She sighed…
(“We made it, Duck!”Izzy, alive in Utah, spat Sarvaduhka’s tongue out of his mouth. They were squirming in shattered, compacted salt.)
…Suddenly, Fay heard the brittle ground heave and crack behind her.
(“I do not count this as female action,”Sarvaduhka whispered.
‘I owe you, you pervert,” Izzy said, as Fay turned and started walking toward them. “Lord, you know how to get memorable!”)
She hurried toward the source of the sound. It looked like two men fallen through a sheet of salt.
A man with extremely attractive moustaches and thick, fine hair all over his tight little body, such that he would never be bald…
(“Damn you, Sarvaduhka,” said Izzy, “stay away from the narration. Stop trying to sneak your kudos into the text, you ninny.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarvaduhka said.
“We’ve got to be very careful outside the parentheses, Duke. This is my life with Feigeleh we’re operating on, and we can’t always rely on italics for cover.”)
…rose to his feet in front of Fay. He looked around in a panic, then ran off in the direction of the Great Salt Lake.
There was another man in the salt fissure, a bald man in his forties with a single ridge of a brow across his forehead. His hands were grimy, a mechanic’s hands, and the left one was missing a few fingertips. He pushed up off the false floor of salt and stood eyeball to eyeball with Fay. His feet a few inches below the salt shelf Fay stood on, he was exactly her height.
“Hey, ain’t I seen you in East Tonawanda?” the man said.
Fay thought, So that’s what I’m doing in Utah! She just stood there, looking at him looking at her with unfathomable intimacy.
“Sure I did,” he said, “outside the Wurlitzer plant when I was working there.”
“Maybe you did at that,” she said. She was beginning to feel that she remembered, not the meeting but the man, and from longer ago than Tonawanda, from far away as the heart alone can measure, so deep in the past that we think of it as future. “Did I offer you a Danish?”
“You could offer me one now.”
Fay blushed.
Somebody was banging on the window at the back of the cafe. “Who’s that?” Izzy said. “Somebody you know?”
“Not me,” she said. “Who was that other guy with you?”
“Some weirdo. Utah! Let’s walk. The name’s Izzy. I know a better cafe down the road. I’m good for coffee.”
“I think I’m going to like you, Izzy.”
Izzy was sitting in the bathroom doorway again, his chin in the traction sling eyebolted to the lintel, while Fay worked the pulleys to straighten his aching back. “Aren’t you glad you met me?” she said.
“You’re my angel, Fay,” he said. “Give it a little slack.”
“Sometimes I wonder what happened to Ralph Tout.”
“You want me to tune in on Izzovision?”
“Naw.”
“Say, how come you never asked me how I got to that place in Rowley Junction? Don’t you wonder, Feigeleh?”
“No, Izzy. I know.”
“Huh?” But the phone rang. “Help me out of this thing,” Izzy said. “That’s for me. An old friend.”
“Sure.” Delicately she released the tension rope and unlaced Izzy’s head, kissing him above the nose, as she always liked to, at the midpoint of his brow. Izzy made for the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight, Fay rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and washed her right forearm, where the three thin, parallel tracks bled just the tiniest bit.
Izzy picked up the phone. It was Sarvaduhka, collect from Salt Lake City. Izzy looked over his shoulder to make sure Fay wasn’t listening. She had gone into the bathroom and closed the door. “Yeah, I’ll pay,” he told the operator.
“You mahapup’hula, Izzy! Some bachelors’ vacation! Where’s my squareback? Where’s my Ganesha? Where’s my female action?”
“Take it easy, Duke of Earl. Is it the same year there as I’ve got here, or are you still back at when I met Fay?”
“All I know is that it’s now, and my feet are swollen, and I am surrounded by people with multiple wives.”
“Ohkay, ohkay. I think I can fix it. But we gotta be patient here, Ducky. We don’t want a recurrence of womporfery, am I right? Just give me a couple paragraphs to think about it, see. Afterward, there won’t even have been this pause, I promise. I can just trick the reader back round to the first sentence, and then you’re back in Buffalo.”
“More orthographic monkeyshines? No, no, no! I’ve been thinking, Izzy. What if nobody ever reads this? Then there won’t be anybody’s attention to ride on from one section to another. I’ll be stuck beside your dead body in Illinois, stinking offish emulsion forever. What about that?”
Izzy excogitated. “I never thought of that, Duck. I’ll call you back.”
“Izzy…!”
And Izzy hung up, as he always does in this paragraph. Fay had sneaked up behind him and grabbed him around the middle.
“Oh, Fay, what you do to me!” he said.
What kind of a match were Izzy and Fay? I’ll tell you.