Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed

They lay afterward, two bodies humming in a field. He felt bad that he had not been able to last. It had been a long time and after a minute or two there was no stopping what had taken over.

“It’s almost worth waiting when it’s like that,” she said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t last.”

“That’s the downside.”

They buttoned and zipped and got to their feet. They began to walk through the field to the car, tall steps through the high grass. It occurred to him that they were leaving too quickly. He wanted to reclaim that spent urgency, the irrefutable proof they both felt in their bodies that they needed each other for life. Had such a long and arduous walk out here to the middle of nowhere, had the task of picking him up, which made his sickness seem to her but a common irritant of clocking miles in the sleepiest hours, really been the occasion for the best sex they’d had in years?

“We should go back,” he said.

“Back where?”

“Back there.”

She looked behind them and saw only the fenced borderland and dry expanse of grass. “What for?”

“To get that back.”

She seemed to get his meaning. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

All at once she jerked away. She did a kind of stutter-step, shrieking, and ended behind him gripping his arms with her claws.

“What is it?” he cried.

“A snake!”

He stopped still and held her behind him. He looked down at the grass. “I don’t see it,” he said.

“How could you miss it?”

“Well, it’s gone now.”

“It’s not gone. It’s just ahead of us. Ahead of us is not gone.”

“It’s more scared of you than you are of it,” he said.

“You talked to the snake?”

“Want me to carry you out, banana?”

“I don’t like snakes,” she said.

She walked the rest of the way with a mix of trepidation and resolve, eyes frozen to the grass, feet choosing the least dense spots. They climbed the wooden fence. The car was waiting for them on the far side of the road. A sign in front of the fence said No Trespassing — Stony Hold Farms.

They drove out of the back roads, past the same fire-damaged landscape she had followed him into. They entered an area more densely populated by single-family residences and there saw exposed houses flaking with ash, cul-de-sacs with pitted cars more fitting the scenes of a riot from a troubled city. Porch pillars burnt down halfway turned ranch houses into small sites of ancient ruin. Most of the houses stood unmolested. The individual damage seemed arbitrary, or perhaps singled out by an inscrutable fate.

“It’s even worse than what you see on the news,” she said.

“What do you make of it?” he asked.

She drove in silence before answering. “It’s either the world just doing its thing,” she said, “or something we’ve never known before.”

They drove a long time. He sat in the passenger seat with the helmet on, the monitor in his hands, wondering what it might have recorded over the course of a walk they were driving miles to erase.

“Nothing,” said Dr. Bagdasarian. “I’m sorry, Tim.”

The scans had revealed nothing. That was neither positive proof of mental illness nor the negative confirmation of a medical disease. It was more of the same, exactly what he feared — greater inconclusiveness, additional absence of evidence, the final barrier removed from boundless interpretation. He was anything anyone wanted him to be — a nutcase, a victim, a freak, a mystery. He’d known to expect it from the moment he took the bicycle helmet out of Bagdasarian’s hands, yet the disappointment, so familiar, felt brand-new. He had no idea to what extent he’d allowed his hopes to rise once more. What a fool he was, an inveterate and self-punishing fool. He felt Jane and Becka looking at him. He turned to them and smiled.

The doctor made an effort to qualify these indeterminate test results. He cautioned again that the device was a prototype, that the sensors picked up only neural activity, and that a second-generation helmet might be made not only to improve the sensitivity of the readings, but to include electrical and hormonal changes, the flow of blood and other biological currents. He suggested they go back to the drawing board for a better device.

Jane shook her head. “This has been a mistake. I’m sorry I encouraged it.” She turned to her husband. “Tim, I’m sorry,” she said. She reached out for his hand.

“We’ve come this far,” said Bagdasarian.

“No, Doctor, thank you,” she said. “I think we’re through.”

Tim turned to her. “Why not give him another shot?” he asked. “See what improvements can be made?”

That night he went down to the basement after Jane and Becka had fallen asleep. He sat on the weight bench and put the barrel of the gun inside his mouth. The cold metal made him salivate. He angled the barrel up toward his brains.

He had told Dr. Ditmar, the psychologist beloved by New York magazine, that he would prefer the diagnosis of a fatal disease. Ditmar bluntly stated that he was being excessive and naive. Compare his situation to someone with Lou Gehrig’s, Ditmar suggested, dead within three months. Wasn’t it better to be on a walk than in a grave? “No,” he said. “I’d rather have something I understand.” To which Ditmar replied: “Do you think you’d understand Lou Gehrig’s?”

He had perfect conviction that killing himself was not only justified now but necessary, that the relief of death was the only reply to the torment of a life that had to be lived as a lost cause, and his mind told him to pull the trigger. But his body, which spoke a persuasive language of its own, singular, subterranean, objected with the most fundamental repulsion, and while he sat with the gun in his mouth, nearly gagging on the barrel, these two opposite wills worked to gain the better of each other in a struggle so primitive that it could not be named. And finally he removed the gun and set it back in the standing toolbox behind the blunt hammers and screwdrivers and returned upstairs. He lacked the courage and the will — although perhaps he had astonishing amounts of both and was simply defeated again, if barely, on a playing field most people never realize exists until the final days and moments of their lives.

Mike Kronish wouldn’t even deign to pick up the phone when he called. Sam Wodica broke the news. The caucus had convened, a vote had been taken, and his partnership was thereby revoked.

“It wasn’t just your appearance at trial, Tim,” said Wodica. “Your wife?”

“She’s not dying.”

“No shit.”

He thought he should have been present for the caucus. He should have been allowed to defend himself. They were lawyers. Weren’t they familiar with due process?

“Does R.H. know about my wife?”

“For fuck’s sake,” said Wodica. “You don’t just want us to lose the revenue? Let’s open ourselves up to malpractice, too?”

“I don’t see how what I did constitutes malpractice.”

“Just what the fuck did you do, Tim? Huh, please allow me to ask. Just what the fuck did you do?”

It settled in, the enormity of a crumbling life. Twenty-one years. The firm had been a second home. Now Frank Novovian would not even be required to greet him. Maybe Frank would look at him and say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Farnsworth. I’m not allowed to let you up.” And he might say, “Twenty-one years, Frank.”

He and Wodica briefly discussed R.H.’s conviction. The only good news was that New York State didn’t allow the death penalty. The presentencing report was due in a few weeks, and then R.H. would be sent off. How would R.H. have fared if Tim had been able to see his case through to the end? If Tim had been allowed to finish the pretrial preparations, to help in jury selection, to argue and object? He was certain that right now they would be celebrating R.H.’s acquittal.