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Donald Barthelme

Paradise

To Elaine de Kooning

After the women had gone Simon began dreaming with new intensity. He dreamed that he was a slave on a leper island, required to clean the latrines and pile up dirty-white shell for the roads, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrowful, then rake the shell smooth and jump up and down on it until it was packed solid. The lepers did not allow him to wear shoes, only white athletic socks, and he had a difficult time finding a pair that matched. The head leper, a man who seemed to be named Al, embraced him repeatedly and tried repeatedly to spit in his mouth. He dreamed that his wife, Carol, had driven a large bus, a Metro bus filled with people, into the front of his building. It was not her fault, she told him, a Japanese man who had not had exact change when he got on the bus, in fact had asked her to change a fifty-dollar bill and had, moreover, insisted that she stuff nine fives into little envelopes printed with colorful out-of-register scenes from the Bible for his First Presbyterian contributions over the next nine Sundays, was the true culprit. Simon woke early, five o’clock and six o’clock, cracked new bottles of white wine and smoked tasteless Marlboro Light 100s and wondered what to do next.

He put all the extra beds in one room, the room Anne had had toward the front of the house. Stacked on top of one another they looked like a means test for a princess. He bought a new plant, a gold-flecked acuba, and a pot for it at Conran’s, a glazed off-white ceramic number. He cleaned the refrigerator, throwing out seven half-full containers of Dannon Strawberry and Dannon Blueberry as well as four daikon in various stages of reduction. They did love salads. He added the remains of an osso buco, capers and red wine, to his dark roiling sauce base. He found a red wrinkled bra hanging like a cut throat over the shower rail and not knowing what else to do with it, threw that out too. He shifted four thousand dollars from stocks into his Keogh account to help upholster his enfeebled retirement years. He called his wife in Philadelphia but got no answer — still, he’d called. He trimmed his toenails, the monstrous left and the even more frightening right big toes knocked back into civility. He inspected his prick and said, “My you’re looking fresh and pretty this morning.

This so good of you,” Dore says, “this is Anne and this is Veronica. This is so good of you. Boy is this place empty. ”

“I put two of the beds in the back room and one in the front,” Simon says, “I thought I’d get some plants maybe tomorrow are you guys hungry let me go see what I’ve got in the kitchen. ”

“Booze I hope,” Dore says dropping her bags in a corner. “Boy is this place empty. I don’t mean that as a criticism. ”

“The owners left the couch and those two chairs and that’s about it. Who would like what? I have beer…”

“Beer for me,” Veronica says, “where do you sleep, Simon?”

“In the middle room. I have vodka, Scotch, white wine…”

“Vodka for me,” Dore says, “and vodka for my horse here, no that’s a joke, Anne will have vodka too. Plants are a good idea. Big plants. Rocks with that, just rocks. Anne will have just rocks too. Really this is so good of you. I guess we figured it a little close in terms of funds —”