Бен Маркус - Notes from the Fog - Stories

“First of all, George,” Pattern said. “Dad’s girlfriend? Really?”

“Trish?”

“What a total pig you are. Does this woman need to be abused and neglected by two generations of our family?”

“How could you know anything about that?”

“Oh cut it out. It astonishes me when I meet people who still think they have secrets. It’s so quaint! You understand that even with your doors closed and lights out… Please tell me you understand. I couldn’t bear it if you were that naive. My own brother.”

“I understand, I think.”

“That man you pay to watch you while you’re cleaning the house? On your laptop screen?”

“Guy Fox.”

“Oh, George, you are a funny young man.”

“That’s actually a fairly mainstream habit, to have a watcher.”

“Right, George, it’s happening all over the Middle East, too. A worldwide craze. In Poland they do it live. It’s called a Peeping Tom. But who cares. Baby brother is a very strange bird.

“So,” she said, scooting closer to him and giving him a luxurious hug. “Mom and Dad never told you, huh?”

“Told me what?”

“They really never told you?”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m just not sure it’s for me to say. Mom and Dad talked about it kind of a lot, I mean we all did. I just figured they’d told you.”

“What already, Jesus. There’s no one else left to tell me.”

“You were adopted. That’s actually not the right word. Dad got in trouble at work and his boss forced him to take you home and raise you. You were born out of a donkey’s ass. Am I remembering correctly? That doesn’t sound right. From the ass of an ass.”

He tried to smile.

“I’m just kidding, George, Jesus. What is wrong with people?”

“Oh my god, right?” said George. “Why can’t people entertain more stupid jokes at their own expense? Je-sus. It’s so frustrating! When, like, my worldview isn’t supported by all the little people beneath me? And I can’t demean people and get an easy laugh? It’s so not fair!”

“Oh fuck off, George.”

They smiled. It felt really good. This was just tremendously nice.

“You don’t understand,” he said, trying harder than usual to be serious. “Mom punted so long ago I can’t even remember her smell. And Dad was just a stranger, you know? He was so formal, so polite. I always felt like I was meeting him for the first time.”

He tried to sound like his father, like any father: “Hello, George, how are you? How was your flight? Well, that’s grand. What’s your life like these days?”

Pattern stared at him.

“Honestly,” said George. “I can’t stand making small talk with people who have seen me naked. Or who fed me. Or spanked me. I mean once you spank someone, you owe them a nickname. Was that just me or were Mom and Dad, like, completely opposed to nicknames? Or even just honey or sweetie or any of that.”

“Jesus, George, what do you want from people? You have some kind of intimacy fantasy. Do you think other people go around hugging each other and holding hands, mainlining secrets and confessions into each other’s veins?”

“I have accepted the fact of strangers,” said George. “After some struggle. But it’s harder when they are in your own family.”

“Violin music for you,” said Pattern, and she snapped her fingers.

He looked up, perked his ears, expecting to hear music.

“Wow,” she marveled. “You think I’m very powerful, don’t you?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I have no idea. Are you in trouble? Everything I read is so scary.”

“I am in a little bit of trouble, yes. But don’t worry. It’s nothing. And you. You seem so sad to me,” Pattern said. “Such a sad, sad young man.” She stroked his face, and it felt ridiculously, treacherously comforting.

George waved this off, insisted that he wasn’t. He just wanted to know about her. He really did. Who knows where she’d vanish to after this, and he genuinely wanted to know what her life was like, where she lived. Was she married? Had she gotten married in secret or something?

“I don’t get to act interested and really mean it,” George explained. “I mean ever, so please tell me who you are. It’s kind of a selfish question, because I can’t figure some things out about myself, so maybe if I hear about you, something will click.”

“Me? I tend to date the house husband type. Self-effacing, generous, asexual. Which is something I’m really attracted to, I should say. Men with low T, who go to bed in a full rack of pajamas. That’s my thing. I don’t go for the super-carnal hetero men; they seem like zoo animals. Those guys who know what they want, and have weird and highly developed skills as lovers, invariably have the worst possible taste—we’re supposed to congratulate them for knowing that they like to lick butter right off the stick. What a nightmare, to be subject to someone else’s expertise. The guys I tend to date, at first, are out to prove that they endorse equality, that my career matters, that my interests are primary—they make really extravagant displays of selflessness, burying all of their own needs. I go along with it, and over time I watch them deflate and lose all reason to live, by which point I have steadily lost all of my attraction for them. I imagine something like that is mirrored in the animal kingdom, but honestly that’s not my specialty. I should have an air gun in my home so I could put these guys out of their misery. Or a time-lapse video documenting the slow and steady loss of self-respect they go through. It’s a turnoff, but, you know, it’s my turnoff. Part of what initially arouses me is the feeling that I am about to mate with someone who will soon be ineffectual and powerless. I’ve come to rely on the arc. It’s part of my process.”

“You think these guys don’t mean it that they believe in equality?”

“No, I think they do, and that it has a kind of cost. They just distort themselves so much trying to do the right thing that there’s nothing left.”

“And you enjoy that?”

“Well, they enjoy that. They’re driven to it. I’m just a bystander to their quest. And I enjoy that. It’s old school, but I like to watch.”

“So you are basically fun times to date.”

“I pull my weight, romantically. I’m not stingy. I supply locations. I supply funding. Transportation. I’m kind of an executive producer. I can green-light stuff.”

“Nobody cums unless you say so, right?”

“That’s not real power,” she said, as if such a thing was actually under her control. She frowned. “That’s bookkeeping. Not my thing at all. Anyway, I think the romantic phase of my life is probably over now. My options won’t be the same. Freedom.”

“Jail time?” asked George.

“It’s not exactly jail for someone like me. But it’s fine if you imagined it that way. That would be nice.”

George hated to do it.They were having such a good time, and she must get this a lot, but he was her last living blood relative and didn’t he merit some consideration over all the hangers-on who no doubt lived pretty well by buzzing around in her orbit?

“All right, so, I mean, you’re rich, right? Like, insanely so?”

Pattern nodded carefully.

“You could, like, buy anything?”

“My money is tied up in money,” Pattern said. “It’s hard to explain. You get to a point where a big sadness and fatigue takes over.”

“Not me,” said George. “I don’t. Anyway, I mean, it wouldn’t even make a dent for you to, you know, solve my life financially. Just fucking solve it. Right?”

Pattern smiled at him, a little too gently, he thought. It seemed like a bad-news smile.