Nothing Important
by Alan Steinberg
I've been thinking an awful lot about the word 'important'. It's a good word, clean and useful in separating out the big from the little. But it has its mystery, its area of uncertainty, if you will. Someone's important may be another person's small. Or vice versa. So I'm trying to be good about it and not think it to death, because I can feel danger all around. Maybe my wife is right. Maybe some things are too important to make important.
Let me set the scene for you. A Writer is coming to Idaho City. If you've never been west - I mean really west, west in a dry, brown, cowboy-and-sage, Louis L'Amour sort of way - you'll have to imagine the place. It's a small town in central Idaho, half-hidden between two sets of treeless hills, dozing in the saffron light of the western sun. It's late in the afternoon of a late autumn day. The bare, rounded hills have hardened themselves into a dusty ochre-brown. Above, a blue sky unfurls, lined with puffy veins of white.
You must imagine the airport, as well: a gray slab of concrete, streaked with oily black, thrust out like a stiffened finger into the gap between the hills. And waiting by the door of the terminal, a small, turquoise, bunker-like building towered in large, glare-proof glass, two people: a man and a woman - yours truly and his wife.
The woman is pretty, almost slim, almost young. She stands there in the thinning light, waiting for the plane to bloom like a silver rose in the darkening sky. I, the husband, am a poet of sorts, a teacher of sorts, jogging the first lap of middle age, with a small band of belted fat and a slightly balding skull. I am host to the Writer - a duty that comes with being the local college's local poet. I am to see to his comfort. He's come a long way, for a mere thousand dollars, to stay a night and a day and teach us all something about art and life.
"It's almost time," my wife says to me, looking up. "I think I see the plane."
Her eyes are good. A small streak of silver blossoms into the belly of a plane. The hawk's cry of its propjet motors deepens into a growl, and soon the plane squeals its way onto the runway and then over to the loading gate. A handful of people descend by means of a small portable staircase. They are local types: ordinary, well-fed Westerners, back, perhaps, from a day in Boise or a week on the coast. One of them must be a visitor, perhaps a relative of one of our score of out-of-state college students. She is wearing a pink dress of light cotton, and ignorant no doubt of our sly desert wind, she neglects to hold the bottom down. The wind catches it, of course, and the dress billows like a parachute to reveal panties, brightly pink, atop bright pink skin.
"The poor woman," my wife says, watching her struggling to contain her rippling skirt.
By then, the Writer has emerged. He looks a lot like his publicity photo: a large man, square-jawed, of indeterminate middle-age, only this time wearing an enormous ten-gallon cowboy hat above a slightly rumpled pea-green suit. He is carrying a well-worn leather briefcase in one hand, and a small, plaid suitcase in the other. He has paused to get a better look at the woman's pantied behind, tilting his head ever so slightly to improve the angle. I would almost swear he nods his head and purses his lips slightly, as if in approval.
"We'd better go, William," my wife says, "before he thinks we've abandoned him."
With that, we move from beside the terminal and past the thin stream of passengers, including the unfortunate woman with the airfoil dress, to the bottom of the portable stairs where the Writer is now standing.
I call out to the Writer and begin to reach out my arm to shake hands with him, but instead he puts the suitcase in my hand. It is surprisingly heavy and I almost drop it. He gives me a condescending look.
"Interesting airport you got here," he says. "Looks like a penis from the air." Then, turning from me to my wife, he smiles and bows - dramatically. "Howdy Ma'am," he says in an exaggerated western twang.
I introduce myself and my wife, all the time trying to get a better grip on the suitcase without him seeing.
The Writer takes off his ten-gallon hat and lets his eyes scan the flat land. "Takes getting used to," he says, looking closely at my wife. "All that space and nowhere to go."
"Don't you think we should move off the field?" I say, watching as the small airport crew readies the plane for its next destination.
"What do you think of this baby here? the Writer says, ignoring me and the ominous sound of the boarding stairs being dragged away and holding up his ten-gallon hat. "Took it from a cowboy in the last college town I was in. Out-drank him for it." He turns to my wife, smiling, twirling the hat on his finger. "How's about I let you buy me a drink?" he says. "I'm dry as a pitted prune."
We start walking toward the parking lot on the other side of the terminal. Conveniently, he's left the briefcase for me to carry, as well, and with his hand on my wife's elbow he begins to engage her in what is, in his mind no doubt, some stimulating conversation. I half expect him to put his hand on her ass, but he doesn't.
You have to understand this cowboy bit is all an act. He grew up in New Jersey. He went to Rutgers for a while, but he got kicked out for "acquiring" exams and selling them. Then he joined the Navy. When his stint was over, he ended up being a disc jockey in some podunk station in Maine. It was there he started writing stories. Most didn't make it until he wrote this one about some sailors raising hell in the Pacific. He turned it into a novel called Going Down. Hollywood picked it up and that was that. He's done a dozen more since then, about people getting beaten up by the establishment, mostly. All of them are set East - Chicago to Boston - only he fills them with a kind of picturesque violence you mainly think of as a legacy of the West. Maybe that was his special angle. I don't know. Anyway, he won a National Book Award a while back for one called The Corporate Rack. Now, he's on a tour of the colleges in the western states. That's how come we got him for a thousand bucks. Otherwise, it's fifteen hundred.
As we get to the car, they announce - my wife and the Writer - that there's been a change of plans.
"We're going home instead," my wife tells me, and because another man is present, "if that's all right with you."
"If you don't mind my saying," the Writer says to me, "I've had it up to here with Coors on tap."
"That's fine with me," I say, trying to make it sound convincing.
"You don't think he can stay with us, do you, William? He was just telling me about the motel he stayed in last night . . . ."
"Mattress like a saltine cracker," The Writer says.
"That's fine with me," I say again, already dreading the call I'll have to make canceling his stay in what passes for a luxury motel out here.
"You sure? I wouldn't want to put you out."
"Oh yes, you would," I think, but say, instead, "We've got lots of room. You're welcome to stay." Under my breath, I devise a curse for my mother, who has instilled in me this wretched sense of hospitality. May all her stockings run.
Mercifully, the drive home is silent. The Writer even dozes, or at least he lowers the brim of his hat over his eyes and is quiet. We arrive: our house is a rather plain affair, half-way up one of the lower hills. There are trees growing in the yard, but it is true that they do not look natural.
The Writer awakens.
"So, this is it, huh?" he says, without much enthusiasm.
"Home sweet home," I say.
He suddenly leaps out of the passenger seat and goes to open the rear door for my wife. It is not something I customarily do, and it takes both of us by surprise - my wife and me. I'll give him this, he can really move when he wants to. He follows my wife to the door, leaving me, of course, with both the suitcase and the leather bag. I have the feeling it's going to be a long night and a day.
Once inside the house, however; once he has taken off his ten-gallon monstrosity, the Writer seems to change, become another man altogether. He is suddenly alert, sharply observant, pensive, even. He walks about the rooms, peering at the paintings and photographs on the walls; he examines our knickknacks one by one, holding several of the Indian carvings up in order to see them better. He takes the cold beer I hand him (not a Coors) and walks to the big window at the end of the dining room. The twilight light has descended, casting a shimmering yellow-orange glow over everything.
"That's quite a view," he says softly.
"At night, when the city lights come on, it's really very pretty," my wife says. She loves the view. It is almost her only consolation for the dry, treeless isolation of the hills.
"When the moon comes up," the Writer says suddenly, whirling around to face my wife, "I bet it just flames in the sage there, flames like the whole hill was a lake of fire."
"Yes," my wife says, in a hushed voice. "How did you know?"
"Sometimes in Maine, the moon would do the same thing to the seagrass, so that at dawn it would look gray and charred and smoldering."
"Here the sage holds the light longer," I say, trying to wedge my way in between them. "It's more amber than gray."
He ignores me, of course.
"Once," he continues, "I was walking the beach. At night. The moon was burning. I saw these footsteps in the sand." He makes it sound as if he is seeing it again, as if it were all there before him. "Small. Delicate. A woman's. Silver birds on the wet sand." He moves closer to my wife. His eyes are bright, glittering. "I followed them down to the water's edge. I waited till morning, till the tide came in and erased them. I never saw the woman at all, not her coming, not her going."
"How did you like living in Maine?" I say, in desperation.
He does not answer me, but all the same I sense the mood is broken. There is a long, uneasy pause. The Writer turns back to the window, takes a last long swig of beer then crushes the can. My wife looks from him to me, as if trying to measure the psychological-social distance between us. I just stand there, waiting for him to make up his mind what he wants to be: cowboy or poet or hustler.
"I'll get supper," my wife says, carefully assuming her role as domestic arranger. She herself must be waiting.
"Good," the Writer says, without turning from the window. "I'm hungry as a ten-foot cockroach."
"Would you like another beer?" I ask.
He turns to me, holds out the crushed can.
"Does an armpit like hair?"
My wife has heard, even from the kitchen. She has turned her domestic antennae up, as it were. She glides into the room holding another can of beer.
"You sure you wouldn't like a glass?" she says, exchanging cans with him.
"Thank you, Ma'am," he says, holding the can up to the dimming light. "But I like my nectar straight." Before my wife can depart, he lassos her with a question.
"What do you do besides cook?" he says.
My wife is flustered.
"I beg your pardon," she says, to buy time.
"I mean, what do you do? What are you good at that makes you feel good? Inside here." He bangs his fist against his chest, where, I would imagine, his heart is.
My wife is silent a moment. I know what she is thinking: 'Should I dare tell him or not? Will he say something sarcastic?'
"I . . . " she begins, reluctantly. "I like to work in metals . . . jewelry."
The Writer moves from the window to where she is standing by the doorway that leads from the dining room to the kitchen.
"Don't say it like that," he says, looking down at her. "Don't say, 'I like to work in metals.' Say, 'I'm a metalsmith.' Say, 'I'm an artist.' You are one, aren't you?"
My wife looks at the crushed can in her hand. She does not look at the Writer.
"I haven't done much of it lately," she says in a soft, sad voice.
"Why not?" the Writer says. "Too much bingo?"
My wife is stung. She lifts her face slowly to look at him.
"No," she says, somewhere between apology and anger. "It's just that, oh, I don't know. What sense does it make to . . . ."
"Look," the Writer says, with a sudden fierceness, "I've heard the state-of-the world speech before: because the pygmies are dying in Africa you can't go ahead and do something you're good at, something you like doing, something that might bring a little beauty into the world. My grandmother used to tell me to go ahead and eat everything on my plate because 'the Chinese were starving.' So I ate up and then I threw up, and for all I know the damn Chinese are still starving."
My wife is hurt. You can see it in her face, in the way she hunches her shoulders, as if the air in the room has suddenly become dense and is pressing down on her.
"That's easy for you to say. You've got success and everything," she says, weakly, in almost a whine. I feel bad for her.
"Tell me," the Writer says, turning to me. "She any good with her jewelry?"
I am caught off guard. My wife is staring at me. The Writer is staring at me. I try to picture the things she has made - the rings and earrings and bracelets. It's been a long time, I realize.
"Yes," I manage to say, to stammer. "When she works at it." I hope I have not betrayed her.
"How come she doesn't work at it?" the Writer says to me, as if he is a prosecutor and I am on the witness stand.
"It's not so easy out here," I say, and point vaguely to the window.
He follows my gaze, briefly.
"Why? The metal's bad? The torch won't burn?"
"There's so little support," my wife says, in her defense, or mine. "No one cares."
"You two got a regular little litany here, don't you?" he says, looking at each of us in turn. Then he goes back over to the window. "Look," he says, "a dog lifts his leg out here the same as in Manhattan. You stand down wind you're gonna get wet, so what kind of story are you trying to hand me?"
I don't know why we should be talking like this about our lives to him, a stranger, and not a very hospitable one at that. But it suddenly becomes important to me to make him understand. Maybe it is a way of understanding myself.
"What she means is, everything beautiful out here becomes an abnormality. Can you understand? Every time you pour yourself into something, every time you get serious, want to make something for beauty's sake, they think you're a fool, or worse."
The Writer waits a moment after I finish. He stands there looking right at me, as if trying to go past what I am saying into my brain, or into my heart. His eyes are glittering again. Then he comes right over to me, so that he is standing no more than a foot away.
"Look," he says very softly so that only I can hear, "I know what's going on. You're afraid maybe your wife does have talent." I think he is going to say something else, something more, but instead he just sighs and takes a big, long swig of beer. "Look, I'm tired," he says wearily. "You think we can eat?"
My wife is embarrassed, perhaps even bewildered.
"Would you like to wash up?" she asks meekly, as if she will be yelled at for suggesting such a thing.
The Writer's face softens, breaks into a gentle smile.
"Sure. Even a pig thinks he's cleaning up when he's in the mud."
"I'll get you some towels," she says, moving down the hallway towards the bathroom. The Writer sets his beer can down on the coffee table and ambles after. I walk to the window. The light has switched from crimson to lavender. Soon, it will turn black and blue and the stars will come out. I want to be angry with the Writer. I know he's a self-righteous sonofabitch. I know a lot of it's an act. I know the bastard is maybe even putting moves on my wife. But, still, some of what he says hits home, and it's that that sits heavy.
"He's right, you know," a voice says softly. It is my wife. She is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, as if suddenly weary.
"No, I didn't know," I say, even though I do.
I watch as she walks towards the kitchen. I am afraid to agree, afraid to disagree.
"This is the last time I play host to anyone," I call after her, in order to divert. "If the Pope comes to town, he's going to have to stay at the Y."
We eat in relative silence. The Writer is hungry, it seems, and he finishes everything quietly and diligently. He waits for us to be done and then he rises slowly from his chair.
"If it's all right with you," he says, politely, "I think I'll go lie down for a while, then take a shower."
I watch him as he walks out of the kitchen and down the hall. Suddenly, he seems like just an ordinary traveler, tired from a long flight. I imagine it has been quite a while since he's had a good night's sleep.
We finish up the dishes and go into the living room to sit. The twilight has faded into evening - the first stars have alighted. This is the best time, really. The darkness has cloaked the hills in a satin sheen; the lights from the houses below are beginning to twinkle. A cool breeze smelling of sage and rye sets the chimes in motion. I think to myself: I have a job I mostly like, in a place where I count for something - an easterner who likes the Romantic poets teaching the sons and daughters of potato farmers. I have come to like the vast spaces, the dry, clear air, and yes, even the brown bare hills. Here, I can hear a sound from beginning to end - no sirens or screams to interfere. Here the sky is big and on certain fine days you can see the towering mountains a hundred miles away. If the lights of Broadway are missing, so, too, are the hookers and muggers.
"You'd better get him up," my wife says after a while, breaking the silence.
I get up slowly and go over to my wife.
"You do have talent," I say.
She smiles up at me. I don't know what she thinks. It seems to me she has given up a lot to be with me, to come with me out west like this. All her family is still back east, back in New Hampshire. Out here, she is all alone - lonely, perhaps. Yet, when I ask her about it, she says she is fine. It is enough that we go back summers to visit, she says. I wonder now if she really means it.
I wonder, too, about children. We tried, but twice she lost the baby. The doctors said it would very risky to go through it again. Dangerous, even. We talked about it. I think she was willing, but I was the one who was afraid. Finally, she agreed to let me go and get a vasectomy. She says it is all right, that children do not matter. I have asked her about adoption, but she says, no, that it is not necessary, that she is content. But I wonder if she only says that to hide her disappointment. It is that way with the jewelry. I have encouraged her, no matter what the Writer thinks. But I have told her that she can't just dabble at it, that if she wants me to respect her art than she has to commit herself to it. But now I wonder if perhaps I have only said that to discourage her. I think to myself, what would I do if she did give herself to her art? If she was at it all the time, not there when I come home, not so willing to listen to me rant and rave about my college day? What if she does make it big and I became the jeweler's husband instead of her being the professor's wife? I want to curse the Writer for opening all this up again, but I cannot. And because I cannot, I wonder if he may be right.
I walk to the spare room. The door is closed. I knock softly several times, but there is no answer. I take the liberty of opening the door. The Writer is lying across the bed, on a diagonal of sorts. His right arm hangs over the bed, nearly to the carpet. He is snoring softly. His face, the side of it I can see, looks puffy. There is a thin spot on the back of his head. I realize that he is almost past his middle age. I realize that he must be tired, very tired; that it must wear thin after a while, this wandering from town to distant town; this playing The Writer day after day - impressing everyone; preaching wisdom and wit and commitment.
I call his name several times but he does not stir. I'm tempted to let him sleep, to let him sleep through the reading, through the party we've arranged afterward, through the night. Let him have a good night's rest, I think. Let him remember us for that. But in the end, I do my duty as a college official. I walk over to him and shake him by the shoulder, softly at first, then harder and harder. Finally, he stirs, groans, rolls over, shielding his eyes from the hallway light.
"Jesus," he says, beginning to sit up and rub his eyes. "I went out like a light."
"It's getting late," I say, sympathetically, "and you said you wanted to take a shower."
He sits, then stands. I can see he is beginning to prepare himself - an actor getting ready for the play.
"They say it beats working for a living," he says to me, as he stumbles into the bathroom. "But I wouldn't know. I've never worked for a living."
I leave him and go to find my wife. She is in the bedroom. She is sitting on the bed, in her slip. The skirt and blouse she is to wear are beside her. She is crying. It is a silent, gentle cry. The tears fill her eyes, spill over, slide down her cheeks, fall from her face to the bedspread. But there is no sound, no heaving of her shoulders. I have seen her cry like this before - when we lost the babies.
"Are you all right?" I say, coming to stand beside her.
She does not answer, of course. She cannot. What she is feeling, what has brought the tears to her eyes, must lie beyond the boundaries of words. I remember the doctor telling me, "We lost the child. I'm sorry." I remember going in to see my wife. I remember her lying there, her eyes almost closed, the tears just seeping out and slowly spilling down her face. I remember the slow sound of her breathing and the silence of her tears, even now, even after all these years.
I stand there beside my wife and let her cry, as I did then, adding my silence to hers.
She lifts her head to look at me.
"What have I done?" she asks. "What have I ever done?"
I have no easy answer.
We go to the reading. Once out of the car the Writer transforms himself again. He is the Stage Man now. He wishes to see the lecture hall. He wishes to know what kind of microphone system we have. He wishes to know what the seating arrangement is.
"It's going to be too stuffy in here," the Writer tells me, looking around. "Those windows open?" he asks, pointing to the row of high, rectangular windows against the far wall.
"I think so," I say, and go to find a chair or something I can stand on. I am angry, too, because my wife has disappeared. She has come with us as far as the lecture room, but after I get the lights on and begin to check out the microphone and everything, I notice she has disappeared. She usually stays with me, helps me get set up, sees about the refreshments. But this time she has disappeared and I am left to see to them myself.
Already some early birds are beginning to straggle in. Ordinarily, I would tell them to please wait, or my wife would, but I am too busy getting the cheese and the crackers laid out in something like an ordered way. I realize how good my wife is at such things; at how easily she arranges things so that they seem both convenient and attractive. I try to picture how she does it - the crackers packed densely on the inside and the cheese wedges circling round them like heaven's rings, as the 17th century poets would say. I try, but I cannot get it right and the platter merely looks crowded and lopsided.
More people come in. Perhaps we will get a good crowd, after all. The Writer has the reputation of being controversial. Maybe that will do it. He is sitting on a chair to the side of the podium. He has brought with him the ten-gallon hat, but he does not wear it. Instead, he has placed it on top of the leather briefcase which he has also brought, and which is beside the chair. He is sitting with his legs slightly crossed, his arms folded in front of him, looking out at the gathering audience, in a half-profiled way. It is a studied pose. I'm sure someone has said to him that he looks dignified that way, or formidable, or artistic, or merely not as old. Suddenly, I see him lift his head a bit, fix onto something. I follow his gaze. It is my wife. She has come back into the auditorium, walking slowly down the center aisle towards the front.
She sits in the first row, in her accustomed seat, and smiles up at me. I am standing by the microphone, waiting for everyone to settle down so that I can begin my introduction. She does not look at the Writer at all. She just sits there, her arms folded. She is calm, and the remnants of her tears and sadness have both gone away. I try to think of what I will say about the Writer. I have an introduction all prepared. It is a standard one: who he is, where he's come from, what the critics have said, and why we are so fortunate to have such a man among us. But I do not feel like saying all that. I don't feel like saying anything. Or if I have to say something, then I feel like saying that writers are often sonsofbitches, that many times the words they put on paper are not the words they live by; that many times it is just the reverse - they put on paper the words they know they should live by but do not. So that mostly literature is a lie and that the audience would do better to go home and write something themselves or live the words themselves.
But I do not. I am the host. I say my little speech. I tell them that we are honored to have the Writer come among us, come to our little college nestled in the brown round hills, and that our distinguished guest has spent many years living and writing, writing and living, and that now he has come all this way to read to us, and to talk about his writing, and about the life of the writer, in general. That is what the contract says: a public reading, followed by a brief discussion, followed by a brief question and answer period. All for a thousand dollars plus expenses.
The Writer gets a long round of applause. He has taken a book from out of his briefcase, and holding it in his hand he strides up to the microphone. Again, I notice how gracefully he moves when he wants to. There is still an athlete in him, though it is no longer sleek and hardened. He places the book on the podium. It is The Corporate Rack. I recognize the cover. But he does not read from it. Instead, he undoes the microphone which I have so patiently secured and aimed, and begins to pace across the small stage, like Ahab on his deck. Each time he talks he stops, looking out over the audience as if they were his crew.
"Man is nothing," he tells them. "Nothing. Dry bones stuffed into sacks of skin. Age doesn't matter," he says, moving closer to the edge of the stage. "When you're young your bones ache from growing. When you're old they ache from caving in. And all the time between is one sad reminder of what we've lost and where we're going. I don't have to tell you, you know. You've all felt the pains."
You could see the people nodding - the old ones and the young ones both. It was like he was seeing into their hearts, seeing to the aches and pains they kept inside - the hurt in their souls as well as in their bodies.
"You know no dream comes true. Or rather it comes true but it's not exactly what you dreamed it was. The anticipation is smothered by the reality. Sand on the flame. Ashes on the wood.
"So that's why I tell you the only thing worth anything is what will outlast you, outlast for a while the sad dispersal of your dying. And nothing does that better than art. Because it's born again in each person's soul whenever they encounter what you've done. It lives in their brains, It lives in their hearts. You live there all over again. Past the dying and the decay. Past the forgetting. Every generation re-creates you or re-invents you or re-discovers you. So you're like an ember that burns on and on though the fire itself has died.
"And because this is so, you must do everything for your art. Everything! You must lie for it and cheat for it and sell your soul for it. And when there's no other way, you may even have to tell the truth for it.
"Art doesn't sustain you; you sustain it. You're the log on the grate. You give your life for the heat and light. For the vision. For the sound. For the touch. Art redeems you; redeems the sadness and the pettiness of life."
The Writer pauses here, moves even closer to the edge. It is so quiet you can hear the air whistling past his nose hairs.
"So, I tell you this: Do anything for your art. Do everything. Sign a pact with the Devil. Sign one with God if He'll give you a better deal. It's not the money. Not the fame. That's not what you do it for. You do it to keep alive, to burn like an ember one more time on this lonely side of the grave.
"So, I tell you again. Do whatever it takes. Pillage. Plunder. Rape. Deceive. Betray. Even love. As long as it brings you art; or makes you art. It will bring more beauty to the world than what you take away. Nothing is as sad or unredeemable as talent wasted. Old bones in an old bag of skin, yet you give the world light - even if it's only an ember."
He says a lot more like that; after all it wouldn't look good to just pace and moan and then bolt - not for a thousand bucks anyway. But the crazy thing of it is, the audience loves it. Why not? It does away with morality and civility and everything else you build a life on and replaces it with every impulse we can dredge up from our rotting souls - all in the sacred name of Art. I can picture a whole world full of human lampshades. Of course the students love it. It plays right into their narcissistic little hands.
The ride back home is strangely quiet. My anger is equally balanced by my shame at not having called him out on his crazy rantings. I feel responsible somehow. It is as if his words have become real things, terrifying things, like a school of piranha and they are swimming after the innocent and I do nothing about it - not even warn them of their danger. I feel tired, bone-tired. I have to fight to keep my eyes from closing, but I know it is a weariness of the spirit and not the body.
We are to host a party for the Writer. Perhaps that will revive me. There will be important guests. Members of the department. People we owe visits and favors to. It is too late to call it off. People will be there already. My wife has made the preparations. It is what passes for art in her life.
And then we are home. The lights are on. Cars are in the driveway. People are celebrating already. The Writer rouses himself. He looks around. His eyes are glittering. He is about to transform himself again. He reminds me of what a vampire must look like before he sets out for the night. I realize that neither my wife nor I any longer have a Cross. Not since the babies died.
It's worse than I imagine. The Writer becomes the Celebrity, the Guzzler, and the Lech - all at once. He wears the hat. He swigs beer. He tells lewd jokes. He ogles all the women. His hands are everywhere. If he were in a bar somewhere, fights would be breaking out all around. Bodies would be flying. But my academic friends and acquaintances are no match for him. He is too fast, too crude. They are too bewildered by the transformation. They cannot equate the man before them with the man who stood on the stage and praised the power of art. Before they can even take offense, he is off somewhere else. Before the woman can actually convince her brain that what her ass feels is real, his hand is somewhere else, on someone else. It's amazing, in a way. It's like we're all in slow motion, or else he's speeded up. He offends everyone. I spend half my time trying to convince the men that it's all harmless bad taste, and the women that it's nothing personal. After a couple of hours, I am exhausted. Physically. I decide to get drunk. It is something I haven't done for a long time, not since our last dean, the one good one we ever had, got fired. I take a half-bottle of whiskey with me and sneak outside.
The air is cool against my face. The breeze muffles the strained laughter from within into a dull background rumble. The lights from the city down below blink and shimmer. None of it brings me comfort. I feel overwhelmed by the chaos and confusion of the world. No one knows anyone else, not even himself, I think. There are a thousand dislocations, I think: parents and children, husbands and wives, writers and saints, poets and poems. My thoughts are a jumble, like the laughter, like the lights. I tip my head back and drink the burning whiskey. It tastes terrible. I don't mind.
It is later. Much later. I am propped against a tree, at the back of the yard. An empty bottle of whiskey is near me, in my hand, actually. The night has grown darker, quieter. My head is spinning. I know I am going to be sick. It is the only certain knowledge I have. I stumble to my feet, dizzy, nauseous. I make it as far as the wooden fence and then begin to vomit. It takes a while. I have much to purge. Finally, I am done, empty. I hang over the wooden rail and let the cool air revive me. It takes a while. I feel able to walk. I am weak, but the world no longer spins. I no longer feel nauseous. Instead, I feel weak and tired and dirty. I have an overwhelming urge to take a shower, to stand under the stinging spray and let the earth's clear water wash all the sweat and dirt and stupidity away. The house is dark and silent and empty. I have to hold onto the door to steady myself, I am that weary. The place is a wreck. There are plates and glasses and bottles and napkins and food everywhere. I realize it is my fault. I am usually the one to clean up after a party. My wife does the catering. I do the cleaning. I try picking up a glass or two, but I lack the strength. My hand shakes. I give it up. I have to lean against the dining room table to steady myself. I know the shower will revive me. It is an article of faith now. I must get to the water. I take a deep breath, ready myself for the long journey down the darkened hall, but before I can take a step, a sudden sharp, rectangle of light pierces the gloom. A door has opened. It is the door to our bedroom. A shadow appears. It is large, vast, round. It seems to fill all the space in the hall. Then, like a cell beginning to divide, it seems to split in two. My eyes begin to blear. I take a deep breath. I close my eyes. I keep them closed a long time, but even so I feel the world spinning. When I open them again, only silence and darkness remain. I am weaker than before. I feel I will collapse to the floor if I do not get to the water. I call upon the last of my strength. I push off from the table. My legs bend but hold. I shuffle down the long hallway to the bathroom. I am almost there when suddenly there is a noise and a door opens. It is the door to my bedroom. My wife is standing in the doorway. She is wearing the black lace nightgown that I bought her, the one with the nearly transparent bodice, the one she said she feels too self-conscious to wear.
Our eyes meet. Hers are open wide. Mine, I can barely keep open. Neither of us speak. I want to say something to her. I want to reach out and touch her. But I do neither. I can do neither. I must get to the water. I turn and stumble on, past the guest room, past the linen closet. I manage to open the door, to step inside. The room is filled with steam, great wispy streaks of wet air. A loud, gurgling, hissing sound fills my ears. I manage to make it to the shower, to open the door. The Writer is inside. In the dim, raspy light, I can see his great naked body glistening.
"You bastard," I hear myself shout, above the hiss and swirl. "You goddamn sonofabitch bastard. . . ."
Suddenly I am being dragged inside. The water is falling all around me, drenching me. The mist thickens. A great, heaving mass of flesh is pressing against me. I begin to pound my fists against the great oppressive weight. I am shouting, still, "You bastard. You sonofabitch bastard." The water is gurgling, hissing.
Suddenly, I don't care anymore. The anger is drained out of me. I feel weak. I give myself to the water, to the wet air. I close my eyes and feel the great watery weight of the world. A voice is whispering to me: "There is no love in the world anymore. There is no love."
And then I am aware that I am alone. I lift my head. The water has begun to turn cold. The cold steamy fog scrapes against my shivering body. I stumble from the shower onto the tiled floor. My clothes are drenched. I have just enough strength to tear them off before I shuffle down the hallway and into the bedroom. I am shivering. As I stumble onto the bed, I see a blurred and fleeting image of my wife. She is standing by the window, bathed in the moon's iridescent light. She is smiling. Her teeth glow like distant stars. She moves towards me. She sits beside me, giving me warmth.
"It's all right," she whispers. "We'll be all right."
She holds me. My shivering eases. The night fades.
We sleep late, my wife and I. The Writer is up before us. It is the smell of coffee that awakens us. We dress in silence. The silence feels whole, natural, not oppressive. I try to force myself to let it be. I think of Oedipus - of what it means to be blind and what it means to see. But a play is one thing and life another. I can feel the words welling up in me. But before I can say them my wife speaks.
"Let it be," she says softly. "Nothing important happened."
"Let it be," I tell myself silently, and take a deep breath. The words that had been forming disappear. "Let it be," I tell myself again, wanting to believe.
I leave my wife to finish dressing and go towards the kitchen. The Writer is sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in his hand. He looks slightly old, slightly worn, slightly sad. He's wearing the pea-green suit he wore when he first arrived. I see that his bags are packed and set by the kitchen door. The ten-gallon cowboy hat is beside them.
He looks up when I come in and gives me a wan little smile. I realize, then, that the place has been cleaned up - the plates and glasses and cans have all been cleared. There is a row of paper bags filled with garbage lined up against the far wall. The Writer sees me looking.
"I got up early," he says, with a slight shrug.
I know I should say something, but I don't know what. The night seems so far away now, like it was years ago, like it was miles away, like it was someone else's. Outside, the Idaho morning is glowing on the bare hills.
The Writer looks out the window and then back at me. I cannot read the expression on his face. It is as if it has become like stone, still, smooth. I think of the faces on Easter Island.
My wife walks into the room. His eyes dilate slightly. But that is all.
He turns to look out the window again.
"It's no paradise," he says, turning to face us. "But then no place is." He takes a deep breath, nods with his head. "There's some coffee left," he says.
"Thanks," I say, and go and get a cup of coffee for myself and for my wife. It is very black and very bitter.
I drive the Writer to the airport. We do not say much beyond something about the weather. The plane is on time. I hand him his check just before he leaves for the small boarding area. He puts it in his pocket without looking at it. Maybe he is embarrassed. Maybe it means so little to him. Just before he goes he does a curious thing. He hands me his ten-gallon cowboy hat.
On the way home I do a curious thing. I stop the car on the side of the road and toss the hat into the bushes. Then I stoop down and pick some fiery-red Indian paintbrushes and a few late-blooming lupines. I will bring them to my wife as an offering. If I am lucky, she will not need them.
Alan Steinberg teaches rhetoric and writing at the State University of
New York at Potsdam. He has published fiction and poetry, most recently in BLUELINE and
PEREGRINE. A chapbook of poems will be published this summer by the Sarasota Poetry Press.
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