In That Case

1. Questions

Susie was a writer. Her name was not "Susie Asado" – that was the name of a poem by Gertrude Stein – poem or portrait or prose piece. What should I call it?¹ What should I call her – Susie the writer?² "Susie Asado" might have been a flamenco dancer. "Susie Asado" was the name of a piece by Stein – still is the name, if some Pièta-smasher with an idée fixe has not gone and crossed out the name in all the remaining editions of Geography and Plays, by Gertrude Stein.

What is the crucial piece of missing information here?³ Is it the relation of "Susie Asado" to Geography and Plays?⁴ Or is it the last name of Susie the writer?⁵ Can there be more than one crucial piece of missing information?⁶

Can you know Susie without knowing her last name?⁷ Does she have one?⁸ Does it have anything to do with her being a writer?⁹ Why is she a writer?¹⁰ Is it because she can't help herself?¹¹ Is it fun?¹² Is it always easy?¹³ Is it ever hard?¹⁴

Is Susie a writer?¹⁵ I said she was. What is writing?¹⁶ Can Gertrude Stein write?¹⁷ She is dead now. She wrote on scraps of paper, and her longtime companion typed them.

Is Susie dead?¹⁸ Does Gertrude Stein still live?¹⁹ If Susie is living, but not published, and Stein is dead, but still published, does that mean Stein exists for you and Susie not?²⁰

Is Susie a fictional character?²¹ Was she writing to escape?²² What was she escaping?²³ Was she escaping reality?²⁴ Did she succeed?²⁵ Can you succeed, by reading this?²⁶

Susie said: "Escaping reality is impossible, because reality is circular. It's like a trip to the dentist. It's like having your teeth cleaned. They are always getting out the metal pick."

I know she said this, because I heard her. Do you believe me?²⁷ Are you afraid of me?²⁸

We were standing in line to get food at the soup kitchen. That's what I call it. I am concealing something. Not Susie's last name, which I wish was "Asado" – but it can't be, that one's taken. Gertrude Stein took it.

Lines weed out the weak. It was like waiting in line to get this far. That's why you work hard in metafiction – you, the reader. If you've got this far, you are determined. You want something. What is it?²⁹ Susie wants it, too.

"Artists work hard," Susie said. She was ahead of me. Was she alive?³⁰ I am not sure. Do we have consciousness?³¹

Are you upset with me?³² Do you have a weak stomach?³³ Can you stand what they eat at the soup kitchen?³⁴ Is it too salty for you?³⁵

Do you think Susie wrote this?³⁶

"Are you working today?"³⁷ said the girl at the soup kitchen. Her name was Debbie. She was a writer. Debbie could write her name. She could fill out forms and applications.

I am lying when I call it a "soup kitchen."

This is the irritation of modern life.

Would you prefer it as a conversation?³⁸ I think I would. Here, have some soup:

"This is the irritation of modern life," said Susie to me, when we were seated. In front of us were steaming bowls of soup.

"What is?"³⁹ I asked.

"This panting shortness of everything," she said. "There are no long, drawn-out phrases today."

"It's because of cars," I said. "Cars and airplanes."

We were not at the soup kitchen, but my house. I don't have a house. But I might live somewhere; maybe just in your mind.

Do you care if Susie has yellow hair?⁴⁰ Very short, very close-cropped, and sunflower-yellow?⁴¹ Do you still want to know her?⁴² What if she has black teeth from chewing betel nuts?⁴³ And wears a red dress?⁴⁴⁴⁵ What if she is a hag?

I said, "Some people said Alice B. Toklas was the ugliest woman they had ever seen, and gave smoothly written reasons for this assertion."

What did Susie say to this?⁴⁶

Did she say, "Do you find me ugly?⁴⁷ Is that why you're bringing this up?"⁴⁸

Did she say, "Alice B. Toklas had beautiful eyes"?⁴⁹

Did she say, "A woman's looks are always relevant"?⁵⁰

I said, "A woman's looks are always relevant." Was I agreeing, or being sarcastic?⁵¹

What is the fount from which all hope springs?⁵²

By now, Susie and I had finished our soup. It was "Cuban black bean." I wish you could have joined us.

"That was the best soup I ever ate," Susie said.

Or was it her little brother?⁵³

"I hate men," I might have said, unless her little brother was in the room. Then I've have had to be careful.

There's something I'm not getting to, because it's so painful. Oh yes; it is this:

"Did you work today?"⁵⁴ Susie asked me.

"Why are you asking me that?"⁵⁵ I said. "How could you?⁵⁶ A writer like you."

"Writer?⁵⁷ I can barely spell my name," she said.

We were eating ice cream – vanilla, if you must know. Plain, since there was nothing to put on it. Artists are poor.

"That's not true," Susie said. "Richard Estes gets $500,000 for a painting."

Call it minimalist ice cream.

"Is it hard work to write like this?"⁵⁸ I asked Susie.

"I don't know; what else did you do today?"⁵⁹ she said.

"What are you, my parole officer?"⁶⁰ I said.

Let's start over; this is too hard.

Life is too hard.

Susie was a writer. She was poor – not even a last name. She went to the soup kitchen. Debbie served her.

Debbie said, "Are you working today?"⁶¹

Susie said, "I'm always working."

Debbie said nothing. Or she said, "No, I mean, did you work at the store?"⁶²

Susie said, "I work at an all-night convenience store, but I don't call that working. That's my job."

"Don't you like your job?"⁶³ said Debbie.

You're holding up the line, you two!

Are you happy?⁶⁴ Do you like your job?⁶⁵ Where do you see yourself ten years from now?⁶⁶ Twenty?⁶⁷⁶⁸ Do you enjoy every minute?⁶⁹ Do you live in the moment?⁷⁰ What are your long-range goals?

Did Susie betray me?⁷¹

Where did we go wrong?⁷²

"I work all the time," Susie said. "I'm an artist."

"Do you paint?"⁷³ said Debbie.
"I'm not painting right now," Susie said.

"Well, did you paint?"⁷⁴ Debbie said.

"We've all painted," said Susie, "at least once, in kindergarten. Or later, in grade school."

"With strange-smelling paints in glass jars," Debbie said. "What were they called?"⁷⁵

"Tempera," Susie said.

Susie has never taken the yellow of an egg, otherwise known as the yolk, and mixed it with raw mineral pigments ground by an apprentice. She has never painted on parchment.

Why was she born?⁷⁶ Does she ask herself this?⁷⁷ I don't know everything. I'm asking you.

"I'm always thinking," said Susie.

"You think too much," Debbie said. This was a different day, a different Debbie; this was long ago. Susie had long hair then; she wore braids.

This is the hard part. I'm tired; I must have worked.

"Is it hard work to write?"⁷⁸ nobody asked me.

"Would you like a million dollars?"⁷⁹ the same person said.

Richard Estes gets half a mil for his pictures, which he paints standing up, wearing a lab coat over a suit and tie. He has a mahl stick, or an extra-long paintbrush.

Susie and I don't have mahl sticks. We are poor. We can barely get through each day.

Susie has a red dress on; it is knee-length. Her short, bright yellow hair and her black eyes are all that I can see. She has spunk, the old men say. She has sass. But how does she show this?⁸⁰

She's never afraid in line.

2. Wanting

This is how Susie met Danny Arnaut:

"What if," said Susie, early one morning, before I had put on my snakeskin slippers (I have a fear of heights, and the presence of snake helps me feel closer to the ground, since the Snake was cursed to go on its belly at the Fall), "stores could only sell on kind of thing at a time? Like I'd say, I feel like eggs today, let's go to the egg store."

"Sounds kind of like Paris," I say, "where you go to the baker, the greengrocer, the cold-cut guy, et cetera."

"Suppose you could only sell one thing, and one of that thing, all day," Susie said. "Legally."

At that point I hadn't thought of the thriving black-market trade going on in the bushes, like children being taught to read in the hedgerow schools, when literacy meant death for the colonized, so I just said, "OK."

We were standing in front of an egg on a dais, in the center of a big room with three broad, shallow steps up to a second level at the far end. A baby spot shone down pure and white-bright on the top of the egg, which rested on a velvet cushion.

"This is how to appreciate things," Susie said, coming closer. "One at a time."

"It's just an ordinary egg," I said. I was afraid it was going to hatch.

A man came down from the shadows at the far end of the room. He wore a robe – not a terrycloth bathrobe, not a smoking jacket, but a dark maroon floor-length number with full sleeves, like a judge's robe.

"Is that your graduation gown?" I said, without thinking. I always get smart-ass when I'm nervous.

He didn't answer me, and I noticed he was floating a few feet above the ground.

Susie said, "Let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

I said, "Hold on. I know you're nervous, but is this guy Danny Arnaut or not?"

The guy just hovered, hollow-eyed.

"It might be his ghost," she said.

"You mean he's dead already? Before we even get to meet him? That's pretty cheesy," I said.

"I'm not alone," the man said in a hollow voice.

"What are you, an oracle?" I said. "Of course you're not alone – you've got two living, breathing women standing here. Contemplating an egg."

Susie gazed into the glass display case.

"Is that a duck egg?" she asked the man. "It's awfully big."

Susie takes paranormal phenomena in stride. I don't.

"You have awfully big feet for a woman," said the man, coming to rest right next to Susie.

He had jeans on.

"How'd you do that?" I asked, curious. Then a wave of revulsion spread over me, and I shuddered.

"That was the backwash," said Susie.

"So what's the story here?" I demanded. "Are you going to have a weird boyfriend now, who does magic tricks?"

"This isn't Danny Arnaut," said Susie. "I mean, it could be, or it could be the prelude to meeting him."

I suddenly grabbed the egg and smashed it to the ground with all my might. It didn't require that much force – it was just an egg.

But how could I do this so readily, when the egg was inside a glass display case?

Well, it could be that at first it wasn't, then it was, and then it wasn't. Or, it could be that any amount of time elapsed between the paragraph ending "prelude to meeting him" and the one beginning "I suddenly grabbed the egg."

Say it was fifteen minutes. Just say it was, to please me. I've pleased you, haven't I? Well, then, you can do something for me. Be ingenious and yielding. I like that in a reader.

The point is, what happened in those fifteen minutes? Maybe they'd opened the display case – Susie and Danny Arnaut – and had taken out the egg, to admire its faint blue-green shell together, under the natural light which flooded the shop once the heavy black curtains were drawn away from the French windows to reveal, like a stage set, an astonishing miniature hanging garden, between his building and the next.

And maybe I said, "Wow! Can we go out there?" and Danny said, "Sure," just a jeans-and-T-shirt guy now (the first few minutes of meeting someone are always weird, though usually not as weird as meeting Danny), and I went out into this fabulous city garden, a paradise created in a minor space, and when I turned back, eager to share my innocent excitement with those two, they were kissing, or, should I say, "locked in an embrace."

"You shouldn't," said Susie. "Cliché is overused."

"What size are your feet?" I said, to be mean. It's pretty clear that I was jealous.

"What possible relevance could that have?" Susie asked.

"Don't evade the question," I said.

We were standing outside the door to writing class, waiting for the other people to come.

I'm tired of being me. Can I be Susie?

"It's not as easy as you think," she tells me. "For one thing, you have to put up with black teeth. See?" And she bares them.

"They're not so bad," I say.

"Oh, sure. Black fangs," she says.

She got them filed on her trip to Bali, where they believe that square, unfiled teeth are uncivilized – the mark of an animal.

"You could get them capped," I say.

"Oh, sure," says Susie. "With what money?"

The writing seminar cost twelve hundred dollars, so I know what she means. Susie saved up by not going to the movies or eating out for a year. She's disciplined that way. Me, I don't know where I got it. Maybe I found it in the street.

"This better be good," I say. "For twelve hundred dollars."

Professor Arnaut strides up, brisk and professional, with a briefcase.

"Hello, ladies," he says to us, smiling. "Coming in?" He holds the door for us.

"Wait a minute," I say to Susie. "This is entirely too plausible. What really happened?"

"It's not that plausible," she hedges. "If I was working nights in a convenience store, which I hope everyone remembers from the last chapter, and that was my only source of income, do you really think I could save twelve hundred dollars in a year just by going without movies and meals out?"

"No," I say.

"Then why did you write it?" she asks.

"I wanted to see if I could get away with it?" I ask.

"You're asking me?" she says.

"Yes," I say. "You're the writer in the group. Aren't you?"

"I never said I was," she says.

"Then what are you doing in front of the open-door, class-about-to-begin portion of a twelve-hundred-dollar writing seminar?" I say, a little too loudly.

"I wanted to meet Daniel Arnaut," she says. "Not the way you described – that was just a dream. Your dream."

"So why didn't you say something?" I bluster.

"This way I get to meet Daniel Arnaut in the flesh, and have your dream, too," she says.

She's cagy, that Susie. What did I tell you?

"So who is this guy?" I say, as if I didn't know.

"He's a famous writer," I let Susie tell me, "and he's going to teach us the sestina."

I groan. "Oh no. I'm too exhausted to learn an intricate 12^th-century verse form!"

"Well, you could change your mind," she says. "The class hasn't started yet. You could go next door and learn about the Internet."

And that's how Susie, the yellow-haired, black-eyed, red-dressed, unpublished writer, met Dr. Arnaut, the sestina specialist (among many other things – I wouldn't want you to think our Susie would be interested in a one-trick pony with an idée fixe, the kind of guy who'd go so far as to cross out lines in pre-existing text).

But I didn't go next door to learn about the Internet. I cast my lot with the artists, thus deepening my vow of poverty (where was I going to get twelve hundred dollars, for Chrissake?), and so I got to hear Arnaut's first words to the class, in his deep, resonant voice:

"Never assume."

3. Construction

They say cholesterol is in the yellow

Of an egg, but I don't care a hair

For that; I'm only glad my blood is red

And powerful; I never wear a dress

With pantyhose; I only dress in black,

And flowingly; I don't dress for men's eyes.

Rich men never pass through the needle eyes

Of honest women; margarine's not yellow

But must be stained; I've dyed my gray hair black,

Though I've been told, "I love your silver hair!"

I take great care with articles of dress;

My lips are pale; my lipstick's brilliant red.

After a night of tears, one's eyes are red;

The skin is delicate around the eyes.

I cried because he didn't like my dress;

I cried because he wished my hair was yellow.

I didn't say a word about his hair.

A girl's account is never in the black.

A man I know said, "Women wearing black

Just kid themselves; they might as well wear red

For all black hides their flaws; and as for hair –

God, how much time they waste!" I dropped my eyes,

And felt, right down my back, the streak of yellow

Glow in shame against my midnight dress.

There could be pleasure in a chiffon dress,

If it were real silk – and shadows black

And sharp and long were cast, as brilliant yellow

Lamps threw out their light – if tawny red

Of hawthorn bark and green brocaded eyes

Of peacock feathers shone inside my hair.

But I ask for too much; that wealth of hair

Is for the young; likewise the chiffon dress.

You know you're getting old when the inward eyes

See everything, although the room is black,

And meaning is a pink-flamed line of red

Between the fingers held up to the yellow.

As with closed eyes you lie, see white in black,

A coin reversed; the red dress in the red

Bruise; and her hair, of straw or gold, in yellow.

 

4. Deconstruction

"Shall we explicate your maiden effort?" Dr. Arnaut said to me.

He didn't know my name; I hadn't told him. The nametag he had issued me was blank.

"I wouldn't think it needs much explanation," I said. "It's pretty clear."

"What about 'red dress in the red bruise'?" said Susie, sticking out her white arm. "I don't have any bruises."

"But you might have had, once," I said.

"Or there might be some under the dress," said Dr. Arnaut, "which we can't see."

"I'm not going to show you what's under my dress," said Susie, turning red in the face.

"Did anyone ask you?" said Dr. Arnaut.

We were the only two people in the class – Susie and I. I didn't feel like bringing in a whole slew of other characters.

It was Monday morning.

The air-conditioning ducts were malfunctioning. Someone had covered them with cheesecloth. Susie and I were drinking pink lemonade, and Dr. Arnaut was wearing a paper hat. It looked incongruous against his bearlike dignity.

We were celebrating the end of class, but it didn't work; nobody was in a festive mood, despite the paper streamers that hung so copiously from the ceiling.

No one wanted to explain her poetry. It was bad enough having written it in the first place.

"So let's talk about form," said Dr. Arnaut.

No one wanted to talk about form.

"Let's talk about your salary," said Susie to Dr. Arnaut. "How come you make five times what I do? You don't work five times as hard, I can assure you of that. And you're not five times as smart."

"Or five times as good-looking," I chimed in.

Dr. Arnaut didn't know what to do. None of us did. All we could think of was to destroy.

Arnaut collapsed.

We can only do what we can do.

"He's having a heart attack!" I shouted. "Get him to the hospital!"

"Out with the old, in with the new," Susie exulted, ripping off his paper hat and throwing it out the window.

"Don't you care what happens to this man?" I squawked. "I thought her was going to be your lover!"

"You thought wrong," laughed Susie, nudging Arnaut's arm with her toe. "What do I want with a man like that? A little stress, and foom! he drops like a stone."

I knelt down by Arnaut's side and put my ear to his chest. Nothing was happening, as far as I could tell.

"Put a mirror over his face," Susie suggested. "he might want to see himself when he wakes up."

"What makes you think he's going to wake up?" I said.

"They always do," said Susie unconcernedly. "It's always temporary with them." She swung her white legs back and forth, heels thumping on the amber wood of Dr. Arnaut's desk.

Can you assume it's not a baroque desk? Can you assume that it's not ten feet high? Maybe Susie had to climb up on top with the help of a ladder, the aluminum ladder that the apple-pickers left behind in class when they walked out in disgust at the difficulty and lonely misery of literary composition.

Dr. Arnaut had on a white shirt with thin gray stripes. You might call him stocky, or fleshy, but he wasn't really fat, just thick. The placket of his shirt was rumpled up slightly, and as I pressed my hand to his chest, I felt his skin's damp warmth.

"I think he's still alive," I said.

"Who cares?" said Susie, jumping down from the desk, which, after all, was only about four feet high. "Let's get out of here." She headed for the door.

"Don't you want to learn how to write from a master?" I called.

"No," she said. "I'm going home. You can stay if you want."

And with that she was gone.

Now what was I going to do with Dr. Arnaut? His plastic horn-rims, I noted, had been knocked askew in his fall, and I removed them gently, setting them on his desk.

What a pathetic, hot and vulnerable thing is man, after all, when you get close to one! So may things can go wrong with this poor lump of flesh, this shaven ape …

Dr. Arnaut opened one eye. "Is she gone?" he asked.

I slapped his bristling cheek. "How could you scare us like that?"

Arnaut lurched neatly into a sitting position, then to a standing, with surprisingly little effort for a man his age. Probably the result of crunches, I thought, or long sessions at the rowing machine.

"How'd you like to come and live with me?" he asked. "I need a housekeeper."

"Housekeeper?" I spluttered. "Get out! Get out of here!"

He ignored me, putting some papers away in his briefcase.

"Give me that," I snapped, snatching my sestina from his hand.

He raised his eyebrows. "Something troubling you?"

"Just who do you think you are?" I shouted, and after his retreating back, down the echoing mint-green corridor, I shouted again:

"Just who do you think you are?"

5. Resting

I am a writer. I am age 55. My hair is black and white, and I wear it in a one-inch crew cut, for practicality. I wear a black suit with a plain white shirt, also for practicality. I wash the whites and blacks separately.

I live on practically nothing, but my wants are few. The only thing I want is to develop as an artist. I've pared my life to the essentials. That way I can concentrate on prose.

"I thought you were writing poetry," you say.

Is that you, dear reader? How nice to see an old friend. Come in and sit down, here, by the open fireplace. Are you suspicious? Does your reach exceed your grasp? Here, drink this honey-mulled cider.

"What are all those little bits of brown stuff floating around in it?" you want to know.

"Oh, that's the mulling spices," I say, a worried frown appearing on my forehead. What kind of beast have I invited into my home?

"What happened to Susie?" you say, blowing the foam off the top of your beer. "I kind of like her."

"She had to go," I say. "She was getting in the way."

"I thought one of you was going to get it on with the guy," you say. "That's why I read this far."

Actually, you leafed through, looking for the "good parts," and, finding none, shoved it back on the drugstore rack upside down.

"I don't allow beer in my house, I'm afraid," I say, "so it's cider or nothing."

What do you say to this? Why, in fact, are you here, with your orange polyester baseball cap? Perhaps you don't know yourself.

"Everybody's lookin' for somethin'," you say, staring into the fire.

"Deep," I could say. "You just quoted the Eurythmics." But I don't, because the fire mesmerizes me and makes your simple words profound.

"What is it about a fire?" I say.

"Heat," you say. "Important in the winter."

I laugh inwardly. How simple life is!

How simple life is.

6. Answers