What Is All This? Read online

  “I’ve complained,” she says. “Plenty of times.”

  “About me you’ve complained. That I’m not nice enough to you after work. That I don’t take you out enough, show you enough attention and give you enough nice things. About those you complain a lot, but I’m talking about at work.”

  “About work you’re right. I have no complaints. Pay’s good and hours aren’t too long and work’s not too hard.”

  “So if neither of us is here tomorrow when you get in,” he says to me, “and I haven’t left or I don’t send any instructions to you, clean up the place, scrub everything down, and just don’t sweep the floor but mop and wax it. And the windows and every shelf—really get this place into tiptop shape. Two coats of paint. And if you later have nothing better to do but sit around, put a few extra hours in painting the doors and window frames and all the furniture and shelves.”

  “I’ll have to get overtime for that.”

  “I don’t pay overtime.”

  Then I can’t give you free overtime anymore. I did it today and plenty of other days for months after you promised you wouldn’t keep me beyond my normal workday, but no more.”

  “You only worked nine hours today.”

  “But I was here for twelve and a half—my half hour for lunch and those three hours waiting around for you.”

  “You rest at home, you rest here. No big difference, and for all I know the office might be a nicer place to rest than your home, and it’ll be even more so after you clean and paint it.”

  “But it isn’t my home. No overtime pay, no more extra hours after my regular workday.”

  Then I’ll have to let you go,” and he asks for my keys to the office, I give them, she waves goodbye and they head toward the park and I go the other way. I turn around when they’re a block away and I yell “You bastard!” Neither of them turn around. People walking past look at me and seem to wonder what I’m yelling about and to whom.

  That bastard,” I say to people who pass. That one over there. Well, now he’s gone, went into the park. But he is a bastard. A slave driver. Let him get another sucker to work overtime for nothing, but not me.”

  These days you’re lucky to have a steady job,” a woman says. “He fired you?”

  “Just now. For what I said. Not giving him hours of free overtime.”

  “Can you give me his name and phone? I might like to apply for the job now that it’s open.”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “Why? I like steady work and money coming in. Right now I’m jobless and broke. Let me talk to him and decide, unless you’re planning on getting your job back.”

  “Not a chance.”

  I give her his name and phone number. She says This is the best hope for a job I’ve had in weeks. Because if you just lost it, I’ll probably be the first one to apply.” She goes to a phone booth a few feet away.

  “You calling him now? I’m sure he won’t be at work till tomorrow.”

  “What do I have to lose? He’s not in, I’ve lost a quarter. Big deal—I’m not that broke.”

  “Nobody will be in, so you won’t lose your quarter.”

  “Good, then I’m losing nothing by calling him.”

  “Time. You’ll be losing time.”

  “What else do I have to lose now?”

  “Also your common sense. Because I just said he won’t be in, yet you still want to call him. You’d think you’d take my advice because you’d think I’d know. Besides, even if he was in, I don’t think he’ll hire you. Or maybe he will. Maybe you’re just the person he wants, someone who’ll knuckle under to everything he tells you to and do any number of free hours’ overtime for him.”

  “If you’re saying all this to stop me from applying for the job or just to insult me, it didn’t work.”

  She puts some coins in the telephone and I go home. By next day I’ve thought about it a lot and call him and keep calling him till I get him at eleven and say “Listen, I lost my head yesterday and I’m sorry. If you give me the job back and if you still want me to, I’ll work a couple of hours overtime for nothing today and with no complaints.”

  “I already hired someone you told about the job. She said she wasn’t using you as a reference, though, because you insulted her when she started to call me.”

  “All I told her was that she wasn’t showing good common sense in trying to call you minutes after you fired me, since I knew you wouldn’t be back at the office right away and that you were probably gone for the day.”

  “I did go back a few minutes after I left you. Went to the park but suddenly remembered I forgot something at the office, and she got me when I was coming in the door. She said you told her you got fired and that she’s exactly the opposite of you in that she’s willing to work overtime for no pay anytime I want.”

  “So will I,” I say. “And me you won’t have to teach how to do the job. Think of all the time you’ll be saving—the worker’s when he doesn’t have to be learning what he already knows; and yours, because you won’t have to teach him.”

  “What time? A few minutes? Half hour at the most? For what’s so complicated about the job? I’ll miss a lunch, that’s all, and what do I do at lunch but sit around and get fat and maybe take a nap.”

  “You sonofabitch.”

  “You know, that’s the second time you cursed me in less than a day. Yesterday you called me a bastard. I didn’t answer or turn around, so I don’t know if you knew I heard. I know it wasn’t meant for your coworker, as you’ve no reason for calling her one. How do you expect to be rehired, cursing me like that?”

  “You weren’t going to rehire me.”

  “You don’t know that for sure, and I won’t tell you. I’ll make you sweat, except to say I told the woman to call me at noon today to see if I still wanted her to start work tomorrow.”

  “You’re just trying to make me feel as if I really lost something in not working for you. But I’m telling you I didn’t, because there are always just as good jobs and better bosses around, and for you to go to hell.”

  Three times in less than a day,” he says. “I think that’s a record for me. Now I’ll level with you what was in my mind before you cursed me a second time, and still in my mind but only by a little before you told me to go to hell. I was going to ask you to come back.”

  “Bull.”

  “Nothing you say now will make it any worse or better for you. So if you want to stay tuned only to hear what was in my mind before, I’ll tell you, which I feel free to do now. I was going to rehire you if you agreed to working overtime for no pay whenever I needed you to, but which I wouldn’t be so excessive at, if I have. I thought maybe I’d been unfair to us both in so quickly firing you, since as workers went you were okay, and should I expect anyone better—more reliable or less complaining—in that kind of job for the pay it gets? If you agreed to my terms, then when she called I’d tell her I rehired you but would keep her in mind in case things didn’t work out. But when you called shortly before I was going to call you, I thought I’d let you shoot off your mouth and agree to all my terms without my even asking them, which’d make it easier to ask more things out of you in the future. Though I doubt it, because you’re so pigheaded, I hope you learned something from this,” and he hangs up.

  I interview for a number of good jobs after that, but nobody will hire me because of the lousy reference my ex-boss gives me. So I start saying he had something personal against me, which had nothing to do with my job performance or even with reality, but none of the people interviewing me will accept that for not giving them his name and phone number. I finally land a really rotten job that doesn’t ask for any references, where I work about ten more hours a week than the last one and for much less money. I also have to put in a lot of free overtime. I never complain about it and I in fact say I’ll do it gladly, and after a year there, I get a small raise. It takes another two years before I’m making as much as I was paid by my last boss. But the cost of living�
��s gone way up since then, so in what I can buy with my salary I’m actually earning half what I did at the old job. But like the woman who replaced me there might still say, with so many people being laid off and looking for work for a year or more, I feel lucky to have a job.

  CAN’T WIN.

  My agent calls and says “Meet me at the Triad Perry Publishing Company right away.” I say “What’s up?” and she says “It’s very important. Just be there as soon as you can. I’m already on my way,” and she hangs up.

  I think “Oh God, it can’t be anything but good news—the annual Triad Perry three thousand dollar prize and publication of the manuscript in the fall.” I leave the apartment, take a cab to the publishing house and walk into the reception room. Quite a few people are sitting on couches and chairs there and a receptionist is behind a desk, a dog sleeping on the floor near her feet. My agent comes out of an office with a man. She says This is the managing editor, Mr. Whithead,” and to him “You tell him, not me.” I say “It’s bad news, isn’t it?” and she says “Depends how you look at it or take it, but I’m afraid it is.”

  He says “Once more you’ve been chosen as one of the runners-up in our annual short fiction award,” and hands me my manuscript, “If this will be any consolation to you, there were again more than four hundred applicants for the award. So take pride in knowing that for the fourth year in a row you were considered good enough to be one of the five finalists, a remarkable achievement, or at least record, I think.”

  I shout “Goddamnit,” and slam the manuscript on the receptionist’s desk and keep slamming it and shouting “Goddamnit, goddamnit. For what the hell stopped you from giving me the prize this year? Because who’d you give it to? And who’d you give it to last year and the years before that? Do you remember? Does anyone here remember? What are some of the names of their books then? Why’d I even have to be dragged down here when you could have used your brains for a change and mailed me the news?” and I throw the manuscript across the room, its pages spilling over most of the people sitting on the couches and chairs. Some of them leap up and snap at the pages before they land on the floor. Others grab the pages off the floor and read them, saying “Hey, this is pretty good…. You mean pretty damn awful…. It’s stupid…. Funny…. Makes no sense…. What the heck’s this passage supposed to mean?…He’s got to be kidding himself…. No, he should have won…. You mean never have entered…. Christ, if he had taken first prize and you announced it, your whole company would have been disgraced and laughed out of the publishing business and maybe even financially ruined. Why don’t you look at my manuscript for next year’s contest if you can’t publish it sooner?” and several of them give Whithead their manuscripts.

  He piles the manuscripts on the desk and says to me “Listen, don’t get so excited. If this will be any consolation to you, and I should have told you this before I broke the other news to you, you did take first prize in the scarf design award this year, which entitles you to a thirty-dollar check and mention in the Scarf Designers News.” He gives me the check and holds up a six-foot scarf for everyone to see. It’s all stripes, but bright stripes of six different colors and with different-colored fringes at the ends of it—not a bad design but not what I had in mind for a first prize today. I take the scarf, stick the check between my teeth and rip it in two and spit the other piece out, and grab a bud vase off the desk and shout “Idiots. This scarf and check aren’t what I came down here for either,” and throw the vase to the floor. It smashes, pieces going everywhere, one into the dog’s rear leg. It yelps, jumps and limps around the room as it cries.

  The receptionist runs over to me and says “Before I could have understood your outbursts and rage, but injuring that defenseless dog has gone too far,” and she shoves me with both hands and I fall over a chair to the floor. She edges back, shouting “Don’t kick me. Don’t beat me. Get him away from me.” The dog’s still limping around the room and crying.

  That’ll be about enough of that,” Whitbread says to me. And to the others: “What about this dog? Whose is it?”

  “Not mine,” my agent says, leaving.

  “Not mine either,” some of the others say.

  “Of course,” he says. “Not yours, his, hers, the receptionist’s, or anyone’s. Then what was it doing here in the first place, and what are you going to do about it now?” looking at me.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m the one responsible for the broken glass, so I’ll look after him, even if he isn’t my dog.” I put the scarf around my neck, pick up the dog and carry him out of room, take the elevator down and look on the building’s register for a vet. There is none, so I go outside on Fifth Avenue and stop one of the hundreds of people on the sidewalk and ask if she knows where I can find a vet around here.

  “For your dog?” and I say “Yes, for this dog, though he isn’t mine,” and she says “Go east on 53rd, then second building on your left after you pass the pocket park.”

  The vet’s office is on the first floor of a brownstone. I go in, set the dog down and say to the nurse “He has a sliver of glass in his rear right leg. Could you have the doctor remove it? I’m not the owner, but I’ll take care of the cost.” That’ll be sixty dollars,” and I give it, and she says “We’re a little crowded in here, so can you wait outside?” I look around and see all the seats are taken by people with pets on their laps and in carriers, and one guy with a parrot on his shoulder, and I go outside.

  The nurse opens the front door an hour later and the dog comes out with a bandage around his leg. He seems to be walking all right. “Good, you’re much better,” I say. I tie the scarf around his collar as a leash, walk him back to the publishing house, take the scarf off and leave him with the receptionist. She doesn’t look up, continues typing. The dog falls asleep beside her on the floor.

  I go home. My mother and sister are there, and I tell them what happened to me today. The agent’s call, the publishing house, my letdown and how mad I got, and the dog and bud vase and consolation prize, and I hold up the scarf.

  That’s my scarf,” my sister says. The one I designed and knitted myself. I’ve been looking all over for it. How come you took credit for it when I should have been the one who entered that contest and won?”

  “What’re you talking about?” I say. “I never entered this scarf in any contest,” but she grabs it from me and calls the publishing house and says “Whithead; give me that chief man Whithead.” When he gets on the phone, she says “Look, my brother before is a cheat, an out-and-out lying fraud. He didn’t design that first-prize scarf or even knit it. I did, and I’m coming right down there now to get all the publicity I can out of winning that contest and also the thirty-dollar check. Some people might think they can’t use the money, but, baby, I sure can.”

  LONG MADE SHORT.

  Mark phones and says The wind is strong, just right for Rain stops but The red rose picked by his wife The rose Marlene cut The little girl comes into the store, At work where I was sorting some I put on my socks He was walking into the elevator He walked into the elevator She lifted herself up, came down hard again He pulled himself out, got to his feet They both felt good because “Bastard,” She started the car To get started they They started to go downstairs, she holding his Starling’s the hardest part, Mark used to say, lots harder than The starter gets his gun The gun gets the starter The cheese got the mouse “Shoot,” the starter said. “Shoot the starter,” Marcos says. “Marko, shoot the starting gun already so we can get started,” she said. We all started out together—Marlene, Bea The road started to slope Just start. Me. Begin. Another way then. Girl phoned Mark’s strong but not so strong where he Mom says Dad whacked his strap Gave her a note which said “What’s Daddy picked up his wife Daddy lifted Mark’s wife above his head Uncle Aunt Bea keeled over, knocking his The teacher had enough, jumped up from her seat behind the desk and screamed “The professor stood out in his yellow When I was a “What the hell,” she said, “you think I care? Do it. Go on
and do it.” “How can you be so cavalier about it?” he says to her. “Oops, a cavalier’s a man, and a chivalrous one no less, right? But that’s okay; the word here’s being used Someone through the window Someone threw a bottle through his bedroom window, awakening them. Suddenly, glass smashed. Glass smashed, building collapsed. He was inside it. The building collapsed on the man. Before I knew it, I was buried in rubble and gasping for air. The building didn’t collapse as they all first thought from the noise, but one wall of it did. A wall of the building collapsed on the girl. A part of the apartment building came off, large enough She’s talking to a friend. A young woman’s talking to what seems like a friend. A woman’s talking to a man at the corner as I’m walking up 113th Street to Broadway, when a At first I thought it was a girl talking Because she was short and slight, I at first thought the person talking to a man at the corner was a A piece from the northwest corner building on a Hundred-thirteenth Street and Broadway “A piece from the corner apartment building,” he said, “just when I’m walking up the block, landed on Smashed this young woman’s head. He was there when it happened. This is what Listen to this. I’m It happened right in front of him. I’m walking up the steep hill on a Hundred and Thirteenth, about fifteen feet from a couple talking at the corner, when I see this thing in the air coming down so fast that by the time I could get my first word out By the time he can get his first word By the time he yelled his first word of warning By the time I could yell “Watch—,” He sees this I see this building piece coming down I see this huge chunk from a building coming down fast, start to yell “Watch out” to a couple on the corner standing under it, when it lands on the woman’s head. Blood everywhere, some hitting me and the wall I’m beside. I shout “Oh God no,” and sink my fingers into my cheeks and turn around and people are running past me down the hill I just came up and others are hurrying up the hill, no doubt to the woman who was hit, and I say to myself “I must help her, I have to do what I can, I can’t just turn my back on her,” and I turn around. She’s on the ground, blood around her head and running along the sidewalk and a little of it into the street. People are looking at her, some with their hands over their mouths and chests, gestures like that. One man on his knees beside her is looking away with an expression as if he’s never seen such a horrible sight. A woman standing near her shouts “She’s dead, she’s dead, there’s no way she can’t be dead.” There’s nothing I can do. And there are enough people here to help her if she can be helped. And I’m feeling dizzy and a little sick and I start down the street to my building on Riverside Drive and then think maybe she isn’t dead, maybe that woman was wrong, maybe nobody else will act in a helping way if she is alive, like call 9-1-1 and yell out “Is there a doctor around?,” for the avenue’s pretty busy, someone could be a doctor or ex-medic among all the passing people, or someone could know of a doctor in one of these buildings here. Or a nurse. A nurse would know how to stop the bleeding and keep her alive. I run back up the hill, there must be fifty people around her now, and I say “Did someone call 9-1-1 or does anyone know of a doctor near here? We have to get help,” and a man says “She doesn’t need a doctor. She’s as dead, the poor girl, as she’ll ever be,” and I say “Maybe it only looks like that. We can’t be sure, because did anyone check her breathing or pulse?” I’m saying this mostly to the backs of people around her. I can’t see even a single part of her, not even the blood anymore, there are so many people in front of me. A woman says “Believe it, she’s gone. No one could have survived something that big from so high up. She was dead the second that foot-by-two-foot slab of concrete hit her,” and I say “Is that what it was, and so large?” and she points to the top part of the fourteen-or-so-story building and says “Came off there, below the last window on the left; you can see where the piece is missing,” and lots of us look and several people move to the street, no doubt to get out of the way in case another piece falls and I say “I can barely see that far, even with my glasses. But please, someone should yell for a doctor and call for an ambulance, if it hasn’t been done yet just to be absolutely sure,” and a man says “Guy went for a cop; two people, in fact,” and I say “A policeman can’t help her—oh, screw it,” and I push my way through, I’m squeamish and I don’t want to but I feel I have to see for sure for that poor girl’s sake, and it’s an awful sight, couldn’t be worse, her eyes are open but the balls can’t be seen, part of her head gone, a little of her brains spattered about, it’s horrible when something like this happens, nothing like it should, for she was just standing there, talking to a man, if only I had come up the block a few seconds sooner and been looking up and close enough to the building to see the piece falling but not that close to get hit by it, I could have yelled, but in time to warn her, and then maybe she could have jumped away and the piece would have missed her or just hit her leg. Or if I were even closer to the corner, got up the hill even sooner and looked up for some reason and saw the piece breaking off the building, I might have been able to push her and the man she was with out of the way. I cover my eyes with my hands, stay there a few seconds and mutter to myself “Poor girl, poor girl,” and then walk out of the crowd. A policeman’s walking into it, saying “All right, folks, everybody move; this means everyone.” Another policeman comes, an ambulance, police cars and an EMS van. A yellow police strip is set up around the medical team working on her. I cross the street and watch. She’s covered completely with a tarp, people near the area are told by the police to keep walking, people who have walked past the area and crossed the street and walk past me talk as if they think she’s been murdered or she jumped from the building or had been hit by a car and then moved to the sidewalk. The medical team put her on a litter, take the tarp off and cover her with something much lighter, which almost blows off when they slide her into the ambulance. Ambulance stays double-parked awhile, emergency lights flashing and back door open but nobody in there with her. Man she was talking with, who for about half an hour after stood in the street with this paralyzed face of pain and constantly pulling his shirt collar apart with both hands, is escorted to a taxi by a policeman and helped inside and driven away. Ambulance leaves, police strip is torn down by a policeman and crumpled up and dropped into a street trash can, some policemen and women have a smoke and seem to be laughing and joking about other things and then either walk away or get in their cars and leave, storeowner or employee comes out several times to throw a container of water over the place where the woman had lain, and all this time thoughts come to me about life, death, sorrow, chance, that young woman, my daughters when they’ll be her age. I picture them standing under similar buildings on Broadway or even this same building or walking past them. Will I now advise them “If you’re walking outside or stop to talk to someone on the street, do it close to the curb”? I think about the woman’s parents hearing the news, which they might not have yet. Brothers and sisters if she has, close friends, maybe a boyfriend or even a husband, though she seemed too young to be married. Maybe the man she was talking to was her boyfriend, although he seemed a lot older than she, quick glimpses I got of her before she was struck and little I could make out when she was on the ground, so he was more likely a neighbor or one of her teachers she’d bumped into, since this is a university neighborhood. She was talking excitedly, if I recall right, smiling, animated, big hand gestures, had long hair in a ponytail and seemed to have a good figure, which was what first caught my attention when I saw her from further down the block, then suddenly dead, probably not even for a half-second knew something was wrong, and so on, thoughts like that, all very natural after what I’d experienced. I cross the street and look at the spot where the storeperson threw the water. He didn’t seem to like that he was doing it at first, but by the third or fourth time he just poured instead of threw, as if he’d got used to it and wanted to do a good job, or maybe it was because the blood and other things had by now washed into the street. There’s still a little blood stain on the sidewalk. A rain or just people step
ping on it will get rid of it. I stare at the stain and think I’ll picture the woman lying there as I last saw her, but I don’t. I think “Does the shape of the stain remind me of anything?” But it’s just a blob. I crouch down and touch the sidewalk, I don’t know why; maybe I’m just being overdramatic or something, but I move my fingers to the stain and say low as I can “I’m very sorry,” then look around to see if anyone’s looking at me. Couple of passersby are but with no more than slightly curious faces, as if thinking something like “Why’s he tying his shoes in the middle of a busy sidewalk instead of by the building or curb?” I get up Sidewalk was still damp from Smells his fingers and they don’t Concrete’s still there but One would think the storeowner Or the police; how come they didn’t Someone could trip over it, even the smaller pieces, and Tries lifting I try to push the biggest piece Kicks the smaller pieces into the street and then against Asks a passing man I ask another man if he’d help me with Together they “By the way,” the man says, “where in hell this big “Up there?” the man says, and he ducks I look up Will more fall Wait a second; how come the police didn’t keep the police strip around this part of the sidewalk, in fact block off with police barricades the whole He goes to the curb In fact, why isn’t there a policeman here directing all the pedestrians around What is it with this city that Runs to the payphone across Broadway I dial Information, gets the phone number of the precinct for this Tells the woman who answers why he’s calling and the location of the The yellow strip, the plastic yellow strip,” I say, “the one that says ‘Don’t cross’ or ‘Do not cross’ and has the word ‘Police’ on it” That is strange,” she says; “very unusual, in fact, that none of the—how many officers did you “‘Some kind of oversight’?” I Goes into the store, asks for the owner or manager The man says “Oh, I don’t think anything else will I stand outside the store warning pedestrians and one couple who stop to talk at the Police car comes and he tells the officers he’s the one who called and points up “Mistakes are made,” one of Same kind of yellow strip is “I’d also,” I say, “because some people who are just talking and not looking could walk right “Don’t worry, they’re coming,” He goes into a liquor I buy a bottle of red wine and a bottle of sake, walk back to the corner entirely cordoned off now except for “It’s far enough away,” the officer Police truck with barricades He walks down the hill with his I think of the young woman and almost feel the impact Shudders, covers I go into my building, take the elevator He opens the door My kids run up to me, shouting “Daddy’s home. Daddy’s home,” pretending it’s been a long time, since I’ve only been gone Sets the bag down on the sofa, gets on one knee and hugs them His kids kiss “Why do you look so sad?” my older “Anything wrong?” his wife says, coming out “Oh gosh,” he says to her, breaking down, “this poor young…I was going up…she was just standing…