Fall and Rise Page 7

  “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?”
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br />   “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: straightout, 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 apo
logize 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.”