Friends (8 page)

He gets a beer, comes back, sits opposite me. He tells me why he chose our university, what he thinks of sharing an apartment with three men, the premed courses he's not doing very well in, his mother who was terminally ill for three years and which made him choose medicine as a career. His father and younger brothers: “They're going to be so surprised when I walk in the door.”

“Maybe you should call them from the station. People today get alarmed when the door opens and you don't expect anyone.”

“No, they like surprises from me. Just like my girl will too.”

“Now she you definitely should have told you were coming. You know, I'm not saying anything, but you don't want to set yourself up for being embarrassed or hurt.”

“She's okay. I'll show up tomorrow early. She lives with her folks.”

“I'm sure you're right.” I yawn. “Sorry—just a little sleepy. It's been a hectic week. But go on.”

We're pulling into Aberdeen. We must have been speaking half an hour. He's talking about the fifty hours a week he works at the campus radio station. “I do it because I love it. I'd have to—I don't get paid.” About the difference of being a freshman and sophomore. Ida and her accident. Some of the interesting people he's met here: teachers, students. The time he barged into the university president's office to get
more money for the station. I'm yawning again. “Did you really?” I say. The train pulls out of Wilmington. My glass is empty. I don't know whether to excuse myself and go back to the nonsmoking car or stay here. I don't want to hurt his feelings. I do want to get some rest. Oh, put up with it a little more. Best way is with another beer.

“I'm going to have another,” I say, standing up. “Can I get you one?”

“Sure, why not? No, I probably shouldn't. Two with no food in me makes me high.”

“Then you better not. I forgot how old you are you speak so well. That's not a put-down either. You're very articulate and mature and have done a lot of things with your life. Then I'm going to go in back now, if you don't mind, and find a seat.”

“Me too, though I already have one, or my bags do. Say, maybe there's a seat available next to mine. There was when I followed you in here. Whoops, I shouldn't have said that again, right? Sounds like hero worship, which it's not. I just think you're an incredibly nice smart guy.”

“Thank you.”

We start back, I first. Coming toward me in the smoking car is the man I spoke to on the platform. I move to the side so he can pass. “How you doing?” I say.

“Hey there,” he says. “I'm about to check out the dining car if they let me see it. They're not all the same on The Montrealer. Where'd you finally find a seat?”

“Haven't got one yet.”

“My car's filled. They should lose some seats in Philadelphia but maybe take as many on. If I see you later in the club car, let's continue our chat.”

“This is a student at my school. Ed—and I don't know your name.”

“What, you teach? I did too. U of P. Five years. Engineering.”

“That's what I thought of taking once,” Ed says.

“Tickets, please,” the trainman says.

We each show him our checks.

“So I'll see you,” I say to the man. I go through the smoking car. A few vacant seats. Maybe there'll be a couple of vacant ones in the nonsmoking car, no matter what the man said.

“I guess you're in the next one too,” I say to Ed.

“Second aisle by the door.”

We enter the nonsmoking car. Seat next to Ed's is taken.

“Maybe I can get her to move,” he says.

“No, it wouldn't be fair. Speak to you later perhaps.”

I go further up the aisle. There's a vacant seat before and after the one that man had put his valise above. I don't want him to see me when he gets back, nor do I want to speak to Ed anymore, so I go through the next smoking car into the rear nonsmoking car and look for a seat. They're all occupied or have seat checks above the seat or something on the seat if nobody's sitting on it. I return to Ed's car, choose the aisle seat in the third to last row and put my overnight bag on the luggage rack. The man next to me smiles at me when I sit, then continues looking out the window. He has no newspaper or book around him, so I'm afraid he's going to be another one who will ultimately want to talk to pass the time. I turn on my reading light, take out a book from my briefcase. My check, I think, and I take the check out of my shirt pocket and stick it in the holder above the seat. It comes loose and drops on the floor by the man's foot. “Excuse me,” I say, bending down to get the check.

“Yoach a pono,” he says. “Yoach a pono—no.”

“Uh…what?”

“Anglish. No English. No speak. No American.” He puts his fingers over his closed lips, hunches his shoulders as if to say he's sorry.

“Really, it's okay,” I say. “Really. No problem.”

He smiles and turns back to the window. I put the check into the holder and my book back into the briefcase and turn off the light. I look behind me, am about to tell the woman in that seat that I'm about to move my seat all the way back so I can sleep, so if she has a drink on the seat tray, hold on to it, then think Don't say anything, don't start. I press the seat button and very slowly let the seat all the way back. I rest my head on the seat's side rest and close my eyes.

“Hey, how are you?” the man from the platform says. I keep my eyes closed, pretend not to hear. “Oh, sorry. Must be asleep.”

“Mr. Taub,” Ed says about twenty minutes later. “There's a seat next to mine now.”

“Shh,” the man I'm sitting beside says. “Shh shh shh.”

Finished

I can't finish anything anymore. I try but can't. I spend most of my night working. Then I take a short nap and go to my paying job and work all day there and come home and have a quick bite and sleep for a few hours and wash up and go to my desk, but much as I work there, nothing gets finished. I try to finish. I try extra hard. I've been working harder at my work and at trying to finish something these last few months than I have in twenty years. Sometimes I work eight hours straight, time off to walk around the room, do some exercises, have a snack, go to the bathroom, time off for all that. Then back to my desk and I work eight hours, ten hours, but never straight. Three hours of actual straight work at the most, perhaps. Maybe four. Of just sitting down and doing it without getting up, I mean. Then time off for a snack, to relax with a brief walk around the room, to get the kinks out with some hard physical exercise in the room, maybe even to sit on the couch and drink coffee and read a newspaper for about fifteen minutes, newspaper which I bought when I went to my paying job earlier that day. And a couple of times in the last few weeks, time off to go outside and around the corner to the all-night grocery for a quart of milk, pound of coffee, bread. Just a few items as I don't want to waste much time buying or preparing or cooking foods, time I could be spending on my work. Maybe also some sandwich meat and sliced cheese and ajar of mustard or mayonnaise if I'm out of it so
I'll have something easy to snack on when I work at home and something to smear on the snack so it won't be so dry. Then back to my desk where I'll continue my work but never finish any of it. I've boxes filled with things I can't finish. Ream boxes, not big carton boxes, and the city dump must have buried or burned another twenty pounds or so of my work that I haven't finished these last few months.

When I first started doing this work at home I used to finish all of it. Ninety-five percent, ninety-eight, so just about all. Then I'd finish a little less—after doing this kind of work for about ten years—but not much less. I wouldn't be able to finish about ten to fifteen percent after about ten years of this work at my desk. Five years after that, and still putting in five to six hours a day every weekday at it and maybe eight to ten hours a day on free weekends and vacations, I couldn't finish at the most twenty-five to thirty percent of what I started. But never any more than that, and those last figures might even be too high by about five to ten percent. But now, after twenty years at it—twenty-five, counting what I called then my self-apprenticeship, when it didn't matter if I finished what I started or not; I was just teaching myself to start then, teaching myself to continue and finish—well, after twenty years at it I can't finish anything. This has been going on—but I already said for how long. Months. If I said a few, I was either intentionally misleading myself or just wrong. It's been eight months, nine. Before that I wasn't able to finish about eighty percent, but still, I finished twenty percent and thought, with all the work I did, that that was enough. That twenty percent was almost a distillate, if that's the right word—a refinement—but distillate's close enough. I don't want to get bogged down now over this word or that and end up where I can't finish this piece too. I want to finish it because maybe with a finished piece I'll have started something and I'll be able to
finish a piece right after this one and maybe all the pieces or just about all of them right after this one I'll be able to finish if I finish this one, till I'm finishing as much work as I used to finish when I first started this kind of work after I felt I'd served enough time at my self-apprenticeship. Maybe this piece will start something like that. It feels like it. Feels as if I'm going to finish this piece. That's what it certainly feels like.

But where was I? That's more important. Because if I don't finish this, then I wouldn't have started anything going but this piece. I have to get back where I left off and finish that line or thought and then come to a finish in this entire piece. I was saying something about a distillate. Not that part that that word was close enough. That—that's right—and don't get off the subject anymore or you'll never get back to that lost line or thought—that the twenty percent I finished a year or so ago was perhaps a distillate of the work I started—I think that was it—sure—and so finishing twenty percent of what I started was enough to make me feel that my work was going along okay. All right, that might not have made the sense I intended it to—started out to do—might not have been what I started out to say in that thought about the distillation of my work—but it's enough. I can't expect everything all at once if I'm going to get back to finishing my first piece in eight to nine months. Just to finish this one, that would or should be enough. It would be, and what I just said, well, something of what I intended to say must have got through. But where was I again? It was enough; finishing twenty percent was; eight to nine months ago and more. But now I can't finish anything. No distillates. Not even one percent. If it was one percent I finished of all the work I started, would that be enough? Yes, anything—I'll say yes to anything, I mean, just to finish this piece. So yes it would, yes it would. Because if I do finish this,
well, I already said what I thought would happen. What was that? Just to remind myself what it was. Because I forgot. Maybe that's my problem. Not only digression but forgetting what I start out to say. That's perhaps why I can't finish anything. Is that it? What? That I forget. Forget what? Now you're just joking. No I'm not. What was I sayingjust now? Something about distillates. No, that was before. Then what? Something about twenty percent. One percent. That if I finish one percent, it wouldn't be enough. I don't think I said “wouldn't” then, but it's what I think now. Why? Well, it's just not enough. Even to get started in finishing pieces? Yes. After all, think of all the work that went into that one percent. Ninety-nine percent work. Or rather, a hundred percent work, one percent finished. Is that right? I'm not sure. Figure it out mathematically. I'm not good with numbers. But it's a simple problem. One from a hundred is ninety-nine. Still. Then what? What what? Let's see, where was I? Something about work. No, that was from somewhere far off. Another piece perhaps. Even three pieces back, maybe four. Give it up. Maybe that's the best idea yet.

Magna Out of Earshot

She calls and says “I just heard. It's terrific news. Lilly just phoned and told me. I can't tell you how happy I am.”

“Yes, I told Lilly a few days ago. I didn't know if she'd tell you.”

“It's just wonderful. That you could do it, and so easily. And she's met the woman. She says she's so intelligent and nice. I'm so happy. I know it's what you wanted. I wish it would've worked for us as easily. After three years with her, and—well, it's just beautiful. Five years with me and we still couldn't do it, right? It was always bad timing, always that bad timing, that's what did it. I'm sorry. But I'm glad it's now going to finally happen for you.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“What you always wanted. Maybe we should've married. You wanted to so much—and the baby. You wanted that so much too. I didn't. I couldn't—it was absolutely the wrong time. Do I repeat myself too much?—but it was. You don't want to have a baby when all you're thinking about is breaking apart, right? And getting rid of the baby—well, not a baby, but it would've been much more than a baby by now—that was the real killer. But I'm so happy for you. Ecstatic, really. When's it going to happen?”

“The marriage?”

“The marriage, the wedding—of course, what else?”

“We think around February. February 8th to be exact. A
very small wedding. Just my brother and sisters and their spouses and my mom and Magna's parents and her uncle and aunts.”

“Magna, that's right.”

“Maybe her closest friend too—someone who was like a sister to her and still is—but that's it.”

“Magna. I like it. It's a great name. Sounds European, though that's not why I'm saying I like it.”

“Her parents came from there. She was born here.”