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Ray Bradbury
Tete-a-Tete
We were walking along the boardwalk in Ocean Park one summer evening, arm in arm, my friend Sid and me, when we saw a familiar sight on one of the benches just ahead, not far from the surf.
«Look,» I said, «and listen.»
We looked and listened.
There was this old Jewish couple, he I would say about seventy and she maybe sixty-five, moving their mouths and hands at the same time, everyone talking, nobody listening.
«I told you more than once,» he said.
«What did you tell? Nothing!» she said.
«Something,» he said, «I'm always telling you something. Of great importance if you'd give a try.»
«Great importance, listen to him!» she said rolling her eyes. «Give me a list!»
«Well, about the wedding…»
«Still the wedding?»
«Sure! The waste, the confusion.»
«Who was confused?»
«I could show you?»
«Don't show. Look, I'm deaf!»
Et cetera, et cetera.
«I wish I had a tape recorder,» I said.
«Who needs a tape recorder,» Sid replied. «I could say what I just heard. Call me at three in the morning and I'll quote.»
We moved on.
«They've been sitting on that same bench every night for years!»
«I believe it,» said Sid. «They're hilarious.»
«You don't find it sad?»
«Sad? Come off it! They're a vaudeville team. I could put them on the Orpheum circuit tomorrow!»
«Not even a little sad?»
«Stop. I bet they're married fifty years. The yammer started before the wedding and kept going after their honeymoon.»
«But they don't listen!»
«Hey, they're taking turns! First hers not to listen, then his. If they ever paid attention they'd freeze. They'll never wind up with Freud.»
«Why not?»
«They're letting it all hang out, there's nothing left to carp or worry about. I bet they get into bed arguing and are asleep with smiles in two minutes.»
«You actually think that?»
«I had an aunt and uncle like that. A few insults shape a long life.»
«How long did they live?»
«Aunt Fannie, Uncle Asa? Eighty, eighty-nine.»
«That long?»
«On a diet of words, distemper almost, Jewish badminton-he hits one, she hits it back, she hits one, he hits it back, nobody wins but, hell, no one loses.»
«I never thought of it that way.»
«Think,» said Sid. «Come on, it's time for refills.»
We turned and strolled back on this fine summer night.
«And another thing!» the old man was saying.
«That's ten dozen other things!»
«Who's counting?» he said.
«Look. Where did I put that list?»
«Lists, who cares for lists?»
«Me. You don't, I do. Wait!»
«Let me finish!»
«It's never finished,» Sid observed as we moved on and the great arguments faded in our wake.
Two nights later Sid called and said, «I got me a tape recorder.»
«You mean?»
«You're a writer, I'm a writer. Let's trap a little grist for the mills.»
«I dunno,» I said.
«On your feet,» said Sid.
We strolled. It was another fine mild California night, the kind we don't tell Eastern relatives about, fearful they might believe.
«I don't want to hear,» he said.
«Shut up and listen,» she said.
«Don't tell me,» I said, eyes shut. «They're still at it. Same couple. Same talk. Shuttlecock's always in the air over the net. No one's on the ground. You really going to use your tape recorder?»
«Dick Tracy invented, I use.»
I heard the small handheld machine snap as we moved by, slowly.
«What was his name? Oh, yeah. Isaac.»
«That wasn't his name.»
«Isaac, sure.»
«Aaron!»
«I don't mean Aaron, the older brother.»
«Younger!»
«Who's telling this?»
«You. And bad.»
«Insults.»
«Truths you could never take.»
«I got scars to prove it.»
«Hot dog,» said Sid as we glided on with their voices in his small device.
And then it happened. One, two, three, like that.
Quite suddenly the bench was empty for two nights.
On the third night I stopped in a small kosher delicatessen and talked, nodding at the bench. I didn't know the names. Sure, they said, Rosa and Al, Al and Rosa. Stein, they said, that was the name. Al and Rosa Stein, there for years, never missed a night. Now, Al will be missed. That was it. Passed away Tuesday. The bench sure looks empty, right, but what can you do?
I did what I could, prompted by an incipient sadness about two people I didn't really know, and yet I knew. From the small local synagogue I got the name of the almost smaller graveyard and for reasons confused and half- known went one late afternoon to look in, feeling like the twelve-year-old goy I once was, peering into the temple in downtown L.A., wondering what it was like to be part of all that chanting and singing, with all those men in hats.
In the graveyard I found what I knew I would find. The old woman was there, seated next to a stone bearing
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