He says, "That's it — you go home and you look."
I says, "Right, right, but like what am I looking at?"
"Where you stand with the brackets," says the window-shade man. "What your setup is as far as the brackets," the window-shade man says. "What's what as far as the current sidedness when you get up on a stool and you inspect each respective bracket constituting the totality of your brackets non-dereistically."
"And that's it?"
"Providing we don't come to an aporia as far as the cuff and so forth," he says.
"But no grommet is what you're telling me no matter what, an affection for dereism notwithstanding."
"No matter what, you get no grommet for the pull, not here. What you get here for the pull is you get this screw-in thing we give you instead. See? Like a button. It's like a button with this like screw-in thing it's got on it sticking out going one way. Whereas what you already got yourself here on this one, it's a grommet. See this? This is a grommet. But me, when you do business here in this place with us as your window-shade people, it's exclusively this button treatment which I give you — lucid yes or lucid no?"
"Definitely, definitely," I says to him. "But so I should like go home, you're saying to me," I says to the window-shade man.
"Go home," the window-shade man says to me.
"See what the setup is."
"The situation," the window-shade man says to me.
"Check it out," I says.
"Check out the brackets," the window-shade man says to me. "Then you come back here and we get down to cases with a grasp of what the score is. Or you go up the block. Because you can always, you know, go up the block. There is always the freedom of you go up the block. Because with some people it's grommet and the question of the cuff is secondary or even absent."
"It's not a factor with me, I don't think."
"The grommet's not."
"The way I feel about it now at this stage of the game, the grommet is a non-issue."
"I know this," the window-shade man says. "I appreciate this," the window-shade man says. "I have every confidence," the window-shade man says.
"I can go with the screw-in," I says to him.
"The button," he says.
"I can definitely go with it," I say.
"Go home," says the window-shade man. "Get up on a stool. Take a look. See what your situation is. Look at it honestly. Take an honest look. Then if there is something for us to discuss as business people, I promise you, we will go ahead and discuss it."
"As people doing business," I say.
"Ah, yes, caught Homer at his nodding, did you? Yes, of course — as you say, as you say — as people doing business," says the window-shade man.
"In his nodding, I would say," I say.
"In? Yes, yes — in. Or caught out at, of course," the window-shade man says.
"So I go home?" says I to the window-shade man.
"That's it," says the window-shade man. "Unless it is your wish," says the window-shade man, "for us to linger over any of these imponderables of ours."
"Perhaps upon the occasion of my return," say I.
Says the window-shade man, "Should you choose for there to be one, that is. For there is the shop up or down the block," says the window-shade man.
Says I, "But it goes with me or stays here?"
Says the window-shade man, "You mean this window shade here. You mean while you go elsewhere, do you leave this window shade here."
"Home," says I. "Home only," says I. "Not elsewhere at all," says I. "But ascertain. Verify. Scope it out."
"I don't know," says the window-shade man. "It is for you as a person of reflection to resolve," says the window-shade man. "There are difficulties I cannot resolve for you," says the window-shade man. "Pretty multitudinous ones."
So I says to him, "But it's decidable, you think."
The window-shade man says to me, "I think — yes, I think. But now I think no — from your point of view, it's maybe going to turn out to be too apophantic for you."
So I says to him, "Yet mustn't something be done one way or the other?"
"You're saying this to me as conjecture?" he says.
"Am I conjecturing?" I say.
"You want to determine if you are actually, in saying what you said, formulating a conjecture," he says.
"Absolutely," says I. "But at another level, you could lock the door. You could bar me from the topos."
"I could come to believe business hours had come to their end," says the window-shade man.
"Where's the law?" says I.
Says he, "Belief and the law, you're saying to me belief and the law, they cannot be tessellated."
"Friendly relations, it makes for friends." says I.
"Well," says the window-shade man, "extensity and intensity, there's also always all that, isn't there?"
"Scum-sucking swine," says I. "Grommetless dog."
"Not grommetless, sir!" asserts the window-shade man. "Never been proved grommetless!" asserts the window-shade man.
"Point," says I. "Therefore," says I, "speak not to me of gussets," says I.
"But see you, don't you see you," says the window-shade man, calmer not by half but by much, "that are we not, in this matter, made claimants, then, the pair of us, on common but non-relational ground?"
"Good," says I to the window-shade man.
"Which makes this mine," says I to the window-shade man, leaving the window shade to keep to its place in the hands of the window-shade man and plucking the fascia from the face of the window-shade man, no more himself a window-shade man than I a shopper in want of even infrequent dark.
AMONG THE POMERANIANS
THE GIRL IN LOVE LEANT her head away from him. The girl in love let her head come to rest against the head of the young woman sitting to the other side of herself. The man loved this. The man did not love the girl in love. What the man loved was that the girl in love was doing this thing she was doing and how the girl in love did it, letting her head lean ever so lightly to the side to let it come to rest against the side of the head of the young woman sitting to the other side of the girl in love — and sighing — oh, sighing — and turning one of the rings on her fingers and smiling into the amazed space in front of her and murmuring madly to the other young women — the girl in love's friends, the girl in love's so very, she said, cherished friends — madly murmuring to them of love — oh, love, love!
Were they to be married?
They were to be married.
Truly?
"Yes, of course — truly," the man said.
But when, when?
Soon — possibly soon — immediately upon their arrival in the great nation of America.
America?
Yes, America.
The United States?
Yes, yes, isn't it wonderful, the United States!
Oh, love, love.
But the man did not love the girl in love. The man loved no one, had loved no one, would love no one, though the man loved, would love, without limit, without reservation, irrevocably, indelibly, this gesture of the girl in love's, this occasion of the gesture's occurrence, of all the infinitely divisible occurrences swarming furiously upon the moment — the phosphorescence in the vast kitchen, the very word phosphorescence — to contrive to make the occurrence occur and to produce upon the man the effect of a thing for the man to love.
But not a person.
Never a person.
The girl in love leant her head away from the man. Something in a pot was heating on the stove. Was it coffee? Ah, no, it was not coffee. What, then, if not coffee? Oh, special, something special — wait and see, oh just you wait and see, you devil you.
Oh yes, to see, to see, to hear, to hear — the women madly murmuring, these wondrously wonderful women all murmuring madly into the amazed space of the vast kitchen — the girl in love with her head leant away from the man so that her head lay against the side of the head of the large woman who sat to the other side of the girl in love, if indeed the girl in love was a girl in love, or was even a girl.