most likely my initial surprise, expecting the person I dialed to answer or some surrogate of hers I know, though she told me of you.”

“Who’s calling?”

“She’ll know what I mean by the following if she remembers who I am. Sure she will, if she contacts you in the next few days. Will she?”

“Up to her. Your message?”

“Tell her…That I wanted to reach her before the newspapers hit the stands?”

“That it?”

“No. Give me time to think.”

“Tell you what. Call back when you have it, but I’m very busy with other calls flashing and even one on hers.” Hangs up.

Who’d be calling her now? None of your bizwax and so forth. But obviously someone who didn’t know she was going to a wedding tonight, if she was telling me the truth. Was she? Hardly your affair, etcetera. Tend to your sodden pants, waterlogged socks and now soaked raincoat. Could I tell by her face though? Goddamn this man never gives up. Seemed truthful enough. Seemed more than that. Seemed truth-filled, overflowed, true-blue, tried and true, true to life and to type, whatever that means, trueborn and to form and the like, though do go on: straight-out, girl scout, foursquare and forthright forsooths ago and still going strong, and so did her voice, which was mellow, intelligible and calm, and her hair, which has nothing to do with truth but which I’d love to be able to portray in a poem to her she’d appreciatively receive in the mail and repeatedly read. Maybe she had a date or wanted to go to a movie alone or felt so disconcerted and repelled with my systematically surveying her and parts unknown that I sort of forced her to set off earlier than she’d planned to. That’s the case she could be home soon or home now but not answering the phone for fear I’ll phone or no fear but has someone home with her now and doesn’t want to answer the phone because she’s or they’re in the middle or start or end of something she or they don’t or he doesn’t want to interrupt. “True-tongued, homespun, abundantly gummed and lipped, not that I caught all of it,” Hasenai says with the aid of his transgressive-lator, “jest saying, past paying, moon’s out, so’s this lout, wood woofs, whelp in the wild and weep in a while, Jun (his first name), same as his son (I write only semidocumentary poems), go home!” Or a man phoning to get the message she left as to when she’ll be home and where’s her doorkey this time: left with the elevator man or taped to the side of her doorjamb or under her stairway handrail but surely not under the doormat. Or a friend or relative saying a good friend or relative’s very sick, so and so suddenly or after a long illness died, car-pool driver — if that’s how she gets to her school upstate and Monday’s one of her teaching days — saying he or she can’t make it and she’ll have to find another ride, or rider, if she’s the one who drives the car-pool car, saying he or she can’t make it, or friend, relative or mate of the rider or car-pool driver saying he or she’s sick, can’t make it or died. Or just a new or relatively new to recently old lover calling to say if she phones that he’s coming by tonight, which he can do because he has his own key and knows it’s all right. Or even Helene, phoning to see who might have called, learning that an anonymous indecisive man was just on the line.

I dial Information, hang up before I get it, wipe the rain and melted snow off the telephone stand shelf, set up my notebook and opened pen on it, dial Information and give the same information plus her street number and get her building and phone numbers and write them down, dial and the woman repeats the last four digits. “It’s the same man from before,” I say.

“What man from when before? So far tonight I’ve answered a couple of men’s voices for this number and one woman’s which might have been a man’s.”

“The nameless semistranger who couldn’t make up his mind five minutes ago.”

“You know, in every holiday season, which I think I can say we’re already in — someone’s blinking window wreath I can see from the slit they give us to see out of here — Well I don’t want to talk about tough nights, but if you’ve any plans to annoy me further and nothing else puts you off, I will.”

“I don’t plan it. But if you think you’ve had a tough night—”

“I don’t want to talk about it either, for that’s exactly what some of the tough calls were on. Depression, rejection, help me to reach him and what’d she say when you gave her my message or told him from me to take gas, and more of the same, no?”

“No, but okay. Just tell Winiker I called. Daniel K-r-i-n. From a pay station or phone booth or one-legged stand you can’t stand under even with one leg, and that I was an incredible fool Friday night, but outside of this call and the last one I made, won’t be anymore.”

“You’re asking me to write all that down?”

“You don’t have to include this booth or stand or anything about legs or even my previous call.”

“Think it wise saying any of it?”

“It’s not what you think. There’s this carefully plotted though harmless meaning behind it all. So no matter how surprised Winiker might be when you first give her the message, you’ll suddenly be surprised when she all of a sudden understands.”

“Fine. Krin. Bye.”

“Maybe you’re right. You are right. You still there?”

“Why?”

“Please erase all I said starting from the beginning of this call. Beginning before even then. Don’t even say I called this time or the last. Don’t even recall I called. Put my name and namelessness and existence out of your mind. I never called either time, okay? If you wrote the message or started to, tear it up. It was dumb of me — child’s play — my acting the way I did. I’ll probably see her later tonight anyway, so I’ll tell her myself, but don’t even tell her that. I mean phone her tonight, I probably will, or one day soon, though nothing of that’s to go past us too, not even an allusion to my musing about it. No, it’s hopeless. Got myself into a nice hole with this one. You’ll no doubt give her the message and my musings no matter what I say, since that’s your job. And maybe after a couple of years of your becoming overprotective and communicationally involved with your clients, you think she should know even more so that I called, whether you wrote it down yet or not.”

“Believe me, Danny, it’s easier for me to rip up a message than slot and give it, so that’s what I’ll do if you want.”

“I do.”

“Then done.” Hangs up. Now begin worrying about it. Not just what she’ll tell Helene, but why I said it. Why did I? Not just this call but the last. Not just all of what I said to the phone and before her to the loan woman but most of what I said and did tonight starting with the party or an hour into it and how with Helene I just about ruined it. Did I? Worry about it. Useless to, since what can I do about it now and so on? High, that’s why I acted the way I did I can say, first time in my life or in a year I got anywhere near to being so inebriated, which is a lie, but no reason I can’t use it to try to swing things around a little my way. “You see, Helene, for some reason — no, that’s not the truth. Yes it is, only I’m almost too ashamed at my behavior that night to recount and explain it, but I will because what more, since it’s also in my self-interest, can I tell you but the excuse, I mean the truth, which is the reason I called, or one of them. For you see, Helene, I didn’t think you left Diana’s for a wedding but because I’d chased you from it with my slobbering attention from afar and series of unsuccessful passes close up, which is the reason I thought you’d be home the first time I called. As for my second call, if your answering service told you of it, and if it didn’t then I don’t remember making any second call, I’ve no excuse except that I was still high and had begun to act like a fool and was also trying to undo the damage of my first call, if you were told of it, and if you weren’t then I only made one call — the second one — to leave an innocuous message that I’d called and would try to get back to you soon, but because of my highness I got carried away. Anyway, now I feel lousy about it and want to apologize for any discomfort I might have caused you by chasing you away from Diana’s if I did, and also through you to your answering service for my foolish and perhaps disturbing calls to it via your number, and also to you again for my having misrepresented myself to your answering service and possibly embarrassing you because of it by intimating I was your friend or knew you better than I did. No, that’s confusing and tumescent, just as that phrase was when I could have more accurately and less clumsily said ‘affected and bombastic,’ though I’m still being vocally showy, and even still with that last adverbial phrase, and even still by saying I know what form of speech it is, when I could have more briefly and plainspeakingly said ‘flip, windy, labored and imprecise,’ or to be even more plainspeaking, ‘not precise,’ but all of it said, including the last two revisions, in what I’ll truthfully say was a laughable and ludicrous endeavor to impress you, and for that, and also for that last flashy phrase, I humbly apologize. Not humbly. Nor so dumbly. No humility, stupidity, apologies, amphibologies, metatheses, paronomasias, lapsus linguae and anglicized or any foreign or lexiphanic or high-falutin words and phrases. Everything I’ve said to you so far has been out-and-out dishonesty if not downright lies, not that I can particularize that difference. I’m sorry. There it is. That’s all I had to say. Sorry for lots of things: my phone calls to your service, my antics and aggressiveness at the party while you were there and after you left, and most of all for what I said to you on the phone tonight, or today if it’s not tonight. Listen. Let me begin again if I can and may. May I? Because lean. Not too late? No reply? I should take that as an okay? Okay. I was quite simply — not ‘quite’ but just simply and maybe simperingly and simplemindedly — no, just simply. Plain and simply. I was simply high that night, though it actually does sound much better saying ‘quite simply high that night,’ for otherwise I do sound simpleminded, and that’s my excuse. Not simplemindedness but highness — now that’s the truth. Which is truly the truth but no real excuse because I have to be responsible for myself and my actions, sober or soused, unless I were a certified lush, which I’m most certainly not, so…no. Where was I? Got confused again in this endless excuse. You see, Helene…” Won’t work. Yes it could. What else I got? “Drunk, stupid, pretentious, insensitive, insouciant, translucent, unseemly, unsociable and other — ent’s and — ant’s and trans’- and in’s- and un’s- like — conscious and — questionably — conscionable, because first time anywhere near to being pickled in a year, so sorries all around: service, operator, you, Diana, guests I spoke to about you at the party, because really, all I usually like is a glass of white or two every night, and not a big glass but a regular red or white wineglass, three and a half ounces and not filled to spilling level at the top, so it must have been all that seemingly innocent enough social drinking and that hundred-proof Russian rotgut.” That’s what it’ll be. Knew I’d eventually find my excuse. “The ice-cold Russian vodka. Not because it was ice-cold, though that could have contributed to my cyclopean high, but because it was vodka and a hundred proof and also Russian and straight and I wasn’t used to that hooch any old way and surely not when they filled my double- or triple-shot glass or cup all the way up. I drank it like water but without water, ice, juice or even a peel. Then before I knew it I was rude to everyone in what was left of my sight and made my dumb phone calls the same night, even though that does show an underlying social problem and perhaps at first view an overriding congenital mental disease, but please don’t believe that or make more out of things than they already are. Maybe when someone’s only used to the softer spiritous stuff, a certain quantity of hard liquor, particularly when it’s distilled so differently and to this person is alien to his physical system in almost any amount or form, would do that to just about anyone including a European with a history of hard drinking or even a Russian who’s lived and drank most of his life in the same freezing regions where that liquor is made, not that I’m trying to exonerate myself for my actions and so forth. So you see, Helene, that’s my excuse. I’m sorry, apologize, you, Diana, answering service, party guests, phone calls, so forth, and hope you’ll forgive me, could kick myself for what I did, pray you don’t think that night or even this phone call is anything but faintly related to my normal behavior, and would like to try to make up for all I aberrantly did by inviting you for a drink somewhere, maybe that nice new, so it won’t be too inconvenient for you, wine bar I heard opened up last month on some second floor above a Lebanese deli around your way, though I’d understand if you refused. You won’t? You will? Meet me for just a brief drink and snack? And there is such a place? Armenian, not Lebanese? On the east side of Broadway between One-hundred-eleventh and — twelfth? See you there tonight at eight? Great. You remember what I look like? Forgivably stewed as I was or whatever the word or expression in Russian—‘Vodt a dumpkin!’—I remember you.”

I put my pen and notebook into my pants and coat pockets and head home by way of this street west and then left on Sixth to the quicker Seventh Avenue subway, approach, pass and start back to a bar I’d been to with May a few times over the years when it had a pianist playing mazurkas, polonaises and études, which the overturned stand-up sign outside still says it does, and go inside for old times’ sake and such but more realistically or whatever I should call it to dry off and have a coffee or beer.