The Ask

by Sam Lipsyte

  "Daddy?" said Bernie.

  "Yes?"

  "Can I have a stegosaurus cake for my birthday like Jeremy got?"

  "Yes, of course. For your birthday."

  I yanked him to me, buried my face against his strong, tiny neck.

  "I love you, Bernie."

  "Will I ever see you again?"

  "Yes," I said. "Later today."

  "Will you be dead?"

  "No."

  "Will I?"

  "No."

  "Can it be a brontosaurus cake instead?"

  "Yes."

  "With an asteroid flying into his face?"

  "Sounds wonderful."

  "Let's go to school."

  "Good idea," I said, stood.

  After I'd dropped off Bernie I walked down to the park under the Hell Gate Bridge. It was one of those beautiful Fridays when everybody decides to ditch work, trust sheer numbers will protect them from retribution. Hondurans roasted chickens near the river, kicked soccer balls at their toddlers' knees. Indian families spread out curry feasts on blankets. A magician did card tricks for a field trip of drooling tweens. Mothers puttered around the quarter-mile track in velour running slacks.

  Beside a stone tower some youngish men played touch football with a battered Nerf. They were young me's by the look of them, their watch caps and lazy passing routes, their Clinton-era trash talk. They had marked the end zones with packs of organic cigarettes and film theory pamphlets.

  I skirted their game, found a quiet spot in the grass under an elm, read Schopenhauer, or read a scholar's long introduction in the paperback I'd dug out of my closet. Some of the stuff I remembered from college. It was foolish to want. You would never get what you wanted. Even if you got what you wanted you would never get what you wanted. It was better to strip yourself of the wanting. But this was impossible. So you suffered. Your raw eyeballs suffered.

  I fell asleep before I got to Professor Schopenhauer's tips on dating. The introduction noted that he once beat a woman senseless on his doorstep. She sued for assault and he paid her off for twenty years. When she died, he wrote, "Obit anus, abit onus."

  "The old woman is dead, the burden is lifted."

  As I slept in Astoria Park, I dreamed of a park in 1820s Berlin. I squatted at the lip of a pond, tossed hunks of black bread to geese. A man with fierce side-whiskers and a greasy coat pushed an immaculate Maclaren stroller along the walkway. A cigarette bobbed in his lips. Two children hunched in the stroller, a boy and a girl. The boy sat on the girl's lap. They were laughing, but suddenly the boy punched the girl in the mouth.

  "Anus," said the man, "don't hit your sister."

  I tried to say something, couldn't get my tongue right.

  The man smiled, spoke, his voice muddy and loud.

  "Hey, you," he said.

  Something pressed into my side and I opened my eyes.

  Predrag stood over me. He tapped my ribs with his boot.

  "You," he said.

  "Predrag," I said.

  "Hungry?" He dropped a doughnut on my chest.

  "Thanks," I said, sat up, bit into a honey-glazed. "Thank you. Wow, I was having the weirdest dream."

  Predrag held up his doughnut sack.

  "I like to take some around, spread the wealth, you know? I usually give them out to homeless guys. But then I saw you."

  "I might be homeless one of these days."

  "Yeah?"

  "It's tough to call."

  "You come to the store, you need help."

  "That's nice of you."

  "We've got to stick together," said Predrag, lifted his face to the sun.

  "Who exactly are we?" I asked.

  "The American Dreamers. There aren't too many of us left."

  "I don't know if I qualify."

  "You an American? Or want to be an American?"

  "I am an American."

  "You said you were having a dream."

  "It's true, I did."

  "Was it the one where you're inside the girl and you are pumping her and pumping her and you are so happy but then it turns out it's not a girl, it's really one of those super poisonous box jellyfish, and it stings you and you are screaming and screaming and the sky rains the diarrhea of babies?"

  "The… no, I don't think so."

  "I get that sometimes. Anyway, see you around."

  I went home to the home that Maura said was still my home and made myself some breakfast. It had been a while since I'd been alone in the apartment. I pulled books off shelves, dug into boxes of old junk, snooped through Maura's drawers. The pills were gone. I sat on the sofa and did nothing for a good hour but sit on the sofa. I could not remember the last time I had managed such a thing.

  I tried to recall the words I'd hurled at McKenzie Rayfield, the outburst that started it all. I couldn't really summon them, or at least the proper sequence. A few individual utterances returned, like "shut," and "mouth," and "spoiled" and "dreck" and "sopressatta" and "daddysauce." But most of it was gone. I was glad of it. Those words had never made me proud.

  Out the window I watched a deliveryman ride up on a bicycle, buzz the house across the street. He wore a sweatshirt that read "New York Yankees 2001 World Champions." The Yankees, however, had lost the series that year. Arizona, with no regard for the national narrative, or even story, beat them in game seven. The deliveryman must have gotten the shirt in a poor country in Asia or Africa or South America, wherever they sell the runner-up crap, the memorabilia of a parallel universe, maybe the one with the gesso-smeared assistant and my name on public radio. I wondered if Sasha had learned to tip these guys yet.

  I still had her cell phone number and I called her now. When she answered, it took her a moment to place me.

  "Right," she said. "That guy. The envelope man. Why are you calling?"

  "Just… I don't know… checking in."

  "You still on some kind of mission? For Purdy?"

  "I don't work for Purdy. I don't work for anybody right now."

  "Got downsized?"

  "Right," I said. "Cut down to size."

  "Okay," said Sasha.

  "I wanted to say hello," I said. "Maybe I could even… I don't know. Come up and talk about things. About all that's happened."

  "You think I might ask you to squeeze my tits again."

  She spoke evenly, nothing coy in her tone.

  "It hadn't occurred to me."

  "Liar. Anyway, you know how high I was that last time? I had to get away from Don to get my head straight. Unlike you, I do have a job now. And a guy I love. And I'm going to school."

  "Don told me. That's great. I didn't call for that. I really didn't. I just wanted to talk. To ask some questions."

  "What, like a detective?"

  "Not really. I'm just…"

  "You're a little too obsessed, is what you are. A little too involved in a situation that's got nothing to do with you."

  "You're probably right. Things have been pretty tough for me."

  "Believe me, mister, I don't want to hear it."

  "Sorry. Well, I guess Don's heading back your way."

  "I know. He called me. Like I'm up here waiting for that bastard. I've moved on. My boyfriend, Bobby, is the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides, this is probably not the best place for Don these days."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Things got sort of bad up here for him before we went down to the city. He had a fight with some guys at Cudahy's. You know how it is. You can bitch about the government all you want, but don't talk shit about the troops. He shot his mouth off about something or other. They really started messing with him, kicking his girls and stuff-I can't believe I still call them girls. God, he was crazy! But those guys got out of hand. They were clubbing him with pool cues."

  "Was it that guy Todd? The happy warrior?"

  "Todd Wilkes? You've got a good memory. No. Some of them were Todd's friends, maybe. Todd really doesn't leave his house much anymore. People say he's got PTSD reall
y bad. And his burns, they never really got better. He's a sad case. Anyway, after those guys messed with Don at Cudahy's, Don went and got a tire iron from his car. People busted it up before it could get too bad, but Don broke one guy's ribs. A rumor went around they were planning to go after Don. And the whole thing didn't help his reputation around here. Probably why he was itching to get out in the first place. Everybody treated him nice with what happened to his mom and the injury. But then they started to wonder about him. At least the ones drinking at Cudahy's. Look, I've got to go pick up my boyfriend."

  "Okay."

  "You have my number in your phone?"

  "Yes."

  "Do me a favor. Delete it."

  "Delete it?"

  "Just do me the favor. Just for peace of mind. My mind. I want to start over. I don't want people like you to know where I am."

  "I'm not one of those people," I said.

  "Right," said Sasha. "Bye."

  I did not delete her number.

  I studied our block in the sun's glitter, listened to the wind in the trees, thought vaguely of Jimmy Easter. Then I watched some television. There was a movie with the male lead's father from Caller I Do. He was much younger, on a chestnut stallion, waving, or maybe brandishing a saber for the Confederacy. He loved a lady but he had no cell phone and could not save her from the Union cannon.

  Maura would be home soon. Then it would be time to get Bernie at Christine's. But this really wasn't my life right now. My life was across the river. My life was in the rough patch. My life was vaporing about. But I'd be back. I belonged here.

  A man sat beside me on the bus out to Nearmont. He looked about my age, with black and gray stubble on his face, a flannel shirt. He tapped a packet of guitar strings in his hands.

  "Do I know you?" he said. "You look familiar."

  "I don't think so," I said.

  "Pat?"

  "No."

  "No, that's me, Pat White. You look familiar. You play music? Did you ever play with Glave Wilkerson? Spacklefinger? Out of Eastern Valley?"

  "No," I said.

  "Sure?"

  "Yes," I said. "I'm pretty sure."

  I pointed to his packet.

  "You play?"

  "Hells, yeah," said Pat. "Used to have a band. Alternative. You like alternative?"

  "I guess."

  "What they play now, that's not really alternative. My generation, maybe our generation, looking at you, we were truly alternative. My band, we played all over. We dominated the area in terms of battle of the bands and whatnot. We even beat Spacklefinger one time."

  "What was the name of your band?"

  "Sontag."

  "Really? That's an amazing name for a band."

  "It means Sunday."

  "Oh, right."

  "That was the days of true alternative rock," said Pat. "Now it's just commercialized. But anyway, what was I saying?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "That's 'cause I didn't say it yet." Pat laughed. "Oh yeah. We were good, is my point. But our drummer, he fucking signed up for the army, went to the Gulf War. Never came back. I mean never came back around here. Went to California. And that was the end of the band, because, I'll tell you, man, you can teach any human ejaculant to play bass or guitar or even front the frigging thing, but you can't turn somebody into a kickass drummer. People are born with that gift, and not many, bro, trust me. Look at what's his name, the British dude, who died of his own puke. Nobody's hit like that since, and that was forty years ago. Forty years is a lifetime. Forty years is my lifetime."

  "Let's hope you have more than that," I said.

  "Bro," said Pat, "I have no intention of outstaying my welcome. I came, I saw, I rocked, I made no money, I got Hep C. End of story."

  Pat pulled a fifth of whiskey from the gym bag at his feet. He took some clandestine pulls, offered it up.

  "No thanks," I said

  "It's decent stuff."

  "I'm trying to cut back."

  "Dude who says that is never cutting back. He's either drinking or not drinking. I know all about it."

  "All the same," I said.

  Pat slipped the bottle back into his bag. We both put our seats back and stared out the window for a while. Night fell and I stared at the dark shapes of trees until they were just dark shapes.

  There was city darkness and the dark outside the city, the Nearmont dark, the Eastern Valley dark, which, being only one town over, was pretty much the Nearmont dark. I pictured the Pangburn Falls dark as something else. Darker, maybe. Did Purdy ever stay the night in those upstate motels, cuddle with Nathalie under scratchy bleached-out sheets, kiss her shoulder to wake her before his dawn drive home? Or did Nathalie leave first, nervous about young Don, his dinner, his suspicions? Only Purdy knew. Only Purdy's version would ever stand for truth. Maybe that was what Don finally understood. There was no use fighting it. Especially when all you were really fighting for was the love of a man you hated.

  Nobody was going to tell Nathalie's story. Stories were like people. We pretended they all counted, but almost none of them did.

  "Hey," said Pat. "Want to rethink your decision?"

  He was hunched over with the bottle near his knee.

  "What the hell," I said, took a sip.

  "That's the way," said Pat. "This country was built on the backs of dudes who drank on buses. What we do honors them. Anyway, it's all highly dealable in the end."

  "What's that?" I said, drank some more.

  "Everything. As long you don't choke on your puke. That's my golden fucking rule."

  Twenty-nine

  We rolled into Nearmont late. I stepped off the bus and walked the berm of the county road. Big Jeeps and minivans roared by and a cold wind blew off Grandy Pond. It was hard to see inside the cars, but I could almost make out the mothers and fathers and children in them, the dirty cleats and grocery bags, the lulling glow of dashboard lights. Everybody wanted to get home. Home could be a ruined place, joyless, heaped with the ashes of scorched hearts, but come evening everybody hustled to get there.

  Once I walked this road on early spring evenings, knapsack slung on one shoulder, the cars ripping along, headlights slashing the yard barrels and wet lawns, my hair wet, too, from the track team showers, my body sore and buzzy from the weight room, all those snatches and squats and curls.

  I threw the javelin then, was no champion, not even a contender for regional ribbons, just good enough to know the happiness of making your body a part of that spear, to get a good trot up to the throwing line, to slip into a rabbity sideways hop and snap your hips, launch a steel-tipped proxy of yourself at the sky.

  I would savor the long walk home, the sweet, achy daze of it, drift into the jagged excitements of my future, paintings, parties, people, women people, a ceaseless celebration of my greedy, spangled destiny. There was nothing noble about such want. But it was me, and maybe some of you, walking home from school in April drizzle, dreaming.

  And maybe it was me and some of you who took a nap before dinner, lay back on the sofa with a book, the assigned reading, another novel with the old-fashioned folk, their stiff speeches and chafed hearts. Maybe some of you, like me, shut your eyes with the book open on your chest, tumbled into another world, near and impossible, homeroom skin beneath rain-damp denim.

  Certain noises would sever the reverie, a cough, my mother in the kitchen, the local news flipped on the kitchen TV-arson and elevator assaults across the river, or Don Mattingly, Donnie Baseball, with his leopard swing and porn-star mustache, on another hitting streak for the Yankees-the sounds of dishes pulled from their shelves, the rubber smooch of the refrigerator door, the tepid click of salad tongs, the hiss of garlic, frying.

  No, Claudia never cooked with garlic. Maura did.

  But this house in Nearmont, with all its woes, a Jolly Roger here and also never here, and the poison sadness seeping from my mother, even then this house in Nearmont was always a home, heated, with food, and familiar noises,
and I was lucky to have it, this home to trust and hate, to launch myself from like a javelin that tails and wobbles and does not drive into the turf but skids to a halt at a slightly less-than-average distance, a mediocre distance, from the lumped lime line.

  This is what the blessed get. A heated box, a stocked pantry, a clumpy metaphor.

  The blessed get legs. The unblessed get humps, titanium girls.

  ***

  I turned onto Eisenhower. Lights blazed in the bay window. Francine opened the door before I could knock.

  "Come in, honey," she said.

  I stepped into the foyer, heard Purdy's voice.

  He sat with my mother on the sofa, sacks of chocolate and licorice between them. Michael Florida tipped forward in the rocking chair, winked.

  "Purdy," I said, took a seat on the hassock.

  "How come you never invited me to your mother's house? She's a force!"

  "I've been calling you," I said.

  "Your friend is making me fat," said Claudia. "I'll never fit into my racing suit."

  "Give me a break," said Purdy. "You're a knockout."

  "I like this guy," said my mother.

  "Did you get my messages?" I said.

  "I'm sure I did."

  "What the fuck does that mean?"

  "Sweetie," said Claudia, "you seem a little wound up."

  "Your mom was just telling us some funny stories about young Milo Burke."

  "Hilarious stuff," shouted Francine from the kitchen. "Hey, guys, I've got stone-ground crackers and pony cans of pumpkin beer. Who's game?"

  "Bring on the crackers!" called Michael Florida. "Heck, let me get in there and help."

  Michael Florida trotted off to the kitchen.

  "What kinds of stories?"

  "Well, we just heard the one where you brought this nice Japanese girl home and then, just as you were about to kiss her, you shit your jeans," said Purdy. "That was pretty good."

  "That never happened."

  "Plausible deniability. Well done."

  "I don't care. It just didn't happen. My mother is conflating."

  "It's true," said Claudia. "I'm a notorious conflater. And we shouldn't tease Milo. He's always been thin-skinned. A very nervous boy. Anxious."