Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

I could hear the other two invaders smash around upstairs, pictured them in the blue light of my tiny room. What would they make of the sketches tacked to the wall, the condoms under the futon, the cracked, unstrung Telecaster in the corner (in case the band idea ever blossomed), the scratched record on the Fold 'N Play? Would they see through the pose?

It did not seem odd that I was thinking about this while the bat guy lurched around us and his accomplices tore through our drawers and our duffels full of dirty jeans and jerk-off socks and plastic bongs and mint cookies and Foucault Reader s. I was still a little stoned and very tired but I wasn't that frightened. I did not believe that we were in mortal danger, though I sensed some of us could get hurt. The bat scared me more than the gun. I saw it caving a skull, maybe that of Raskov, who sat on the sofa arm near Goldfarb. There was something melon-y and inviting about Raskov's head, I understood that objectively, and despite our frictions the prospect of its stoving did not please me. But the downside of this muted state was that I maybe appeared too comfortable, too fragmented, dreamy, and I suddenly paid for this with a sharp chop to the ribs. I squinted up from the floor into the wool-ringed eyes of the bat guy.

"What!" he said. "What are you staring at!"

"He's not staring at anything, man," said Maurice, his voice high, airless. "Everything's cool. I have morphine. You want that?"

"Fuck your morphine," said the bat guy. "Yeah, give it to me."

"It's in my room."

"Where's your room?"

"End of the hall."

"Go get it. Just fucking stay where you are."

"I am," said Maurice.

"Get back on the couch."

The bat guy turned just as Constance put out her hand for me.

"Don't touch him!" he said. "Shit, you're a chick. Let me see you. You fuck him?"

It's complicated, I wanted to say.

"He's my friend," she said.

"You fuck him. I can tell. You blow him and tell him how smart he is. But he's a dumbshit. Take it from me."

"I can vouch for that," said Billy Raskov.

I didn't take it personally, knew it for some kind of play, a ridiculous one.

"You can vouch for what, potato head?"

"Jesus, Billy," Goldfarb whispered.

The bat guy stuck his bat in the cushions of an armchair behind him, far from our reach, though I noticed Gunderson eye it. Now he snatched a handful of Billy's lank hair, cranked his head back.

"What do you vouch for?"

"Nothing," said Raskov.

"Nothing?"

Raskov snarled as the bat guy bent his head. Constance leaned in and stroked Raskov's knuckles, as though what he needed most now was moral support, the structural integrity of his spinal column a minor matter.

"No," said Raskov. "Just that I can vouch for what you said about the guy over here. Milo. He is a dumbshit."

"Oh, is he?"

"Yeah."

The bat guy slammed Raskov's head down on a spindly wooden end table. A leg splintered.

Billy slumped, clutched his skull.

The bat guy turned to me, waved his gun.

"Nice friend you got there. Calls you a dumbshit. He's fucking the chick, isn't he? Or maybe you all are. Maybe I will. What do you think of that?"

I could see Constance out of the corner of my eye. Her lips twittered, as though moving briskly through a sequence of calculations.

"Been a while since I got my wick dipped."

I could tell the bat guy was about to do something ugly with his penis. His pistol would authorize the ugliness. His pistol would have his penis's back. He started to rub himself. We froze, Billy and Maurice and Charles and I, or else we watched the scene as though it were precisely that, a scene, unfurling in the present but with a structure, a destination, already in place. Like a TV show, if TV made you too scared to move. I guess in a sense it does, but this was also something else. I was waiting for some instinct to take over. Fight or flight, I remember thinking. I suppose just sitting there on the sofa was, technically, flight.

The bat guy made an experiment of bobbing his crotch near Constance's face.

Something scraped on the hardwood behind us.

Purdy and Michael Florida squatted behind the armchair. Had they been here all along? Wandered in from the kitchen? Purdy put his finger to his lips. Michael Florida's eyes blazed, flicked around the room. They each crept around a side of the chair. Purdy slipped the Easton from the cushions.

The bat guy cocked his head but did not look back.

"What the fuck took you so long?" he said. "Did you find the morphine? This kid says he got morphine."

"Hey," he said again, "I want to get out of here. You see this chick here? Let's take her with us. She'll have a better time than with these queers."

Then we all heard footfalls from the hallway, the boots of his fellow invaders. I saw fear in the bat guy's eyes and he had every right to feel it, because as he wheeled to see what forms he had mistaken for his friends, Purdy and Michael Florida vaulted over the wrecked coffee table. Purdy smashed the pistol from the bat guy's hand. Michael Florida dove, speared the bat guy in the chest. Together they crashed to the floor. The bat guy rolled on top of Michael Florida, choked him, both men dusted with glass. Michael Florida clawed back and the bat guy's mask peeled off and we saw his face, his brown hair and rosy cheeks. He looked like a thousand young men in this city. But this one was throttling brave, meth-carved Michael Florida.

Purdy picked up the pistol, pointed it at the other two men.

"He's a fucking nut," said one of them. "We didn't even want him with us."

"He's my cousin," said the other. "But I don't care. We just came for the cash."

It was an odd moment, as though the narrative had somehow forked and we were witnessing two possible outcomes, the intruders subdued at one end of the room, our friend strangled at the other. The story had to decide. Or Purdy had to decide, because the rest of us just sat there, and he did, tossed the Easton, shouted, "Constance!"

Constance stood, snatched the airborne bat. The knob slid toward her fist and I remembered her stint on the freshman softball squad as she rocked her hips and swung into the bat guy's head. He screamed, but did not let go of Michael Florida's throat. Charles Goldfarb shouted. Constance bashed the bat guy on the elbow and his grip popped loose. Michael Florida rose, spun out, a practiced wrestler's escape. Many of us, maybe, were secret jocks. Michael Florida pounced on the bat guy, pressed him into the table shards, tugged his arms behind his back, bound his wrists with a leather belt. Michael Florida, more than anyone, would also be practiced in the swift removal of his belt.

Now Purdy waved the pistol at the two economically motivated, mostly non-violent invaders.

"Go," he said. "Get out of here. Run. Nobody's seen your faces. Just run on out of here."

"What about Jamie?" said one intruder to the other.

"Fuck Jamie. He's my cousin, and I say fuck him."

"They'll kill him."

"Don't be stupid," said Purdy. "We won't kill anybody. We want to graduate on time."

"There's nothing here," said Jamie's cousin. "We got nothing."

"You have everything," said Purdy. "The only important thing. Leave with it now."

"Wait!" called Jamie, started to thrash.

Michael Florida cinched his improvised truss. Billy Raskov stood, kicked Jamie in the kidney.

"Shit!"

It was craven, but at least Raskov had bare feet, and anyway I hadn't been cracked with a used end table.

"Billy," said Constance, pulled Raskov off.

"Leave him here," said Purdy to the other two. "You guys deserve better."

The deserved invaders nodded, bolted for the door. I watched them through the window fly down the street, weave off under streetlamps.