Sam Lipsyte - The Fun Parts

“Let’s not ever do that to each other,” Peg said, her eyes filling with tears.

* * *

That night, I dreamed I had another son, a bigger one, and he punched me in the neck and I stumbled off the edge of a skyscraper. I fell through the air. I could also feel myself climbing out of the dream. Gregory floated near me, waved.

“Miranda!” I shouted. “Miranda!”

Peg shook me awake.

One hand cradled my head, the other hovered in a fist.

“How long have you been seeing this Miranda?” she asked.

“She’s a constitutional guarantee,” I said.

“She goes all night?”

“Forget it.”

“I can’t,” Peg said. “I’m pregnant.”

“We’re going to have a second kid? I thought we were going to keep discussing this.”

“A second kid? We have two kids already.”

“We do?”

Two boys walked into the room. One looked like Philip, but a few years older. The other, smaller, didn’t look like anybody I knew. They wore matching airplane pajamas.

“We can’t sleep,” the Philip-looking one said.

“Come on down,” said Peg, like a very tired game show host.

The two boys slid into bed with us. The smaller one curled up beside me. He giggled and put his finger in my ear.

“Papa,” he said, dug hard with his fingernail.

“Ow!”

I jumped out of bed, clutching my ear.

“Toby,” Peg said. “Don’t hurt your father.”

I ran out of the bedroom and into the living room. Things looked different in our dark apartment. I opened another door to step into the hall. But cool, spongy grass had replaced the smudged carpet. In fact, there was no hall. I stood on a lawn on a moonlit lane. Night air filled my lungs, and I stared up at the stars, then across to the houses, cream houses with high porticos that sat along the silent block. In one, flabby nude figures moved behind a blindless bay window. The goddamn Lockwoods masturbated each other on their sofa again, though how did I know their name or that these exhibitions were habitual? Did it matter? This couldn’t go on. What if Philip, or the other one, what’s-his-face, Toby, saw?

DANNY

Dad picks me up on Knickerbocker near the monument in Cresskill. He has his new girlfriend in the car. I throw my bag into the backseat and slide in, shut the door.

“This is my friend Lisa,” Dad says.

“Totally sincere greetings,” I say, stick my hand over the seatback. Lisa grins. She looks younger than Dad’s last few. He goes through them quick — like he’s stoked by the idea of them, but when they get too close, he has to send them packing. Or else, and this is my buddy Ronko’s theory, he’s secretly gay, and can’t face it. But who ever heard of a gay homicide cop, and besides, there’s no way you could be gay with this chick Lisa around. She has such nice, soft-looking hair, which is a tell-me-about-the-rabbits-George thing to say, but what can you do?

“Hi,” Lisa says. “It’s good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of stories.”

“I’m sure they’re all true, but skewed by my dad’s peculiar vision of the world.”

“What’s his vision of the world?”

“He thinks raccoons are advance scouts for alien invaders.”

“It’s clear from their behavior that they work for the Greys,” Dad says.

“Oh, Gregory,” she says, and gives his head a playful shove.

“Watch out, I’m driving here!” Dad barks.

“Hey, Lisa,” I say. “What’s the lamest car in Bergen County?”

“A gold Firebird with four on the floor.”

She’s a local girl. She remembers that nasty joke from years before, after a quartet of satanic metalheads turned their car into a carbon monoxide Jacuzzi and went to meet their master.

She’s probably just a few years older than me.

“What are you two talking about?” Dad asks. He’s no local boy. He’s from Brooklyn. He moved us out here to Jersey when I was a kid. Dad’s also old. Too old for this chick. But you have to hand it to him. I generally want to hand it to him, and then, while he’s absorbed in admiring whatever I’ve handed to him, kick away at his balls. That’s my basic strategy. Except he has no balls. Testicular cancer. Sounds like a bad rock band. I sound like the narrator of a mediocre young adult novel from the eighties. Which is, in fact, what I am. Exactly whose colostomy bag must I tongue wash to escape this edgy voice-driven narrative?

Back at the house, Lisa grills some steaks while Dad and I chop veggies for the salad.

“How’s your mom doing?” he asks.

“Mom?” I say.

“Your mom,” Dad says.

“Mom?” I say.

“Yes, Mom,” says Dad. His serrated blade bites into the cutting board. It’s like that commercial with the beer can, the tomato, the Japanese knife.

“Mom’s fine,” I say. “She’s rimming this experimental bassoonist from Santa Cruz.”

Dad throws the knife down, shoots me his photon-torpedo eyes.

Shields up.

“Don’t you talk about your mother that way,” he says.

“What?” I say. “I love the bassoon.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sorry, dude,” I say.

Shields hold.

“Steaks are almost done,” Lisa calls from the deck. “Hope you like them severely wounded, but not dead.”

“Fantastic!” Dad shouts back. He’s got this big smile on his face, like he’s happy or something. It’s a rare expression. Mostly you only see it on the weekends, when he’s working on his paintings. It’s how he relaxes from being around so much homicide. Now his eyes flick my way, and I see that happiness drain away.

What Lisa just said, that’s how I feel about my relationship with Dad: severely wounded, but not quite dead. Okay, maybe that’s sappy and jervis, but it’s how I feel, and as the young protagonist, my job is to keep you abreast of my feelings. I’m brash, but you better believe I hurt inside. Like I said, I will do windows and colostomy bags. Just get me out of here before I have to tell you in the next chapter how I think internal affairs is investigating my father, and what it’s like to be the son of a cop, and also what it’s like just to cope with all the strangeness in the world, strangest of all being that I just know, with a certainty I’ve never experienced, that before she is out of our lives forever, I will be in Lisa’s ass, though you probably won’t get to see it, or even hear me use the phrase “in Lisa’s ass,” because this book depends on school library sales.

LEON AND FRESKO

Leon banged open the metal door and staggered out onto the tar-covered roof. Fresko followed. They circled each other in sunlight, both men in a martial crouch. Voices screeched from the walkie-talkies on their hips. They wore shirts with name patches. Leon’s said LEON. Fresko’s said PETE. They worked maintenance in adjacent buildings. They were friends, and they planned to make an action movie with Leon’s new camera over the weekend. During lunch they rehearsed the dialogue for the fight scene.

“One of us is going to die today,” Fresko said.

“That would be you, dog,” Leon said. “It’s time to punch out, bro.”

“I’ll dock your goddamn existence.”

“I’ll take it up with the grievance committee.”

“They’ll be grieving for you,” Fresko said.

“No time for arbitration, son. See this fist of mine? This is your severance package.”

Leon and Fresko charged each other. They didn’t know how to movie fight. They only knew how to fight fight. So, by tacit agreement, they fought fought. It was the only way the scene would seem real. They ran at each other, collided, punched. They kicked and bit and spun in a clinch. And then Leon fell off the side of the building. Fresko thought it was a joke. It didn’t seem as if it was happening, but it was happening. That’s how so many things happen.