The Ask

by Sam Lipsyte

Bernie fell asleep before the evil. The children picked their berries. The trolls slumbered in their caves.

  The spires of the castle of the vintage cardigan king pierced the mist.

  Maura and I took our places in the living room, turned on the television, moved through the stations of the stations. We still did not own the devices that let you skip the commercials. Would we always be part of the slow television movement? Would we always be a we?

  We jumped from pundit to pundit, then on to basketball, Albanian cooking, endangered voles,America's Top Topiary Designers,America's Toughest Back-up Generators,The Amazing Class Struggle, the catfish channel, a show called, simply,Airstrikes!

  We watched television in the old way and it was good.

  Maybe the animator could just scram. No fester, no rot. Maybe we didn't have to talk about it. Maybe that was the problem. We yapped too much. We weren't equipped.

  "I love you, Maura," I said. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm also fine with never knowing. If you can end it, come back to me."

  "How can you be fine with never knowing?"

  "What is there to know?"

  "What do you want to know?"

  "I want to know what's happening between you and Paul. But I'm saying I can live without knowing if whatever it is stops happening."

  "Paul's gay."

  "Really?"

  "The only person I've ever fucked from the office is Candace. And that was a few years ago."

  "Are you gay?"

  "Once in a while. Not really. You knew that."

  "Well, yeah, in that sense. I mean, like, in Greenpoint, I was gay, too."

  "You were a spaz."

  "I'm a sensualist."

  "Okay, Milo."

  "Have there been others?" I said.

  "Others?"

  "Besides Candace."

  "I thought you were fine never knowing."

  "I didn't realize how much there was not to know."

  "What do you want, Milo? A signed confession? A show trial?"

  "What happened?" I said. "I was out there pounding the pave-o-mento! What the hell happened to us?"

  "The pave-o-what?"

  "Forget it."

  "What do you want, Milo? What are you asking for?"

  "Asking?"

  "What's the give?" said Maura. "A divorce? A stale but stable marriage? A poison one? What about Bernie? Do we stay together for the sake of Bernie? Do we split up for the sake of Bernie? Different websites advise differently."

  "You're way ahead of me," I said. "I just love you."

  "That's a cop-out, Milo."

  "How can that be a cop-out?"

  "God," said Maura, "we're arguing like a bunch of pussies."

  "Do you love me, Maura?"

  "Fine, forget it."

  "Forget what?"

  "This crisis. It's not worth it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'll stop fucking Paul."

  "I thought it was just Candace. I thought you said Paul was gay."

  "You're like from another century. Nobody cares what anybody is."

  "You're from the same century I am."

  "Poor Milo. What are you asking for?"

  "From you?"

  "From all of it."

  "I don't know," I said. "I guess what I really-"

  "Look," said Maura. "Look there."

  It was Caller I Do. This was no surprise. It was on heavy rotation these days, a new classic. The male lead scrunched in a steel-domed turret in a sandbox in Central Park, wept. He'd just seen the woman he loved kiss a much younger man on her office softball team. His cell phone blinked the name and number of the woman, who was calling to tell him the younger man was not a rival lover but the office mailboy, a virgin soon headed to the hospice to die of leukemia. The kiss had been an innocent goodbye gift, but the man was too blinded by tears to see his cell phone display.

  "I love this part," said Maura. "I mean, I hate it."

  "We used to hate this together," I said.

  "Maybe we can get back to that place," said Maura.

  "Let's have an appointment," I said.

  "I'm touched out."

  "I thought you were in."

  "I'm out again."

  "Oh."

  "We'll get there, baby," said Maura. "Not yet. Soon."

  "I want to show you something," I said. "A part of my life. I want to share it with you."

  I fetched my laptop, found Spreadsheet Spreaders. Maura peered over at the screen.

  "Is that what you like?"

  "I like you."

  "Take out your cock," she said.

  I unzipped my fly, tugged myself out.

  "Do your business while I watch the end of the movie."

  I scuttled over to the other end of the sofa, propped the laptop on a pillow. I did what she said, but she never looked over. I wanted her to look over. I tried to keep everything on my hand.

  "Done?" she said.

  "Yes."

  "Okay," said Maura. "I love you, Milo. We are changing, our lives are changing. I don't know if we are finished or not. But we need a little break. Go to your mother's tomorrow."

  "But what about Bernie?"

  "It's just for a few days. So I can think. So you can think. Figure out what the hell you are doing with your life. With Purdy."

  "What does this have to do with Purdy?"

  "I need you to figure that out. Now go to the kitchen and wipe your hand."

  I slept on the sofa that night. It was noisy out here in the room near the street. There were car alarms and the shouting of names. Somebody named Garza was going to get it. Somebody was going to bust a cap in Garza's ass. Somebody, maybe Garza, knocked over a garbage pail. The sound recalled the metal canoes my bunk once had to portage over rocks on a summer camp trip. We caught trout from a stream, ate nuts and berries and M &Ms. Our counselor talked incessantly about the "truth of the land." He did not mention the home heating potential of trout. I saw the side of Wendy Leed's tit, heard an owl hoot. I thought I heard an owl hoot now.

  My phone glowed again.

  "Did I wake you?" said Purdy.

  "No," I said.

  "But you're the sleeper. Why doth the sleeper not sleep? Melinda's conked. She sleeps and she hurls. First trimester is an ass-kicker. Who knew about any of this shit? Morning sickness always sounded so dainty to me. A little tummy ache before breakfast. But then you think of what's growing in her. Our heads are too big, you know. I've been reading up on this."

  "I know all about it," I said, bent away from the sofa's crevasse. Maybe I would have to exile myself to Claudia's just for the sake of my spine.

  "It's because our brains evolved too rapidly," said Purdy. "One minute we're doofuses in trees, the next we're outfoxing mastodons on the savannah, and we have these huge-ass pumpkin heads. Can you outfox a mastodon? Did foxes exist? Were there mastodons on the savannah?"

  "I don't know, Purdy."

  "They had those midget horses, I think. But anyway, think about it, big baby skulls ripping through the birth canal. It's criminal. It's rape, really. Reverse rape. Nature should do time for it. Melinda says I'm an idiot. She says the female body is designed for childbirth. Have you ever heard of the pelvic floor?"

  "Purdy," I said, "how much candy have you eaten?"

  "A lot. I'll have to do another ten miles on the treadmill tomorrow. You work out?"

  "Not at all."

  "You should."

  "Why?"

  "You'll live longer, better. Don't you want that?"

  "I'm not sure, given my present circumstances."

  "You'll definitely look better."

  "Better than what?"

  "Better than a half-melted block of Muenster cheese."

  "That's a nice image."

  "I rarely employ them. Anyway… yumm… ginger crystals."

  "I'm actually hitting a bit of a rough patch with Maura."

  "Rough patch. That's kind of a dead image, no? I'm trying to cut down on stock
phrases myself. But I'm sorry to hear about your marital woes. Anyway, listen. Melinda wants to do a natural childbirth, but not at that place you met me, the Best Place. She's decided to do it here at home. No epidural, nothing. Fine by me. If she's a glutton for agony, that's her business. I'll be right there, stroking her brow, telling her what a great job she's doing, rah rah. I'll cut the cord. We're banking the cord blood. For bone marrow transplants, stuff like that."

  "Do you need a bone marrow transplant?"

  "I don't know. Do you?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Well, this blood won't help you. Oh, and there's also the placenta. Maybe I'll do some kind of face-mask treatment. I'm not eating that crap. Friend of mine slapped his boy Bronco's afterbirth on a Portuguese sweet roll. Ate it with his wife right there on the birthing bed. Did it come with soup? No thanks, I say. Maybe I'll help with the snip-snip."

  "The what?"

  "The circumcision. We've decided to go with that. It's not a religious thing, it's just that Melinda thinks foreskins are repulsive. Plus they give women cervical cancer."

  "Oh," I said. "Yeah. We didn't do Bernie. We went the other way on the question. Maura thinks… we think it's mutilation."

  "No, female circumcision is mutilation, not male. What planet are you on? What they do to the clitoris-man alive! I mean, especially if it's not even part of your culture, that is some brutal shit."

  "I've never heard of that," I said.

  "Never heard of what?"

  "People doing female circumcision when it's not part of their culture."

  "That's what I'm saying," said Purdy. "How insane would that be?"

  "Will the midwives do a circumcision in your home?"

  "No, but Melinda's doctor has already agreed to be here just for that procedure, so we can get everything out of the way in one shot. The midwives and doulas are cool with it. It will be a melding of opposed philosophies as only a rich motherfucker like myself can engineer."

  "I see."

  "So, anyway, sorry to ramble. I've just been sitting here watching TV and spinning my wheels. I'm not even forwarding through commercials. You should see the kind of stuff they've got on. I now officially know more about the Maxim gun than I ever thought possible."

  "I saw that one."

  "I bet you did," said Purdy.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Oh, did that sting? Come on, Milo. Don't be so sensitive. And don't take yourself so seriously. We both know what your life has been like."

  I stayed silent for a moment, listened for the owl.

  "Milo?"

  "Purdy, why'd you call me? You must have got word from Lee Moss. Your son is thinking about it. But I think he will sign the papers."

  "I know that."

  "So, why did you call?"

  "Do I need a reason? Don't you work for me?"

  "No, I don't. Maybe I do. I don't know."

  "Don't worry about that," said Purdy. "I called because I can't sleep. This is when we always used to talk. Like in the house on Staley Street. You'd always be there. You were my friend. Weren't you my friend?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "I don't have too many-"

  "Yes, you do."

  "Yeah," said Purdy. "But they're all asleep right now."

  Twenty-five

  Nobody told me about the noon staff meeting. Nobody told me much of anything these days. I was some kind of bad luck charm. I was somebody's error in judgment all over again. But the energy tides eluded me. I was stranded on a shoal with my turkey wrap. A Post-It note on my computer reminded me to ask for more Post-It notes. But I was afraid to ask. I wasn't even drawing a salary, but I did not want to be a drain.

  Nobody told me about the noon staff meeting, or even waved me over to join them now, but I followed them into the conference room anyway, found a chair between Horace and Vargina. There were people from other teams I did not know that well, a tall Asian man who raised money for the business school, a white woman with cat glasses who handled undergraduate gifts. The early arrivers had left chairs between themselves and others, the way travelers on a bus might prop their suitcases on the seats beside them, make a play for solitude. But the room filled up. We'd packed the bus. Now the driver climbed aboard.

  Dean Cooley walked in and slapped a folder on the desk. The folder sported the new lime green tabs a recent directive had mandated. War Crimes scanned the room until his eyes appeared to alight on Horace, who wore a tuft of his hoagie's shredded lettuce on his chin.

  "In my time," said Cooley, "I have been a combat marine. Trained for combat. Trained to kill. But I never saw combat. I never killed. It was my blessing, and my misfortune, to be an instrument of war at a time of relative peace. So, as I say, I never saw combat and I never killed. In my time I have also been a purchaser and purveyor of bandwidth, not that there was much difference in those heady, early days of bandwidth. We were all for one thing: more bandwidth. Above all, I was an instrument of bandwidth. But I never saw bandwidth. How can you see bandwidth? You can see measurements of bandwidth. But you can't see bandwidth. It does not matter. What am I driving at?"

  Some of us slid our lunches off the table, into our laps, or bags.

  "Anybody? Nobody? Anybody?"

  "We don't need to know?" said the man from the business school team.

  "Know what?" said Cooley.

  "Who we are?"

  "No," said Cooley, "you need to know who you are."

  "What we represent?" said the woman with the cat glasses.

  "You represent the university," said Cooley. "What about you, Llewellyn? You're one of our franchise players. What the hell am I talking about?"

  "I know!" said Horace.

  "Go ahead, Lettuce Face."

  "We need to know you believe in us."

  "That I believe in you?"

  "Yes," said Horace.

  "But I don't believe in you, young man. That's not my job. I'm not your mommy. I believe in results. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Vargina? Sean?"

  Vargina and the man from the business school development team nodded.

  "Anyway," said Cooley. "Llewellyn, you were going to enlighten us."

  Llewellyn propped himself up on his palms.

  "Well, to be perfectly honest, Dean, I am not entirely clear on your line of thought, but I believe it has something to do with conviction."

  "Conviction."

  "Yes."

  "Very interesting."

  "Is it?"

  "It is. You're very close."

  "I am?"

  "Yes, you are," said Cooley, raised his hand as though it held a dog treat. "It's right over here, Quantrill. Come for it. Let's hear that rebel yell."

  "Conviction about the product," said Llewellyn.

  "Okay…"

  "Conviction about the product even if it is something of an abstraction. Conviction that we can weave a story, as it were-"

  "Story, yes, that's it, keep going…"

  "A narrative in which-"

  "Narrative? Don't get fruity."

  "A story…"

  "That's it…"

  "A story about all the wonderful things that the give can bring about, a story, in our particular team's case, about the role of culture as both a bulwark of the civilization we cherish and a bridge, an interconnective bridge, to other incredibly and wonderfully global modes of thinking and being, as well as a story about young and diverse and often sexy people expressing themselves through their creativity and in doing so spreading a kind of artistic balm on the wounds of the world, a balm that not only heals but promotes understanding, especially in a world, a globe, as global as ours, where isolation is no option, where the only choices are globality or chaos."

  "Globality or chaos?" said Cooley.

  "Yes," said Llewellyn.

  "You sure?"

  Llewellyn squeezed his fists, nodded his head.

  "Yes, I'm sure."

  "Damn right, you're sure! Because that's what
I call a fucking story! You see? You see, Lettuce Face? You hear that, feline and voluptuous secretary from the 1950s? That's the bull's balls, right there!"

  "Thanks," said Llewellyn.

  "No, thank you, young gentleman. Not only for that cogent and rousing description of what it is we do around here, but for something far more important. See, Lew here is what we call a change agent. He brings in the loose change of the rich folks. It falls out of their pockets and Lew is Johnny-on-the-Spot about bringing it here to us, to our students, to our joint glorious project of bulwarking and bridging. What I'm saying is, the papers on the Teitelbaum ask have finally come through. Guess which students at which university will have a new game design center?"

  A shout went up, followed by applause. Llewellyn did his best imitation of bashful.

  "So, give that man a potato chip!" said Cooley.

  Many of us laughed, applauded anew. I joined them, a shamed heat rising in me. Would Cooley mention that the Teitelbaum ask had once been mine? I'd screwed that one up good at a lunch, made the mistake, in listing the kinds of exhibits that might be mounted in a proposed gallery space, of mentioning the work of a Polish artist who built a model Treblinka with Tinker Toys. The camp guards were freeze-dried ants. Teitelbaum, a Holocaust orphan, was not amused.

  "What did he make the Jews out of?" the old man snarled over his salade Nicoise.

  "Vintage coins from the Weimar Republic," I mumbled.

  "Money? He made them out of money?"

  "It was a point about historical perception. The artist is Jewish himself."

  But Teitelbaum, who'd made a fortune in optics, was not so intrigued by this notion of perception. He charged off to the toilet. I ate some slivers of his hard-boiled egg.

  People still clapped but Cooley had a new stern look.

  "No, really," he said. "Give him a potato chip."

  Sean slid a rippled mesquite-flavored chip from his bag, passed it down the table to Llewellyn.

  "That's your bonus," said Cooley, and the room got quiet.

  We did not get bonuses. But something about hearing the word seemed to drive the fact home. I wondered what management technique this was that Cooley had decided to employ, though after some years in this business, I'd come to suspect there were no techniques, or none that really traveled well out of books and conference seminars. The kiddie-diddler was right, it was all just people doing kindnesses, or smearing each other into the earth, usually both at the same time.