Late Stories by Stephen Dixon Page B

if I went to a camp in Pennsylvania when I was a girl. And she has to be considerably older than I. Ten years.”
    â€œI thought her looks might have stayed that young. It’s possible. Forty could look thirty. But it was just something that flashed through my mind then, or whatever it did, and I quickly knew was impossible. But I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
    â€œSure you should have,” she said. “And long before. It’s interesting. And if this girl was instrumental in being the prototype for the women you were later attracted to—”
    â€œHer expressions too. Just by her face she seemed very bright and cheerful and self-contained, as I think I said, and mature. So it wasn’t just her good looks that first attracted me to her, as it wasn’t with you.”
    â€œI’m glad. And what I started to say was that I’m grateful to her, if she was even remotely responsible for you being drawn to me at that party. You came over, we got to talking, found we had lots in common, started seeing each other, married, and the rest.”
    â€œSo it all doesn’t sound too silly to you?”
    â€œNot at all.”
    He stepped out into the street and saw their bus coming. “There’s our bus.”
    â€œGood,” she said. “I’m getting tired.”
    â€œIt looks crowded. If all the seats are taken, would it be all right with you if I ask someone to get up and give you his seat?”
    â€œYes, thanks. I could never ask anyone that myself.”

Talk
    H e hasn’t talked to anyone today. I haven’t talked to anyone today. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to. It’s not that he hasn’t wanted to talk to someone, but he just never had the chance to. He only realized he hasn’t talked to anyone today when he sat down on the bench he’s sitting on now. In front of the church across the street from his house. I like to sit on it after a long or not-so-long walk around my neighborhood. I usually take the same route. Almost always end up on the same bench. One of the benches in front of the entrance to the church. It’s now 6:45. Closer to 6:47. I haven’t talked to anyone today since I woke up more than twelve hours ago, rested in bed awhile, exercised in bed awhile, mostly his legs, and then got out of bed and washed up and so on. Did lots of things. Brushed my teeth, brushed my hair, dressed, took my pill, let the cat out, let the cat in, gave the cat food, changed its water, let the cat out again, made myself breakfast, ate, got the newspaper from outside before I made myself breakfast and ate, same things almost every morning soon after waking up, same breakfast, coffee and hot cereal and toast, maybe blueberry jam and butter on the toast every third or fourth day instead of butter and orange marmalade, same newspaper, different news but some of it the same, same cat, same water bowl for the cat, same kibble in a different bowl for the cat, same plate for the cat’s wet food and same wet food till the cat finishes the can in about three days. Then I shaved, did some exercises with two ten-pound barbells, one for each hand, curls, he thinks they’recalled—the exercises—and so on. No one phoned. The classical music radio station was on when I shaved and exercised and after he was done exercising he turned the radio off. Then he sat at his work table in his bedroom. I could use one of the other two bedrooms in the house to work in or the study his wife used to work in, but I prefer this room, the master bedroom they used to call it to distinguish it from the other bedrooms, the room that was once their bedroom but is now only his since his wife died. She didn’t die in that room. She died in one of the other bedrooms. He had a hospital bed set up for her in that room more than a year before she died and she died in that bed. She was unconscious for twelve days in that bed before she died. Do I