The Nurse from Outer Space

From New American Stories written by Matt Cohen

Too many people, including you and me, is around wondering whether we really come from outer space. Of course we come from outer space. It's time to stop wondering about it and start putting it all together. I have a friend called Arthur. Everyone has a friend called Arthur. It is a very common name. Arthur lives in a room in an empty house. He wakes up every morning at seven o'clock sharp. That is the way of the world.


One morning, when Arthur woke up, it was raining. He could hear the sound of rain dripping off the roof of his empty house. And laid neatly on top of the sound of water, he could hear the spiky tapping of high heels. He sat up in his bed and looked out the window. A woman with an umbrella was walking in front of his house. She stopped at the corner, took a chocolate bar from her raincoat pocket, and ate it. When she was finished she threw the wrapper on Arthur's lawn and crossed the street.

The sound of her high heels faded off into the distance and Arthur lay down again on his bed. He listened to the rivers of water running from his roof onto the ground. Then he got out of bed and went down to the kitchen.

Like everyone from outer space Arthur is a terrible lazy person. He seldom works, his laundry is unspeakable, and most of the time he forgets to wind his watch. Although he has always known he was from out space - his mother told him - Arthur has never really gotten hold of the fact. He could have made a career of it and dressed up in strange clothes and interviewed people. Or he could have gone into electronics and spent his evenings constructing a radar set. Instead Arthur evolved an entirely original hobby. He moves into empty houses and makes plans for interior decoration. Unfortunately he has no sense of color or proportion so his plans are completely uninteresting.

Jack Kerouac once wrote that you should open up your mind and let it all happen spontaneously: the muse takes care of her children. Arthur follows this advice. Talking to him is like taking a shower. Writing about him is like trying to compose the yellow pages from memory.

Down in the kitchen Arthur did what he always does in the morning. He drank orange juice, ate two pieces of toast, and had a cup of coffee. Then he went upstairs and put on his clothes. It was exactly seven thirty-three. Arthur dressed and fed, went outside to pick the candy wrapper off his lawn. He put his pocket, brought it inside, and made another cup of coffee. The he sat at the kitchen table and stared at wall.

There are many reasons why people from outer space may have been placed on this earth. One possibility is that at some time in the future an alien ship is going to land and take over the earth. During the Christmas holidays I met an ex-priest who holds this view. He is from Newfoundland. His theory is that pollution and war and misery don't matter because everyone enjoys them and one day strange creatures will come from out space and set things right. We are here to welcome them. When they arrive a switch will be thrown and we will all go into action. I n the meantime we live awkward uncoordinated live and appear to be parasites on the mundane world. That is all part of it.

But Arthur was not staring at the wall waiting for the invisible switch to be thrown. The reason he is here on this earth is to do things that other Earthlings can't do. For example, Arthur fills up empty houses. He moves into them and makes all sorts of plans. The fact that the plans are terrible makes no difference: they represent love and it is Arthur's special knowledge that empty spaces need love. That is why they are empty.

It would be nice to write a sentimental story about Athur's love of empty spaces. One could compose a sweet vignette about Arthur sitting on the edge of Lake Ontario filling the sky with love. Or Arthur in a subway. Or Arthur in a cigar store. But that is not the story that has to be written about Arthur: that is a nurse story and the only time I tried to write a nurse story I got stuck in the sex scene. How do nurses make love? Of course they make love like everyone else, but there must be some special imagery, some unique consciousness, some set of esoteric techniques hat distinguish the way nurses make love. I am ashamed to admit it but I have never make love to a nurse, either had Arthur. He had never even met a nurse.

This is all getting very chatty. Chatty is something writing is not supposed to be. Good writing is tense, taut, evocative. Words bounce off each other like feeling gazelles. My wife, who is not a chatty person, has the unfortunate quality of being a good listener. She says that while people are busily chattering away they send off little invisible cues which tell you how they want you to be. If you don't catch all those little cues then you are from outer space. If you do catch those cues you probably wish that you didn't.

Arthur is so oblivious to the cues that even if you told him they were happening he wouldn't believe it. He would think that you were harassing him. Arthur always thinks that people are harassing him. He is always wrong. It is so absolutely to try and get him to do anything. Even if you are a nurse.

Arthur yawned and rubbed his eyes. It seemed to him that he was waking up a little earlier every day. That is one of the benefits of being a man of property. He shifted in his chair; his movement made him aware of the wadded candy wrapper in his pocket. He took it out and spread it in front of him on the table. He red over the list of ingredients and noticed that most of them were chemical. Then he turned the wrapper over: in regular number. Katherine Smith, R.N.756-5123.

Another theory about outer space is that there are already many developed races who live on planets far from Earth. They have arranged an inter-galactic treaty which has as its basis a police force of robots. Any time someone commits aggression against someone else, a robot sees it and eliminates the aggressor. Arthur and I had watched a movie with the same plot on my television set. The point that the earthmen were only barely able to comprehend, was that the Earth had now developed its technology to the point where it would soon be a menace to other planets. It is a scientific fact that if there were a city as big as New York on the surface of Mars, we would be able to see it from Earth.

Arthur got up from his chair and walked into the living room. The living room was absolutely empty. It had a bay window so it was even emptier than it might have been otherwise. He sat on the ledge of the bay window and looked out at the street. He tried to remember what the woman had looked like but could only recall the sound of her high heels counterpointing the rain. Considering that she was a prostitute, her handwriting was very neat. He had always thought that prostitutes were illiterate. But she was a nurse too. What kind of nurse would leave her name and telephone number where absolutely anyone could find it?

There was one significant clue. She had stopped and waited a few moments before crossing the street. Perhaps she had left it specifically for him. It wasn't impossible. She might live nearby and have seen him coming and going. Maybe she had even intended to knock on the door but had lost courage and left the wrapper instead. After all, it was a quiet neighborhood.

The most important rule to keep in mind when writing a short story is that every word must count. Every short story writer and every short story reader knows that rule and Arthur was no exception. He walked back into the kitchen to examine Katherine Smith's short story. It contained a name, a telephone number and the letters R.N. Her story was so economical that she had only needed two words, an abbreviation and a number to tell Arthur everything necessary. To demonstrate that she knew what story on the back of a candy wrapper and thus had not wasted even one piece of paper.

When Arthur got to the phone booth he didn't hesitate. He walked inside, spread out the wrapper, and put in his dime. The woman answered on the second ring. She sounded very cool and self-possessed. "Hello," Arthur said. "Someone left a chocolate bar wrapper with your name and telephone number written on it on my front lawn. I thought you should know."

"I do know," the woman said. "I left it there myself."

"There is one thing you should be told."

"Tell me."

"It's too good to publish." He hung up and went out of the phone booth. It was eight-thirty in the morning. People were lined up at bus stop waiting to go to work. People were walking up and down the street looking for an open store. Some of them carried empty shopping bags.

Arthur walked the two blocks back from the telephone booth and then he went upstairs to brush his teeth. When he had finished brushing his teeth, he decided to go downstairs again and finish his plans for the living room. It was a large room with a bay window which made it slightly emptier than it would have been otherwise. He wanted to line the walls with bookshelves and put a big gold and red rug in the middle of the floor. When he was half way down the stairs the doorbell rang. His visitor was a woman, the woman whom he had seen tat morning. Katherine Smith, R.N. and short story writer. She looked about thirty-five, had faded blond hair and, Arthur thought, rather British features.

"Good morning. My name is Katherine Smith. May I come in?"

"Of course." Arthur led her through the empty dining room to the kitchen. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Thank you." The woman was wearing a light-colored raincoat, the same one she had been wearing before, and was carrying a purse. She hung the raincoat on the back of her chair and took some cigarettes from her purse.

Arthur didn't smoke but he had an ashtray. He put the ashtray on the kitchen table. Katherine Smith lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and set it in the ashtray. Arthur noticed that there lipstick marks on the filter. He filled the kettle and turned on the stove.

People from outer space recognize each other but they seldom mention the subject until they are close friends. It sounds incredible but it's really no different than sex.

"Do you do a lot of revisions?" Arthur asked.

"Yes, Sometimes twenty or thirty. I'm getting sick of chocolate bars."

"How do you know which words to use?"

"They come to me in the night."

"What exactly is your genre?"

"Classified advertisements. Especially personals. Arthur call Katherine. All is forgiven."

"Katherine, meet me at mz house at nine o’clock, Arthur."

"Arthur: the kettle boils."

"I would have said the pot boils."

"That is the difference between a professional and an amateur. The difference between the vernacular and literature. In a word, the difference.”

“What word?”

Katherine got up and made the coffee. She brought milk from the refrigerator and pulled two packages of sugar from the top drawer.

“Do you sleep well?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” Arthur said. “I always fall asleep very quickly. But I’m quite awake now. Would you like another cup of coffee?”

“I haven’t finished this one yet.”

Arthur sat at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee and dissembling. In the early morning it had rained – he had heard rivers of water running from the roof to the ground. Now the sun was out. He imagined the ponds of water on the road and sidewalk.

The story proceeds in fits and starts. The gradual development of character, the unfolding of action, the creation of a private cosmology all take place within a few pages. That is why all the true masters of the short story live in attics.

“Do you sleep well?” she asked.

“No,” Arthur said. “I wake up earlier very morning.”

She looked at him closely. If his origins had not been obvious to her she would have thought him a desperate man, she would have thought that he had been so scarred by the world that he had put on a mask of false craziness to hide himself, to eliminate the necessity of responding to anything. She would have thought him vacant and ruined. She would have taken him by the hand and led him gently up the stairs and laid him like a baby on his single bed. Half absentmindedly, looking out the window at the corner where she had stood and eaten her chocolate bar., she would have undressed him and made love to him at ten o’clock in the morning.

Another day they would have walked to the lake. They would have watched the seagulls in the lonely sky and filled its emptiness with their love. They would have eaten sandwiches and oranges by the lake and filled the afternoon with silence.

“Would you like to see my house?”

“Yes,” Katherine said.

He took her by the hand and led her to the living room where the bay window billowed out towards the street. He led her up the stairs and laid her gently on the bed. Absentmindedly, looking out the window to the corner where she had stood in the morning rain composing her perfect story, he undressed her. Then he took off his own clothes and lay down, precariously, beside her on the single bed. In the ten o’clock morning stillness he made love to her. She closed her eyes and saw the streaks where the rain had dried on his window. In the afternoon he took her to the museum and they walked around its old emptiness, filling it with the sharp sounds of her high heels and the quiet rhythms of their breathing. The next sunny day they went down to the lake. They saw a heron, older and balder and striking poses for them in the warm breeze.

“Yes,” she said, “That’s the difference between a professional and an amateur.” She was sitting with Arthur in his kitchen eating a piece of toast. They had spent the evening writing a novel.

Wanted: old candy bar wrappers,
Free pick-up and delivery.

“Why do you say delivery?” Arthur said.

“It goes with pick-up. People would feel uncomfortable if it was left out.”

Arthur snuggled his feet into his slippers and sipped his hot chocolate. Making love to a nurse wasn’t much different from making love to an ordinary woman, she reminded him, though only distantly, of a telephone operator he had once known.


Every morning, all year round, Katherine would wake up at six o’clock. She would get dressed and walk to an all-night restaurant. She would sit there and drink a cup of coffee and write her short story on a candy-wrapper. Then she would re-wrap the time she got there it would be about seven o’clock, to make sure that Arthur was awake. Then she would drop the wrapper on the front lawn and walk around the block. There was a place, a small opening in a hedge, where she could sit privately and watch for Arthur. After an hour, sometimes two, he would leave the house and go to a telephone booth. When she saw him leave she would walk in the opposite direction to her own telephone booth.

“Hello,” he would say, “someone left a chocolate bar wrapper with your name and telephone number written on it on my front lawn. I thought you should know.”

“I do know,” she would reply. “I left it there myself.”

“There is one thing you should be told,” he would say.

“Tell me.”

“It’s too good to publish.” He hung up and went out of the phone booth. It was eight-thirty in the morning. People were lined up at the bus stop waiting to go to work. People were walking up and down the street looking for an open store. Some of them carried empty shopping bags.

Arthur walked the two blocks from the phone teeth. When he had finished he decided to go downstairs again and complete his plans for living room. It was a large room with a bay window which made it slightly emptier than it otherwise would have been. When he was half way down the stairs the doorbell rang. His visitor was a woman, the woman he had seen that morning, Katherine Smith, R.N. and short story writer.

“Good morning. My name is Katherine Smith. May I come in?”

“Of course.” Arthur led her through the empty dining room to the kitchen. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Thank you.” Katherine was wearing a bright summer dress, the same one she had been wearing before, and was carrying a purse. She took a package of cigarettes out of the purse.

Arthur didn’t smoke but he had an ashtray. He put the ashtray on the kitchen table. Katherine lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and set it on the ashtray. Arthur noticed there were lipstick marks on the filter. He filled the kettle and put it on the stove.

When the kettle was boiling Katherine got up and made the coffee. She had some sugar with her, sugar that she had taken from the restaurant.