A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

  When you sleep with a friend, the trickiest part is getting started. You can’t just jump into fucking without kissing, and kissing is very intimate. If you kiss in the wrong way, it sends the wrong message. But we had to kiss, to get the engines warm, so to speak. We never kissed after sex, obviously. What would be the point? You don’t warm the engine after you’ve reached your destination, do you? But then we started doing it anyway. I was confused. I thought a friendly fuck was supposed to be passionate and revitalizing. I was all ready for that. Sex as fun- sinful but harmless, like chocolate ice cream for breakfast. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was tender and loving, and afterward we lay in each other’s arms, and sometimes we even caressed each other. I didn’t know what to make of it. Neither of us knew what to say, and it was to fill an awkward silence that I confided to Anouk my big secret, that I was finally actually dying.

  She took it worse than I had imagined. In fact, she almost took it even worse than I did. “No!” she screamed, then launched feverishly into a catalogue of alternative therapies: acupuncture, strange-sounding herbs, some terrifying cure called soul-flossing, meditation and the curative potency of positive thinking. But you can’t positive-think your death away; you might as well try thinking “Tomorrow the sun will rise in the west. In the west. In the west.” It doesn’t do any good. Nature has laws which she’s maniacal about enforcing.

  “Look, Anouk. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting death,” I said.

  She asked me all the details. I gave them to her, as I knew them. She felt so sorry for me, I wept.

  Then we made love in a frenzy of desire that was downright violent. We were fucking death.

  “Have you told Jasper?” she asked afterward.

  “About us?”

  “No- about you.”

  I shook my head feeling shamefully elated, because I was enjoying a fantasy in which he would be sorry for despising me. He would break down and weep, half torn open by remorse. This thought perked me up a bit. Someone else’s soul-destroying guilt can be a reason for living.

  After this initial discussion, we didn’t talk about my upcoming death much, although I could tell it was on her mind by the way she would try to convince me to donate my cancerous organs to researchers. Then one frosty night, while warming our hands on the afterglow of ferocious sex, she asked, “What are you going to do for the rest of your life?”

  It was a good question; now that the rest of my life wasn’t the few billion years I had assumed it would be, what was I going to do? For the first time in my life, I was at a real loss. A total loss. I couldn’t even read anymore. What was the point of deepening my understanding of the universe and the shitheads in it when I would no longer be around to snarl at my findings? I already felt my nonexistence with bitterness. There was so much I wanted to do. I thought of all the things I could’ve been. As I said them to Anouk, each sounded as ludicrous as the next: a mountaineer, a writer of historical romances, an inventor credited with a great discovery, like Alexander Graham Bell, who pioneered phone sex.

  “Anything else?”

  “There’s one thing.”

  “What?”

  “I always thought I would make a really good Rasputin character.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  I dug through my notebooks and showed her an idea I’d had about influencing rich and powerful men with my ideas, whispering spectacular ideas into an enormous golden ear. She latched on to this with a lunatic’s energy. She seemed to think that if I achieved just one of my dreams, I would go to the grave feeling satisfied. Does anyone go to the grave satisfied? True satisfaction can’t exist as long as there’s one itch left to scratch. And I don’t care who you are, there’s always an itch.

  ***

  Then one empty night Jasper burst into my room with the unlikely news that Oscar and Reynold Hobbs were here to see me. Apparently Anouk had brought home two of the most powerful men on earth. An intense hatred for Anouk surged up in me. What a nasty act of cruelty, giving a dying man his last wish. Don’t you realize he doesn’t want it? His real wish is not to die.

  I went out and saw them. Reynold, imperious and resolute; he even blinked with authority. And his son, the heir apparent, Oscar- sharp and serious, with aesthetically jarring good looks, he was the perfect product of the modern dynasty (in modern dynasties every second generation breeds with supermodels to ensure that the bloodline has high cheekbones). I felt an intense hatred for those two men too, so secure in their destiny. I had finally come around to believing in my death, but I couldn’t fathom theirs. They seemed impervious to everything.

  Reynold looked at me, sizing me up. I was two sizes too small.

  And why were they in my house? To listen to my ideas. How had Anouk pulled that off? It was remarkable. It was the most anyone had ever done for me. I dug out some old notebooks and read a couple of asinine ideas I’d had over the years. It’s not important what they were, only that they fell flat. As I read, the two men looked to have faces made of a sturdy wood. There was really nothing human about them.

  After hearing me out, Reynold violently lit a cigar and I thought: What is it with wealthy men and cigars? Are they thinking that lung cancer is for the plebs while tongue cancer puts them in a higher echelon? Then Reynold mentioned to me the real reason they were here. Not to listen to my ideas after all, but to get my input on a television miniseries they were hoping to make on, what else, the Terry Dean story.

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say anything.

  Reynold brushed one hand down his thigh and suddenly the son said, “Now we’ll be off!”

  What teamwork! What superconsciousness!

  Then they left.

  I went out into the labyrinth, furious at my dead brother, begging the cosmos to allow me to travel back in time just for five minutes, long enough to spit in his eye. I mean, how tireless a ghost was he? He had turned my past into a vast open wound, unhealed and unhealable. Infected and infectious.

  It was cold out. I waded through the night as through a river. My disappointment was not so surprising; of course a part of me wanted to succeed. You can’t be a failure all your life, can you? Actually, you can. That was the problem right there.

  “Marty!”

  Anouk. She was running toward me. The sight of her was a great relief. I was no longer angry at her for fanning the flame of my brother’s ghost. I had Anouk. I had ferocious passion on my résumé. Our lovemaking was so exciting you’d think we were committing adultery.

  “I’m sorry. I thought they might really be interested.”

  “They just wanted Terry. They always do.”

  Anouk put her arms around me. I felt desire moving through the rooms of my body, a bright sun casting its light on the shadows of my cancer, and I grew fresh and young and Anouk could feel this was happening because she hugged me tighter and nestled her face in my neck and left it there for what seemed like a long time.

  We heard footsteps somewhere in the bush. I pushed her away.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s Jasper.”

  “So?”

  “So don’t you think we should keep this between us?”

  Anouk studied my face for a long time. “Why?”

  Somehow I knew he’d take it badly. I was terrified that his hysterics might prejudice Anouk against me, might turn her off the whole idea. She might conclude that sleeping with me wasn’t worth the trouble. That’s why a couple of days later I went about the bizarre, unenviable chore of interfering in my son’s love life. A part of me knew that no matter what I did, no matter how honorable or dishonorable my intentions were, it would inevitably backfire. Well, so what? It’s not like I’d be breaking up the world’s most rock-solid couple. Isn’t their incompatibility evident by the mere fact that she has risen to the moral challenge of acquiring a lover and he hasn’t? I’m rationalizing, of course. The truth was, I preferred his storming furiously out of my life to the prosp
ect of Anouk slipping out of my arms.

  I couldn’t call the girlfriend up, and there was no way of asking Jasper for her phone number without his taking out a restraining order against me, so one morning I woke early and staked out his hut, waiting for her to leave, and when she did I trailed her. The frequency of their relations, if not the seriousness, I was able to ascertain by the adroit way she navigated through the labyrinth. I walked behind her, watching her curvaceous body swing this way and that. As I followed her, I wondered how you go about addressing someone’s treachery. I decided you just come out with it.

  “Hey, you!” I said.

  She turned quickly and gave me the kind of smile that can really castrate a man. “Hello, Mr. Dean.”

  “Don’t give me that. I have something to say to you.”

  She looked at me with all the sweet, innocent patience in the world. I launched right into it. “I saw you the other day.”

  “Where?”

  “Kissing someone I didn’t father.”

  She let out an uncertain gulp of air and lowered her eyes. “Mr. Dean,” she said, but that’s all she said.

  “So what have you got to say for yourself? Are you going to tell Jasper, or am I?”

  “There’s no reason to tell Jasper. The thing is, we used to go out together, and I’ve had a hard time forgetting about him, and I thought…well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, but he doesn’t want me. And I don’t want him anymore. And I do love Jasper. I just…Please don’t tell him. I’ll break up with him, but I won’t tell him.”

  “I don’t want you to break up with him. I don’t care if you’re my son’s girlfriend or not. But if you are, you can’t cheat on him. And if you do, you have to tell him. Look- let me tell you a story. One time I was in love with my brother’s girlfriend. Her name was Caroline Potts. Hang on, maybe I’d better start at the beginning. People always want to know what Terry Dean was like as a child. They expect tales of kiddie violence and corruption in the heart of an infant. They imagine a miniature criminal crawling around the playpen perpetrating acts of immorality in between feedings. Ridiculous! Was Hitler goose-stepping all the way to his mother’s breast?”

  “Mr. Dean, I have to go.”

  “Oh, well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I said, and as she walked away, I couldn’t work out for the life of me what we had cleared up, if anything.

  ***

  Later that night Jasper walked in on Anouk and me in bed. He flipped out. I don’t know why it caused him such profound embarrassment- maybe the Oedipal project is most effective in broken families such as ours; the son’s desire to kill the father and fuck the mother is less repulsive an idea if it is the mother-substitute the boy desires to sleep with. As if to confirm my revolting theory, Jasper acted very hurt and even furious. I suppose at some point in life we give in to a senseless outburst that serves to rob us of all credibility, and this was Jasper’s. There was no logical reason why he should oppose this occasional physical and sweaty union of Anouk’s and mine, and he knew it too, but the next thing he came and told me was that he was moving out. We stood in silence for a minute. It was a large minute, not long but wide and cavernous.

  I smiled. I felt the weight of my smile. It was exceedingly heavy.

  His exit threatened to last a century but was over surprisingly quickly. After he said, “I’ll phone you,” I listened to the furious song of his footsteps retreating and I wanted to call him back and guilt-trip him into staying in contact with me.

  He was gone.

  I was alone.

  My presence weighed as heavily on me as my concrete smile.

  So! He’s left me in my dark crevice, in my solitary whirlwind. Children are a complete failure, aren’t they? I don’t know how people can derive any lasting satisfaction out of them.

  I couldn’t believe he was gone.

  My son!

  The sperm that got away!

  My failed abortion!

  I stepped outside and looked at the stars tattooed on the night sky. It was one of those magnetic nights when you feel everything is either drawn to your body or is repelled by it. All this time I had thought my son was striving to be my mirror opposite, but he wasn’t- he had become my polar opposite instead, and that had sent him careering away.

  ***

  A week later I felt lost in a dark and heavy cloud. Anouk hadn’t turned up for a couple of days and I sat in her studio, surrounded by plaster genitalia, feeling deeply ashamed because I was bored. What right does a dying man have to be bored? Time was killing me and I retaliated by killing time. Jasper was gone; Anouk had abandoned me. The only person I had left was Eddie, but I really could stand him only for short bursts. It’s a shame you can’t go out and see people for just ten minutes. That’s all the human contact I need to carry me through life for three days- then I need ten minutes more. But you can’t invite someone over for ten minutes. They stay and stay and never leave, and I always have to say something jarring like “You go now.” For many years I tried the favorite, “I won’t keep you any longer,” or “I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” but that never worked. There are far too many people who don’t have anything to do and have nowhere to go and who would like nothing better than to squander their whole lives chatting. I’ve never understood it.

  When I heard Anouk’s voice calling my name, a gust of pure joy blew through my heart and I shouted, “I’m here! In the studio!” and I felt the pulse of sexual desire fire up. At once I had the imprudent notion that I should take off my clothes. I hardly even remember peeling them off, I was in such a fervor for union, and by the time she came to the doorway I was fully naked, beaming at her. At first I didn’t understand the frown on her face; then I thought about how I’d been lurking in ambush among the world’s largest collection of genitals, and my own, by comparison, didn’t compare. In my defense, the genitals around me were not to scale.

  Then she said, “Um, I’m not alone.” And who should stick his impeccable head through the doorway but Oscar Hobbs.

  In a testament to his unshakable coolness, he launched right into it. “I have some news for you,” he said. “I’d like to help you realize one of your ideas.”

  I felt about to either shatter or freeze into a solid block. “For God’s sake, why?” I said briskly, then, “Which one?”

  “I thought we’d discuss it. Which one would you most like to see realized?”

  Good question. I had no clue. I closed my eyes, took a long breath, and dove into my brain. I swam down deep, and in the space of a minute I must have picked up and discarded over a hundred silly schemes. Then I found the one I wanted- an idea with handles. My eyelids sprang open.

  “I’d like to start making everyone in Australia a millionaire,” I announced.

  “Smart choice,” he said, and I understood immediately that we understood each other. “How do you intend to do that?”

  “Trust me. I’ve got it all worked out.”

  “Trust you?”

  “Obviously, since you’re a major player in a multinational conglomerate, I can’t trust you. So you’ll have to trust me. When it’s time, I’ll tell you the details.”

  Oscar gave Anouk the briefest of looks before his eyes returned to me.

  “OK,” he said.

  “OK? Wait a minute- are you serious about this?”

  “Yes.”

  In the awkward silence that followed this improbable turn of events, I noticed how the customarily expressionless Oscar was looking at Anouk as if he were struggling against something in his nature. What did it mean? Had Anouk promised him sexual favors? Had she made some strange, unpleasant pact for my benefit? The niggling suspicion compromised my sudden success. That’s how it always is- you never get a complete victory; there are always strings attached. Still, I didn’t hesitate to accept his offer. That was followed by another unexpected slug in the guts, the crushing look of disillusionment on Anouk’s face, as if by accepting Oscar’s offer I had proved myself
to be less than she imagined. That I couldn’t understand. This was her idea, wasn’t it?

  Anyway, I had to accept it. What choice did I have?

  I was time-poor.

  Chapter Two

  We went straight into battle mode. First there was the publicity; we had to whet the public’s appetite. Oscar was smart; he didn’t mess around. The very next day, before we’d even properly discussed how this ludicrous scheme was going to function, he put my picture on the front page of the daily tabloid with the headline “This Man Wants to Make You Rich.” A little clunky, not very elegant, but effective. And that was it for me. The official end to my life as the invisible man.

  There was the briefest outline of my idea, without specifics, but most infuriatingly, I was introduced to the Australian public as “Brother of Iconic Outlaw Terry Dean.”

  I tore the newspaper into ribbons. Then the telephone started ringing and the lowest forms of human life were on the other end- journalists. What had I gotten myself into? Becoming a public figure is like befriending a rottweiler with meat in your pockets. They all wanted details on how I planned to do it. The first to pick up on the story was a TV producer for a current affairs show, wanting to know if I would be interviewed for a segment. “Of course not,” I said, and hung up. This was just reflex.

  “You have to publicize your scheme,” Anouk said.

  “Fuck that,” I said weakly. I knew she was right. But how could I speak to these journalists when all I could hear in my head, drowning out their questions, was noisy echoes of an old rage? It turned out I was the kind of person who could hold a grudge for a lifetime. I was still fuming over how the media had relentlessly harassed my family during Terry’s rampage. What was I going to do? They called and called and called. They asked me about myself, my scheme, my brother. Different voices, same questions. When I walked outside, I heard them calling from somewhere within the labyrinth. Helicopters circled overhead. I went inside and locked the door and climbed into bed and turned off the lights. I felt my whole world was on fire. I’d done this to myself, I knew, but that didn’t make it any easier. It made it worse.