Charles Baxter - There's Something I Want You to Do

“I don’t know,” Benny said at his drawing desk, blueprints spread out in front of him.

“Exactly,” Sarah said with triumph. “ You don’t know . And you never will. But here’s what I believe: I believe that because of the way we’re all wired up, we’ll never know God, and that’s just for starters . Something is out there, but we’ll never have any concept of what it is. All we have are these dumb fairy tales about crucified guys with beards and dead people coming alive again and the book sealed with seven seals. Also, by the way, we’ll never know the actual structure of the universe. And there’s something else we’ll never know. Or, at least, you’ll never know it. And I’ll never know it.”

“What’s that?” Benny asked.

“You’ll never know me.” Sarah laughed. “And I’ll never know you.”

Benny waited, his heart thumping in his chest, in a state of mind that he would describe as “desolate” the next time he saw Elijah, even though Elijah would try to shake him out of it by calling it a girl-word that only girls would use.

“Is that so bad?” she asked. “I don’t think that’s so bad!” She paused, and when Benny said nothing, she said, “I’ve hurt your feelings, haven’t I?” Her voice sounded heartbreak ingly cheerful. “We’re all planets,” she said, “and we’re all covered with clouds, Benny, which, in my opinion, in my dog brain, is what liberates us.”

To Benny, she didn’t sound saved, but just then the sun emerged from behind a tree outside his office window, and he remembered to say, “Sarah, I love you, and I have to go.”

—

On architectural paper he drew a Prairie-style house for her, then discarded it. (Too dark.) Then he tried out a post-Bauhaus horizontal-and-vertical glass house in the Philip Johnson style, but the windows made it too exposed to the gaze of the outdoors. She wouldn’t like that. He tried a monumental bunker that would call for poured concrete. How cold it seemed! Finally he drew a little A-frame cabin in the woods beside a lake, though he wondered whether such a home might be too isolated for her.

No one had ever asked him to design a house in which a human being might be happy. It was an architectural koan, he decided, meant to tie him into a comical knot.

—

On the way to the Longfellow Comedy Club, one month later, with Benny driving the car, Sarah showed no trace of jumpiness or excitement. She sat quietly settled on the passenger side. Benny didn’t know what the protocols were about talking to your girlfriend on the way to her comedy set, so he didn’t say much, worrying that if he did speak up, he would give away the miasmic dread that had gradually settled itself over him. “You look great,” he told her glumly, and she nodded. She had girled herself up and had applied a shellac of glamour: she’d worn her best punk T-shirt and jeans, her scuffed saddle shoes, and her red hair had been sprayed into a stylish disorder. Over the hair she wore a battered attitude hat tinted green like some ghastly Irish shrub. “Are you nervous?”

“Nervous? No.” She was texting someone on her phone and didn’t look up.

“I’d be nervous.”

“Yes, you would be.” She nodded, agreeing with herself. Autumn had arrived, and the streets swirled with fallen leaves, some of which stuck to the windshield. Before long, he thought, the snow will be in the air.

“The snow will be in the air soon,” Sarah said, giving voice to his thoughts in that eerie way she sometimes had.

“Remind me of when your set begins,” he said, although he already knew.

“Ten. By the way, Benny, if I mention you, don’t take it personally, okay?”

“Okay.”

“It’s just a comedy act.”

“Right.”

“Remember that.”

—

The Longfellow was located between two city lakes, Hiawatha and Nokomis, and out in front a line of elegantly scruffy patrons stood waiting to get in. The poet’s face, with its silver hair and silver beard painted on a signboard above the entrance, was outlined with neon tubing, a joke-optic. Underneath the neon, the club’s name had been lettered in Braggadocio font.

After they parked, Benny said, “Good luck,” and he leaned over to peck Sarah’s cheek.

“Thanks. Sit in the front row,” she said. “Laugh for me.” Before getting out of the car, she touched him tenderly on his face. “You’re a good man,” she said in a whisper. “Sometimes that’s enough.” Then she disappeared through the club’s back entrance.

After waiting in line and paying the admission price — Sarah hadn’t given him a comp — Benny located himself as close as he could to the stage, where he was surrounded by men and women in camouflage gear, sunglasses, leather vests, caps with the visors reversed, faded jeans, and ripped T-shirts advertising defunct Internet start-ups. These kids had bypassed glitz and gone straight to hyperirony: to his left, a woman with purple streaks in her hair sported a tattoo on her arm: I’M FOR SALE. A genial and loudmouthed clown-army, they quieted when the emcee came out and introduced the leadoff, a skinny kid in a Mets baseball hat who stood absolutely still on the stage and said that he suffered from autism. His name, he said, was Joe Autism. For ten minutes he provided an autism-based commentary in an absentminded monotone. “What if elevators wanted to go sideways?” he asked. He waited, and the silence became comically tense.

Benny zoned out. He may have dozed off, because when he opened his eyes, the emcee had introduced Sarah, and she was out onstage.

“Hello, Longfellow,” she crowed, and the audience woofed and hooted. “I’m Sarah. Sarah Lemming. I throw myself off things. I’m suicidal. Anybody here suicidal? Ladies?” Many women in the audience clapped and cheered. “Yeah, I thought so. No shame there . None at all. A few in every crowd. But it’s so fuckin’ hard, ’cause rescue-squad types are always trying to stop you.” She held on to the microphone and paced menacingly back and forth on the narrow stage. “I hate that. Guys are always trying to save you. All you guys practicing your superhero moves? What the fuck is that ?” She appeared befuddled. “Relapse and have a beer. And then there’s the actual damn superheroes! I am so tired of Spider-Man — a real asshole, can I say that without being sued? — and that other guy, the famous one in the blue tights and the red cape, grabbing me and feeling me up. And flying around! They think it’ll impress you, being airborne, dodging 727s. But it really just musses your hair and gives you vertigo. Leave me alone, superheroes, okay? Let me go. Let me fall splat on the pavement. Rescue someone else, for a change. My therapist disagrees. My therapist said I should vote for life .” She stopped to glare at the audience. “She says life is better than death because you can still go shopping as long as you’re not dead. Wise words! Words of wisdom. She’s quoting Socrates, I think. Or Pluto or somebody. I’m trying to remember that wisdom. I mean, if Bed Bath & Beyond isn’t the meaning of life, come up right here onstage and tell me: What is? Yeah, my boyfriend saved me the last time. What’s-his-name in the blue tights didn’t show up. The famous superhero had another appointment in Metropolis with Lex Luthor or Eradicator, so this guy did it. A passerby. He saved me. He became my boyfriend. He’s in the audience. Give him a hand.” Everyone applauded. “Yeah, he didn’t ask much in return, either. He just wanted me to fuck him. So I did. What’s the harm in that? A mere favor. He’s scared I’m going to make fun of him and say in front of everybody that he has a little dick. Naw, he has a big friendly dick. That’s why I don’t mind the mold in his bathroom. Am I right, ladies?” More cheers. “Yes, it’s true: he and I have sex. He loves me. He saves lives. A hero, right? I’m not afraid to admit it. We get in bed and that thing happens where you open your legs and he puts that probe in there that guys have. What you don’t plan on are the unexpected consequences.” Just then, her cell phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket, looked at the screen, and said to the audience, “Excuse me.” She put the phone to her ear. “Hello? Oh, great!” She closed the phone, grinned, and put it back. She must have timed the call somehow to ring a few minutes into the set. “Those were the results from the lab. Guess what? I’m pregnant!”