Free Spectacle: Stories by Susan Steinberg Page A

this was now.
    One’s friend laughed, and all that mattered, in this moment, was this moment.
    All that mattered in the next moment was the pulling in one’s gut as one laughed too.
    One mentions the pulling as it too is a detail, the detail that made one stay in one’s bedroom, shades drawn, the following day and the following day, but it was a great day, this day, to be on the other side of the bridge.
    Everything was a metaphor this day.
    Like the bridge itself.
    Like the lack of traffic on the bridge.
    Like the doves cooing from every branch that morning in bed, and one read the doves as a sign of something to come.
    One was right to do so; everything that day was a sign.
    Not from the universe, as one now knows the universe is not in control, as one now knows the universe is not calling the shots, as one now knows that neither is there human control and neither is there fate and neither is there an explanation for what there is.
    There is just the endless dialogue between one’s own soft brain and one’s own soft brain.
    One has to accept this.
    It was just a morning.
    It was just a visit one had to get to, and as the birds flew off the branches, one by one, one got out of bed, one pulled on clothes, one left.
    It was just the usual: one’s body transported as if pulled by strings.
    Then the wait, feet up, for the doctor to enter, the doctor who called one Baltimore; How’s it going, Baltimore, he’d say, and laugh.
    After, one felt the need to leave the city, to see it shrinking in the side-view.
    And when one felt like being alone, one left one’s friend at the table, one stood outside in the wind, looking toward the houseboats, feeling half-pathetic, half-heroic.
    Which is to say half-oneself, half—someone else.
    Once back inside, one didn’t explain the events of outside, that while one’s hair was whipping about the way one would imagine, there was a pulling in one’s gut.
    One only said one saw the houseboats, a man in a straw hat standing on one, sweeping its floor, and this seemed a metaphor too.
    But for what.
    One does not know.
    Perhaps something about out with the old.
    Perhaps something about each man for himself.
    Perhaps something about that.
    The story itself is a force inside; the doctor afraid to move closer; one’s insides afloat, quivering black and white on a screen.
    The doctor said nothing, kept his distance.
    One knew what he was thinking.
    One now was fluent in the doctor’s face.
    One now was fluent in one’s insides.
    One now knew where to find this and that: the cord, the head, the spastic flicker of the heart.
    When the doctor sighed, looked down, one thought, Now what.
    The nurse, as well, looked down.
    There was nowhere else to look.
    This was not the time for words.
    This was not the time to say something dumb.
    Anything would have been dumb.
    Fuck this would have been dumb.
    Why would have been pathetic.
    It was supposed to happen to others.
    It was not supposed to happen.
    One was only trying to be an adult.
    One was only trying to start one’s life.
    One was only trying to start another.
    Check again, one said.
    One said, Check again.
    Check again, one said.
    The heart wasn’t beating.
    One said, Check again.
    The doctor held out his hand for a handshake and anyone would have been confused.
    It was not a handshake but a way to help one up.
    Tomorrow, he said.
    One did not want to get up.
    The technical term was aspiration, and this was not the time to deconstruct words.
    Get dressed, Baltimore, he said.
    One left him hanging, hand in the air, and he left.
    When one’s phone rang, one was still undressed, standing barefoot by the screen.
    One’s friend said, What do you need.
    It was too big a question.
    There were machines in the room one did not understand.
    There were jars of sticks one could not figure out, not the jars, but the sticks.
    One’s man was supposed to be there, helping to pull one’s underwear on.
    One’s man was supposed to tell one what