ingers, say to myself “Me with Helene in Helene’s bed what I want right now, please.” Forget the please. Too much like when I used to pray to God out of fear every night before I fell asleep. God please this, please that, God please keep my mommy well, sister unsick, daddy making money and alive, God no awful war, enemy soldiers landing ashore, please God I beg, wish, swear I’ll be a good boy from now on and pray to you as much as you like, and please if there’s anything I’m doing or not doing you’re not pleased with, please let me know. Close my eyes, snap my fingers, say to myself “Me with Helene in really any nice clean bed right now,” open them. I liked it when she used the word scoot. And way she moved. As well as what she didn’t say and do. What do I mean “way she moved”? She moved normally, naturally, unaffectedly, but athletically, though not muscleboundly, as if as a girl she used to seriously tap dance or take some after-school classical or modern dance or early-on had exceptionally agile legs as if she’d run and won or second-placed in dashes and long-distance races in grade school and beat when they let her compete most boys her age, and also how she flew downstairs at Diana’s so sure she didn’t even think that flying down so fast she could have fallen on her face. Or just fallen, forget the face. Tripped but not gotten hurt. And “as well as what she didn’t say and do”? So subdued. That’s not the word. But something I liked. Not edgy, testy, overpeppy, sloppy, noisy, coarse, raucous, smoky, talky, scowly, mousy, so on. That she whacked the umbrella open: in notebook too. “Okay, Mr. Krin, now I must scoot.” “I’ve got to.” “Now I got to.” Or “have to.” But definitely “scoot.” This one I truly mustn’t ruin. Meaning she: I shouldn’t. Though with those phone calls? No, lots of apologies as I said. “Um, just joking, I was, but not the best jest-joking, no?” No, no more jesting in joking. “I didn’t think my call would wreak so much harm.” Or truth: “I was a little high. Not a little. Let me tell the truth: a lot. But you also should know that’s unusual for me to get so high. No it’s not. Truth is, if I’m gonna tell it, or going to, cause that’s, I mean because that’s or those are just another language affectation or digression I use to direct attention to what I say and away from what I do: I get high. Don’t want to but I do. No, truth, I do want to, because lots of times I’ve nothing else to do or think I don’t or just don’t want to think about doing anything else, so about once every three weeks I get high, but not as high as I got that night, is the truth. Usually by myself high. A solitary tippler mostly. I don’t like it though do when I’m doing it or planning to. If things changed for me in ways I’ve gone over with myself, I’d probably change that drinking habit as well as stop drinking a little too much almost every night of the week while I read and often just to get to sleep, and that’s also the truth. Doesn’t interfere with my work though. Wake up, regular time, no alarm clock, exercise, coffee, newspaper, maybe a shower and in an hour I’m ready to go, or almost, though ten to fifteen times a year or so when I get high the previous night, mornings till around noon will be slow. And God knows why I feel compelled to tell all this in my first call to you when you certainly didn’t want to hear it, right? Look: right, wrong, truth or not, and maybe half of that was, since I tend to distort as well as affect and digress — well, maybe not as well as, though I am a pretty effective distorter too — just see me, okay? You’ve no reason to even speak to me I guess, but what but an hour or less do you have to lose? Meet me I mean, not see, for coffee, tea or even a drink, because what I didn’t want you to think before, and I swear I’m not trying now to affect, digress or distort, is that drink’s any kind of problem with me. Those ten to fifteen mornings-after a year perhaps, but usually when I start work late I work later into the day than I usually do, and because I’m so tired from having worked late and maybe also from the evening before, that late day is usually one of the ten to fifteen days a year I don’t drink or hardly at all. And meet not tonight if you don’t like. Now that I think of it we can’t, since tonight, and what I’m going to say isn’t going to be said so you’ll think something like how nice that he’s such a good son, I’m going to visit my mother, but maybe in the coming week, so what do you say? Even a couple of drinks or dinner or both for two on me. You can’t? You won’t? You never will? You’ll meet? Great. Time and date and see you at yours or you at mine or just at the meeting place.” I want to hold her face in my hands and bring it toward mine and lean over the two to three inches I think it’d take if what I’m remembering now is right about her height and if she doesn’t raise herself on her toes to kiss. I want to. Yes. Very much. To open my eyes and find hers closed. Then open them again and find them open. Hers. Her to smile when I find her eyes open when I open mine. Her to take my face in her hands and bring it down to hers and kiss my lips. Want to. I. Lie my head on a pillow beside hers on a pillow or both ours on the same pillow and our lips almost touching but not speaking and then touching and our eyes closing, though I don’t know why not speaking. Sure we can be speaking. Softly, moderately, I suppose any way but loudly, crudely, though even there too. So we’re kissing and holding and possibly speaking and possibly crudely but not loudly and doing the rest. Doing the best. To have done the rest. To shut the light and her to turn over and face away from me or the light’s already off and we’ve done the rest and her to turn over and I press up from behind while my nose is in her hair or lips are on her shoulder or neck and penis against her behind or between her thighs. I’m sure I can get out of that window scene and calls to her service some way. Lots of apologies. But not to act oafish on the phone. She’s a bright woman. She’ll probably respect the work I do. She looks like she likes poetry. Courses she gives. Plenty of poetry in there and that she’ll respect what I do I didn’t mean makes her bright. But all could be so nice. Live at her place if it’s big enough if first we worked out. Two bedrooms, one for her to work in, I’d set up and tear down the living room table every day or some other unused day space. I’d mind but adapt. All I need’s one drawer and a long shelf. Two incomes, not rents, how else can a representative couple like us afford to live in this city without a struggle, and 600 block of West Hundred-tenth could be along Riverside Drive or close. Maybe she overlooks the Hudson. Tugs would pass. Summertime Circle Line trippers. Columbia area may be near as she can safely live to City College did Diana say? If so my alma I’ll tell her next time we speak. Pre-med, then pre-dent, but I’d frequently feel queasy when I entered the bio and chem buildings because of the formaldehyde and rotten eggs smells and couldn’t learn the formulas and laws or dissect the baby pig or earthworms. Wasn’t a smart student — I can get part of this into the phone call some way, maybe just to say I thought she taught at City but then remembered it was a college upstate. Now makes me wonder why she lives around Columbia: went there or to City for her postgraduate work and got a cheap flat and stayed? Someone cut them up and labeled the parts for me and in exchange I took the requisite swimming test for him in gym under his name. Never got a post-B. A. I’ll say. Not boasting of course. They wouldn’t believe him when he said he sinks when he jumps in. Got interested in Japanese language and lit through a deeply moving Japanese movie about Japanese prisoners of war when I was nearly thirty and waiting tables at a beach resort. But more from the book it was based on that I later read and took a quick Berlitz thinking that would be it and then private lessons from an elderly Japanese businessman I taught English to and cooked dinner for in return. He also taught me the sake and tea ceremonies and how to disembowel myself and make paper insects and birds. Started translating poetry on my own and for a while brought my literal translations to this man. “Hasenai,” he once said, pushing my other poets aside. “I buried his grandfather’s sister. He be the one you should assist and do. What if I say without saying why or when of then, if you’ll allow me, that I owe his grandaunt a grave favor,” and by heart he recited in Japanese the end of one of Jun’s earliest poems and first I ever heard: “Juvenile, goose-fed, young junk, halfcocked bloom. Pardon me, exceedable fathers, but I’ve got to make rot and humor and doom.” She might appreciate some of that. An ill-mannered autodidact. Hardworking, a bit self-deprecating, humble origins, funny-boned. Had enough of her stuffed pedants, pedagogues and preppies and might be drawn to a literary roughneck. But I’m not that ill-mannered or much of a roughneck and her men friends probably aren’t pedantic or stuffy and I’d love to get a pedagogical job. I want to say goodnight to her from behind while she lies on her side and she to turn her face toward mine and barely be able to reach my lips and turn away from me again and my face in one of those places I mentioned and hand on her breast, hip or thigh and other arm under a pillow or holding her shoulder or hand and to fall asleep like that, penis pressed, legs and chest. Sure there’d be problems but. Two bedrooms, not two beds. Two of us working in the same apartment. Two typewriters going at the same time but a door or two closed between them to shut out the noise. Two pens or minds or pairs of eyes going at the same time and the doors to shut out the quietness. Only one living room and bedroom and when she passes me on her way to the kitchen for coffee or tea, what? To brush her hand across my shoulder or head or back of my chair. For the phone to ring and both of us to go for it. Door or doors to her bedroom suddenly opened to get the phone in the living room. Or if it’s in the bedroom her phone, for her to say “It’s for you, Dan” or “Sweetie, it sounds like Dick or Jane — the phone,” and for me to go to the bedroom and touch or brush up against her or her chair and smile at her when she hands me the receiver if she didn’t leave it on the bed. Or she might have a long extension cord and bring the phone to me from the bedroom or even past the living room to the kitchen where I could be boiling water for coffee or tea. Or it could ring and I could answer it and it’s for her, her mother or last lover, her colleague or student or friend, and I’d bring the phone into the bedroom where she’s working. Or just for her to be in the kitchen around noon and say “I’m toasting a roll, want me to toast one for you too?” Or come in crunching a carrot and say “Want me to peel you one too?” Or hold a carrot or roll up and say “You want one too?” Or hold both up and say “You want these two too?” Or to hear her chewing or crunching a carrot or radish or celery stick in the kitchen. She’s in the kitchen, I’m in the living room. I want it to disturb my work enough for me to say “You make a hell of a racket with your crunching” or “chewing,” and she could say “Why, does it bother you?” or “Why does it bother you?” but she’d say “I’m sorry, does it bother you?” and I’d say yes and take the carrot or what’s left of the radish or celery out of her hand and even out of her mouth if the carrot or celery’s sticking out of it and bite into it loudly or take all three if she’s holding them and bite into each loudly and chew more loudly than she and she could take back the carrot, radish or celery stick, though I doubt anything would be left of the radish by then, or even the toasted roll or a toasted or three-day-old bagel and bite into it or two of those three and we could chew loudly simultaneously. I’ve done things like that. Or I want to have egg salad on my lips after taking a forkful from a bowl of egg salad she just made and to look at her and suddenly want to kiss her and she could say “This is a childhood fear I once had — to have a boy with egg salad on his lips try to kiss me.” Something like that happened to May with chicken salad I think, but I want something like that to happen to Helene with me. That’s silly but true but I want much much more to. To go to France with her for a month to drink, eat, serious sightseeing and sleep and especially for a week the prehistoric caves. To go back to my roots — wrong. To return, at least in my mind — skip it. Or to spend, if we didn’t have the loot for France, a couple of summer months in a remote bay area of Gaspé let’s say. Way up. Northern lights and deep in woods. Fireplace going every night. Fog, some days I want plenty of fog and most nights sky swarming with stars clear as whatever simile and for a while during that time not only northern lights but meteorites clear as that same simile too. And even if I heard and saw them all before I want her to tell me which star is which and when combined their constellations or parts and yarns. She looks a lot like a woman I knew who knew a lot about stars and sailed. Also with a cheery bright face, long full frame, long white neck, straight bright teeth, long light hair, but wavy and blond, not red and I think straight, long strong legs and little feet, which with Helene’s long skirt I couldn’t see, little to no makeup around the eyes and on the lips and cheeks, and who nuzzled and made love only when it was most expedient to and it seemed had little to do with me and wrote poem after poem on beach after beach, but shortly after I last saw her on one wrote she’s turning me loose and giving up writing poetry and living off her family to just write critically for the time being and study, read and teach. But this time with Helene or someone much like, meaning with a bright full mind, hard worker, no snob, someone I’m sexually drawn to and who’s similarly drawn to me, and with substantially a cheerful disposition and strong sense of fairness and constancy, I want it to be much different than the rest and to start happening soon. I want to love and be loved and be called my love and beloved and make love with my beloved and call out love love love while we do. To take long beach walks and bike rides and go berry-picking along country roads. All that and then some I want unabashedly. Berries. Together. To pick. Rasp-, straw-, black-, blue- and even cran- and goose- in a mutual quart-basket or two, one for me, with the black-, straw-, rasp- and blue-, two for it, gibt here ein kiss, fourth for you, something I once did too. Was when? Eight or so years ago with a woman where? Coastal Maine and someone other than May or that star-and-sail woman whose name I can’t recall and did that for a week and fell ears over heels for her for several days and she a little with me she said, though we both later said it could only have been because of the sea, fog, stars, fresh vegs and berry pickings and knew beforehand I was only bussing up to escape the hot city and make lots of love with someone and she at the time was the one woman I knew who, just as she’d said on the phone she’d been alone too long with her foxgloves and Muscovy ducks and wanted someone to bike, beach, pick and make love with too, “So come come come, it’s a long trip but not much fare and I’ll go in half on it and if this is any inducement, I’m as sticky as your city and as needy to be relieved.” I want to rowboat out with her or canoe which I did with that Maine woman too. Her name was Lale, star-and-sail woman Sue. Want her to catch a fish from the boat’s aft with last night’s fish as bait while I paddle or row. Want her to troll. Want to get blisters on my hands first time I row and for her to say next day “You’ve blisters, I’ll row, you troll,” or “I’ll paddle, you fish,” but this is too ridic. Even if it is. What I want. To sit facing her in the boat and look at her tightened thighs spread apart in her swim bottoms or jeans and that bulge where’s the vulv as she struggles against wind, current or tide. Want her to wear a sun hat out there and her hair to hang salty and loose. Want to make afternoon love. On a sunny porch or on top of a sleeping bag beside the fired-up fireplace with all our cloth