Sam Lipsyte: The Subject Steve

Many thanks to Gerry Howard for his wisdom and skill and to Ira Silverberg for his faith and diligence. Thanks to my family and friends and friends of the family. Thanks to Gordon Lish. Thanks to the Supreme Council of the Squanderers-Alex Abramovich, John Barr, Lucas Hendrich, Tom Moore-and to Marc Maron, co-drafter of the Astoria Statement.

The author also wishes to thank the subject.

Bastards said they had some good news and some bad news.

"Stop," I said. "I've heard this joke before."

"What joke," said one of them, the Mechanic.

"He means that joke," said the other, the Philosopher.

"That bit about the doctors. He thinks we're doctors."

"Aren't you?" I said.

They had white coats, their own wing.

"This ain't no joke, Jack," said the Mechanic. My name's not Jack.

My name's not Steve, either, but we'll get to that. "We have some good news and some bad news."

I can't remember what the good news was.

The bad news was bad. I was dying of something nobody had ever died of before. I was dying of something absolutely, fantastically new. Strangely enough, I was in fine fettle. My heart was strong and my lungs were clean. My vitals were vital. Nothing was enveloping me or eating away at me or brandishing itself towards some violence in my brain. There weren't any blocks or clots or seeps or leaks. My levels were good. My counts were good. All my numbers said my number wasn't up.

Fine fettle for a dead man, they said. Days, they said, months, maybe a year, maybe more than a year. It was difficult to calculate. Nobody had ever died of this before. By their calculations there could be no calculations.

"You'll have to live like the rest of us," the Philosopher told me. "Just less so."

"You mean more so," I said.

"No time for semantics," said the Mechanic. "You'd best get ready."

I readied myself for the period in which I'd have to get ready. I waited for the time during which I'd have to wait. I tied up loose ends, tidied up accounts, put my papers in order, called old friends. I didn't really have any papers.

I did have friends.

I had Cudahy.

I called Cudahy.

"I'm coming to see you," said Cudahy.

"Come soon," I said.

I called my ex-wife, nothing if not a loose end, or at least a bit of untidiness, what with all we had left unaccounted for.

"I knew you'd call," said Maryse. "I had a dream about you last week. You were walking through the pet food aisle at the supermarket and a kind of viscid bile was streaming down your chin."

"It wasn't a dream," I said. "I'm dying."

"I know, baby. I'm dying, too. But we've tried so many times already. We just have to learn to live with things the way things are. Things are not so bad. Truth be told, I'm not unfulfilled by William."

"William's a very good fellow," I said.

"He's not you," said my ex-wife, "but then again, you're not him."

William had once been my hero. Then he whisked away my wife. Now he was a very good fellow, a fucker, a thief. He deserved to die of whatever everybody had ever died of before, but with more agony, a heavier soiling of sheets.

"You may not hear from me again," I said.

"That's probably a wise choice," said Maryse.

"I don't think it's a choice," I said. "I'm really dying."

"Don't threaten me," said Maryse.

I quit my job, jammed a letter under my supervisor's door. He waved me in anyway. It appeared I had to interview for the right to quit.

"What kind of contribution do you feel you've made to the agency?" said my supervisor.

"I was quiet in my cube," I said. "I never fastened personal items with tape to the wall. I leered at female coworkers in the most unobtrusive manner possible. My work, albeit inane, jibed with the greater inanities required of us to maintain the fictions of our industry. I never stinted on pastries for my team."

"What makes you think you're qualified to relinquish your present position?"

"All of the above," I said. "Plus the fact that I'm dying."

"Dying of what?" said my supervisor.

"It's new," I said.

Home, I threw away my watches, my clocks, my clock-radios. I kept my Jews of Jazz calendar up on the kitchen door. The knowledge of days was crucial, I decided, the marking of hours a mistake. I spread old photographs out on the coffee table, Scotch-taped a nice lifetime of say-cheese to the walls. Tacky, maybe, a mural like this, but what's tacky to the terminal? I studied the faces of all those friends and family and friends of the family. There they posed, on throw rugs, on sofas, in fields. Sitting or standing. Alone, in groups, in tandems, foregrounding fountains, friezes, pagodas, squares. Some of them were still living, others still dead. They had lived known lives, died, well, understandably. What I was dying of, I mused, nobody anywhere had a picture of somebody dead from it.

I mused this for a damn long while.

I mused this for almost a day.

I called up my daughter at the School for Disaffected Daughters. My ex-wife and I had agreed it was the best place for our Fiona to flourish and grow. We'd married out of school, Maryse and I, maybe just to be rebellious, fallen into factionhood the way rebels at rest will do. The worse things got, the more we cooed our devotion. Maybe our devotion was a blister we were waiting for the proper time to pop. I guess we wanted to see the pus.

"Fiona," I said, "I have some news."

"Don't tell me," she said.

"I have to tell you."

"Tell me later," she said. "I've got a lot on my plate."

"I'm going to tell you now."

I told my daughter I was dying of something no one had ever died of before.

"A rare disease?" she said. "Wow, that's wild."

"Not rare, Fiona. Mysterious. Rare would imply other sufferers. I'm the only one. Or at least the first. The pioneer. Think mud barns and locusts, rough cotton bonnets."

"I don't follow," said Fiona. "Do you feel sick? Is it some kind of therapeutic bonnet?"

"I feel fine," I said. "I'm in fine fettle for a dead man, in fact."

"Is that from a song?" said Fiona.

"Maybe it will be," I said. "Maybe I'll write a song."

"I've got to go," said Fiona. "I'll check in to see how you're doing."

"You mean to see if I'm dead."

I'd been a bad man. Bad hubby. Bad dad. Well, not bad. Less than bad, which was worse. But I'd paid for it. I mean, I was paying for it.

"Please, Daddy, don't say that," said Fiona. "What if this is the last time we speak?"

She hung up on me, on "speak." Typical of her disaffection. Typical of her disbelief. I figured she figured it all for a song or a game. What else is it when you're thirteen and test just shy of genius? When she has to pick the suit they bury me in, then she'll believe it. When she has to pick the urn they pour my burnt bones in.

Weekdays were clinic days. The Philosopher and the Mechanic wished to meet with me often as I was such a special case. Already my malady had begun to further their careers. They were collaborating on a book based loosely on my autopsy.

"You look amazing," said the Mechanic. "Doesn't he look amazing?"

"Luminous," said the Philosopher. "Luminous with this mysterious rot."

We sat on overstuffed sofas in the Special Cases Lounge. A man in black surgical scrubs brought us tea and lemon cake.

"Can I get a drink around here?"

"Not officially," said the Philosopher, "but here."

He plucked a bronze flask from his coat.

"Brandy?" I said, sniffing it.

"Cognac," said the Philosopher. "With a dash of metham-phetamine."

"Tell us," said the Mechanic, "how are you coping with the emotional devastation of your predicament? How do you go on living knowing you are going to die?"