Jonathan Lethem: You Don't Love Me Yet

The complainer wore a T-shirt reading nobody knows i’m suicidal.

“Look,” Lucinda said.

“Is that—”

“Shhh, just let them pass.”

The riders were soon gone beyond the curve of highway, off toward who knew what. Perhaps merely a different fish shack, higher up the coast. Lucinda was glad they’d appeared. It was another harbinger of happiness for herself and Matthew, but she felt glad too that the couple had passed without detecting their audience at the porch rail.

“Does he ever come around the zoo office?”

“A couple of times.”

“Do you talk?”

Matthew shrugged. “He’s a very friendly guy.”

Lucinda decided not to ask more. “It’s strange to think about now,” she said.

The large woman returned without her dog. Matthew and Lucinda daubed guiltily at the greasy corners of their mouths and scooted away from her fries.

“What’s strange to think about?” said Matthew.

“The whole thing.” Lucinda stopped herself. “I mean, that he was actually in the band.”

“There’s something I never told you.”

“What’s that?”

“At certain times I felt like Carl was the only real artist out of all of us,” said Matthew. “I mean, I suppose this is kind of crazy, but he reminded me of Elvis Presley, like he was some kind of idiot savant trying to invent something new, to break through to a new kind of sound.”

“It’s possible, I guess.”

“Okay, it’s ridiculous.”

“Yes.”

“It’s totally ridiculous.”

Lucinda was done with this part of the conversation. “You know what I love most about you?” she asked.

“What?”

She grabbed his arm, grabbed his neck, pulled him to her, whispered against his bristly sinewy cheek. She felt so hungry she almost wanted to take a bite. Neptune’s Net would call their number soon. “The way the veins in your forearms stick out. And the ridge of muscle that runs along your waist. I love that you’re skinny.”

“That’s superficial, Lucinda.”

“You can’t be deep without a surface.”

Special thanks to Amy Greenstadt, for help inventing this story. Thanks also Pamela Jackson, Will Amato, Diane Martel, Alice Eckles, Maureen Linker, Alexis Rivera, Kat Silverstein, Philip Price, Heidi Julavits, Rodrigo Fresán, Rebecca Donner, Lauren Mechling, Sean Howe, Andrew Hultkrans, Chris Sorrentino, Bill, Richard, Amy.

The Disappointment Artist (essays)

Men and Cartoons (stories)

The Fortress of Solitude

This Shape We’re In

Motherless Brooklyn

Girl in Landscape

As She Climbed Across the Table

The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (stories)

Amnesia Moon

Gun, with Occasional Music

Kafka Americana

The Vintage Book of Amnesia

The Year’s Best Music Writing 2002

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2008

Copyright © 2007 by Jonathan Lethem

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lethem, Jonathan.

You don’t love me yet / Jonathan Lethem.

p. cm.

1. Musicians—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3562.E8544Y68 2007

813’.54—dc22

2006011768

www.vintagebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-38943-5

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