Late Stories. Stephen Dixon
without him doing all that. He turns over on his right side and moves closer to her or where she was. She’s not there. He was going to squeeze into her and hold her breasts with his left hand. Not fondle them, because that might disturb her sleep or her going back to sleep, but just hold. Of course she’s not there. What did he think? But turn the light on to make sure. Don’t be silly. No, turn it on. He turns over and with his right hand turns his bedlamp on. Are you ready to look? He thinks. He’s facing the opposite way from her side of the bed. “I’m ready to look,” he says. He turns around and looks. A pillow’s there. The fourth pillow, where he left it last night, the one he didn’t set up against the wall with the others to sit back against while he read in bed. Maybe she fell off the bed and is on the floor. That happened a couple of times. She broke her nose once falling off her side of the bed. There was a lot of bleeding; he rushed her to a hospital a few blocks away. This was in New York. They had to wait two hours for her to be examined and treated by a doctor in Emergency and by then the bleeding had stopped. She had a problem snoring at night after that. They were told it could only be corrected by an operation on some part of her nose, which he didn’t want her to have. “Too risky for something so minor,” he said. “And since I’m the one being kept up at night and the snoring doesn’t seem to inconvenience you any, it should be my decision. What do you say?” He gets on his stomach and looks over her side of the bed to the floor. She’s not there. A pillow is, he forgot it was missing, the one he removed from his side of the bed before. Maybe she got up very quietly and made it to the bathroom on her own somehow. Not the one in this room—he’d hear her and would have seen the light under the door when his bedlamp was off—but the guest bathroom in the hallway outside this room. “You in the guest bathroom?” he says, louder than he was speaking before. Listens. Nothing. Maybe she made it to the kitchen for something. Water. From the filtered water tap attached to the sink. Or maybe she was hungry and wanted something to eat. What’s he talking about? Water. Food. Ridiculous. He turns off the light. Gets on his left side close to the edge of his side of the bed and reaches for the radio on his night table and turns it on. They’re playing a piece he’s heard on the radio several times but doesn’t know what it’s called. Schubert. Has to be. Chamber music. One of the quartets? He wrote fifteen of them. Fifteen. He’s not familiar with them all but this one he is. He even thinks they heard it in Maine at the chamber music hall near where they used to stay. “Are you back in bed?” he says, without turning around. “Do you like this music? Will it disturb your sleep? Am I disturbing you just by talking? Do you want to snuggle again? Then do you want me to keep the radio on? If not, say so, and I’ll turn it off. I should turn it off. We’ll never get to sleep with it on. Schubert. One of his quartets, but which one I don’t know. I’m almost sure we heard it in Maine once, lots of summers ago.” He listens. Nothing. Turns the radio off and gets on his back. He reaches over to hold her hand. They often used to go to sleep that way, both on their backs. Sometimes she reached over to him to hold his hand in bed. Sometimes he raised her hand to his mouth when they were both on their backs in bed and kissed it. He’ll leave her alone. He’ll let her sleep or go to sleep. He’ll tell her in the morning if she’s still in bed that if he had snuggled with her anymore than he did last night he probably would have wanted to make love with her. She might say something like “Want to have a go at it now?” No, that’s not like her. She’d say something more like “Are you interested now?” He’d say “Yes. Want me to take off your panties before we start?” “Do you mean my pad?” she might say. “Whatever you’re wearing.” “Sure,” she’d say. “You’d have to, eventually, wouldn’t you? I don’t see how there’s any other way.” He’d pull her panties down her legs and over her toes. No. He’d unbutton the straps on either side of her pad and slip it out from under her and drop it on the floor even if it was wet. No. She’s not wearing anything there. She went to bed without anything on but a nightshirt. He pulls the nightshirt up to her neck. No. He pulls it up over one arm and then the other and then manages to get it over her head without hurting her ears and drops it on the floor. Sometimes even the bottom of her shirt would be wet but this time it’s not. Now she’s not wearing anything. He kisses her left shoulder, then her left breast. Her head’s on two pillows. She’s on her back. The covers are over both of them. No. She’s on her right side. He kisses her left shoulder, kisses her back. He lifts her left leg, plays with her down there awhile, and then sticks his penis in. It feels so good, he thinks. “It feels so good,” he says. “Shh,” she says. “What?” he says. But don’t be silly, he thinks. Maybe it was the bed making noise, or the cat. He gets on his back, pulls the covers up to his neck and shuts his eyes. Go to sleep, he thinks. “Go to sleep,” he says. “Sleep. Sleep.”
A friend of mine said “Would you like to meet Cochran?”
“Sure, what writer wouldn’t? But what would I say?”
“You don’t have to say anything. He’ll do most of the talking. If there’s silence, even long silences, there’s silence, but then he or I will say something or the visit will be over. Here, I’ll call him. I’m sure he’d like to meet you.”
“Why would he?”
“Because you’re my friend and a writer.”
He called Cochran from a telephone booth. Cochran said for them to meet him in the bar downstairs in the building he lives in. We went there. He wasn’t there. We ordered a glass of wine each and waited.
“I’m surprised,” my friend said. “He’s usually so prompt.”
“Maybe he meant another day or another hour.”
“No, he specifically said he’ll meet us in exactly twenty minutes in this bar and please don’t be late. Also, he could only give us half an hour.”
“That’s better than nothing. Fact is, it’s something I never expected, ever. I knew you knew him, but I didn’t know how well and didn’t want to ask because I thought you might think I was pushing for a meeting with him. Where do you know him from?”
“Oh, I get around.”
Just then Cochran came into the bar, but from the street entrance, not the one to the apartment building. He put out his hand to me and said “Cochran. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’ve been a long-time admirer of your work.”
“Please, I’m sure you haven’t read my work. It hardly gets around and there’s so little of it.”
“Take my word, son. I’ve read it. So, what are you boys drinking? Wine? Have another on me.” He ordered a glass of white wine for himself, refills for us, and some bar food for us all. “Have some,” he said. “It’s delicious.”
“What is it?” I said. “I don’t recognize it. I only ask because if it’s shrimp or anything even close in the shrimp family—langoustines, for example—I’m allergic to it.”
“It’s shrimp,” he said. “You no doubt couldn’t tell because the shells have been removed. I was also fooled the first time. I’ll order something else for you.”
“Really, I’m not hungry.”
“I insist. You’re young; you have to eat.” He ordered something else. But he spoke so rapidly to the waiter that I again didn’t make out what it was. “No meat in it of any kind,” he said to me, “so you’re safe. Now, let’s talk about your work while we have one more drink. Or I’ll have; you two can stay here for as long as you want and drink on me. The waiter will put it on my tab.”
He went on and on about my work. What he liked, what he didn’t think particularly worked but could easily be repaired, because it was too good to toss out; what he thought was original. He’d obviously read both my books, or a lot of each of them.
“May I now say what I think about your fiction?” I said. “Especially, the short prose. What I have to say is all good, believe me. And I’m not saying that because of the kind things you said about my stuff.”
“Stuff.