Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

"No," I said. "No panini."

"What's that?"

"I said, 'No panini,' " I said.

I bought an energy bar, and as I ate it a great weariness fell over me. I forced myself across the street and back up to the office. Reception was still empty. So was Horace's desk. I walked down to Vargina's command nook, knocked.

"Yes?"

"It's Milo," I said. "May I have a word?"

"Of course. Pull up a chair."

Vargina swiveled to face me, scooped egg salad from a plastic dish. The egg salad had a slightly redder tinge than the batch in the deli case across the street.

"Want some?"

"What? No, I'm fine."

"You were staring at it."

"Is that paprika?"

"Have a bite."

Vargina held out a spoonful and I leaned forward, let the egg salad slide into my mouth, sucked down the creamy aftercoat of mayonnaise, with its spiced, nearly deviled, kick.

"Wow," I said.

"Pretty good, right?"

"Delicious," I said. "I. . I hope this wasn't inappropriate."

"It wasn't," said Vargina. "Until you said the word 'inappropriate.' "

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Milo."

"This is delicious egg salad."

"My husband made it."

"He's got a gift."

"I'll tell him you said so."

"Please do."

"So, Milo, how may I help you?"

I told her about my talk with Horace. I tried not to betray too much, kept things general. I just wanted to understand the terms of this arrangement.

"I see," said Vargina. "It sounds like you had a very nice chat."

"Come on," I said, "be straight with me."

"About what?"

"Are you guys going to screw me?"

"As far as I know, the terms stand."

"But what are the terms? What's the number?"

"What number?"

"How big does the give have to be for it to be considered a success, or enough of one to earn my job back? Is there a target on this give?"

"It's hard to say, Milo."

"Hard to say?"

"I mean it would have to be big."

"Big."

"Hate speech, sexual harassment, these are horrible allegations."

"I prefer to think of them as challenges for me to meet and overcome."

"That's good, Milo. You're coming around, I can tell. I'm on your side. Among other sides. But I am on your side. Think I like Llewellyn? The pastiness? The arrogance? Please. But he's our rainmaker. Of course we can't count out Horace. But you, this Purdy give, it sounds like it can be something. We need it to be something. I'm sure Horace told you that. This is larger than you. This whole game is poised for a gargantuan fall."

"What game?" I said.

"Higher education. Of the liberal arts variety. The fine arts in particular. Times get tough, people want the practical. Even the rich start finding us superfluous. Well, they always think we're superfluous, but when they're feeling flush it doesn't matter. You pay a whore to make you feel like a man, you fund a philharmonic to make yourself feel like a refined man. But it's a pleasure many don't feel like splurging on these days. Worse is the pain of the tuition payers. They are just small-time enough to really resent the price we charge to fool their children into thinking they have a lucrative future in, say, kinetic sculpture. Fat times it was maybe okay to send your slightly slow middle son to an expensive film program. He'd learn to charge around in his baseball cap, write his violent, derivative screenplay in the coffee shop. Idiotic, right? But ultimately affordable."

"Those days are over?" I said.

"Not yet," said Vargina. "Or none of us would be sitting here. But it's not looking good. Donors are getting scarce. Everybody's worried. That's really my point. The whole deal's in danger. And maybe it should be. Look at you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You were an art major, right? What did it get you? Some egg salad from a crack baby?"

"That was good egg salad," I said.

"I know you liked it."

"You're a good friend, Vargina."

"I'm not your friend, Milo."

"Good colleague."

"So are we straight?"

"You still need to tell me the number. So I have an idea about what to shoot for. Unless you want to come in on this, work Purdy with me."

"No, this is your deal."

"So, what's the number?"

"You're thinking small again. It's not a number. It's a feeling. A great, big, wonderful, gleaming feeling."

"Okay," I said. "I think I got it now."

"I know you can do it. I also know you can't do it. But on some level I know you can do it. Good luck."

"Thanks," I said.

"Now I've got a question for you."

"Shoot," I said.

"Do you know anybody who speaks Mandarin?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"I'm just looking into something in Beijing."

"That's exciting."

"Yes, it is."

"Tell me," I said. "Does it have anything to do with that kid who is always sleeping outside Cooley's office?"

"You need to mind your own business. Especially on the subject of business."

"Will do," I said.

"Here," said Vargina, handed me the rest of her egg salad.

"No, I couldn't," I said.

"Yes, you could. Just wash out the dish when you're done."

One night in the House of Drinking and Smoking we were victims of what I would later call a home invasion. I didn't know the term then. I think I learned it later, from a rap song, or a movie based loosely on a newspaper columnist's fear of a rap song.

Probably they thought we'd be out, which was funny, because we were never out. This night, though, we had turned in early. Eve of a test week, I think. Given the soporifics in our systems, I'm still surprised we ever woke up, or that Maurice Gunderson did, to the sound, he said later, of his dresser drawer sliding open. His shriek roused the rest of us, though by then they, the invaders, had dragged Maurice from his bed, commenced what Billy Raskov would by morning term a "total fucking rampage." One of them banged a baseball bat on the walls and they all barked and shouted, flushed us from our smoky caves, herded us into the main room, where we sat in our underwear among the ashtrays and beer bottles that littered the glass coffee table we'd bought at the Salvation Army.

The invaders seemed quite familiar with the modality of the roust, knew the best ways to terrorize, corral. Later we learned at least one of them had been in the non-salvation army.

They wore ski masks, but we could tell by their hands that one was black and two were white. We could tell by their accents they were local. The largest invader, the apparent leader, the bat guy, as I later dubbed him, drifted about the room with his Easton aluminum, tapped our shoulders, our knees, lightly, with humorless threat, while the others drew the shades.

I shivered on the sofa in my boxer shorts. Christmas break was not far off and the house was always cold. Constance and Charles Goldfarb sat beside me and through my grogginess I felt my arm brush Constance's warm shoulder. Two things occurred to me simultaneously: that she must have been in bed with Charles, and that I missed her. Then the bat guy smashed his bat on the coffee table. Maurice Gunderson squealed from his camp chair.

"Shit, just take what you need and get out," he said.

Glass twinkled in his scalp.

"What was that?" said the bat guy.

"I said just take what you need."

"What do I need, faggot? Tell me what I need!"

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small pistol. Its diminutive aspect did not offer comfort.

"Calm down, dude," said another invader.

"I'll keep these fairies here," said the bat guy. "You two go upstairs."

"You sure?" said the third invader.

"Just fucking go!" said the bat guy. "I don't have all night."

If he was the leader, he was not a natural one. He seemed more disturbed than the others, twitchier, less clinical in his approach to the burglarious. That they figured we'd have cash and valuables stashed away here on Staley Street was not an indictment of their intelligence, but it did point to a knowledge deficit with regard to the various striations and flavors of capital accumulation at a private university. There were some varsity golfers down the block they would have done much better to rob. Maybe they already had.