Sam Lipsyte - Venus Drive

“I’ve always been partial to low-hanging fruit,” I hear the company man say.

Rosalie waves me over.

“This is Gene,” Rosalie tells me. “Gene knew Kyle.”

“And I know you!” says Gene.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“I doubt you remember, except that we once French kissed. Think back, Chicago, ninety-two, ninety-three. You guys opened for somebody. I can’t remember. I can’t remember because you were so fucking awesome. You blew my mind. I mean blew it open. I was up front, just a little high school shit. I’d never seen anything like it. Oh my God, Rosalie, you should have seen it.”

“Oh, I’ve seen it,” says Rosalie.

“And this guy, he goes down to all the men in the room and starts trying to kiss them. I mean kiss them with these real gentle kisses. Unbelievable. I mean, it was Chicago, okay? Shaking it all up, this guy. I was so turbo’d. A whole new thing. A whole new idea. No rock bullshit. You know? I mean, sure, it had been done before. I mean, maybe you guys were pretty derivative. But still. Like little butterfly kisses. And the music, man, if it even was music, if it even needed to fall under the rubric of music. Shaking it up. Changing the terms. The terms of the experience. Not just sexually, either. Not just with the microphone in your ass. And what was that stuff you said about the corporate police state? You know, that we had a choice, that we had to choose between a police state or a police state? That really stuck with me. I admired it, man. Truly. All of it. Really. It altered me. Somehow. I don’t know how, but I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t seen it. You know? Look, I’m scaring him. He’s like, Back off, man. Hey, it’s cool. But I’ve got to tell you, I was so psyched when Rosalie told me you were on our team. It all fell together for me when I heard. Rosalie was like, You probably never heard of him, but I hired this guy…Never heard of him! Shit. It all fell together. Here’s a guy, I’ve seen musical equipment in his ass, I’ve seen him literally crying and shitting and bleeding because the rest of us were too scared to, and here’s me, right, always thinking to myself, I saw that, that moved me, so how come I wind up here, doing this? You know, like am I a sell-out? Because I wondered about that. But now you’re here. You’re here where I am and we’re doing this thing together. So, now I’m like, oh, right, this is what we should be doing. You know? The next step. It all falls together now.”

“It really, really makes sense,” says Rosalie.

“Total,” says Gene.

“So what’s the deal with you?” says Gene. “Are you still playing music?”

“No,” I say.

“No? Well, I’m going to sign you up for the company talent show. We do it every year at this great club. It’s for real, I mean it’s not bullshit. There’s a programmer at our San Francisco office who does poetry slams.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” I say.

“No,” says Gene. “It’s going to be awesome.”

There’s another e-mail from Rosalie asking me to meet her later in the stairwell. It’s our unofficial conference room, though there are plans for expanding into the suite next door. I diddle around on the web for a while, do my umpteenth search on the name of my old band. It’s pathetic, I guess, but it beats the heartbreak of a scrapbook. It’s always the same hits, too. Some kid in Bremen selling bootlegs, a girl in Wisconsin who posted a review of our last ever show. “They sucked,” she wrote, “and in sucking proved their point about American consumerism. We won’t see the likes of this band again.” I used to have a fantasy about flying out to Green Bay to sweep her off her feet, but I tended to sabotage the dream by playing out the scenario to the finish. Little girl grows up and sees through me, puts an end to her dark time.

I hear Shrike’s barks long before I see Rosalie. She’s down on one knee with the big boy in a tender headlock. He’s got a wet biscuit in his mouth, jerks his snout around, lays into me with a sloppy eyeball as though he knows something I don’t.

“Did you hear that,” I say, “Gene worships me. I forever altered his consciousness. Think I have a shot at V.P.?”

“We need to talk,” says Rosalie.

“Last night,” I say.

“That, too,” says Rosalie.

We talk there in the stairwell. Much is noted about my underutilization in the company structure, even more about my eclectic skill-set going to menial waste. Rosalie doesn’t really fire me. I don’t really quit. Somehow, though, it seems I’m out of a job.

“Does Gene know about this?” I say. I picture him hearing of my departure, looking up from the Full Amphibious Scenarios: Weehauken demo running on his desktop, stunned, worried about the talent show.

“Gene supports the idea,” says Rosalie. “But it’s up to you.”

“What about us?” I say.

“I think we need to move on in all aspects of our lives. You’re not happy here.”

“How do you know?”

“If you were happy, you wouldn’t be so busy denouncing my style of bowel evacuation to the staff.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and probably mean it.

“It’s okay,” says Rosalie.

“Fine,” I say. “But I want you to know I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she says. Fraught. Considered. Her delivery makes my declaration sound cheap.

“I’ll clear out my things,” I say.

“No rush,” says Rosalie, and starts to push the dog down the stairs.

“Wait,” I say.

“What?”

“Let me ask you something. In the motel. When we went to see your brother.”

“Yeah?”

“What was my secret?”

“Are you testing me?”

“No.”

“That’s sad. You don’t remember? That’s really sad.”

“I know. I can’t remember my secret. What the hell was my secret? I must have had something I was running from. What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” says Rosalie. “You peaked a little early. It happens sometimes.”

“Rosalie, tell me my goddamn secret,” I say.

“I’ve got to go.”

“The show’s over, bitch,” I call, but too softly, as though my throat knows to close it off.

I clear out quietly. I don’t really have any things.

I go over to the bean-bag bar. The door is locked and I look through the window. There are no bean bags there. There are some stacked boxes and a broom. Maybe it’s a new theme.

Somewhere in this city somebody is probably peaking right now, getting high on a couch and talking about a bootleg he bought from a kid in Bremen. I should locate this fool, tell him what a lout he is, but he’s all I’ve got.

Too bad I sold the Merc. I could sail it off the Verrazano. I’d be a footnote to a footnote, food for carp.

Maybe I’ll fly out to Wisconsin, instead. Or take some slow hearse of a bus. They have movies on the good lines now, so you don’t get so bitter about the landscape, big windows that open with manual levers in case of bad aquatic luck.

The crazy thing is I’m not even Jewish. But when I showed up at Dana’s house with that beanie on my head, her dad didn’t even blink an eye. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t have any. Well, he does, but I think he pops them out at night before he goes to bed. Dunks them in a water glass. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s true. I know he can’t see. At least he can’t see me.

Dana got mad and told me to take the beanie off. She called it the harmonica. “Take it off, you idiot,” she said.

“Take what off,” I said.

“That fucking harmonica,” she said.

“Why,” I said, “Is this Spain?”

Dana didn’t know what I was talking about because she’s not in World Studies. She’s in all these college-track classes. But they don’t teach her shit.