Fall and Rise (9 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Think it wise saying any of it?”

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

“Fine. Krin. Bye.”

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

“Why?”

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

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

“I do.”

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

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

Not the same. Lot less light. Piano music though piano covered and keyboard cover locked. Before the place always so jammed. One customer at the bar and behind it a barmaid with her mouth right up to the mirror picking her teeth with a toothpick. She reams, she digs. Got it her face seems to say throwing the toothpick away. Before when there probably wasn't so much rain. When there was and we were down here we'd get a cab or on a subway and go to either of, or a bus if we didn't mind the long ride, our apartments to be dry. To drink wine or shot of warming this or that and maybe a snack and maybe read awhile or watch—or do both—part of a television movie in our undies or nude. Or one in her or his undies and the other nude, depending if the temperature outside was mild and if it wasn't then if the heat inside was still up. And chances are one or the other of us after we'd fooled as May liked to say with one another would climb—but stop. On top of the other and get not climb or side by side each other or both of us on our knees facing one of the bedboards. But why bring all that back? I don't know. You can try. “Lost like a dog, dark like a roach, dumb like a goat and almost half as hot as a cat it'd be too rudimental and simplistic to say, those are four of the foresown fates of man—Hasenai, it's not safe: grab your son and bone and race back to your flat!” he says in his poem “Autumnal Ordinal Poems.” And disinfecting smell from the john, music from the jukebox. Not jukebox but whatever those big blinking modern record-playing machines are called and which I don't think was here before. Debussy I bet.

“Debussy,” I say to the barmaid, walking over bobbing my head at the jukebox as she turns puckering her lips from putting on lipstick in front of the mirror, but not taking a seat.

“Could be. Like something from the bar?”

“Sounds it. The little piano tinkle. Like rolling leaves, like falling trees. I mean rivers and leaves. The high keys. Rivers rippling, little leaves flipping in the air or on the ground briskly tripping. And ridiculous those descriptions. Not descriptions but likenesses or pictures of whatever they sound like or are depicting. Maybe depictions. But you probably know music so do you know…?” snapping my fingers. “By the same composer. Not Le or La Mer or
The Valse
. No, that was someone else. Piano pieces all in a series by Debussy that sound like this and maybe is. I bet the pianist knows. He on his break?”

“Vacation.”

“Oh, vacation, lucky stiff. But I bet he's playing twelve hours a day on a resort ship or at a Nassau hotel or one on one of the Keys. Say, that'd be the right spot. But the sign outside—Never mind. I'm not nosy and I'm sure you have your good reasons.”

“You're not very thirsty either and the reason for the sign is it's not my idea. The reason is it's my boss's. To keep music lovers coming in while the pianist's away. You see what luck we've had. Sure, the freaky weather, but people are a lot smarter than he thinks. And the wind which keeps knocking it over could be God's way of saying don't pull the wool over the public's eyes too much.”

“You believe that?”

“If I just said ‘politics and religion,' you'd like a light know what I meant.”

“Go ahead. I never get upset over those two subjects.”

“But you should or you're not human. If you were a Jew and I called you a Red kike, you wouldn't mind? Anyway, you still don't want anything to drink if you never did? False advertising, so I'm not holding you to stay here.”

“No, I'll have something.” I take off my raincoat and hang it on a wall peg. “My sweater.”