Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

Even Llewellyn laughed, or maybe only Llewellyn laughed.

"Listen up," said Dean Cooley. "To cap off this wonderful moment for Mr. Burke, I have one more announcement. We've been a bit worried, to be truthful, because of the lack of updates we've been getting from Milo on his special project, but I guess there was a good reason for the radio silence. Seems Mr. Burke is to your average development officer what a recon marine is to your typical jarhead. He's the cream of the crop, and best left alone to gather his own intel, set his own traps, and take down the enemy like a freaking phantom ninja born straight out of Satan's blazing quim. Sorry, Martha."

"For what?"

"Good girl. Anyway, it's my great pleasure to inform all of you that next year we will break ground for the Walter Stuart Memorial Arts Pavilion, right here on our main campus, which will house facilities for all branches of the visual arts, but with special attention to the construction of naturally lit studios for our painters and a brand-new bronze-casting facility. Burke, looks like even Stonewall Jackson here could learn something from you. Now I hope your spirits are buoyed by all this news. Given the economic situation, most of you will be fired soon, but I want us all to be proud of what's going on around here. Okay, have a great day."

The applause started up again. The potato chip crumbled in my hand.

Back at my workstation I clutched the edge of my desk. It wasn't the terrible feeling, the Maxim gun shudders. It was more what coursed through me the night of the burglary on Staley Street, actions of cost taken all around, me in a frozen state, nothing close to floating. A soft hand roamed my shoulder.

"Relieved?" said Vargina's voice.

"I'm not sure what it all means," I said.

"It means you've proved yourself."

"But I never even. . did you?"

"Shhh," said Vargina.

"Who handled Purdy's give? He was my ask and the whole deal was in a tailspin. Was it Cooley?"

"Purdy handled the Purdy give. Some things came together. There was a Chinese element involved. A few people did favors for other people. An international student, a young man of means, was instrumental."

"The napper," I said.

"This went up to the provost, the president, the board. It was beyond us really. It just fell together."

"Why am I still here? Purdy?"

"It was a stipulation of Purdy's give, yes. But I backed it up. I told Cooley we needed you."

"You don't need me."

"I know that."

"So, I get to stay?"

I didn't really hear Vargina's answer. I'd tried to stand, crumpled to the carpet. I came to with Vargina leaning over me, her breasts brushing up my chest.

"I'm sorry I undress you with my eyes," I said.

"It's okay, Milo. Just breathe."

"I do a lot worse with my eyes. Am I the only one?"

"Of course not, Milo. You just lack subtlety. But breathe now."

"Subtlety," I said.

"Breathe."

"I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just wanted to slide my dick between your breasts."

"A Sabrett man," said Vargina.

"What?"

"Breathe. You're okay, but we've called for help."

"I'm so sorry," I said.

"I'm not offended, Milo."

"Does that mean you are interested?"

"Not at all. Now keep breathing, baby."

"Because I'm married?"

"Sure, because you're married."

"Because I'm white?"

Vargina laughed.

"I'm not very likable, am I?"

"You're likable enough," said Vargina.

"No, I mean, if I were the protagonist of a book or a movie, it would be hard to like me, to identify with me, right?"

"I would never read a book like that, Milo. I can't think of anyone who would. There's no reason for it."

"Oh."

"Hey, here come some friends. Look. Here they come. Look at them. Like angels."

They looked more like muscular men in blue shirts. They laid a large kit next to my head, dug through it.

"What happened?"

"Well," I heard Horace say. "He figured out the world wasn't all about him and he fainted."

"Seen it before," said the other.

"By the way," said Horace. "You guys make pretty good money, right?"

"It's not great."

"What's the training process? I mean, like, if I did CPR in swim class, do I get to skip ahead?"

They took me to the emergency room for a few hours of observation. I lay on a gurney beside an old drunk woman with gangrene. She lifted some blackened fingers.

"I used to play piano," she said. "Up in Utica. Up in the hotel there."

"I've never been to Utica," I said.

"Do yourself a favor. Don't go up there. Look what happened to me. Utica spat me out."

"Tough town."

"Utica is pitiless. Used me up and spat me out. I was Piano Patty. Go up there and ask around, they'll know."

"I thought you told me not to go there."

"Do what you think is right. I'm not your mommy."

"You're the second person I've heard say that this afternoon."

"Must have been on the radio. Some kind of giveaway."

The doctor stopped by my gurney with his clipboard.

"We're ready to release you," he said.

"So, everything's fine?"

"I didn't say that," said the doctor. "I said we were ready to release you."

That gangrenous wino from Utica was correct. She was not my mommy. My mommy was here in Nearmont, in her living room, sipping peppermint tea.

"When I was young," she said now, "single, working in the city, that was something. Something hideous. But wonderful. I did things that would make your hair curl. The hair on your palms."

"Mom," I said.

We had to shout a bit above the loud, lunging minor chords Francine banged out on her organ. This recital, according to Claudia, was the new post-prandial routine. Francine claimed to have studied at a conservatory in Indiana, though all she ever played was this piece of her own composition, a meandering dirgey thing with sudden surges of dark joy. Francine's performance varied, my mother said, with the quality of her stash.

"Very nice, Francie! Fortissimo!"

"Fortissimo," I said. "You don't know anything about music."

"Fake it until you make it. Now where was I?"

"You were about to inflict me with the details of your youthful peccadilloes."

"Peccadilloes? What are you, an old society dame? You kids today are so uptight."

"I'm almost forty, Mom."

"You must change your life."

"Don't give me your hippy crap."

"That's Rilke."

"Rilke's a hippy."

"I'm not. The fifties were the sixties. For the people who mattered. Not that I mattered. But I wanted to."

"And what were the sixties?"

"Boring. Of course, by the good part I was stuck out here."

"With me."

"Don't sulk. You were an infant. It's not your fault you weren't stimulating."

"Weren't you happy just being a mother?"

"I was happy being a mother. Take out the 'just.' "

"Well, you're still in the suburbs, and I'm long gone, so I can't take all the blame."

"When did you ever take blame? You give blame. To me."

"We're not doing that tonight."

"Right, I forgot. The suburbs are the new bohemia, anyway."

"Judging by what we're hearing right now, you could be right."

"Don't worry, I'm right. Fortissimo!"

Later I sat on the patio with a beer and a one-hitter I'd found in Francine's sewing box. I kept calling Purdy. I kept calling Maura. I even called Don. Nobody was home, or near a phone, or answering. I sat out on the patio in a rubber-ribbed chair with the phone in one hand and the one-hitter and a lighter in the other and the beer like a throttle between my legs, and it seemed for a brief moment that I might be the pilot of something, something sleek and meaningful, but I was not the pilot of anything. The night was warm, the night sky blue, gluey. I could smell the neighbor's fresh-mown lawn. New Jersey was a fresh-mown tomb.