Free What Is All This? by Stephen Dixon

I should have shown more restraint. Nobody has a nice word for her, though. I begin to feel sorry for her now in a different way. I picture her all alone. Without good friends. Just Burleigh and she. And all these people saying nasty things about her behind her back and even to her face. I see her lying in bed with a bandage on her jaw, planning things, scheming, worried about what the chin scar will do to her beauty, or maybe just sleeping now or in pain. Maybe she did push me too far. Still, I should have held back. Anyway, I don’t feel as bad about myself now and that I won’t be seeing her anymore. Tomorrow I’ll feel better. Days after that, better yet. I’ll send her flowers. Make my apologies more intelligible in a letter or two and wish her a long happy life, and then forget her for good. I drink more wine and get sleepy. “Mona,” I shout, “I love you, what can I say?” I pass out. All night I seem to dream of her making love with other men and enjoying it. I wake up around three and for hours just lie there with the lights on. “Tough days ahead,” I say.

END OF A FRIEND.
    I bump into him. He says “Excuse me.”
    I say The same.”
    He passes. I say “Wait up.”
    He stops, turns to me. “Yes?”
    â€œYou forgot something.”
    He looks around. “I don’t see anything. What?”
    â€œTo say excuse me.”
    â€œEither you didn’t hear me before or you’re trying to fool me.”
    â€œNo other alternative?”
    â€œNone I can think of now, but what of it?”
    â€œYou’re right. You did say excuse me.”
    â€œFine, then. I won’t begin to try to understand you.” He walks away.
    â€œOne more thing.”
    He doesn’t stop. I run after him, tap his shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me?”
    â€œYes, I heard you.”
    â€œGood. For a second I was afraid maybe your hearing wasn’t okay.”
    â€œMy hearing, my vision, and I’ll tell you, my smelling, are all okay.” He starts off again.
    I run after him, grab his arm. “Now listen you,” he says, pushing my hand away. “I don’t quite like this. Not ‘quite.’ I definitely don’t. I don’t know you, yet you stop me and immediately try to fool me. Then you talk some gibberish about my hearing to me. Maybe you even intentionally bumped into me. Now it’s no doubt something else. Well, I’ve someplace to be now. Important work. People are depending on my being there. So if you don’t mind?”
    â€œBut one more thing. Only what I wanted to say to you before I got distracted and asked about your hearing.”
    â€œAll right. One more thing. What?”
    â€œYour face.”
    â€œYes, my face.”
    â€œYes, that you have a face.”
    â€œYou’re right. How completely absentminded of me. I have a face. Thanks for reminding me. Goodbye.”
    He starts off. I grab his arm. He swivels around hard this time and says “Stop me once more and I’m going to do something you won’t like.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause you’re provoking me. Detaining me for some ulterior or insidious reason of your own which I think I’m finally on to and am a little fearful of. Now, may I go? Not that I have to ask you. But rather, I am going, and stop me once more and it’s the police I talk to next, not you.”
    â€œGo on, go on, I’m not stopping you.”
    â€œYou don’t call grabbing my arm a couple of times and saying nonsensical things to stop me, stopping me?”
    â€œTo be honest, yes, I’d say I stopped you, but not with nonsensical things.”
    â€œOh? That I have a face?”
    â€œMy point wasn’t just that you have a face. For we all have faces. All except those poor disfigured people who don’t have faces. Not disfigured. People without faces at all, I mean. But that wasn’t my point. My point