Sam Lipsyte - The Subject Steve

"Call me Wen," he said.

"The Wanderer Wendell," I said.

"Call me Wen," said the Wanderer.

"Wen," I said.

"You need to get well," he said. "In all ways. I'd like to escort you now to the Alternative Outreach Wing. But it's really inreach, really. I want to say that up front. Any questions?"

"Yes," I said. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Aren't you?"

"No, I mean they talk about you. Please note."

"You liked that," said Wen.

"Yeah."

"Mythology. Schoolyard stuff. Remember the kid who stuck his hand out the bus window?"

"Got lopped off."

"Did it?" said Wen.

He held up his hand at a squid-like tilt.

"It's right here," he said. "The motion it's making means come with me."

I followed him down some dingy corridors. We passed more needlepoint, doors ajar to sun-soaked rooms.

"Right up here," said Wen. He slapped his palm on a button on the wall. The button was palm-sized. A pair of glass doors parted.

"By the way, we don't use painkillers in this wing."

"What do you use?"

"For what?"

Wen took me to a room like my room in the other wing, but no needlepoint.

He said to get some rest. We'd begin that afternoon.

"Begin what?"

"That's your decision," said Wen.

"What do you suggest?"

"Well, you're dying. Maybe we should deal with that first."

"I'm not dying," I said.

"Au contraire, amigo," said Wen.

He flipped the PREXIS book onto my bed. The chrome type on his copy had a slightly different tint, a blurb emblazoned across the top-" 'Read it before your line dies out!'-Dr. Lauren Lovinger."

"Peruse at your leisure," said Wen.

I got into bed and started to leaf through the preface.

Not surprisingly, it was only after the results of the most routine of checkups for the most routine of men were faxed to us with some peculiar queries, that the hunt for PREXIS really began. . The subject had an admittedly rough time adjusting to the truth of his condition. . countless blind alleys and false starts later the race was on!. . Maybe I wasn't a circus caliber juggler, but I was good enough to dream. . Like the proverbial horse of proverb, you can lead a man to the laboratory, but you can't make him fully confront the implications of the data. . Nobody, of course, with our current technological capabilities, can really know what death feels like. .

I drifted off hearing Heinrich's voice.

"Falanga," it said. "Oh, dear Christ, sing it, Falanga!"

Lem Burke was at the window when I woke. He was squeezing whiteheads through his chin fuzz, putting the pus up to sunlight, making odd snorts I took for empirical glee.

"Breakthrough?" I said.

Lem flicked his pore goo at the window pane.

"Morning."

"Never thought I'd see you again," I said.

"How much did you think about it?"

"Are you here with your mother?"

"Figured she'd give Wendell a whirl," he said. "She's a guru addict, I guess."

"We all need love," I said.

"Bullshit," said Lem. "We all need bullshit."

I did have pity for the kid. Born in a bubble of babble, shuttled from one freak retreat to the next. So knowing, but what did he know? Estelle once claimed to have home-schooled him. I think that meant she gave him a couple of coloring books, left him alone to talk to himself.

"I'm supposed to take you to group."

Lem led me down to an airy dayroom. People in pajamas sat in slat-backed chairs. Wen was there, wearing a sweater with tiny felt animals sewn on it.

"My name is Wen," he said, "and I'm feeling what I'm feeling today."

I took a seat, looked around at all this pain, puff-eyed, in flame-retardant cotton.

There's an air hockey table in the dayroom, and when I'm not too busy feeling what I'm feeling, I'm taking Lem in three-out-of-fives for the day-old doughnuts Nurse Donald sneaks us from the cafeteria. Cudahy and I used to play on a table just like this one in his father's basement, until the Thornfield boys took a clawhammer to it. The world is full of sore losers. Some go on to win with great bitterness, too. Me, I've just always loved the sound of these babies warming up, all that air hockey air jetting up through holes.

Lem's nom de puck is The Wrist. I'm Rip Van Winkie, maybe on account of the new white shoots in my hair. Today there was a coconut flake on the line, but the game was called due to an unscheduled shame rap. Out came the chairs of sharing. The pajama zombies filed in.

"I'm feeling less than today," Wen said, picked at the fuzzy rhino on his sleeve. "My shame monster has woken from deep slumber."

A hard, thin pain slung through me as he spoke.

"Steve," said Wen. "Are you okay? You're shaking over there."

"I'm fine, Wen," I said.

"We all know what that means," said the woman beside me. Estelle Burke. Scorned ballerina. She tore at her thumb with her teeth.

"It doesn't mean anything," I said. "Do we have to do this now?"

"Wen's shame monster reared up," said Estelle. "You can't just pick and choose when that's going to happen."

"Thank you, Estelle," said Wen.

"Yes, thank you," I said, "for the blowjob Wen is about to receive."

"Whoa!" said Estelle. "I mean, from where?"

She spit some cuticle on my knee.

"It's okay," said Wen.

"Fuck okay," said Estelle. "I'm feeling very flanked."

"I understand the flanked feeling," said Wen. "And I understand Steve's rage. Though I can't condone it."

"I don't feel so good," I said.

"In what sense?" said Wen.

I had a fairly heady answer planned before I pitched off the chair.

"Steve?" said Wen.

"My name's not Steve," I said from the floor.

"What is it then?" said Lem.

"John Q. Fuckeroo."

"Is that Welsh?" said Estelle. "My first husband was Welsh."

"I'm the stewman," I said.

Everyone stared.

Wen walked me back to my door.

"You've got to stop collapsing," he said. "It's impeding your progress."

I found Lem down near the bed sifting through some dust balls.

"What's going on?" I said.

"Nothing," said Lem. "I dropped some Percodan."

"Where'd you get Percodan?"

"Your nurse buddy, Donald. Decent caring Donald."

"I'm going home, Lem," I said. "I'm going home to live or die but I'm going home."

"Probably die," said Lem.

"You're coming with me."

"I can't," said Lem. "I'm a country boy."

"You're a freak, Lem. A botched psychosocial experiment."

"I'm not that bad. I get the jokes on TV."

"We have to stick together now."

"I have to find the percs I dropped."

"You didn't drop them. No one ever drops anything."

"What's these, then?" said Lem.

We popped the pills, broke out some Bavarian creams. We rolled the TV in from the TV lounge.

"I've seen this," I said.

"Don't ruin it," said Lem.

Sandhogs ate their sandwiches and died by the score. The host stood inside the tiled tube, sobbed.

"The men were mealed," he said. "Until a granular quality obtained."

We took a bus down to the city with the motor oil money. We got a good movie on the bus. It was about airplanes falling out of the sky. Airplanes fell, boats sank, what could you do but get nervous? Buses swerved into ditches, mostly, or they tumbled from mountaintops in mountainous countries and only the chickens lived. But the chickens, they'd get buried in an avalanche. The avalanche would kick off a flood. Rivers would swell, whole villages would be wiped out. It was horrible, horrible. These goddamn countries were exporting horror and they had to be stopped. Maybe invaded, even.

I mentioned my concern to Lem.

"You're out of your fucking mind," he said. "It's the PREXIS. It's snacking on your faculty for reason."

"I'm in fine fettle," I said.

But I'd been feeling the shoots and shudders again. The organ-flutter, the vein ache. Lem had his perc stash in his fanny pack. I partook, feared more chicken visions.