Sam Lipsyte: The Fun Parts

“Thus spake Hallmark,” came a voice through his headset. “Cut the humanist rah-rah, friend.”

Gunderson was embarrassed the rock star had heard him get so sentimental, not to mention talk to himself.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” said Gunderson.

“What’s on your mind, lad? You seem perturbed.”

“Do you really want to know what I’m thinking?” said Gunderson.

“Hell, no,” said the rock star. “Just name the number.”

“You’ve mastered telepathy.”

“Something like that. Or maybe I can just tell that you need my help and I believe in your message enough to want to give it. I’ll write the check. You lead us back from the abyss.”

Screw Jack. Screw the deal. What had to be done would be done by the secret society, his brothers and sisters in vision, like this ludicrous geezer with the thousand-dollar T-shirt and spiked white hair.

Gunderson turned to thank him, to tell him of the long march ahead and the beautiful bond they would forge, but discovered the rock star slumped in his straps, stick hand listing. It was difficult to tell exactly when the spin had started or how fast the buildings roared up. The rock star was definitely dead. Maybe it was all the cocaine he’d been sneaking off to snort during dinner. Maybe it was everything he’d sniffed and jabbed and swallowed for the last forty years. Rock stars made millions singing about their broken hearts, and then their hearts actually exploded. This guy was going blue in his helmet. And he was not being a very good pilot.

Gunderson shut his eyes, saw the strewn green of his son’s. He felt strange pressures on his body, was a boy again himself, waking slowly between his mother and father on their flannel sheets in Eugene, a happy little boat bumping up on warm, sloped isles. Pleasant, primal enough, this memory, suitable for the closing clip, though didn’t Gunderson rate revelation, every artifice fallen away, the cosmos unmasked and Gunderson receiving the supreme briefing via transcendental brain beam? He deserved that much, didn’t he? Apparently not, for here rushed the rooftops with their colossal vents, their transnational signage, penthouses lush with light and hanging gardens. Gunderson grew dizzy in his bubbled tomb. Death’s smash and grab was upon him, he could feel a hand grip his arm, though it didn’t seem to be the Reaper’s.

“Sorry about this. Not what we were expecting, is it?”

Light twirled in the gold weave of Baltran. The elf’s shimmer steadied Gunderson.

“So, it’s bullshit? The calendar? The prophecy? Dimensional interface? You?”

“No, it’s not bullshit,” said Baltran. “It can’t be.”

“Are you just a figment of my imagination?”

“Fuck you. Figment.”

“You told me to do you proud.”

“You did do me proud, kid. I saw what you accomplished. It won’t be forgotten. Not by me.”

“And now what?”

“I don’t know, exactly. The beat goes on?”

“The beat,” said Gunderson, and he felt his phone vibrate, read the backlit text: Serious offer .

“Hey, shouldn’t I be dead yet?” said Gunderson, looking over at Baltran. “This thing’s been crashing for a while.”

“Not really. That’s just how you’re experiencing it. Okeydokey, here it comes, baby.”

“I can feel it,” whispered Gunderson. “I can taste it. It’s coming on sweet.”

“That might be your lozenge. See, really, there is no sweetness. What comes is pitiless, blind to you.”

“Aren’t we all connected?”

“Yes, we are all connected,” said Baltran, “but that’s not really a good thing. For the record, I always liked you, Gunderson. Breathe easy.”

Gunderson watched his friend’s form collapse into a sprinkly nimbus.

“Connected how?” cried Gunderson. “To what?” But he knew what, had known for some time, a few thousand years at least, back before his own shaman days on the shores of Oaxaca, longer, much longer, back before his human days, his golden molting days, his wailing vapor days, back before anything you could call a day, when he was just another stray vector shooting through great jagged reefs of anti-space. He’d known, but had he believed? Had he ever believed? Did it matter? Beyond the seal of the multiverse was a wet, blazing mouth. It slavered. It meant to munch. It had journeyed through many forevers to reach what it existed to devour: the real-ass jumbo.

Gunderson began, or ceased, to dream.

Thanks to the editors who first worked with me on these stories, including Willing Davidson, Deborah Treisman, Amy Grace Loyd, Jeff Johnson, Lorin Stein, Rob Spillman, Hunter Kennedy, Jason Fulford, Michelle Orange, Tom Beller, and Joanna Yas. Thanks to Eric Chinski, who helped me make a book out of them. Thanks to the late George Kimball, whose book Four Kings: Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran and the Last Great Era of Boxing proved a valuable source in the writing of “The Worm in Philly.” Thanks to Ira Silverberg and Eric Simonoff. Thanks to Ben Marcus. Thanks to the MacDowell Colony, where several of these stories were begun. Thanks to Ceridwen Morris, who encouraged me to finish them.