Sam Lipsyte - The Subject Steve

"Ad lib," said Trubate.

"That's right."

"Listen," said Trubate, "don't wait for the laugh track. Makes you look like an amateur."

"I am an amateur."

"Point taken. Just don't ruin my show."

"Or what?"

"I'm a sick man," said Trubate. "And I don't have the luxury of dying, like you do. I have to live with my sickness. I have to take it out on other people. Or the people other people care about."

"Is that a threat?"

"Vague. Veiled."

He stuck an old light meter under my chin. The dial didn't move, looked busted, and Trubate didn't check it anyway.

"Let's take it from the dead dad speech," he said.

Heinrich coughed, pulled a clementine from a sack that hung on his bedpost, started to peel it down.

"You know," he said, "I watched my old man die. Kind of like this. He gathered us all to him. He said he had something to show us. When we were all there in the room he lifted up his blanket, pointed down to his bedpan. To what was in the bedpan. 'There it is,' he said. 'I wish I could leave you more.' He was dead by dusk."

"I don't believe that story," I said.

"Jeez, you want a gazelle?"

He had his tongue out. It was hard to tell if he was razzing me, or just gagging, dry.

"Can I get you some water?"

His eyelids were caked with paste. Beige fluid frothed at the hems of his mouth. He shuddered like some piece of overheating machinery.

"Hey," called Trubate from the darkness, "Code Blue Man!"

The Philosopher leaped through the door in his Lycra hood, a heel of French bread in his hand. The recorded applause was a concert-hall roar, maybe something bootlegged from a diva's farewell. The Philosopher did some bug-eyed business to the camera, a vampy strut to the bed. He sopped up Heinrich's froth with his baguette.

"Won't be long now," he said. "Vitals are locking down. Big choo-choo's comin' round the bend. All aboard!"

"This is a man here," I said. "A man dying. Have some respect."

Heinrich made more noises. Froth fluttered up.

"Meat, meat, meat," said the Philosopher. "You, too, pal."

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

"That's how you're supposed to feel in the final stages of PREXIS. Haven't you heard the news? How I discovered virulent Goldfarb clusters within the original PREXIS protein model?"

"PREXIS schmexis," I said.

Laughter boomed out of the walls.

The Philosopher fell on me. We pitched down to concrete. I kicked, caught him with my knee, flew at him with both fists, windmilling. Rain of blows. Steady rain of blows. My knuckle came up with a piece of blue-stained tooth.

Now Heinrich started to stir, thrash, blow froth, a sea beast sounding. I went to him, took his hand.

"Herodotus," he whispered, "writes of an army that went away to war for twenty-eight years. When they returned home they found themselves locked out of their city. Their wives, you see, had married their slaves. A new generation had grown up and seized power. The last thing these slave sons wanted was the masters of their fathers back in town. Day after day the old army stormed the city. Day after day the slave sons drove them back. At last one of the wizened old generals said, 'If we keep attacking them with swords and spears they will consider themselves our equals and they will keep beating us back. We must go to them with whips.' And so they did. And when the slave sons saw the masters of their fathers come to the city walls with whips, they fled."

Heinrich's hand drooped down along the bed skirt. I thought it a sign, some finality of musculature, a swoop death-ward. But he was just strumming the fabric down there with his thumb. Boredom, itch, even now.

"I genuinely prefer tangerines," he said, turned to the wall dunes, died.

"Cut!" called Trubate from the darkness. "That was dynamite."

Someone scurried up to cover Heinrich with a sheet. The Philosopher was kneeling on the floor, feeling around for his teeth.

"Goldfarb what?" I said to him.

"Cluthterth," he said through his ruined mouth.

"I believe you."

"Fuf nath ta beleef?"

The Digger and I dug the hole at daybreak. We dug it near the rockpile behind the hangar. The clouds were the color of our shovel blades. The Digger looked to be suffering under his ski mask.

"Why don't you take that thing off?" I said.

He stared at me through slits in the wool.

The rest of them stood in a ring around us. Trubate, Desmond, Warren, Dietz, all the Realmers, dozens of them, most dozing in the heat. The Philosopher sat a little ways off, his mouth stuffed with gauze.

They'd carried Heinrich out on a battered boogie board, shrouded him in counterpane. A pair of mint-condition quarter pieces commemorating the statehood of New Jersey rested on his eyelids.

"Coins of a darker realm," said Desmond.

They slid Heinrich into the hole.

"That's it?" said Renee.

"What else is there?" said Trubate.

"When my dog died," said Warren, "we buried him just like this. And we all threw something in that reminded us of him. Dog toys, dog biscuits, essays in which I'd mentioned my dog."

"That's so beautiful," said the Rad Balm girl.

"Oh, is it?" said Renee. "Why don't we just throw you in."

"Go ahead," said the Rad Balm girl. "See if you can find another technologist who'll work for stock options these days."

"Cunt," said Renee.

"Silly cunt," called one of the New Zealanders.

I started to walk away.

"Where are you going, Steve?" said Trubate.

"I'm leaving."

"You can't leave. Don't you get that? Damn, you of all people."

I walked off in the direction I'd come with Dietz. Somewhere up ahead was the abandoned campsite. Past that was the runway. I could wait for the plane. Maybe the plane was due back. Doubtful, but possible. What wasn't possible?

I'd gone in for a checkup.

I could hear Trubate shouting down his people behind me. I kept walking, walking through the pain, walking it off, moving through my moist crackle and burst. I pictured each step shucking those Goldfarb clusters loose, little protein deathsquads bouncing along in miniature humvees through the bleak ravines of me. They had names like Reynoldo, Spider, Wideband, wore paramilitary underwear manufactured in Rhode Island. Ever since the Philosopher had told me about the clusters I'd been feeling them on the move. Psychosomatic? Later, towards the end, I asked him.

"Psychosomatic like a heart attack," he said.

Now Dietz caught up with me.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"What do you mean?"

"He'll shoot you."

"Paranoid hippie fuck," I said.

I heard the crack, the whistle, felt the punch in my spine.

Why does Steve deny his name is Steve?

He hated his name. There was nothing to his name. There was taunt built into it because of its nothingness. It sounded like something you wiped off your shirt. Everyone was supposed to be special but how could you be special if your name was tantamount to lint? He stayed in his room and read books. He stayed in his room and read the beginnings of books, until there was mention of a breast heaving, or a groin tightening. Then he'd put the book aside for a few minutes. He could do it over and over again, for hours. He'd skip school to do it.

He knew what was special.

His mother said he was too shy. His only friend was Cudahy. They used to burn trees. Sometimes he'd sit by himself in his father's toolshed, study the lawn mower blade in his lap. He'd run his thumb over the rust, up to the toothy crack near the tip. Something might scuttle in the rake bin behind him. Field mice, his father called them. Field mice ran free in the fields. They had freedoms we couldn't dream.

They had no names.

What he'd seen his father do with Cudahy's father, there was a name for that. That wasn't anything, though. Kids did stuff like that all the time. It was weird, was all, like seeing your old man on a moped.