“You’re rambling quite a bit,” Rosenthal said.
“Oyez, oyez, oyez. The court of oyer and terminer hears that you ramble and determines that you rambled. Didn’t he ramble? Ramble? Rambled all around. Up and down the town. Oh, didn’t he ramble? Ramble? He rambled till the fuckers cut him down.”
“Great tune.”
“Swings. Rambled till the fuckers cut him. Fuckers cut him. Fuckers. Cut him. Cut. Him. Down.”
“Are you all right, Bailey?”
Bailey smiled at Rosenthal, feeling boundless goodwill toward the man. Partners in failure have a bond unknown to winners. Winners tell funny stories. Losers keep the game going.
“Where we walking to?” Rosenthal said. “It’s starting to snow.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Bailey said. “But you’re right. Look at all those little fuckers coming down. Sneaking up. Trying to bury us very quietly. Shhhhhhhhh.”
“We’ll get inside someplace.”
“By the time you figure out where, you’re on the way under.”
“We’ll go to my place,” Rosenthal said.
“No. Too depressing.”
“Your place.”
“No. Irma’s sleeping.”
“How is Irma’s condition?”
“Very suitable. In fact, great. Yes, great, goddamn it. And come to think of it, she’s had enough sleep. Where is she when I need her? Call Irma. Get Irma to join us. Irma is a constant, joyous temptation. Tempts me unwittingly, titillatingly, cuneiformly, asteroidally, oral pro nobisly and in other extravesicular ways.”
“Call her, then.”
“We’ll all go to the Guild room. Do you have a key to the new lock?”
“No.”
“We’ll get in,” Bailey said.
They stopped at a grill and bought more beer and wine, and Bailey spent his last dime calling Irma. He told her to meet them at the Guild room. Then he went back and drank his beer and wondered: Did he really make it tough for himself to live in the world? He had never looked at the problem that way. He drank his beer and remembered when his own response, not necessarily in a higher cause, had lost him what he wanted most. So many absurd things happened to himself and others because of his response. Things bloomed or died according to how he behaved. It was unfortunate. He felt he should do some serious worrying about such behavior. But when he thought about it, the cause of it all fanned out into every corner of his being. He could not change everything. He had changed some things, but he could not become a different man. So what if he failed? If he hadn’t failed, what would he be today? Nothing but a cheap success. So the hell with it. Bolly it. Bollywolly it. He drank his beer. Bolly the whole bleeding mess. Whatever was wrong, it hadn’t killed him. He could still pour in the beer and pump out the syrup.
“Let’s get on with it,” Bailey said.
He and Rosenthal left the bar and walked through the snow, which was falling in large flakes in a quiet and beautiful way.
When Irma arrived, the Guild-room door was open, the snow blowing in. Bailey and Rosenthal were on the floor in their coats, leaning against the wall, where a row of chairs had been. The room was empty and dark, the walls stripped of signs, photos, clippings, notices.
“Look at the door,” Rosenthal told her.
“I did. The glass is broken.”
“Bailey put his fist through that. I mean look at the notice tacked to it.”
By the light of a streetlamp Irma read a note typed on International Guild stationery:
To Former Guild Members
This is to advise you that this local of the International Guild has been permanently dissolved by fiat of the international body. All financial and other support of strikes, demonstrations, negotiations or other forms of contact with the former employer by Guildsmen is officially and irrevocably rescinded. In view of recent developments involving violence, death and costly recriminations, this decision was taken in the best interests of all concerned. Those seeking further information on this decision may contact the undersigned. Guild cards of former members of this local will be honored, should their holders find employment in other firms where the Guild is the collective bargainer. Anyone having unfinished business with this local may consummate it through Mr. D. O. Jarvis, former Guild local chairman, who after the 15th of the month will be an assistant superintendent of maintenance at the Greyhound Bus Terminal.
(signed) ADAM POPKIN
Third Alternate Delegate
Irma went inside and stood in the middle of the empty room.
“They took everything,” Rosenthal said. “Even my coffee cup.”
“I’m thinking of an aphorism,” Bailey said. “It’s got something to do with fun. Also the clap.”
“How did they do it so fast?”
“I think the company and the Guild were in league for months,” Rosenthal said. “It came to me in a dream.”
“So there’s nothing left.” Irma paced up and down shaking her head.
“You walk very like a pooka,” Bailey said to her.
“How is that pooka of yours, anyway?” Rosenthal asked.
“Unreliable. I’m trading him in for a winged pig.”
“It’s so rotten,” Irma said. “And sad.”
“Instead of an aphorism,” Bailey said, “I’m beginning to think in terms of a syllogism.”
“Your trouble, Bailey,” Rosenthal said, “is that you never know when to be solemn.”
“So that’s what my trouble is.”
“When I was a little girl,” Irma said, “I remember being in the front yard when a woman in a lacy nightgown came running down the road. She was barefoot, and when she saw me she stopped and asked if she might pick a flower. I said yes because she was so beautiful, and she broke a yellow rose off the trellis. She held its stem in her hand just as if it didn’t have any thorns on it. Then she thanked me and ran on down the street. Somebody was chasing her, I found out later.”
“Did they catch her?” Bailey asked.
“Down by the garage. I always felt she died after that.”
“That’s not how you die,” Bailey said. “They never really catch you.”
“Oh, glop, Bailey,” Irma said.
“I can’t stand unhappy endings. Why do you suppose I’m thinking about fun? However, I’m no longer thinking of a syllogism, but of a riddle.”
Irma walked to the back of the room, looking in all the corners with matches to see if anything had been left.
“Nothing at all,” she said.
“No. Nothing,” Rosenthal said.
She looked in the closet and found that even the dust was gone.
“The dust is gone,” she said. “Why do you suppose they took away the dust?”
“They’ve got a use for all sorts of things,” Rosenthal said.
“My riddle,” Bailey said, “should prove to be a challenge to Guild people like yourselves. I know the sound of one hand clapping, but what is the fruit of the fun tree?”
Irma stopped walking and sat down on the floor and stared at Bailey. Bailey was sitting on the spot where the mimeograph machine had been. Irma looked above his head at the wall where the streetlight hit it.
“Say,” she said, “they took down the sign.”
They all looked up at the spot where the DON’T SIT HERE sign had been. When they each had exhausted the sight of the empty wall, they again looked at each other. After a long silence they got up and left the room.
About the Author
William Kennedy (b. 1928) is an American author and journalist. Born and raised in Albany, New York, he graduated from Siena College and served in the US Army. After living in Puerto Rico, Kennedy returned to Albany and worked at the Times Union as an investigative journalist. He would go on to write Ironweed, Very Old Bones, and other novels in his celebrated Albany Cycle, and earn honors including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a New York State Governor’s Arts Award.
All rights reserved, including wit
hout limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material:
Avon Books: “For My Part I’ll Smoke a Good Ten Cent Cigar,” by William Saroyan. From 48 Saroyan Stories, copyright 1938, 1939, 1942 by William Saroyan.
The Bollingen Foundation: For The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, Bollingen Series XVII (Princeton University Press, revised edition, 1968). Copyright 1949 by the Bollingen Foundation.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.: An excerpt from archy and mehitabel, by don marquis. Copyright 1927 by don marquis.
Harper & Row, Publishers: Epigram from “Maxims from the Chinese” in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew, by Robert Benchley. Copyright 1936 by Robert Benchley; renewed 1964 by Gertrude Benchley. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
D.C. Heath and Company: For material from Hundreds of Turkeys, by E. Osswald and M.M. Reed. Copyright © 1941 by D.C. Heath and Company, A Division of Raytheon Education Company, Boston, Massachusetts.
Macmillan Publishing Company and A.P. Watt Ltd: “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing,” from The Poems of W.B. Yeats, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1916 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1944 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.
Stratemeyer Syndicate: Selections from Tom Swift and His Undersea Search, copyright 1920 by Grosset & Dunlap. Copyright renewed 1948 by Victor Appleton; copyright assigned to Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1978.
The Welk Music Group: Lyrics from “They Always Pick on Me,” written by Stanley Murphy and Harry Von Tilzer. Copyright 1911 by Harry Von Tilzer Music Publishing Company. Copyright renewed (c/o The Welk Music Group, Santa Monica, California 90401). International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1969, 1984 by William Kennedy
Cover design by Greg Mortimer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4211-6
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WILLIAM KENNEDY
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