Sam Lipsyte - The Fun Parts

Tomorrow she’d look up tattoo removal. They were doing big things with lasers. When he was just a little more stable, she’d break up with Cal, gently, and then she’d begin her project of helping everybody she could help, and after that she’d head out on a great long journey to absolutely nowhere and write a majestic poem cycle steeped in heavenly lavender-scented closure and also utter despair, a poem cycle you could also actually ride for its aerobic benefits, and she’d pedal that fucker straight across the face of the earth until at some point she’d coast right off the edge, whereupon she’d giggle and say, “Oh, shit.”

WILLIAM

My wife wanted another baby. But I thought Philip was enough. A toddler is a lot. I couldn’t picture us going through the whole ordeal again. We’d just gotten our lives back. We needed time to snuggle with them, plan their futures.

But Peg really wanted another baby, said we owed Philip a brother or a sister. That seemed like a pretty huge debt. What do you do for the second child? Have a third?

“Peg,” I said. But I had no follow-up. Or was it follow-through?

Peg sat at the kitchen table scribbling in the workbook she’d gotten from Arno, her German tutor. The handwriting didn’t look like hers, though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her handwriting.

“This is a dealbreaker,” Peg said.

“The deal being our marriage?”

“Please don’t leave me,” she said.

“Who said I wanted to leave?”

“If you refuse to have another baby, that’s the same as leaving me.”

“This is emotional blackmail.”

“The emotional aspect is implicit. You could just say blackmail.”

“But why, Peg?”

“This morning I smelled the top of Philip’s head. That sweet baby scent is gone. Now it just smells like the top of any dumbshit’s head.”

* * *

I took Philip for a walk. He tired easily, but his gait was significant. He tended to clutch his hands behind his back, like the vexed ruler of something about to disintegrate.

“How about a brother or a sister?” I asked.

“How about I just pooped,” Philip said.

“Thanks for your input.”

Peg always said I shouldn’t model sarcasm for the boy, but who will? Everybody’s so earnest around children. Besides, I’ve always wanted to model, to strut down the runway under all that strobe and glitter while the fashionably witty cheer on my sarcasm.

* * *

Later I had to jet over to the office. The flip-flop prototypes were a total joke. Art had ignored my notes. Where were the porpoise pods, the sea grass? I hated Art. They needed some attitudinal realignment, or whatever the badasses say. Art and I were scheduled to meet in the meeting room and communicate about our communication problems.

Gregory walked up to my desk. He didn’t work for our company, but rented a room in the building, where he made paintings for plays and movies. Gregory painted to the specifications of the filmmakers and stage directors. He could paint a copy of a famous painting or create a whole original series to represent the work of a character in a play or a movie. His oeuvre wasn’t known, but it had won fame and riches for fictional artists in several films.

Gregory always wore a festive shirt and a baseball cap with no logo. He said he wore these clothes because he believed they made him resemble a thoughtful, retired gay cop, which he was.

He’d come to see if I’d join him for a joint.

“Code Doob,” he said.

“Stat,” I said.

We went to the roof and smoked and stared at the large metal exhaust units mounted on nearby roofs.

“So, Peg…” I said.

“She wants to do a number two,” Gregory said. “I mean…”

“Oh, yeah, I told you already,” I said. “Guess I don’t have anything super-recent.”

“That’s okay,” Gregory said. “I got one. Guy just asked me to do a painting. Not a copy job, but a painting in the style of. A very famous painter. Died young, but did spectacular things. A great talent. All my gifts would fit in his pinkie, and so forth. This guy said he would pay me the equivalent of what I thought a real, newly discovered peak-performance painting by this painter would fetch. I said it would be many millions. He said, ‘Fine.’”

“Why?”

“Said he’s interested in exploring questions of authenticity, and he’s got the money to do it. Investment banker. But did some art theory in college. He’s not going to throw his money away on a yacht he’ll have no time to … yacht on. Here, at least, he’s shaking things up.”

“You’ll be so rich.”

“I told him to go to hell.”

“Why?”

“I’m a copyist and a hack visionary, but I’m not a criminal. Fuck the banker.”

“You’re a proud man,” I said.

“If that’s all it takes. Hey, look.”

Across the way, on the roof of another building, two figures fought. They both wore dark coveralls and walkie-talkies clipped to their tool belts. They threw huge roundhouse punches, wrestled, choked each other, broke apart, and banged each other into the shiny exhausts and flues. You could hear the metal flutter.

“It’s either about money or women,” Gregory said.

“Or another man,” I said.

“Don’t get inclusive on my account,” Gregory said.

“Shouldn’t we call this in?”

“Good thinking, Citizen.”

We did call it in, but only after the next thing that happened. One of the guys grabbed the other guy’s shirt and spun him off the edge of the building. The falling guy fell. His head hit a steel fence post and made a moist, crunching sound. His body slid limp beside a Dumpster. Vomit fired up my throat. Gregory called it in, used a language I knew vaguely from television.

We gave statements to the police. Afterward we went to a bar. Gregory warned me that I might have nightmares about the grisly scene we’d just witnessed, but if I had the wherewithal to utter, from within the dream, the word “Miranda,” I might break out of the gruesomeness.

“Why Miranda?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s just what I use. You can use your own word.”

“Was she a friend of yours, Miranda?”

“She’s the friend of every cop who believes in a person’s right to remain silent.”

* * *

Peg was angry that I got home so late, but when I told her the story, leaving out the joint part, she seemed appeased. She didn’t care if I smoked marijuana. She smoked it or, rather, took tinctures of THC on her tongue. But the idea that I might be out of the house doing anything enjoyable, and not generating revenue, enraged her. She had a right to be enraged. She was home with our son a good deal. It took a toll. You can cobble together a solid twelve minutes of unconquerable joy a day caring for a toddler. It’s just the other fourteen or fifteen hours that strip your nerves and immolate your spirit. Peg was a warrior, but she got testy the time I told her that. She said she didn’t want to be a warrior. She wanted to be the smart, sexy, sociable woman she’d been before Philip.

I should have said, “You are, honey. You still are.”

Instead I said, “Better save up for a time machine.”

We hardly talked for a week. But I guess she’d forgiven me, as lately it had been all about another baby, and today my absence had been excused, even if it took a corpse to clear the air.

“You must be traumatized,” she said. “Oh, sweetie.”

She sat on the carpet with Philip, who chewed on a toy hammer.

“I’m okay,” I said.

I squatted down and stroked Philip’s face.

“It just reminds you of the fragility of everything,” I said. “Especially the fragility of brawling on the roof of a very tall building.”