Time to Go by Stephen Dixon Read Free Book Online

the first to know. This is Lucy. I met her last Friday, proposed to her this morning, and we’re getting married, if we can get the blood tests and license and all in that time, Saturday of next week.” “I’m glad to meet you, Lucy, and to know I’ll have such a beautiful sister-in-law, but what,” she said to Don, “happened to my best friend and your fiancée Susan who you were in love with so much till last week?”
    His wife called and said “If you have a moment I’d like to speak to you.” “I have to rush to an important union meeting, I’ll call back.” “You don’t know where I am,” she said. “You’re not at your mother’s?” and she said no. “Nor at one of the women’s departments in Bloomingdale’s?” and she said “Don’t be such an ass.” “Or at either of your two lovers?” and she said “One I haven’t seen for a month and the other’s on a business trip.” “Oh, I’ll find you,” and he hung up.
    His wife brought him flowers in bed on one of his birthdays. He said “The hell with those, I want you,” and lunged for her. She jumped out of his reach; he fell out of bed and landed on top of the flowers. She said “I’m leaving you,” and he asked why. “The way you treat me and the way you treat flowers.” He said” Ah, you both like to be treated rough, don’t tell me, and besides, on my birthday I can get what I want and act any way I please. It’s an unwritten law or maybe even in the Talmud,” and he kicked the flowers under the bed. She packed but didn’t leave.
    His daughter lost her first tooth. He said “Go to sleep, put it under your pillow.” She said “First I have to put it under my pillow, then I go to sleep.” “Oh, you’ve done this before?” “How could I—this is my first lost tooth? I know all about it though. I put it under my pillow, make a wish to the good fairy and go to sleep and you or mommy put money under my pillow and take the tooth away.” “No. We take the tooth away while you’re asleep, inspect it, see what it’s worth as a tooth, if anything, and then put money under your pillow according to the tooth’s value. This one—I don’t know. It looks a little rotted. In the long run, eating all those sweets doesn’t pay.” She said “I don’t eat so many. I want my tooth’s money.” “Oh sweetie,” he said, hugging her and wiping away her tears. “I’m sorry. For your first tooth we’ll try to make an exception.”
    His mother liked to say he was born in a taxi. Actually, his head appeared out of her vagina just as the cab was pulling up at the hospital. The driver and Dan’s father carried her inside and she delivered unassisted in the elevator going up to the delivery room. “Yours, except for the fact that I thought they might drop me carrying me to the lobby, was the easiest birth of all my kids.”
    His second oldest brother died in an air crash. One hundred and seven people, including the crew, died in the plane with him. One person survived. He floated down about three thousand feet inside the tail section and escaped with minor injuries. Don had wanted to phone him and ask what he remembered last about his brother, since they were both actors going to Los Angeles to work in the same film and had sat a few rows from one another, but he never did. He wrote him once about it, care of the film company, but never got a reply.
    â€œHelp,” his nextdoor neighbor yelled through the walls, “I’m being attacked by two black panthers.” It was the third time this week she was attacked by a wild animal; the last one was a lion. He rang her doorbell and asked if there was anything wrong and she said “Go away, I’m okay,” and resumed yelling