Jonathan Lethem - Lucky Alan - And Other Stories

“He’s the greatest maker of sentences in the United States of America,” I said.

“I’ve had a look,” the chief said. “He’s not bad. I’m just wondering if you ever troubled with the content of his books, as opposed to just the sentences.”

“Sentences are content,” Clea said.

The chief lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Fair enough then, I’ve said my piece. Just understand this — whatever my personal views of either his character or his prose, he’s under my protection surely as any other citizen in this town. Comprende? ”

“Does everyone up here speak Spanish? Is this a bilingual metropolis?” Clea said.

“That’s enough out of you, young lady. Here’s the Econo Lodge, and a good day to you both.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

We crept inside the Econo Lodge’s slumbering atrium. A uniformed teenage clerk blinked hello, raised his hand. We ignored him. The King of Sentences hovered beside a counter bearing urns of complimentary coffee labeled “Premium,” “Diesel,” and “Jet Fuel.” The King nodded mutely, beckoned to us with a tilt of his chin. We trailed him down a corridor with a tongue-hued carpet. I worked not to visualize an anal doughnut.

“Inside,” he said.

The King lit only a lamp at the bedside in the windowless room. We crowded in, the room a mere margin to the queen-size bed. The air conditioner rumbled and hummed. The temperature was frigid. The King took the only chair, gestured us to the bed’s edge. We sat.

Clea and I began simultaneously, tangling aloud. “We’re—” I said. Clea said, “You’re the—”

“Let’s not waste time,” the King interrupted. He spoke in an exhausted snarl, all redemptive possibility purged from his voice and manner. Our rendezvous had taken on the starkness of an endgame. “Do you want money?”

“Money?” I said.

“That’s right.” He reached into his shirt pocket and revealed a packet of twenties, obviously prepared in advance. It occurred to me wildly that he’d taken us for blackmailers. Perhaps he was blackmailed routinely, had cash on hand for regular payouts. “How much will it take to make you go away?” He began counting out piles: “Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two hundred—”

“We don’t want your money!” I nearly shouted. “You’ve given us enough, you’ve given us everything! We’re here to give something back!”

“I suppose I’m meant to be glad to hear it.” He repocketed his money carelessly.

“We’d like you to be glad, yes.”

He only cocked an eyebrow. “What have you got for me?”

I untucked my polo shirt and withdrew my chapter, the pages a mass curled and baked in its secret compression against my belly.

“I knew you looked funny!” Clea cried. I ignored her, handed the pages across to the King. He accepted them, his expression sour.

“For a moment there I thought you were about to undress,” he said.

“Would you like that?” Clea blurted. “Should we undress?”

The King examined us starkly. He placed my chapter ignominiously on the carpet beneath his chair. Perhaps now we were at the crossroads, perhaps we had his attention at last. “Yes,” he said cautiously. “I think that could be … advantageous.”

We stripped, racing to be the first bared to his view. I’d lose the race either way, for Clea had rigged the game: She had written a sentence on her stomach in blue marker. The sorcerer lately couldn’t recall whether he was a capable sleeper or an insomniac . Brilliant, I thought bitterly. The King stared. I saw Clea’s pubic hair through the eyes of the King. Clea’s bush was full and crazy. I thought, I will never see it again without seeing the pubic hair at which the King of Sentences once glanced. The King said, “Insomniac, I believe.”

Clea blushed around the sentence, her flesh blazing like neon.

“Hand me your clothes, please.”

We handed the King our clothes. He began immediately rending them, in a weary frenzy of destruction, tearing both of our shirts sleeve from sleeve, shredding Clea’s bra and underwear, slicing at her skirt with his nicotine teeth. He struggled to do any damage to my jeans. I felt I wanted to help him somehow, but stood jellied in my nakedness, doing nothing, not wishing to insult him, to draw attention to his feebleness. It was a mighty enough display, given his age. The hands that had forged the supreme sentences in contemporary American writing were now dismembering the syntax of my underwear.

Soon enough our daily costumes lay in an unseemly ruined pile at our feet. My chapter scattered beneath the clothes and chair legs, forgotten. He hadn’t looked at even one sentence, never would. I knew I would have to forgive him. So I did it right then and there: I forgave him.

The King moved to the door. We stood in our bare feet, wobbling slightly, goose-pimpled, still breathing out clouds of expectation like frost-breath.

“That’s all?” Clea said.

“That’s all, you ask? Yes, that’s all. That’s more than enough.”

“You’re leaving us here.”

“I am.”

He closed the door carefully, not slamming it. Clea and I waited an appropriate interval, then turned and clung to each other in a kind of rapture. Understanding, abruptly and at last, just what it takes to be King. How much, in the end, it actually costs.

1.

Traveler waking. Journey begins. No dreams this night. Bags packed before sunset, sink emptied, alarm rings, Traveler hits snooze, thinks snooze-lose, lies awake instead, lingering for second alarm. Quandary of toothbrush solved, laid on briefcase for ease of notforgetting. Haunted angle in morning light, toothbrush a sundial suggesting. New direction in morning light. No path more ideal than any other given. Night’s snow fallen, obliterated traces. Shovel itself buried. Car in plowed mound, couldn’t specify where. Drive to resume in spring’s melting. Needs speak with Plowman, demand Plowman present a bill. Snowball’s chance. Confrontation delayed, striding up path hopeless. Arrive baked items in hand if possible. Hardly so. Plowman’s house itself irretrievable. Cars tumbled in clotted curb’s-cake, ridged ice walls visible from space, satellite’s eye. Path glimpsed no more lately. Plowman growing hydroponic greenhouse food, relying solely on Plowman’s powers, plow’s battery and headlamps undying. Plowman homeschooling Plowman’s beautiful daughters. Seven dark-haired, order of height. Out of sight, in mind. Traveler alone. Traveler pining. Traveler waking, turns out dreaming. Lost tickets. Automatic coffee. Toothbrush unfound. Angle of daylight. Snows grows. Snows lose. Missing shoes. Mossy rooted path. Bridge fallen. Asteroid shower. Traveler waking. Double dreaming. Dream shakes off, a second skin, dog’s wet fur. Alarm furious, astounded interval between first waking and five-minute snoozed. Traveler showering. Toothbrush foamed. Thermos brimful. Journey under way.

2.

Traveler sits watching television alone. Not alone, with Terrier. Huddled on sofa with Terrier in dark house, furnace beneath floorboards rumbling, outside snow falling again. Remote on couch handy. Traveler’s flatscreen plasma television, hulking presence, only glow in warm-dark house in white-dark night. Terrier watching too, head cocked at motion, throaty growl at anything remotely ratlike, shadows skulking to edges of screen. Terrier who has never caught any actual rat. Satellite dish provides Traveler with five hundred channels, at least in name, though dozens are fallow, wastes of pay-per-view, cooking, sports, cartoons. Still, forty or fifty channels of films, only a handful of those with commercials. Traveler tonight watches Insomnia , tale of weary detective, unsleeping, trudging through barren noon-lit landscapes in killer’s pursuit. Traveler feels déjà vu, has perhaps seen this film or another like it, remake or sequel. Nonetheless trudges as detective trudges through story, camaraderie of sleepless. Night long-fallen everywhere, windows less-frequently lit by passing headlamps, now only yellow siren-flashing glow of Plowman passing. In this, his smalltown country life, Traveler has learned his few scattered neighbors keep a newborn’s hours, asleep at first dark, six, seven o’clock, rising at five, even four. Traveler long accustomed now to keeping his city hours, habit impossible of breaking, possibly the sole waking presence in a hundred-mile radius. Traveler and Plowman, on a night like this. Plowman scraping road, high in steaming plow’s cab, watching funnels of volcanic white swirl in headlamps through widescreen of windshield. Traveler shudders.