Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed

“Have I ever told you the story of Lev Wittig?” he asked.

She raised her head off the back of the chair and looked at him with heavy eyes.

“Lev Wittig was a partner at Troyer, Barr,” he said. “Tax partner from Connecticut. Family man, went to Yale. Dullest man you will ever meet. And ugly. He had a neck on him. The largest continuous piece of flesh I’ve seen on a human being.”

She rested her head on the recliner’s gold velvet arm. That chair belonged in a different house, in an alternative family history in which festive struggles were ones of car troubles, bill paying, and who controlled the remote. He looked at his daughter over the edge of the hospital bed. Poor girl, middle of the night, she was so tired.

“But this man Lev Wittig was really a genius at tax,” he said. “You don’t find many of those. Some of the most effective structures currently in place that keep the really big corporations from paying federal income tax were devised by Lev Wittig. You do that at Troyer, Barr, and there’s no question you make partner. Do you want to hear this?”

“Sure,” she said.

“You’re not just taking pity on me?”

“Taking pity on you?”

“It’s so late.”

“Go on with your story, Dad.”

“Okay,” he said. “Lev Wittig. He brought in so many clients, made the firm so much money. But you know what some of our partners are like. Just dull, dull, dull. So rich, so dull. And a guy like Lev Wittig, ugly, too. Rich, dull, and ugly. Now, that’s a powder keg. Are you sure you want to listen to this?”

“Why do you keep asking me?”

“I’m saying if you have to go to bed I’ll understand.”

“Dad, I’m up, I’m listening.”

“I bet you could unstrap me,” he said. “For an hour. I’d be fine.”

“No,” she said.

He sank down into silence.

“Dad?”

“I feel like talking,” he said.

“So talk.”

He remained silent another minute. “Lev Wittig. He throws all his energy into becoming the tax king of the world, and after twenty years, he’s at the top of his game. It’s never going to get any better. He’s sitting on more money than he knows what to do with, and he’s a powerhouse at one of the city’s most prestigious firms. Then he starts to feel age creep up on him. He turns fifty — this is what happens when you turn fifty, you feel age creep up on you. And something in Lev sort of breaks, where he says, if I’m going to work this hard and make this much money and be this good at my job, I’m gonna do whatever I goddamn well want to do. And so he sets forth to do what he wants to do.”

“Which is what?”

“Indulge his sexual proclivities. Which is what all of them want, basically. Are you up to hearing your old man tell you the story of someone’s sexual proclivities?”

“Is it going to make me uncomfortable?”

“No,” he said. “It’s too weird.”

She motioned for him to continue.

“Okay, so he wants to indulge himself, so he finds a guy in Chinatown. Who knows how he finds him, but Lev Wittig’s got money, and when you have money, you can always find a guy. This guy specializes in smuggling exotic animals out of China, Africa, wherever, for people in the city who want to own them as pets and can bear the cost. And Lev Wittig can bear the cost.”

Becka lifted off the arm of the chair. “Where’s this going?” she asked. She curled her legs under her so that now she sat as if meditating.

“Now, the other thing you have to know is, Lev’s sick of having sex with his wife. And you can’t really blame him, because Lev Wittig’s wife, let’s just say, is a brutish woman. Mustache, thinning hair. And he doesn’t want to do it anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. He told everybody. I was just an associate when all this was going on, but he told me how sick he was of having sex with his wife and I didn’t even work in tax. At major firm functions, he’d tell entire groups of people. We’d all be in a circle, you know, everybody dressed up, drinks in hand, and he’s telling it like it’s a courtroom anecdote. But he was Lev Wittig. He practically wrote the tax code.”

“Still gross,” she said.

“But the truth of the matter is this,” he said. And he paused, but not for too long. He wanted to build tension but he didn’t want her losing interest. “Under certain circumstances, he can still have sex with her.”

“How do you know this?”

“Under very particular circumstances,” he said, “he can still do it.”

“Which are what?”

He paused again, longer this time. “There has to be a snake in the room,” he said.

“What?”

“He can’t get an erection unless there’s a snake in the room.”

“Are you serious?”

“Swear to God.”

“And how do you know that? ”

“It came out at trial.”

“What trial?”

“Just listen. The guy he hooks up with in Chinatown, at first this guy doesn’t even have to go outside the country. He has a three-foot rattlesnake from Arizona delivered to Lev at the firm. It comes in a box. Inside the box is the cage, and inside the cage is the snake. There are feeding instructions. Do you know what certain types of rattlesnake do to your respiratory system?”

She hugged her knees. “Are you kidding about this?”

“So Lev takes the snake home,” he said, “and he tells his wife that if she wants to stay married, if she wants to keep the family together and the house and all that, from now on she’ll be having sex with a snake in the room.” He paused, letting that sink in. He had gained confidence that she wasn’t going to leave the room until he was through. “I’m going to go out on a limb,” he said, “and say that that one comes as a shock to old Mrs. Wittig.”

“You think?”

“But it’s a fantasy he’s had for years and he’s not going to suppress it any longer. This is what he tells her. A snake in the room gets him excited. So he puts the cage up in one of the guest rooms and he tells her that he’s going to let it out, and she can either be in there already or come in after, but either way, they’re going to have sex with the snake on the loose. So she goes up to the guest room and she sees the snake in the cage and she comes back down and opts for the divorce.”

“Which is the only sane thing to do,” she said.

“Thank you for listening to me,” he said.

“Is that it? Is that the end of the story?”

“No.”

“So why are you thanking me?”

“I just felt like thanking you.”

“Dad,” she said, “finish the story.”

“So what does Lev do? Despite the threats and manipulations, he can’t really do much of anything except move out, given what she can now testify to at family court. So he moves to an apartment near Central Park, and that’s when he starts to hire the prostitutes.”

“To go with the snake?”

“He’s got the money,” he said, “and he wants what he wants.”

“Who is this guy?”

“Lev Wittig. Wrote the tax code. Dullest man you’ll ever meet.”

“ I’m not meeting him.”

“He tells them a little fib about how everything must be absolutely dark or he can’t, you know, perform, and then they go into the bedroom, and this is exciting for Lev because there’s a snake present.”

She squirmed and shuddered audibly and gathered herself closer, holding her legs tighter.

“And here’s the thing. Each time, it has to be a different snake. That turns out to be part of the kick. The guy from Chinatown brings Lev cobras and vipers and green mambas, I don’t know what all. Not good snakes to have around.”

“Define a good snake,” she said.