Jonathan Lethem - You Don't Love Me Yet

“Now, friends,” said Falmouth, making an appeal for peace.

“And anyway, all those legendary women this clearing in the woods ever-so-sweetly presided over but never took advantage of,” Lucinda continued, “I can’t help noticing they were all conveniently smashed on alcohol or suffering a famously devastating breakup at the time.”

“Huh?” said Matthew.

Lucinda’s eyes stung. Her throat began to tighten and she understood, reluctantly, that she was crying. “I’m just saying Mr. Funbreast sounds like a rebound operator to me.”

“What’s the matter, Luce?” said Matthew.

“Nothing.” She pressed her knuckles against her trembling chin, swallowed hard.

Falmouth stubbed his cigarette and peered at her. Lucinda fell silent, cast her gaze to the far avenue, shook the slime of tears from her cheeks.

“Did I say something?” said Matthew.

“We were only joking, Lucinda, whatever we said,” said Falmouth.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, you’re crying,” said Falmouth.

“I’m fake-crying.”

“Why would you do that?”

“For sympathy.” She tucked what had welled, the joyous trauma of the past days, back into its hidden compartment. Something in Matthew might have been triggered by her sniping, however, or perhaps by the sight of her tears. He’d lapsed into his old recessive state, his joy in the gig unsustainable. Perhaps he’d also recalled Shelf the Flyer, maundering in her dismal basin.

“I wish I could fake cry as well as that,” said Falmouth.

“I’ll teach you.”

“Sniffles Harvey—that was a good one.”

“You don’t even know how he earned that name.”

“Of course I do. He was sniffling all around your band like a truffle pig. Trying to take credit for it himself, as if you were some strange lucky outgrowth of his loft.”

“Let’s give last night a break,” said Lucinda. “Forget about Harvey and Summerbreast or any of these other spooky characters circling around.”

“What other spooky characters?” said Falmouth.

“Nothing, I just mean let’s give the whole thing a rest. Try to enjoy the morning.”

“That’s what we were doing,” said Matthew.

“But not even mention the band, just pretend we’re our regular selves.”

“I think I just saw someone I think I know,” said Falmouth, rising from his seat.

it’s like I got into some kind of horrible chess match with Dr. Marian. All I wanted was for them to take Shelf back into the general population. They said she was gouging the other kangaroos but solitary confinement is a self-perpetuating thing, she wasn’t learning anything about proper socialization by being stuck in the pit.” Matthew had begun to confess his and the kangaroo’s dilemma the moment Falmouth had left him and Lucinda alone.

“They call it the pit?” asked Lucinda.

“Sure.”

“That’s what it looks like. I mean, that’s what a visitor would probably call it. But there’s something horrible about knowing that you people call it that too.”

“It just kept escalating between us. I was totally discredited because I tried to go around Dr. Marian, to the board. Everyone in the office kept freezing me out.”

“You appealed to the zoo’s board about a single kangaroo?”

“I wrote a letter.”

“Isn’t Dr. Marian the one who hired you?”

“The bad vibes up at the office aren’t really important anymore,” he said. “My problem is I can’t get anyone to pay attention now that I’ve, you know—taken Shelf away.” Matthew sagged in his chair as though only now relieved of some burden of denial, as if Lucinda and Denise hadn’t broken in and seen for themselves. Perhaps he’d persuaded himself that episode was truly a dream, a kangaroo piss-fever hallucination.

“You want attention for that?”

“My plan was to leak it and embarrass the zoo. I tried to get the Times and the Weekly to come and see Shelf. I said I was holding her hostage to protest her treatment. I even tried News Eleven. But they won’t return my calls.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Dr. Marian outflanked me. When the paper or the television calls, she says the zoo’s not missing any kangaroos. They think I’m a crank. She won’t even confirm that I worked there, just says I’m familiar to them, a publicity hound, some kind of zoological stalker, and that attention only encourages me. At the same time, she won’t admit to anyone at the zoo that I’m fired. Actually, I’m not fired.”

“What?”

“The department secretary called and said they were holding my paychecks in the office, but they won’t forward them. They’re trying to get me to come in, so they can surround me and conduct some kind of brainwashing.”

“That sounds a little paranoid.”

“You get used to putting a gorilla in a straitjacket or shooting an ibex in the throat with a twelve-ounce dart you’d be surprised what you’d be willing to do to a human being, Luce. These people are like Nazi doctors, they’ve persuaded themselves they’re engaged with primal factors outside the ken of normal human beings.”

“Were you ever recruited to join some kind of vigilante faction? I suppose the gorillas themselves could be employed in death squads, after enough shock treatment.”

“Don’t make fun of me.” He shrank into the corner of his chair, his eyes revealing real fear, as if the restaurant might be surrounded at that moment by Dr. Marian’s operatives.

“It can’t be easy, just the two of you in that apartment,” Lucinda said, gently now, thinking of that dungeon of lettuce and urine.

“I’ve been telling myself it’s going to get better,” Matthew droned, ponderous in his guilt.

“You probably thought it would be different when you got her out of the pit.”

“I think she blames me. I used to be the one who cheered her up. We’d talk and she’d lift her head and I could tell she didn’t want me to leave. Now it’s like she associates me with the zoo. She won’t even look at me.”

“Moving in together might not have been the best idea.”

“She has a problem with high expectations,” Matthew said, his gaze on some middle distance, as if facing some unseen advocate for the kangaroo, a mediator or marriage counselor. “It began with her parents.”

“What about her parents?”

“Shelf was born right here, in Los Angeles. Her parents were sort of famous. They were sent here as a gift to Linda Ronstadt from an Australian fan. Linda Ronstadt didn’t know what to do with them, so she gave them to the zoo. There was a lot of publicity at the time, and I think it was confusing for the kangaroos. They got special treatment and then were expected to melt into the regular population. I suppose they imparted a certain lack of realistic perspective to Shelf.”

“Maybe Fancher Autumnbreast should take her to Morocco,” said Lucinda. “It worked for Marianne Faithfull.”

“Either you want to help me or you don’t, Lucinda.”

“I’m sorry. Tell me what I can do. I’m hardly a kangaroo person.”

“Go and collect my checks,” he said. “I’m totally broke.”

“They’d let me?”

“It’s worth a try. At least there’s nothing they can do to you.”

Lucinda reached across the table and nudged Matthew’s fingertips, offered a smile. An immense noontime melancholy had suffused their table. The lives at nearby tables, pairs of couples, families, the clank of silver and happy conversation, all evoked what they’d deserted. Their days were rich and strange, full of kangaroos and gigs, things other brunchers couldn’t know, but they were impoverished too, bereft of ordinary solidarities which had once seemed near at hand as the spoons and forks on the table between them, as their browsing fingertips.