George Saunders - Tenth of December - Stories

It was a lunchtime auction of Local Celebrities, a Local Celebrity being any sucker dopey enough to answer yes when the Chamber of Commerce asked.

“So that’s why we’re here raising money for LaffKidsOffCrack and their antidrug clowns!” the blonde shouted. “Such as Mr. BugOut, who, in his classroom work, with a balloon, makes this thing that starts out as a crack pipe and ends up as a coffin, which I think is so true!”

Larry Donfrey of Larry Donfrey Realty stood nearby in a swimsuit. Donfrey was a good guy. Good but flawed. Not that bright. Always tan. Was Donfrey attractive? Cute? Would the bidders consider Donfrey cuter than him, Al Roosten? Oh, how should he know? Did he like guys? Was he some kind of expert judge on the cuteness of guys?

No, he didn’t like guys and never had.

There had been that period in junior high, yes, when he had been somewhat worried that he might perhaps like guys, and had constantly lost in wrestling because, instead of concentrating on his holds he was always mentally assessing whether his thing was hurting inside his cup because he was popping a mild pre-bone or because the tip was sticking out an airhole, and once he was almost sure he’d popped a mild pre-bone when he found his face pressed against Tom Reed’s hard abs, which smelled of coconut, but, after practice, obsessing about this in the woods, he realized that he sometimes popped a similar mild pre-bone when the cat sat on his groin in a beam of sun, which proved he didn’t have sexual feelings for Tom Reed, since he knew for sure he didn’t have sexual feelings for the cat, since he’d never even heard that described as being possible. And from that day on, whenever he found himself wondering whether he liked guys, he always remembered walking exultantly in the woods after the liberating realization that he was no more attracted to guys than to cats, just happily kicking the tops off mushrooms in a spirit of tremendous relief.

A sort of music started up, consisting of a series of loud, thick bumps punctuated by a smattering of feminine groans and something that sounded like a squeaky door, and Larry Donfrey headed down the runway to sudden cheers and whoops.

What the heck? thought Roosten. Whoops? Cheers? Would he get cheers? Whoops? He doubted it. Who whooped/cheered for the round bald guy in the gondolier costume? If he were a woman, he’d cheer/whoop for Donfrey, the guy with the tight ass and ripped brown arms.

The blonde cued Roosten by pointing at him while walking in place.

Oh God oh God.

Roosten stepped warily out from behind the paper screen. No one whooped. He started down the runway. No cheering. The room made the sound a room makes when attempting not to laugh. He tried to smile sexily but his mouth was too dry. Probably his yellow teeth were showing and the place where his gums dipped down.

Frozen in the harsh spotlight, he looked so crazy and old and forlorn and yet residually arrogant that an intense discomfort settled on the room, a discomfort that, in a non-charity situation, might have led to shouted insults or thrown objects but in this case drew a kind of pity whoop from near the salad bar.

Roosten brightened and sent a relieved half wave in the direction of the whoop, and the awkwardness of this gesture — the way it inadvertently revealed how terrified he was — endeared him to the crowd that seconds before had been ready to mock him, and someone else pity-whooped, and Roosten smiled a big loopy grin, which caused a wave of mercy cheers.

Roosten was deaf to the charity in this. What a super level of whoops and cheers. He should do a flex. He would. He did. This caused an increase in the level of whoops and cheers, which, to his ear, were now at least equal in volume to Donfrey’s whoops/cheers. Plus Donfrey had been basically naked. Which meant that technically he’d beaten Donfrey, since Donfrey had needed to get naked just to manage a tie with him, Al Roosten.

Ha ha, poor Donfrey! Running around in his skivvies to no avail.

The blonde threw a butterfly net over Roosten’s head and he joined Donfrey in the cardboard jail.

Now that he had thrashed Donfrey, he felt a surge of affection for him. Good old Donfrey. He and Donfrey were the twin pillars of the local business community. He didn’t know Donfrey well. Just admired him from afar. Just like Donfrey admired him from afar. Once, the whole Donfrey clan had filed into Roosten’s shop, Bygone Daze. Donfrey’s wife had been beautiful: nice legs, slim back, long hair. You looked at her and couldn’t look away. Donfrey’s kids had also seemed great, two elflike androgynes politely debating something, possibly the history of the Supreme Court?

Each Celeb had his own barred window in the cardboard jail. Donfrey now stepped away from his and toward Roosten’s. How gracious. What a prince. They’d have a little chat. The crowd would jealously wonder what the twin pillars were chatting about in private. But, sorry, no: this was between pillars. Rabble need not apply.

Donfrey was saying something but the music was blaring and Roosten was partly deaf.

Roosten leaned in.

“I said, Don’t worry about it, Ed,” Donfrey was shouting. “You did fine. Really. No biggie. Give it a week, nobody will even remember it.”

What? What the hell? What was Donfrey saying? That he’d done badly? Had embarrassed himself? In front of the whole town? No way. He’d kicked butt. Was Donfrey on some other planet? On drugs? On drugs at an antidrug event? Had Donfrey just called him Ed?

Donfrey could kiss his ass. That fake. That snob. He’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten that Donfrey was a snobby fake. That time the Donfreys came into Bygone Daze, they’d immediately turned and walked out, as if they’d found Roosten’s vintage collectibles too dusty and ill-selected for the Donfrey house, a literal mansion on a hill. And Donfrey’s wife wasn’t beautiful, Roosten suddenly honestly admitted; she was pale. A pale, haughty waif. As far as Donfrey’s kids — if those kids belonged to him? He’d scruff them up a bit. Try and de-elfify them. Were they girls or boys? You honestly couldn’t tell.

He didn’t have kids himself. Had never married. He had the boys, however. The boys were his nephews. The boys were not elfin. Au contraire . The boys were whatever was the opposite of elfin. Trollish? Clodhoppers? No, the boys were great. The boys were all-boy. And how. Possibly too much so. Why his sister, Mag, insisted on taking them to Budgi-Cutz when Budgi-Cutz made them look like three hulking versions of the same odd Germanic roundhead, their bangs cut straight across, he did not know. Every night was a three-way grunting/wrestling fest in the basement, the boys calling one another Skuzzknuckles or FartIngestron until one of them bonked his round head into something metal and they all helped the hurt one upstairs, tears running down their wrestling-engorged cheeks, like three suddenly repentant Nazis—

Not Nazis. Jeez. Germans. Energetic prewar Germanic lads. Healthy young Beethovens. Although as far as Beethoven, he doubted Beethoven had ever pried a prayer-book rack off the pew with his bare hands on a dare from another Beethoven, while a third Beethoven proudly displayed, on a hymnal, four tightly rolled snot towers he’d just—

It was the divorce. The divorce had made the boys wild. It was sad about Mag. In high school, Al had been the popular wrestler and Mag had been the stout girl in ChristLife with a big crush on Christ. They’d lived on their parents’ farm. But somehow only Mag had turned out farmish. Junior year, she’d started dating Ken Glenn, equally agrarian, with plate-sized ears. There’d been jokes at the time about Mag and Ken being married in overalls. There’d been jokes about Mag and Ken being married in a church full of barnyard animals. If there was ever a marriage you’d expect to last, this one was it: two homely Christian farmers. But no, Ken had left Mag for another farmer’s—