Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver (classic fiction .txt) 📗

other people. And, if you ask me, we’d have a great deal less crime and drug addiction if mothers and fathers realized their children are not their pets. And this understanding would lead to happier children, healthier adults, less crime, lower taxes, a thriving economy, prettier architecture, less television, more theatre, less litigation, more understanding, less alienation, more love, less hate and a calmer humanity who felt less of a need to spit all the time in public!! Because that’s what it is, really. All this spitting in public, is just a thinly veiled hostility for ME, MY TASTE, MY AESTHETIC AND THE COMMON CONSENSUS OF WHAT IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE!! —AND ISN’T IT WONDERFUL HOW I HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE, AND CAN NOW CONTINUE WITH MY STORY IN A NATURAL, LOGICAL FASHION!!

Everything goes in circles really. Except things that go in straight lines. Hmmm. I was counting spitters, vile, angry, lost souls who felt impotent to change their lives in view of what they think is fate. Well, after about a hundred of these spitting villains, I could take no more. I was in a rage! What has happened to my lovely city! What has happened to it? The buildings are suddenly eyesores. There are placards everywhere, for so-called bands I’ve never heard of with fascist-sounding names and illustrations of women so wanton as to degrade women everywhere.

Finally, I could take no more. So I started following this one young woman, who looked reasonably sane—except for the fact that she was wearing a tweed skirt with sneakers, but I allowed for a foot condition. She had on a blazer. Her light brown hair was piled high on her head with a tortoise clip. She looked fine. She looked normal. I thought to myself, “I will just stare at this young woman. I will not look to her right. I will not look to her left. I will see only her. And I will convince myself that I am surrounded by similarly sane young women. I won’t look, so I’ll assume everyone around me is just as polite and normal as she. . . .” And it was working. I had myself believing it. Everything was lovely . . . and then she veered over to the curb. (A real panic builds inside of her) I said a silent prayer. This woman had become, to me, a symbol: the last great kindness in a once kind world. My breathing changed. I felt my hands grow tense and saw my knuckles whiten in my clenched fists. She walked along the curb for a few feet. I thought, “Thank you, God, thank you. She’s just walking along the curb. She’s a little erratic, but she’s not one of them, she’s one of us!” And then slowly, it seemed as if everything was in slow motion . . . she leaned over. I hoped, I prayed she was going to faint! I hoped she was ill and going to die! “Let her die a martyr to beauty, but please God, please, don’t let her spit! Let her fall over, into the street, into the traffic, let her be canonized the patron saint of civilization, but PLEASE GOD, don’t let her spit!” And she made a small coughing noise. “She’s coughing—you’re coughing—she’s coughing—aren’t you?—please don’t be clearing your throat—just be coughing!” If I shut my eyes, I’ll miss whatever happens and I can pretend that nothing happened and I can go on, continue to live and hope! But they would not close! I couldn’t shut them! I wanted to! I tried to! But I couldn’t! I was hypnotized! I just stared and stared and the seconds became hours and the hours weeks and the weeks millennia! And then it happened!!!

SHE SPIT!!!

And the world went black and the sun fell out of the sky, burning the earth and sending the buildings tumbling, bricks flying, people crushed in the rain of debris and humanity, which had only recently learned to walk, was SMASHED into oblivion for all time!! “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!?” I found my hand on her sleeve. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done?!” She spun around with such a look of utter horror and disgust on her face that I was only spurred to continue—“The world is decomposing! Humanity is rotting away! We’re reverting to the behavior of apes and YOU’RE TO BLAME!” “Let go of me!!” She shouted, very loudly, much more loudly than was called for. “I had to spit. What’s it to you?!” And with that she shoved me, hard, and I fell onto the pavement.

All I could think about was how sad, how sorry, I was, that I’d chosen badly, chosen someone who didn’t care, couldn’t be convinced, didn’t see that we are all just withering, dying, crumbling in on ourselves. . . . I looked around from my position on the sidewalk and I was the center of quite a crowd. And I thought, “Oh no. I’m sitting in it. She’s gone, and I am sitting in her expectoration!”

(Sad and shaken) And. Then. I shut my eyes and I hurried to the dressmaker. I was late of course and she was already on her next client, my old friend, Phoebe Potter. We were girls in school together. She looked so old, and I was so distraught from my experience that I mistook her for a mirror. It broke me completely, to see myself in her eyes and the folds of her flesh. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” “No, no. Mrs. Potter’s almost finished.” And so I waited. . . . And, soon, it was my turn.

I looked into the mirror as I was pinned. And, I was me again. I was shaken, but I was myself. I heard music in my head while she worked. And. As soon as I could, I rushed home. To Tony.

(Quite still, forgetting herself) I did not speak. I unbuttoned his shirt and he wrapped his arms around my waist, mumbling something into my