Sam Lipsyte: The Subject Steve

"What?"

"I can almost smell it," said Cudahy. "Garlic potatoes. Yum. Another tough day at the office, and now Fran's unwinding with a little Chablis, calling her sister, the perennial grad student. 'So, what's up, sis?' 'Not much, how's by you, Fran?' 'Oh, the usual, bringing ruin down on the poor slobs of the republic.' Am I right? Fucking Fran."

"Who?" I said. "Grad student?"

" 'Look, sis,' " Cudahy went on, doing voices now, twitching up his mouth, "'you've got to find something and stick with it. The rest of us Kincaids, we work.' 'Up yours, Fran, everything's so easy for you, you don't get my deal at all.' 'Mom was right about you, sis. You're not as smart or as pretty as you think you are, but not dumb and ugly enough to take care of yourself. It's sad, really.' 'At least I didn't marry what's-his-name.' 'At least I didn't fuck my high school trivia team coach.' 'Finger-fucked.' 'Titter titter. Mmm.' 'What are you cooking, Fran?' 'Garlic potatoes.' "

"Cudahy," I said. "Hey."

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know. It just wells up in me sometimes."

It was the last thing I'd ever hear him say. I nodded off while the androids praised Caesar in transistorized Elizabethan, woke to a bad stench. Cudahy's beautiful heart must have blown on a sprint to the john. His pants were at his ankles. I'd never noticed how hairy and slender his ankles were. All that grunt and shove of him rising up from those tender stalks. A new roll of toilet paper lay near his hand. I turned Cudahy over, saw a bubble on his lips. The bubble probably meant he was still breathing. Somebody said that, later. I sat there with his bright enormous head in my lap.

"What words could even begin to capture the indomitable spirit of our beloved Cudahy?"

I'd rented out a so-called intimately priced room in the basement of Ferguson's Funerary. Now I stood beside a wreathed easel festooned with snapshots slipped from a binder I'd found under Cudahy's bed. Shot-putters, mostly, a few light-damaged Latvian brides.

"He was a huge man with a huge heart," I continued. "He had no coverage."

I looked out to Fiona, my only fellow mourner, apart from Ferguson. Somebody else loomed up in the shadows behind her, a tight bloat of a man in aviator shades. He must have sneaked in while I'd been fussing with the easel. His shirt looked damp from the sink, his white-yellow hair tucked beneath a vintage derby. A great berry-colored stain fell down his cheek. Fiona's new beau? A far-flung colleague of Cudahy? Some wet brain weeping at the wrong bier? Ferguson had hinted he could hire grievers. Maybe this freak was on the house.

"Welcome," I said. "Thank you for coming."

The stranger gave a nod of grim salute and I resumed my address, but as I started talking I got the odd sense he was taunting me somehow. His eyebrows pogo'd up past his sunglass rims. He did some herky business with his elbows. Tremors, I figured, tried to ignore it, prattled on for a while about the birches and the beet fields and the moth cocoons. Most of it went dead in my mouth. This wasn't any kind of eulogy, more like a pitch, a campaign presentation. Sell the suits on how you mean to sell the legacy. Keep it punchy. Avoid the coy. I wished I had some graphics with me, visual backup, some fresh data, too. What was the mourning-Cudahy demo, anyway? His folks were dead and his family scattered. I sputtered onward into Cudahy minutiae-shoe size, culinary proclivities-groped for a grace note, a tag.

"So long, Cud," I said.

I signaled Ferguson, a tiny man with a sun-peeled nose. Ferguson made for the urn, a Florentine, he'd called it earlier, flourishing his line of them, but the stranger beat him to it, lifted the lid, peered in.

"What the hell are you doing?" I said.

"Not really what you'd call ashes. There's bone chunks in there."

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," I said.

"When, man?"

"When what?"

"When are you going to ask me to leave?"

"Now," I said. "Leave."

The stranger made a gentle scooping noise in his throat, prelude to a loogie.

"Don't," I said.

"Lovely service," he said. "Very moving."

"You're in deep shit, son," said Ferguson. "I do cop funerals."

"You don't scare me because you're so midgety," said the stranger. "Are you aware of how midgety you are?"

"Please," said Fiona. "Please leave."

The stranger regarded Fiona with not a little tenderness. He tipped his sunglasses down to maybe do something cunning with his eyes. The stain on his cheek had a glittery quality.

"I'm Dietz."

"Fiona," said my daughter.

"Tell your father over there I have a message for him. The only cure is the disease."

"All right," I said. "That's it. Get out of here. Go."

"Relax," said Dietz.

"I'll relax when I'm dead," I said.

"That's original. Just remember what I said."

"What did you say?"

"Goddamn," said Dietz, and all his swagger seemed to drain from him at once.

He smacked at his head with the heel of his palm.

"You don't remember what you just said."

"I told them I wasn't ready for the people world."

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"The fucking clusterfuck is what I'm fucking talking about."

Dietz froze for a moment, then broke into a dead run out of the room. Ferguson locked the door behind him.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, "I thought he was a friend of the deceased."

"It's okay."

"If I'd known he was going to pull a stunt like that I would have booked him a seat on the pain train."

"You?"

"I used to be a jockey," said Ferguson. "It's all just in the knees. You should see what I can do to a coconut."

"Do you need money?" Fiona asked me on the cab ride home. "How much was the cup?"

"It's called an urn," I said. "Who was that guy?"

"Forget him," said Fiona. "Probably busted out of some psych ward. Where'd you get the cake for the urn?"

"Cake? You sound like a venture capitalist with a coke habit."

"I was dating one for a while. During the boom."

"I don't want to hear about it."

"Of course you don't. Look, it's not my fault I had an early puberty. I didn't put the hormones in the milk supply."

"Can't I just not hear about it?"

"Here you are not hearing about it. Happy?"

"Within parameters," I said.

"So?"

"Cudahy had some cake on him. I used most of it for the cup."

"I can borrow from Mom."

"I wouldn't hear of it."

"William's loaded."

"William fulfills."

"I'm serious."

"I'm sure you are. Why don't I just move in with them?"

"I'll ask."

"I'm kidding."

"I'm not. Daddy, you're very sick. You need people around."

"What about you? I thought you were going to take care of me."

"I'm in a weird transitional place, right now. I don't think my presence would be good for either one of us. I need space to work it all through."

"Work what through?"

"My hatred for you."

"You hate me?"

"I didn't say that," said my daughter, diddled her pock.

I sat up the night with Cudahy's vodka, his videotapes. Shoot-outs, showdowns, duels in the sun. Frontier dust and destiny. No transitional spaces or places. Nothing to work through. Draw. Slap leather. Fill your hand. Cudahy believed in that kind of clarity.

Never could myself.

When Fiona was born I worried about the bills, my paternal deficiencies, my potential usurpation in the eyeshine of my wife.

"You are blessed," said Cudahy.

When I made team leader I grew furtive, paranoid, teased out every encounter for portents of sedition.

"Relax," said Cudahy, "you're a winner."

When Maryse left me, Cudahy drank to her riddance. Then he drank a shitload more and confessed to having loved her and even licking her ear one Thanksgiving while she tested the yams with a fork.