Sam Lipsyte - The Subject Steve

"What brings any of us?" he said.

"I'm here for a cure."

"DaShawn's here for that fucking egg on his neck."

"Grave's disease?" I said.

"Who doesn't have that?" said Bobby Trubate.

"We're working on my thyroid," said DaShawn. "Among other things."

"Good luck, pal," said Trubate.

"Cease transmission of negative ionic force, please," said DaShawn.

"He says that sometimes," said Trubate.

"I'm saying it now," said DaShawn, and stood, made for the bus cart with his plate.

"Why be such a pussy?" Trubate called after him. "You're already ugly and fucking insane. Why add to your problems?"

"You have such a way with people," I said to Trubate.

"I'm a truth-teller. That's how I ended up here."

"Just that?"

"Well, the speedballs, too. Don't you read the trades?"

"Not your trades."

"Right, I forgot. You're pretending I'm not a celebrity. Well, doesn't matter. I've been in and out of lots of joints. My problem is the enormity of my talent. My manager suggested this place. Saw an ad somewhere. I haven't heard from him since. Good riddance, though. I'm into deep meaning now. Like I'd ever bother to do television again. Unless it was quality television."

Someone was tapping a water glass. I thought of all the flatware and silverware out here tonight I'd be on intimate terms with in the morning. Parish had been full of huzzahs for my hose work, said I possessed an intuitive form of the bubble dancer ethos: let no dirty or dirty-seeming thing pass through. Now the tapping got louder and the room hushed down. Heinrich rose before the hearth.

"People of recovery and redemption," he said, "I hope I speak for all of us when I say to our brother Parish in the kitchen, with regard to our fare tonight, well done, well done! But now we must move on to graver concerns, namely the execution of our sentence upon young Lem Burke for crimes against the community and egregious violations of the Tenets . Lemuel, if you will."

The boy stood.

"Please," he said softly. "Please, don't."

Estelle Burke howled from the doorway. Old Gold hooked her under the arms, gagged her while she kicked.

"Please," said Lem. "I promise I won't do it again."

"Won't do what again?"

"Those things."

"I'm afraid," said Heinrich, "that you have yet to exhibit any comprehension of your transgressions. Harness!"

It looked something like a rolling wardrobe rack. Naperton wheeled it into the room.

Lem was weeping now.

"Please, please don't."

"Disrobe!" said Heinrich.

Lem was a skinny kid, all rib cage. He palmed his crotch, looked out at his mother, still cinched in Old Gold's arms.

"Up!" said Heinrich.

They lifted the boy by the elbows, slid his feet into rawhide straps, tied his wrists down near the wheels. Lem swung there for a bit and Heinrich stooped to the floor, ran his fingers in the boy's hair.

"People," said Heinrich, "it is only through a symbolic reenactment of our deepest secret, our darkest desire, our most monumental shame, that we can ever hope to transcend our own limitude. Now look at this kid. Fucking incorrigible. Breaks all the rules. Steals food from the kitchen. Sneaks into town without permission. Brings back controlled goodies with which to obviate himself in the trance pasture. Well, boys will be boys. But boys will also someday be men. Childish men. Narcissistic sheep. In young Lem's case, however, we have an opportunity to avoid all that. He was just a small child when his mother brought him here, and let me tell you, our beloved Estelle was in pretty sad shape. A tumor with shoes, you want to know the truth. But she found the strength to heal herself, my friends. Her body saved, she sought then to be truly nondenominationally redeemed. Young Lem, it was decided, would be raised here among us. But though he began in purity the boy has become much corrupted over time. Good as dead, really. What are we to do? How do we effect some sort of reversal? We must try, at any rate. He belongs to all of us, in a way, but he still belongs to his mother most of all. And it is she who must save him now."

"No!" said Lem.

"Saw!" said Heinrich.

Naperton and another man slipped the hideous thing off its hooks, slid it down into the crack of the boy.

"Bad wiper," Naperton mouthed to the crowd.

"Now," said Heinrich, "when I say symbolic I don't mean that something very real isn't going to happen in a moment. Here's the deal: we're going to saw this little shitbird right the fuck in half unless his mommy sucks him off to big jiz. Big jiz! Them's the rules. I think fifteen minutes is fair. I mean, she's a mighty handsome woman. So, what do you all think? Pretty nifty, right? Lem, I figure you get through this, what in the whole wide fucking world is there left to fear? Rest easy, kid, in a little while you'll either be dead or a god. I only wish someone had done this for me. Estelle, my sweet, come on down!"

Old Gold wrestled the woman towards her son. Benches scraped the floor and tipped. Brethren scurried, parted.

I stood, shook Trubate's hand off my arm.

"This is fucking crazy!" I shouted. "Stop this now! Take him down!"

"Or what?"

"I'll call the police. They might be interested in your idea of dinner theater."

"Steve," said Heinrich, "darling Steve, that there is the threat of a victim, not a hero. A phone call? You're going to make a phone call? Man, are you neck deep in the big dark darkety dark."

"Take him down now," I said.

I saw heavy movement in my periphery. Heinrich bore down on me with glittery eyes.

"Hey," he said. "It's just a hummer."

Heinrich said, "Start anywhere."

Heinrich said, "Let memory scamper to the glades of the now."

It's hard to believe people buy this brand of tripe. But then you picture the very same man pressing a SIG Sauer barrel to the brow of a sleeping Indian, a trussed nun.

You let it slide.

Heinrich gave me a ballpoint pen, a notebook with a Velcro flap. The Velcro, he said, was so I'd feel safe.

"Like a seat belt?" I said.

It was a good pop, spleen region. Put me on my knees.

"Like a seat belt," he said. "That's humorous."

It's hard to know what's humorous anymore.

I started the first notebook soon after my head wound healed, the one I received the night Estelle Burke publicly pleasured her son. Sorry to say I missed that particular spectacle. It was Parish, I later discovered, who did me my concussive honors, employing what he termed the "old cast-iron hat."

I've been writing, or itemizing, as they call it, ever since.

Heinrich says I'd better get it all down. He believes I'm really dying. Sees it in my eyes, he says. Dimness and some flickering. It's nothing any doctor could detect.

"What if I'm not dying?" I say.

"God forbid," he says.

"Itemize, itemize," he says.

I haven't written anything like this in years. The copy I confected for a living was never more than a line or two, designed to capture the allure of the new, to shimmer with efficient leisure and sumptuous toil, the ongoing orgasm of the information lifestyle: "Software with a Soft Touch," I wrote, or "Reality for Those Who Dream," or, simply, "How Did You Like Tomorrow?"

You've probably seen my work on billboards, on takeout coffee cups, between perfumed pullouts in those surveys of venality otherwise known as slicks. Somebody actually wrote this crap, you said to yourself.

You were absolutely right.

I was a droplet in the steady rain of crap.

I had, I guess, like my father before me, a naif's faith in words. When I was twelve, thirteen, I won the fire safety essay contest for a longish tract, "The Oil-Soaked Rags of Death." Captain Thornfield, he of the silvery sidewhiskers and exquisitely braided dress cap, lauded my genius to an assembly of my peers.