The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

by Dave Eggers

  40.

  When Marshall came back with the dark chocolate bars. He said he'd gone up to a traffic cop and told him that his sister had turned into a giant orange glow and was controlling our minds. He said the man was extremely rude to him.

  41.

  I don't have a boyfriend. I did, but we broke up after he went to a Rolling Stones concert with the evil bottle-blond former friend whose name I do not mention. Also, I mean, the Rolling Stones? These little old goat-men hopping around the stage pretending to be all rock and roll? Please. So, no.

  42.

  I'd quite like to be a vet. But then I think about having to put animals down, and I don't know. I want to travel for a bit before I make any decisions.

  43.

  The garden hose. We turned it on full, while she was eating her chocolate bars, and distracted, and we sprayed it at her.

  44.

  Just orange steam, really. Mom said that she had solvents and things in the garage, if we could get in there, but by now Her Immanence was hissing mad (literally), and she sort of fixed us to the floor. I can't explain it. I mean, I wasn't stuck, but I couldn't leave or move my legs. I was just where she left me.

  45.

  About two feet above the carpet. She'd sink down a bit to go through the door, so she didn't bump her head. And after the hose incident she didn't go back to her room, just stayed in the main room and floated about frumpily, the color of a luminous carrot.

  46.

  Complete world domination.

  47.

  I wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to Marshall.

  48.

  He had to carry it back. I don't think Her Immanence really understood money.

  49.

  I don't know. It was Mom's idea more than mine. I think she hoped that the solvent might remove the orange. And at that point, it couldn't hurt. Nothing could have made things worse.

  50.

  It didn't even upset her, like the hose-water did. I'm pretty sure she liked it. I think I saw her dipping her chocolate bars into it, before she ate them, although I had to sort of squint up my eyes to see anything where she was. It was all a sort of great orange glow.

  51.

  That we were all going to die. Mom told Marshall that if the Great Oompaloompa let him out to buy chocolate again, he just shouldn't bother coming back. And I was getting really upset about the animals—I hadn't fed the chinchilla or Roland the guinea pig for two days, because I couldn't go into the back garden. I couldn't go anywhere. Except the bathroom, and then I had to ask.

  52.

  I suppose because they thought the house was on fire. All the orange light. I mean, it was a natural mistake.

  53.

  We were glad she hadn't done that to us. Mom said it proved that Lilias was still in there somewhere, because if she had the power to turn us into goo, like she did the firefighters, she would have done so. I said that maybe she just wasn't powerful enough to turn us into goo at the beginning and now she couldn't be bothered.

  54.

  You couldn't even see a person in there anymore. It was a bright orange pulsating light, and sometimes it talked straight into your head.

  55.

  When the spaceship landed.

  56.

  I don't know. I mean, it was bigger than the whole block, but it didn't crush anything. It sort of materialized around us, so that our whole house was inside it. And the whole street was inside it too.

  57.

  No. But what else could it have been?

  58.

  A sort of pale blue. They didn't pulse, either. They twinkled.

  59.

  More than six, less than twenty. it's not that easy to tell if this is the same intelligent blue light you were just speaking to five minutes ago.

  60.

  Three things. First of all, a promise that Lilias wouldn't be hurt or harmed. Second, that if they were ever able to return her to the way she was, they'd let us know, and bring her back. Thirdly, a recipe for fluorescent bubble mixture. (I can only assume they were reading Mom's mind, because she didn't say anything. it's possible that Her Immanence told them, though. She definitely had access to some of the Vehicle's memories.) Also, they gave Marshall a thing like a glass skateboard.

  61.

  A sort of a liquid sound. Then everything became transparent. I was crying, and so was Mom. And Marshall said "Cool beans," and I started to giggle while crying, and then it was just our house again.

  62.

  We went out in the back garden and looked up. There was something blinking blue and orange, very high, getting smaller and smaller, and we watched it until it was out of sight.

  63.

  Because I didn't want to.

  64.

  I fed the remaining animals. Roland was in a state. The cats just seemed happy that someone was feeding them again. I don't know how the chinchilla got out.

  65.

  Sometimes. I mean, you have to bear in mind that she was the single most irritating person on the planet, even before the whole Her Immanence thing. But yes, I guess so. If I'm honest.

  66.

  Sitting outside at night, staring up at the sky, wondering what she's doing now.

  67.

  He wants his glass skateboard back. He says that it's his, and the government has no right to keep it. (You are the government, aren't you?) Mom seems happy to share the patent for the Colored Bubble recipe with the government though. The man said that it might be the basis of a whole new branch of molecular something or other. Nobody gave me anything, so I don't have to worry.

  68.

  Once, in the back garden, looking up at the night sky. I think it was only an orangeyish star, actually. It could have been Mars, I know they call it the red planet. Although once in a while I think that maybe she's back to herself again, and dancing, up there, wherever she is, and all the aliens love her pole dancing because they just don't know any better, and they think it's a whole new art-form, and they don't even mind that she's sort of square.

  69.

  I don't know. Sitting in the back garden talking to the cats, maybe. Or blowing silly-colored bubbles.

  70.

  Until the day I die.

  I attest that this is a true statement of events.

  Signed:

  Date:

  Butt and Bhatti

  Mohammed Hanif

  FROM Granta

  TEDDY HAS BROUGHT A MAUSER to his declaration of love. He has brought a story about the moon as well but he is not sure where to start. The story is romantic in an old-fashioned kind of way; the Mauser has three bullets in it. He is hoping that the Mauser and the story about the moon will somehow come together to produce the kind of love song that makes old acquaintances run away together.

  Before resorting to gunpoint poetry, Teddy Butt tries the traditional route to romancing a medical professional; he pretends to be sick and then, like a truly hopeless lover, starts believing that he is sick, recognizes all the little symptoms—sudden fevers, heart palpitations, lingering migraine, even mild depression. He cries while watching a documentary about a snow leopard stranded on a melting glacier.

  He lurks around the Outpatients Department on a Sunday afternoon, when Sister Alice Bhatti is alone. She pretends to be busy counting syringes, boiling needles, polishing grimy surfaces, and only turns round when he coughs politely, like you are supposed to do when entering a respectable household so that women have the time to cover themselves. Sister Alice Bhatti doesn't understand this polite-cough protocol and stares at him as if telling him, See? This is what smoking does to your lungs.

  Teddy Butt is too vain to bring up anything like stomach troubles or a skin rash, both conditions he frequently suffers from. Boldabolics play havoc with his digestion. His bodybuilder's weekly regime of waxing his body hair has left certain parts of his body looking like abstract kilim designs. For his first consultation with Sister Alice he has thought up something more romantic. />
  "I can't sleep."

  He says this sitting on a rickety little stool as Sister Alice takes notes in a khaki-coloured register. "For how long have you not been able to sleep?" With any other patient Alice would have reached for the wrist to take the pulse, would have listened to their chest with a stethoscope, but she knows that Teddy is not that kind of patient.

  "Since I have seen you," is what Teddy wants to say but he hasn't rehearsed it, he is not ready yet.

  "I do go to sleep. But then I have dreams and I wake up," he says and feels relieved at having delivered a full sentence without falling off the stool.

  Alice Bhatti wants to tell him to go to the OPD in Charya Ward, that is where they deal in dreams. The whole place is a bad dream. But she knows that he wants to be her patient and Senior Sister Hina Alvi has taught her that when a patient walks in with intent you listen to them, even if you know they are making up their symptoms.

  She can also see the outline of a muzzle in the crotch of his yellow Adidas trousers. He looks like a freak with two cocks.

  "What kind of dreams?"

  Teddy has only ever had one dream, the one with a river and a kaftan-wearing God in it. The dream always ends badly as a drowning Teddy discovers that he can't walk on water even in his dream. God stands at the edge of a silvery, completely walkable river and shakes His head in disappointment as if saying, it's your dream, what do you expect me to do? But somehow bringing up God and His kaftan and His disapproval right now seems inappropriate. "I see a river in my dream." He conveniently leaves God out.

  "A river?" Alice Bhatti taps the pen on the register without writing anything.

  Teddy feels he is being told that his dream is not sick enough.

  "it's a river of blood. Red."

  Sister Alice looks at him with interest. This Teddy boy might be a police tout but he has a poetic side to him, she thinks.

  "Any boats in that river of yours?" she asks with an encouraging smile, as if urging him to go on sharing more of his dream with her, to go ahead and dream for her. Teddy accepts the challenge. "It has bodies floating in it and severed heads, bobbing up and down." He realizes that his dream doesn't sound very romantic. "And some flowers also."

  "Do you recognize any of these people in the river? In your dream, I mean." Teddy shuts his eyes as if trying hard to recognize a face from the river. Teddy was hoping that somehow his midnight yearning for Alice and his insomnia would walk hand in hand and form a rhyming, soaring declaration of love that would reverberate through the corridors of the hospital. Instead he is stuck with embellishing details for a bad dream.

  "I can't really stop your dreams but I can give you something that will ensure that you sleep well. And if you sleep well then you might start having better dreams." She scribbles a prescription for Lexotanil then puts it aside. "Actually I might have one here. An hour before you sleep. Never on an empty stomach. And no warm milk at night. Sometimes indigestion can give you bad dreams."

  Sister Alice gives him a curt smile, turns round and goes back to counting her syringes. She does it with such studied concentration that it seems the health of the nation depends on getting this count right.

  Teddy Butt stumbles into the OPD the following morning, bleary-eyed, moving slowly. Even his voice seems to be coming from underwater. There is a sleepy calm about him. Even the muzzle of the gun in his trousers seems flaccid. "I didn't have any dreams. What did you give me? What did you mix in that pill?" Teddy's words are accusatory but his tone is grateful.

  "I didn't mix anything. It was a Glaxo original, supposed to help you sleep. Do you want more?" She reaches into her drawer and stops. She notices that he is wearing a little cross on a gold chain around his neck. She shows the slight, spontaneous irritation that natives feel when tourists try and dress up like them. "What's that thing you are wearing?"

  "A chain," Teddy Butt says. "A friend from Dubai got it for me." The man whose neck Teddy snatched it from was indeed visiting from Dubai. One ear and the side of his face were blown off in an unfortunate accident during an interrogation. The man from Dubai had almost strangled Teddy with his handcuffs before Inspector Malangi put his Repeater near his left ear, shouted at Teddy, "Knee on the left, bhai. Your left, not mine,"—and shot him. The chain with the cross was the reward Inspector Malangi gave him for keeping the man pinned down at that difficult moment. Teddy hadn't killed the man; he was only holding him down. It was his job. If he hadn't done it someone else would have. If he hadn't done this job he would definitely have to do some other job. And who knows what he might be required to do in that new job? He runs his forefinger along his chain and presses the cross into his chest with the satisfaction of someone who is lucky enough not to get the worst job in the city. He had felt the man's breath on his knee when he tried to bite him before getting shot.

  For a moment Teddy wonders whether he can source a matching necklace for her.

  "it's a cross, not jewellery. Why would a man want to wear jewellery anyway?" She scribbles a prescription for Lexotanil on her pad and turns away.

  Teddy Butt is flummoxed and walks away without answering, without asking anything. He goes to his room in Al Aman apartments and sleeps the whole day. He doesn't have any dreams but after he wakes up and starts doing weights he watches a fascinating documentary about Komodo dragons who hypnotize their prey before going for the underside of their throat.

  Teddy decides that he is going to tell Alice Bhatti everything but he will need her full attention. From what Teddy can tell, women are always distracted, trying to do too many things at the same time, always happy to go off on tangents; that's why they make good nurses and politicians but not good chefs and truck drivers. He realizes that he can't do it without his Mauser. He also realizes that he'll have to wait for the coming Sunday when there is only skeleton staff on duty.

  Teddy is one of those people who are only articulate when they talk about cricket. The rest of the time they rely on a combination of grunts, hand gestures and repeat the snippets of what other people have just said to them. He also has very little experience of sharing his feelings.

  He has been a customer of women and occasionally their tormentor but never a lover. He believes that being a lover is something that falls somewhere between paying them and slapping them around. Twice he has come close to conceding love. Once he gave a fifty-rupee tip to a prostitute who looked fourteen but claimed to be twenty-two. Encouraged by his generosity she also demanded a poster of Imran Khan and that put him off. Teddy promised to get it but never went back because he thought Imran Khan was a failed batsman pretending to be a bowler. On another occasion he only pretended to take his turn with a thirty-two-year-old Bangladeshi prisoner after a small police contingent had shuffled out of the room. He only sat there and played with her hair while she sobbed and cursed in Bengali. The only word he could understand was Allah. He had walked out adjusting his fly, pretending to be exhausted and satisfied, even joking with the policemen: It was like fucking an oil spill.

  But Teddy Butt can be very articulate, even poetic, with a Mauser in his hand, and after much thought this is what he decides to do. He tries practising in front of the full-length mirror in his room. "You live in my heart." With every word he jabs the Mauser in the air like an underprepared lawyer trying to impress a judge. The gun might send the wrong signal but Teddy is convinced that he will be able to explain himself. People always listen and try their best to understand when their life depends on listening properly.

  "You can't go around in the Ortho Ward with that," Alice Bhatti has emerged carrying a bedpan in one hand and a discarded, blood-smeared bandage in the other and starts admonishing him while walking away from him. "Don't waste your bullets, this hospital will kill them all anyway." Teddy feels the love of his life slipping from his hands, his plan falling apart at the very first hurdle. He grips the Mauser, stretches his arm and blocks her way.

  Alice Bhatti looks confused for a moment and then irritated. "What do you want to
rob me of? This piss tray?"

  With the Mauser extended, Teddy finds his tongue. "I can't live like this. This life is too much."

  "Nobody can live like this." Alice Bhatti is attentive now and sympathetic. "If these cheap guns don't kill you, those Boldabolic pills will. Get a job as a PT master. Or come to think of it, you could get a nurse's diploma and work here. There is always work for a man nurse. There are parts of this place where even women doctors don't go. Charya Ward for example hasn't had a..."

  Teddy doesn't listen to the whole thing, the word PT master triggers off a childhood memory that he had completely forgotten—a very tall, very fat PT teacher holds him by his ears, swings him round and then hurls him on the ground and walks away laughing. The other children run around him in a circle and decide to change his nickname from "Nappy" to "Yo-yo." Teddy takes the gun to Alice Bhatti's temple and snarls in his high-pitched, sing-song voice.

  "Give me one good reason why somebody wouldn't shoot in this hospital? Why shouldn't I shoot you right here and end all my troubles?"

  "Mine too," she wants to say but Teddy's hand holding the Mauser is trembling and one thing Sister Alice doesn't want in her life is a shoot-out in her workplace.