Nicholson Baker: The Fermata

But what we didn’t realize at the time was that the penis pump had somehow sucked all of my temporal powers out of me. Then, when the Athena vibrator went into the penis pump, the same powers were apparently transferred to it, and when the Athena vibrator muttered its way deep into Joyce, the powers entered her. As a result, the next time I snapped my fingers, nothing at all happened — or rather, everything kept on happening. But the next time Joyce clicked on the switch of her Athena vibrator, time dutifully halted for her.

I find I don’t miss the Fold too terribly much at present. My self-discipline has improved. I’m still temping, but I’ve begun going over some of the notes for my master’s thesis. (It’s a history of Dover Books.) Joyce, meanwhile, is having a good time. She carries her vibrating Cleft-Goddess around with her in her purse and turns it on at will, as when she has an important deadline at MassBank that she can’t otherwise meet. She strips pedestrians and tells me about strange genitalia she has seen and known. She talks of taking a jaunt down to Washington and sucking the presidential dick. Sometimes she uses Fold tricks while we’re having sex: for instance, she will alternate her mouth and her vadge on my richard so fast that I feel as if I’m in both places at once — as if she’s twirling over me. We’ve mentioned marriage as a possibility.

The other day I was in her apartment. I did some pushups on the floor. Then I sat on her bed. I called out, “Can I tell you about this great dream I once had about how you saved the two of us with your flying blue brassiere?”

“Briefly,” said Joyce from the bathroom. She was unbraiding her hair.

“We were in a boat in the middle of this lake of sulfuric acid,” I happily began, “and you were wearing your flying blue brassiere …”

Joyce has saved me, for the time being. I haven’t taken a stranger’s clothes off in weeks now. I’m trying to interest a publisher in my autobiography. But even if nobody wants to publish it, I could still have, say, a hundred copies made up. I’ll typeset them myself. I’ll get Copy Cop to bind them. I’ll design a jacket that uses the logo of some flush, big-name publisher like Random House. Yes, I’ll put that little stylized house on the bottom of the spine of my book. I’ll use a color copier to make the cover. It will look like a real book! And then, assuming I get my Fold-powers back, I’ll go to Waterstone’s or the Avenue Victor Hugo and Drop and put this book in people’s hands just as they think their fingers are closing on some other, real, book. They will read me. Word will spread. The Fermata, my Fermata, the keeper of all my secrets, will be a secret no longer.