Spectacle: Stories by Steinberg Susan

Author:Steinberg, Susan [Steinberg, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2013-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

UNIVERSE

One does not start with mourning doves.

One cannot start with doves surrounding the bedroom.

One starts with the trip to Sausalito, the quick ride over the bridge, the city shrinking in the side-view.

One starts with the trip, as the details of the trip are simple: Mexican food, espresso.

The details are simple: houseboats and the theater where one remembered seeing a film on a first date, a blind date, some years back.

The date himself, one remembered, was beautiful, the night itself, and if one felt to sleep with him on the first date, one would have gotten, one would guess, the second date.

The film was foreign, fine, two perfect people falling in love.

One cannot start with mourning doves surrounding the bedroom, several in windows sitting on branches, making their hollow sound.

One cannot start with doves looking through the windows to where one lay in one’s bed, still, too late to be lying still in one’s bed.

One starts with something lighter, light, the Mexican food, the espresso, and, walking past the theater, one told one’s friend about the blind date from years back, how beautiful his face was; how sentimental the film; how one fell for it, still, the perfect people falling in love; how after the date, one went back to his place; how one was asked to take off one’s shoes; how one was asked to lie in his bed; how one did not go all the way on first dates; how that was back then; how 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.

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