The Fun Parts

by Sam Lipsyte

  “It’s been two days,” Tovah said.

  “Those first few are the ones that count. Anyway, thanks for rejiggering your schedule. It means a lot, and you shall be rewarded.”

  “Rewarded? I’m a professional.”

  “No, you’re not,” Mr. Gautier said. “That’s why you’re good.”

  * * *

  She figured she’d have to be patient, but the Goat popped right up on her computer search and dominated the many pages of results that followed. Math prodigy Randolph Gautier had dropped out of a North Jersey high school in 1973 and hitched out to Palo Alto. He would have seized a silicon throne but for some purloined software here, a botched algorithm there. Still, he’d done just fine. He’d sold his company, Glyph Systems, for tens of millions, though in interviews he seemed bitter about it. He told RadTech magazine that Bill Gates had an IQ of seventy-four.

  The man had made money in computers. Was this fact the object of her search? There were plenty of rich oldies in the neighborhood. Then she noticed another branch of search hits, sites that mentioned Gautier in relation to artistic foundations, to his funding of a poetry journal called Glyphonym. She’d never heard of the journal or any of the poets listed in the index, but the bound editions looked swank. Photos of a launch party in a grand ballroom featured charitable omnipotent people chuckling over cocktails. No real poet would want a poem in that journal, but the party looked like vulgar fun, or at least better than a night on the couch locked in a frigonometric fugue state, sour sweet-and-sour sweat soaked through the cushions, although Tovah did, to her surprise, look back on that evening with fondness. “Needing the Wood” had a few lines now, borrowed, perhaps, and in Sanskrit, but indelibly on the page.

  * * *

  The shock about Sean was his shock of white hair. It looked regal but incongruous with the dark-locked boy she’d known. He stood and seemed to bow as she approached the table, a fairly formal gesture for a place that specialized in artisanal scrapple.

  “Sean!” she called with cheerful volume, as though to cover for her disappointment in his follicles.

  “Tovah!” Sean said. “Awesome!”

  They hugged, and Tovah’s chin grazed his collarbone. That zap, the hot, sweet charge of the party long ago, tingled. She wanted Sean to save her and screw her and give her a baby. After that, maybe he’d have to leave.

  “You look great,” Tovah said.

  “If that’s true, I owe it to the mighty sport of handball. I play with the Spanish gentlemen at the playground. It’s an epic workout. You look really good, too. Seriously.”

  “I never exercise and I rarely eat. It’s a winning plan.”

  “I think you’re meant to be a little heavier, though. You’re tall and skinny with big, beautiful bones.”

  “Big bones?”

  “Totes. I know it’s a euphemism for chubby girls, but you just happen to be hot with slightly extra-large bones. I always wanted to jump them. That night we talked. That was an epic night.”

  They hadn’t even heard the specials and he’d already mentioned their magic moment.

  “Man,” he said. “What’s it been? Twenty years?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Oh, that’s better.”

  “How’s your sister?” Tovah asked. “I haven’t spoken with her in a long time.”

  “She’s good. I mean evil. She works for this huge rape-a-licious law firm.”

  “Is she still married?”

  “Totes.”

  “What’s ‘totes’?”

  “Sorry, I work with a lot of young people. I pick up their lingo. Anyway, man, Tovah, you do look really good.”

  Was it possible he could be a moron and still be her savior?

  “Where do you work?”

  “Right now I’m involved with a new start-up,” Sean said. “It’s hard to explain. We make apps for apps, basically.”

  “So that pays well?”

  “No, not yet. Meantime I’m working with organic food materials. Mostly flour items.”

  “Like a muffin shop?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “I’m a part-time preschool teacher right now.”

  “Sounds epic,” Sean said. “Little kids.”

  “I love kids,” said Tovah. “But the politics…”

  Or could she be the moron?

  A young waiter arrived without menus and explained the ordering process, which involved a few crucial decisions about sides and beverages but a surrender of volition in the realm of entrées. Tonight was Thursday, which meant Pennsylvania-style scrapple.

  “What exactly is scrapple?” Tovah asked.

  “It’s Mennonite soul food,” Sean said.

  The waiter rolled his eyes.

  “It’s everything from the pig except the meat,” he said. “Organs, hooves, eyelashes, lips. It’s all pressed together in a loaf. I, personally, love it.”

  “Sounds kind of tref,” Tovah said.

  “Très tref, dollface,” the waiter said. “After dinner you can join a settlement and redeem yourself.”

  “Whoa there, buddy,” Sean said.

  “It’s okay. I’m a Yid,” the waiter said.

  “Really?” Tovah said.

  “Totes,” the waiter said.

  “Look, I think I’m going to leave,” Tovah said. “I actually prefer pig eyelashes as a separate dish.”

  “Of course,” Sean said. “Let’s go.”

  They walked the streets for a while, laughed at the shitty waiter and the perspectival complexity of time. It reminded Tovah of those play scenes from eighth grade. Lovers by the creek or at the carnival. Something about the moon. Now they leaned on a playground fence. Beyond it, in the last of the light, children stalked each other with neon water rifles.

  Sean looked at Tovah, pinched the collar of her shirt.

  “Twenty years later, and I still feel attracted to you.”

  “Sixteen years,” Tovah said. “I had no idea you liked me. I was so smitten. You were the genius. You were going to do all the wonderful things.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” Sean said. “I’ve had all sorts of adventures. Good times, bad times. You know I’ve had my share…”

  “Seriously,” Tovah said.

  She must have clawed out of the womb saying that.

  “Seriously, I wasn’t measuring myself against a prophecy of me.”

  “We were,” Tovah said.

  “Well, then, fuck you, Big Bones. That’s your problem. And what are you doing that’s so great? Anybody can play with kids.”

  “I’m also a poet.”

  “And you have a blog, I’m guessing?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tovah said. “You’re right. I’m being abrasive. I get scared of intimacy. I flail.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  “Let’s start again. No more scrapple.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sean said. “Whatever the opposite of compatible is, that’s us.”

  “Incompatible?” Tovah said.

  “If you say so, wordsmith. Thing is, we both need the same crap. Somebody with money, and security, and also did I mention money? To shore up our egos. To nurture our unrealistic dreams.”

  “Yes,” Tovah said. “That’s actually true. That’s an insight.”

  “Thank you,” Sean said. “I used to be very promising.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Are you going to ask whether my hair turned white slowly or overnight?”

  “Do you want me to?” Tovah said.

  “Well, let me tell you a story. I was working on a guide boat out of the Solomon Islands.”

  Sean spoke into the darkness for a while, telling a mesmerizing, no doubt spurious tale. Tovah realized that she didn’t care about him or his saga or the whiteness of his hair one whit. She could never mate with a man who called her Big Bones, even once, even in jest. She could never expose her eggs to such a jerk.r />
  * * *

  The climber room admitted six kids and one teacher at a time. The other children had to wait in the next room at their sand tables and clay stations. Tovah stood near the varnished wooden bars and watched Dezzy scale the ladder. This day had once been her day off.

  Laura had called her soon after she’d talked to Mr. Gautier.

  “Is this standard at Sweet Apple?” Tovah had asked. “Letting a parent dictate schedules?”

  “He’s not dictating. He made a request.”

  “What’s the diff?”

  “Tovah, I understand how this might seem concerning to you. But you’re just here temporarily. Mr. Gautier has been part of the school family for many years. His yearly donation keeps us afloat. I don’t want to disappoint him. That would be concerning to me. I don’t want to say that if you don’t abide by his request, there’s a chance you might not be able to continue with us.”

  “You don’t want to say what?”

  “I believe you heard me.”

  “What if I just quit?”

  “God, can you afford that? Lucky you. Can I quit with you? Do you have us covered?”

  “Okay, Laura. I understand. It’s okay.”

  “You’re a real sweetheart,” Laura said.

  “I’m a schmuck,” Tovah said.

  “Always a fine line.”

  Tovah winced admiringly.

  Now Dezzy turned from the ladder and shoved herself at Tovah’s shoulder. Her frizzy hair scratched Tovah’s cheek. The girl’s breath carried sour fruit.

  “I love you, Tovah!” Dezzy said, gurgled through surplus saliva. Desdemona wasn’t slow, just charmless, a sloppy need machine.

  One of the other kids, a funny boy named Ewen, tugged on Tovah’s jeans.

  “Tovah,” he said. “Can we read about the tigers again?”

  Because Laura did in fact care about the boys and didn’t want them to notice her revulsion, they’d become Tovah’s responsibility.

  “You can change them, the boys,” Laura had told her. “Erase the predator patterns in their brains. Make them docile and generous. I’d do it myself, but I get so nauseated.”

  Tovah’s Dezzy duty was a drag. She wanted to read to Ewen, but if Dezzy didn’t want to join them, the morning would turn dire. Dezzy would collapse and wail. A real Trojan widow scene. It made Tovah wonder what went on at the House of Gautier. Randy Goat hadn’t been making drop-offs or pickups this week. A young Tibetan woman came instead. And what did Mrs. Gautier do with her time? Or was that blond woman at the home visit even Dezzy’s mother? Now Tovah found the narrative becoming dense. Dense wouldn’t do. She was ready to wrap this up, find another—what did they call it?—situation.

  Dezzy licked and nibbled Tovah’s neck. Tovah hoisted the girl away from her.

  “You don’t want to skin lip?” Dezzy said.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Ouchie. Put me down.”

  “Tigers, Tovah,” Ewen said, tugged.

  * * *

  Mr. Gautier offered too much money for the babysitting job. It was more like a call girl’s fee, even factoring in Dezzy’s unpleasantness, but this was no era to demur. Tovah took the gig. It would be a noon-to-midnight shift on Saturday. Mr. Gautier had meetings, a benefit dinner.

  Tovah had never babysat, not even in high school, but at least she was starting at the top. This wasn’t a few hours at the neighbor’s house, with Tovah paid in cable TV and leftover casserole. This was big bucks to encamp in a palace on Central Park West and monitor a brat while Mr. and Mrs. Gautier lorded it over the city’s top-shelf kowtowers. Maybe they’d bring her white-frosted cake in swanned-up tinfoil. Everything seemed so pathetic and exciting.

  She knew she should mention the offer to Laura, but she enjoyed the secret, side-business feel of it. There was something odd about Mr. Gautier, to be sure, but even if he returned home in his tux, tipsy from champagne, and his wife excused herself and retired to what she might refer to as her chambers, and when she was gone Mr. Gautier, while plucking sharp green bills from his silver clip, accidentally brushed his well-preserved knuckles against her breast or her bosom or her (perhaps let’s just say specifically) unusually responsive (based on informal polls of friends) nipple, and they locked eyes and giggled and then, for no reason at all, kissed, skin lipped, as some tiny persons would have it, until they heard a noise, a door off the den or a loose board in the refurbished hallway, maybe the wife returning to the kitchen for her bedtime book, one of those wretched memoirs with a blurred photo of a schoolgirl on the jacket, and upon hearing the noise, they, Randy and Tovah, froze and broke apart in thrilled fright—even if all of that happened, she wasn’t sure she would tell Laura. In fact, she knew she wouldn’t tell her, so why mention the babysitting job at all?

  Besides, it would be awkward in a few years, when Tovah was—and let’s be totally random here—Randy’s new wife, the mother of his baby, and Tovah found herself, for example, president of the board of Sweet Apple, which had the power to hire and fire directors as she (or she and the board) saw fit. Of course, without question, Tovah would endorse a renewal of Laura’s contract. The woman needed a viable wardrobe, but she’d proved herself a more than capable employee. Besides, there would be so many other things to worry about, such as the transformation of Glyphonym from a ludicrous glossy bursting with trust fund doggerel to a rigorous journal where the best poets, regardless of tradition, would connect with one another and a larger audience. A few poems a year by Tovah would not be unseemly. Other editors did it.

  Plenty more so-called luxury problems might rear their plush heads. You had to hire the right people, make certain that the nanny wasn’t teaching the baby Cantonese by mistake, or the cook wasn’t drizzling the wrong oils on Tovah’s salads, not to mention the guaranteed Stukka dives of bitchery from the ditched blond wife. Tovah didn’t know a thing about her, but the woman’s gold-digging implements had been edged enough to carve out some precious metal from the Randolph Gautier vein. Doubtless they could leave nasty divots in the flesh of her usurper. Still, the state of alert would be worth it because of the baby, the baby that would be hers and also nestled in cozy plenitude, the combination she never thought possible.

  * * *

  Dezzy didn’t come to school on Friday, so Tovah e-mailed Mr. Gautier to make sure the date, or the job, rather, was still on. He did not respond all day.

  Sweet Apple exhausted her. Her boys—Ewen, Juanito, Medgar, and Shalom—had been hanging all over her, begging her read to them or play airplane or lie on the carpet as a launchpad. Tovah wasn’t sure if she had deactivated their predator wiring. It was hard to tell when they were such relentless puppies. She fell asleep on the train home and nearly missed her stop. She’d need some quality rest to handle Dezzy tomorrow, if that was still her destiny.

  The call finally came as she finished her radicchio.

  “You e-mail me?”

  “Yes. About tomorrow.”

  “It’s better to just call me. I don’t check e-mail much. But I see your e-mail in my browser. It scared me. I didn’t open it. Does it say you’re not coming? Don’t tell me you’re not coming. Jesus fucking Christ. I counted on you. I put my neck on the chopping block convincing Connie that you weren’t just some tight little piece of … well, whatever, but a real—”

  “I’m coming, Randy Goat!” Tovah cried.

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, I just e-mailed to confirm. I’m certainly planning on coming to watch Dezzy, so you and your wife shouldn’t worry about a—”

  “My wife?”

  “Yes, I met her at the home visit.”

  “Connie’s my sister. That’s who you saw. She’s always trying to horn in on the raising of Dezzy. I guess I let her. It’s easier that way. Dezzy’s adopted. She was my goddaughter, and her parents were killed. Okay, what the hell are we doing? Are we phone buddies or something?”

  “No,” Tovah said.

  “You bet your ass we aren’t
. I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven.”

  “You said noon.”

  “Stay flexible, Tovah.”

  A few minutes before eleven the next morning Tovah waited outside the building. She wore a dress that was maybe too chic, especially given the bleached-out T-shirts she favored at school, but after Dezzy went to bed, there’d be some spare hours to relax in a beautiful apartment. She thought she’d do it in style.

  She knew she’d never be back after today. Since the phone call, she’d been mortified by her matrimonial fantasy. You think you know yourself, the world. You believe you’ve got a bead on everybody else’s bullshit, but what about your own? She’d had delusions of using this man because he somehow deserved it. Now she wondered if she even deserved to watch Dezzy. At eleven she pushed the buzzer. The elevator, just as Tovah remembered, opened into the plum-colored foyer.

  * * *

  She felt the hand on her shoulder even while asleep, and the whole day whizzed through her, all the games and snacks, the walk to the park, the Winnie-the-Pooh books, the TV programs full of anxious furry creatures, the sudsy bath, the creamy noodles, Dezzy’s kissy snuggle at tuck-in. Tovah had come to the study afterward to read. The leather Eames had pulled her into sleep better than a pill. She blinked up at Mr. Gautier. He smiled, and his eyes looked fogged. His bow tie hung limp around his collar. His tuxedo took on a rumpled sheen in the lamplight.

  “Wake up, little Toh-Va, wake up,” he sang.

  “Mr. Gautier.” Her voice sounded deeper, liquored, in her ears. Her ears seemed stuffed with silk.

  “How was your evening?” he asked. He sat on the coffee table beside her.

  “It was perfect. How was your evening with the muckety-mucks?”

  “Actually, I lied about the event. I don’t know why. My older son got married today. Evan. He’s a lawyer, she’s a doctor. They will be very happy or something.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “No. They’ll thrive. It’s just been a long, emotional day.”

  “Was your ex-wife there?”

  “Like I said, an emotional day.”

  Mr. Gautier stood.

  “Drink?”

  “I should go.”

  “You should have a drink with a sad old man first.”

  Mr. Gautier fetched Scotches from the kitchen, handed her one, and lowered himself on the arm of her chair.