Sam Lipsyte - The Fun Parts

It wasn’t. It was real, and he had to share it with the world. He had to hit eyeballs. A heads-up for species-wide calamity deserved eyeballs. So, yes, he was a little on edge, on brink. He stood at the counter of Gray’s Papaya waiting for a call from his manager, who was waiting for a call from his agent, who was waiting for a call from the TV people. He’d pitched them like some puma-headed god of pitching a few days before, laid waste to that conference room, but now there were concerns. They wanted to be certain Gunderson truly believed in his vision, that it wasn’t a gag. Otherwise the Untitled Gunderson Prophecy Project might make for lousy television. But how could a rad Siddhartha who roved the earth quaffing potions in its most sacred places and boning its most radiant creatures, not to mention rallying humanity for one last stand against its own worst urges, make for lousy television?

Bastards had insulted him, and Gunderson could feel that hunched, bile-sopped troll he’d been, that devolved little prick he’d purged with iboga root and Jung, burble up. The old Gunderson, he knew, would never really go away. He’d just have to be endured, like some incorrigible junkie brother everybody in the family hopes will finally get clean, or just die already.

Even now the old Gunderson hovered close, craved, for instance, those glistening turd tubes on the Gray’s grill rollers. Meanwhile the street stinker at the counter beside him — grease-stiff duster, foam-and-twine sandals — wolfed down a jumbo, gave Gunderson one of those poignantly exasperated looks certain nutjobs mastered, the one that asked, “Will the hologram ever cease transmission?” Bun crumbs tumbled from the man’s mouth. Orphaned schizo cast out by the corporate state? Avatar of an ancient sage? Both? You never knew, but plenty of avatars burned out anyway.

Some got as lost as the old Gunderson.

Now the new, improved Gunderson sipped his papaya smoothie. Fairly toxic, this stuff, too, but he gave himself a pass. During a recent DMT excursion in his ex-wife’s duplex, while Nellie wept and shivered in the linen closet, the machine elves, or this one other-dimensional ambassador in particular, a squat, faintly buzzing fellow with scalloped metallic skin and emerald eyes, a gnome in gold lamé who’d become something of a guardian to Gunderson, ordered him to ease up.

“Relax,” Baltran had said, slithering up from his usual sofa cushion crevasse. “You’re doing great. You’re on the verge of serious revelations. Highest clearance imaginable.”

“Really? That’s amazing. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s all your hard work. But really, relax. You’re wound too tight. Get a massage or something. Rolfing’s fun. Stay loose for the coming astonishments. Don’t be a fuckrod.”

He would not be a fuckrod. He would stay loose, stay on his toes, whatever Baltran and his glimmering ilk required. They looked like cartoons, sure, lacked sustained corporeality, and even had slightly squeaky voices, but they had chosen him. The message was too important to be left to anybody else, no matter how much he lectured at symposia about dialogue and communal deliverance. Also, no fuckrods could lurk in his vicinity. Maybe he should shitcan his manager. No sooner had he thought the phrase “shitcan my manager” than Jack’s name blinked in his hand. Coincidence was a concept for sheep.

“What have you got?” said Gunderson, stepped out to the sidewalk.

“Everything’s still in play,” said Jack.

Gunderson’s eyes strayed to the Gray’s sign on the building’s facade: WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY, OR BROKE, OR JUST IN A HURRY. NO GIMMICKS. NO BULL.

There was always a gimmick. The gimmick here was you ate factory-sealed pig chins and the hologram never ceased transmission.

“Everything’s still in play? That’s a good one for your tombstone.”

“Thanks. I’ll leave it to you to make arrangements with the engraver. Meantime, the series division is still meeting, but my guy there, my mole — don’t you love it — says there will be an offer by the end of the day. They no longer have the aforementioned concerns. They believe you believe.”

“Good.”

“More than good.”

“Do you believe I believe, Jack?”

“I believe in solid, serious offers.”

“Fair enough. Because I don’t care about the money.”

“I know, I know. How about you take my cut and I take yours?”

“I would, my friend. The money’s not for me. It’s for Carlos.”

“How is the boy?”

“He’s beautiful. A beautiful child.”

“Seen him lately?”

“Victoria nagging you again? I’m sorry about that. But you can’t listen to all her crap. I see him plenty.”

Now the reeker staggered out of Gray’s Papaya, waved his ragged arms.

“Hold on.” Gunderson dug in his coat for some loose bills. “Hey, buddy…”

“Keep your papes!” screamed the man. Particulate of frankfurter and a fine gin mist sprayed from his mouth. “I want your goddamn soul! Mean to munch it!”

“Pardon?” said Gunderson.

“Your soul wiener! That’s the real-ass jumbo!”

Doubtless on the astral plane, or even just an outer ring of Saturn, this man was delivering galaxy-beating sermons to sentient manifestations of light, but in this dimension, Seventy-Second and Broadway to be exact, Gunderson had to fucking go.

* * *

Maybe he wasn’t such a bright guy. Victoria’s divorce lawyer probably hadn’t thought so when he brought Gunderson to ruin, or rather, to Queens. His studio in Sunnyside was suitable for the composition of prison manifestos, but Gunderson was long past garret-pacing histrionics. He’d already written his book. He’d been on the talk shows, the campus panels. A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rock star kept inviting him up for a helicopter ride.

The Queens studio worked for hippie tang sessions, but it was not the apartment of a generational touchstone. Yet here he festered within the chipped stucco walls, beneath the hideous chandelier. He was lying on the futon after smoking some of the alpha weed, a gift, or tribute, from one of Nellie’s rich friends, when he felt an odd prodding in his spine. He stood, peeled back the mattress.

“Baltran.”

The machine elf’s head poked through the cheap slats of the frame. Most of him seemed morphed with the hardwood floor.

“What the fuck, Gunderson? It smells like sad, lonely man in here.”

Baltran’s buzzing was fainter than usual. His scallops bore an odd magenta tint.

“I need to catch up on laundry.”

“How about ass wiping?”

Things had, in fact, grown a wee degraded. That’s why he still spent as much time as he could at Victoria’s. Psychologists, probably, would offer negative explanations for Victoria’s failure to change the locks, but Gunderson preferred to see it as evidence of her personal evolution. Guilt for the skill of her lawyer, too.

“Look, buddy,” said Baltran, “we have to talk.”

“The TV thing? I’m close. I think it has a real chance to be a wake-up call for—”

“It’s about the prophecy.”

“What about it?”

“The math needs a little tweaking.”

“Same old same old.”

“But now it’s different.”

“Meaning what? It’s not a few years?”

“Not quite.”

“What do you mean not quite?”

Baltran fell buzzless for a moment. This happened sometimes. Though his image remained, it was as though the essence of the elf were no longer present. He was perhaps being called away for an important matter. He’d be back. Baltran always came back. But Gunderson wanted him back right now.

“What do you mean not quite?” Gunderson said again, lunged. His hand sliced through the hovering projection of his friend.