Sam Lipsyte - The Subject Steve

"Sounds like kitchen duty."

"Hardly."

"I guess I'll have to ask Bobby about that."

"Mister Fucking Melodrama. You love this stuff, don't you? You loved it when those quacks told you you were dying and you love thinking I have some awful plan for you. And here I was banking on the idea that your cowardice was just a surface ploy. You really are addicted to your existence, aren't you? You'd be better off strung out on smack."

"I just came to say goodbye."

"Goodbye."

"And thank you."

"For what?"

"I don't know."

"There's going to be a reckoning tonight. Old Gold will face his demon. I think you should stick around. Maybe you'll change your mind about all of this. If you don't, wait outside your cabin. Naperton's making a cheese run tonight. He'll give you a ride."

"I'll be there."

"It's too bad," said Heinrich.

"What's that?"

"I was hoping you'd be my entree into a whole new market."

"I'll recommend you at the racquet club."

I did the day. I did the rest of the day. I went to the kitchen for my bubble dance. I did big hellos.

"What are you grinning about?" said Parish.

"These all the dishes?" I said. "Bring it on! Greasy platters, gunked spoons, the dried ketchup of martyrs! Bring the shit on, Parish! I am the cleanser."

"Who gave you permission for giddiness, you little shit? Listen, I'm in a funk. I'm in no mood."

"I'm all moods," I said. "In and out of them."

"I'm the boss of you," said Parish. "I set the mood."

We squared off. I got up on boxer's toes, popped Parish in the tit. He dropped me with a whisk handle to the mouth. I got up, got quiet, rubbed my teeth.

"Oh, don't be sulky," said Parish. "I think you're charming. I'm just having a day. Too many peepers on the potatoes. I don't like to be so seen by tubers. I'm sorry. You're the cleanser, okay?"

"I'm the cleanser," I said.

"That's my boy. Now don't forget to punch out."

My rye'd gone green.

I went back to the cabin to check on Trubate. The room was dark and stank of balm. He was sitting up, the drip ripped from his arm. He stared up at the rafter beam.

"Bobby?" I said.

"Bobby died in a fire," he said.

I walked out to the trance pasture, saw Lem Burke sitting in the punk weeds, smoking a joint, gerrymandering an ant colony with a stick.

"Got some of those in my cabin," I said.

"What?"

"Ants."

"What kind of ants?"

"I don't know. Black ants."

"These are red ants."

"Communists."

"I wouldn't say that," said Lem. "They just do what seems right."

Lem whipped the stick. It careened off my knee.

"Sorry," he said.

The weeds were high. I could only make out the top of the kid's head. He was so long and scrawny, weedlike himself. It seemed like he'd always been here, sitting, dreaming, playing Hitler with dirt life.

"Hear about Old Gold?" I said.

"Poor fucker," said Lem.

"You don't like it here, do you?"

Lem said nothing.

"How's your continuum awareness coming?"

"Why do you ask so many questions?" said Lem. "What are you trying to hide?"

"Sometimes people ask questions just to find out things."

"My continuum awareness is coming along fine," said Lem. "The past present and future are entirely saturated with one thought, one image, one sensation. My mom knew what she was doing, tell you that."

Smoke was rolling off the ridge. Both of us sniffed at the sky. Wolves, I thought. Rabbits, I revised.

"That man Wendell who had my cabin," I said. "What happened to him?"

"He died."

"Heinrich says he hanged himself."

"You know you splooge in your pants when you do that?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Guess everyone knows. I'm finding that the older I get, it's not that I learn new things, it's more like I find out how much of what I know is common knowledge."

"That's a good way of putting it."

"Don't condescend."

"I'm not."

"Don't deny your actions."

Lem was truly a child of this place.

"Did Wendell leave a note? An explanation?"

"Yeah. There was a note. It said, Please note."

"Please note?"

"Please note."

"Damn," I said.

"That's what I said. Want some of this?"

"Yes," I said.

I hardly noticed Lem leave. I hardly noticed anything except the helium panic of the pot, the warp of the world, the fissuring. I decided to give the shit-free zone one more shot. No more boat. No more no-more-boat. I thought about nothing. I zeroed in on nothingness. Nothingness rose out of the ether to greet me, to embrace. I heard music now, horns, a brassy vamp. Flashpots, fireworks. The nothingness dancers chorus-kicked through smoke.

"Please note! Please note!" they sang. Kick-turn. Kick-turn. Balcony gels, leotards, hip jut. This was not for nothing, I thought. Then the weed wore off. The garter belts fell from the trees. The sun was going down.

I did not hate twilight.

I went to fetch Renee.

I rolled her out to the milk barn to see the calf twins born last week. Romulus and Rimjob, Old Gold had named them. They were dark and frisky in the moonlit pen, big sweet pups. They nuzzled our knees at the rail. Renee put her hand out and one of them took it with a soft sucking sound up to the wrist.

"Oh, my God," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said, "about those things I said the other night."

"You have to try this," said Renee.

"I need to tell you something," I said.

"You really have to try this."

I stuck a loose fist out for the other calf. It made a rough warm womb of its mouth for me.

"Jesus," I said. "That really is something."

"Isn't it? No wonder cows are sacred in Japan."

"I don't think it's Japan," I said.

"I hate you," said Renee. "Let's have a hate fuck."

"Over there, then," I said, "behind the hayrick."

"That's called a hayrick?" said Renee.

"Sure," I said.

"Sounds like Heinrich," said Renee.

"Don't say that," I said.

There were no dessert speeches that night. We bused our plates and marched out of the dining hall. Portable lights lit the lawn outside, night-game bright. There was a chop in the air and the lamp casings hummed. Somewhere behind us an engine gunned. The glow of brake lights parted us.

Naperton slid down from the van, popped the hatch, reached in to struggle with some kind of ungainly parcel. The thing seemed to twitch in its plummet and when it hit the lawn we saw what it was-a man. He wore a blindfold, handcuffs of clear plastic. Blood had dried on his shaven head. Naperton pulled the blindfold off. The man just stood there and blinked for a while. The lights were probably putting a wildness in his eyes but he looked a tad touched anyway, the type who spends his childhood plucking butterflies apart, or Scotch-taping patriotic ordnance to gerbils, only to make his way up the living chain in a great pageant of abuse.

But who am I to talk, mastermind of the Moth-O-Caust?

He had tattoos. A steely anchor on his sternum tipped into a fat black heart. A target spiraled out from the top of his skull. The bull's-eye read "C.B." There was a logo on his shoulder that looked familiar. I nearly retched when I read the legend beneath it: Tough Cookies-Deal or Die .

Now we all watched as Clellon Beach rolled to his knees and made to somehow stand.

Naperton kicked him in the hip.

"Fuck you," said Beach.

"Fuck me?" said Naperton. "I'm old enough to be your grandfather. You wouldn't want to fuck me."

Naperton kicked him in the mouth. Tooth bits stuck to Beach's lip.

"That all you got?" he said.

"For now," said Naperton. "Try our sales representative tomorrow. Unless you'd be interested in this."

Naperton kicked him in the stomach. Beach puked through his teeth.