Sam Lipsyte - Venus Drive

Our double-album debut, Barbecue Pork Class Suicide , was snubbed by the mainstream and reviled by the underground. Or maybe it was the reverse. Either way, I can tell you it hurt. When the spiteful alcoholics you have always depended on for uplift turn their backs, it’s time to call it a nice post-college try.

Once in a while, though, in the elevator at work, someone will stop me, a man my age with a cell phone, a portfolio case. He will ask me if I am who I am, recall with wonder something I did on stage with safety razors, mayonnaise. Maybe it’s some dim gift I’ve given him, some phony idea that he’s reached into danger long enough for one life. Now he can make some calls, do some deals. But neither of us knows what danger is. Neither of us is sinking fast through lake weeds.

Tonight, Rosalie wants to have a drink after work. She sent me e-mail about it from a few desks away. She says she has an errand to run, that she will meet me at this new bar I keep walking past but avoiding, one of those places where they pay slinky women with nose gold to sip peanut-butter martinis and approximate feeling. The errand must be a ruse. Probably Rosalie doesn’t want the staff to see us leave together, which, after all the rumor I’ve spewed, is fine by me.

We sit in bean bags in a low bright room. This is one of those theme bars. Maybe the theme is childhood in suburbia. It doesn’t matter, the theme is always the same. The theme is we’re not black, after all. Everything is a variation on this theme.

Rosalie calls over the waitress and they talk for a while about somebody’s new art gallery. The waitress is famous for a piece where she served Bloody Marys mixed with her menstrual blood. Word had it she overdid the tabasco.

I wait for the moment when our waitress stops being a notorious trangressor of social mores and becomes our waitress again, look for it in her eyes, that sad blink, and order a beer.

“So,” says Rosalie, poking through a bowl of Swedish fish, “how are you?”

“Man, those shelves are really coming along. It’s a very exciting time.”

“You’re funny. But forget work. I don’t want to talk about work. That’s all I do now. Meetings. Meetings. Value triangles.”

“The pressure, the pressure.”

“No, really. I mean, it’s great, but what the hell happened? Who is this woman talking to you right now? Do you know this woman? Does she bear any resemblance to the little twit who used to follow you around, hang on your every word?”

“I miss that little twit.”

“I don’t,” says Rosalie. “And fuck you, you miss her. I don’t miss her at all.”

“What?”

“What what? Did you think I was going to spend my whole life trailing you around, soaking up your bullshit? Worshipping you? That was a dark time for me. I learned a lot though, I can say that.”

“And your pussy ran like a river,” I say.

“True,” says Rosalie. “How’s Glenda?” She sticks her tits out when she says this. This is what I’ve always loved about Rosalie. She makes the obvious subtle somehow. This is her art. Or maybe I’ve just always been smitten by her tits.

“Glenda’s in bad shape,” I say.

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

“I know, I know. I can’t talk about Kyle and it’s a year later.”

“So,” I say, “are we going to have a commiseration fuck, or what? I have shelves to build.”

I have no subtlety when it comes to Rosalie. It’s what I’ve always counted on her loving about me.

We do that thing of lying in bed and touching each other softly like we’re brother and sister on a naughty expedition. We do that thing of falling asleep feeling all sad and superior to fools who fuck. I’ve never been too keen on this particular activity, but it’s good to do once in a while, keeps you sharp for the day you may rejoin the human species. It’s a nice dense lull in the thin-seeming quick. The only thing is, Rosalie falls asleep before I do, and now I’m up on an elbow studying one of her tits, the way it slinks off and gathers at her top rib, the skin smoothed out on her chest bone. I pull on myself, wonder how I can get my teeth on her nip without violating this cuddle paradigm we’ve got going, and also without enacting that babyman suckle which would probably sicken us both, not to mention Shrike, the dog, who’s heaped near us, brooding on his usurpation. Rosalie turns over and I see those prayer-wheel spokes sticking out past her panties. The swirls have begun to fade.

Next thing there’s light in the room and Rosalie’s sitting up. I guess she dresses, but somehow I miss it. The dog is doing his big dumb click dance on the hardwood.

“See you at work,” she says.

“Wait,” I say, “did this happen or not happen?”

“Nothing happened,” she says. “So I don’t care if it happened or not.”

“We can talk about it later,” I say.

“Or not,” says Rosalie.

I suddenly have the feeling of wanting to confess all my sins, all that back-daggering, those terrible things I say when she steps out of the office for a coffee or a smoke. I want to tell her something she doesn’t know about me.

“Glenda’s dead,” I say.

“Who?” says Rosalie, and leaves.

I pop a Paxil from Rosalie’s medicine chest and go downstairs for some Cuban coffee.

I used to come here in the mornings when Rosalie and I were serious, work on my hangover, cool my head on all this anti-Castro Formica, wait for sentience to return like a mildly sadistic soccer coach. Then I’d call the band, hammer out the day’s futile itinerary, not much — a few hours of noise in our practice room, then off to the German’s where the Butcher of Ludlow Street poured stiff ones, or off to someone’s couch for the short-count foil packets and the same dumb saga about some band from Akron, or Toledo, that flamed out years ago but made one choice single somebody’s cousin owned. It’s a good life if you don’t die, or worse, start to believe in it.

The old Cuban and the young Cuban are still there behind the glass case with their pork and pickle sandwiches, still giving me that look. I’ve never quite known the meaning of it. There have been times, I must admit, it seemed almost accusatory, as though I were on some kind of jack-ass authenticity hunt. Mostly I took it as tender beseechment, a beckon porkward. Either way I’ve never given them anything to base a look on. I’ve never even said “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” I say, today.

“You’re welcome,” says the young Cuban.

“Thank you,” I say again.

If I believed in brief moments of cosmic alignment, I would have to say things feel fairly aligned right now. Better than aligned. I’m one up on universal niceties.

Then I realize I’m still in love with Rosalie, or Rosalie’s tit, or Rosalie’s tattoo. This must be why they call them brief moments.

I sit there until I’m good and tardy.

It’s almost lunch by the time I get to work. This used to be somewhat allowable, but Rosalie has made an effort of late to make us quiet and punctual and professional-seeming in our one big room, all on account of the corporate types who have been dropping by to inspect their acquisition. I’m sure they want us to stay “funky,” but it’s not as though we turn a profit, and our salaries and overhead are siphoned from their graver silicon concerns. Our parent company makes simulations of hypothetical amphibious invasions for the Navy, and also some kind of spree-killer game for the kids. Rosalie gets pretty jumpy when the men in tasseled loafers pop by.

This one, though, he’s got on suede sneakers with his suit. The new breed. He’s a smarm engine, torquing himself over Rosalie’s work module. He talks in a hush and Rosalie offers up her specialty, low moans and conversational coos floating up from the seat of her lust like observation balloons. Everyone else is locked into monitor glow, code jockeys with their Linux books open on their laps, producers scanning the latest posts from Cyberbitch5.