The Subject Steve: A Novel (14 page)

"John Q. Fuckeroo."

"Is that Welsh?" said Estelle. "My first husband was Welsh."

"I'm the stewman," I said.

Everyone stared.

Wen walked me back to my door.

"You've got to stop collapsing," he said. "It's impeding your progress."

I found Lem down near the bed sifting through some dust balls.

"What's going on?" I said.

"Nothing," said Lem. "I dropped some Percodan."

"Where'd you get Percodan?"

"Your nurse buddy, Donald. Decent caring Donald."

"I'm going home, Lem," I said. "I'm going home to live or die but I'm going home."

"Probably die," said Lem.

"You're coming with me."

"I can't," said Lem. "I'm a country boy."

"You're a freak, Lem. A botched psychosocial experiment."

"I'm not that bad. I get the jokes on TV."

"We have to stick together now."

"I have to find the percs I dropped."

"You didn't drop them. No one ever drops anything."

"What's these, then?" said Lem.

We popped the pills, broke out some Bavarian creams. We rolled the TV in from the TV lounge.

"I've seen this," I said.

"Don't ruin it," said Lem.

Sandhogs ate their sandwiches and died by the score. The host stood inside the tiled tube, sobbed.

"The men were mealed," he said. "Until a granular quality obtained."

We took a bus down to the city with the motor oil money. We got a good movie on the bus. It was about airplanes falling out of the sky. Airplanes fell, boats sank, what could you do but get nervous? Buses swerved into ditches, mostly, or they tumbled from mountaintops in mountainous countries and only the chickens lived. But the chickens, they'd get buried in an avalanche. The avalanche would kick off a flood. Rivers would swell, whole villages would be wiped out. It was horrible, horrible. These goddamn countries were exporting horror and they had to be stopped. Maybe invaded, even.

I mentioned my concern to Lem.

"You're out of your fucking mind," he said. "It's the PREXIS. It's snacking on your faculty for reason."

"I'm in fine fettle," I said.

But I'd been feeling the shoots and shudders again. The organ-flutter, the vein ache. Lem had his perc stash in his fanny pack. I partook, feared more chicken visions.

We pulled into Port Authority at dusk. The home grime gladdened me. I led Lem through the throng.

"How about a peep show?"

"It's all kiddie stuff now," I said.

"Kiddie porn?"

"Kind of."

I shoved him onto a downtown train.

"Gibbering, jostling humanity," said Lem.

"Sit the fuck down," I said.

A man stood near us gripping the pole. He dropped his pants, groaned down into a squat.

"I have no place to shit tonight," he said. "Can you help me find a place to shit tonight?"

He started to pass a hat around.

"Have you ever really done it?" Lem asked the man.

"Done what?"

"Taken a dump on the train."

"That's disgusting," said the man.

It looked like they were doing some work on my old building. There were ladders outside, high bins full of stones. The neighborhood had been crumbling for some time. Every so often a gargoyle would topple off an edifice, crush a schoolgirl. It was good homegrown horror but people still preferred the imported kind. My old neighbor, an architect, wore a hard hat everywhere outside. He called us all cornice-bait.

Lem and I walked into the lobby and waited for the elevator.

"You're not going to believe this," said Lem, "but I've never been on one of these before."

"An elevator?"

"People fuck in them, right?"

"Constantly."

We got in with an old lady I used to bathe.

"Hilda," I said.

"Hilda's dead," said the woman. "I'm Hilda's mother."

My apartment door had been painted over. Someone was doing slap bass scales inside. I knocked and a woman in platinum-rimmed safety glasses answered the door. She had a jar of ointment with her. The label said Rad Balm. She daubed some of it on her lips.

"What?" she said.

"I live here," I said.

"Are you a time traveler?"

"I don't understand."

"Maybe you used to live here."

"That's very clever," I said. "How'd you get in?"

"Super gave me the key."

The Rad Balm girl disappeared, came back with a cardboard box. There was my Jews of Jazz calendar sticking out, Cudahy's track jacket, some spice vials bound in rubber band.

"Yours?"

"Yes."

"I had no real reason to save it. No law compelled me. And how many months does Benny Goodman get anyway?"

"Somebody gave me that calendar."

"Somebody gave me chlamydia. Stop making excuses. You'll be better off."

"I'd be better off if I hadn't been illegally evicted from my home."

"That I can't help you with. Just the emotional stuff."

"Thanks," I said. "See you around."

"Sure."

"You play beautifully," said Lem.

"It's not me," said the Rad Balm girl. "It's software for the fish."

"Fish?" said Lem.

"That's musician talk."

She shut the door.

We got some hot dogs and papaya juice, sat with the pigeons in a park. The park was mostly concrete. Stone benches, stone fountains, a brick chute for the kids. I threw a piece of wiener to the birds. They didn't mob it the way I'd hoped. A few made some listless pecks. It was a slowdown.

"Get hungry later," said Lem, "we can always eat one of those guys."

"Full of disease."

"Glass houses, pal."

Traffic was jammed up at the intersection. Stop-and-go all the way to the bridge. Families on the other side of the river were probably boiling their dinner pouches, cursing the tardiness of their pouch-winners. Surly sons punched down the channel changer for some late-afternoon bikini tit before Mom came home. Disaffected daughters carved Wiccan proverbs into their arms. Cats dozed on quilts, recovering traumatic memories in dream. Most cats were once mishandled kittens. This was all waiting for the men and women in the cars and they leaned on their horns as though they did not know they were already home.

I decided to die. I figured I owed it to myself, maybe to future personal extinction victims everywhere. Cleaved, sawed, prised open, my corpse would yield the secret to their salvation. Maybe it was fair penance for the damage I'd done.

Tough cookies.

"Come on," I said to Lem. "I've got to make a call."

We took a train back up to Port Authority. We had an hour to kill before the next bus, found a lone porn shop tucked off near a parking lot. New laws had reconfigured the stock. Teen comedy up near the register, teen anal in back. Somehow it reminded me of a medieval synagogue I'd once visited in Spain.

Tenakill was a leafy ville out past the city limits. The plaque at the bus stand explained the name was Dutch but that the Dutch had left before explaining what it meant.

Maryse was out by the curb in what must have been the latest in suburban transport. You could see where the gun mounts had gone, how you might secure the wounded. The color was a cousin to teal. We climbed in back and Maryse nodded, peeled out toward the hills. The vehicle shook with Bach.

"You used to call this math rock," I said.

"I appreciate it now," she said. "I'm a much more evolved appreciator."

We passed a chain video store and a shop selling "locally scented" candles. The Latte Da, Tenakill's most stylish cafe, advertised an open mike sonnet slam to benefit victims of the victim culture.

"By the way," I said, "this is Lem."

"Okay, Lem," said Maryse.

"Thanks for picking us up," I said.

"I take it this isn't just a friendly visit."

"I think we're being very friendly," I said.

"Look," said Lem, pointed out the window. "It's a white person."

"Kid's a comedy gem," said Maryse.

Business news burbled out of the wall. William was asleep on modular suede. His laptop was sliding off his lap. His slipper had fallen to the carpet. There were bruises on his toes.

"Oh," said William, waking. "Hey. Hi. Wow. Look at you. Hey. Hi. Come sit down."

"He called before," said Maryse. "I didn't want to interrupt you."

"Trading in my sleep," said William. "Nap trader."

"He hasn't told me why he's here," said Maryse. "He said he wanted to speak to the both of us. Coffee?"

"Coffee," said William. "Terrific. Coffee?"

"I'm in," said Lem.

"He's in. Terrific."

William looked down at his swollen toes.

"Thought we had a creep," he said. "A prowler. I kicked the credenza."

We sat quietly for a while. William seemed to be conducting vital transactions on his laptop. I peered over, watched him switch his desktop photo from a seascape to an apple basket. Lem was scoping the stock quotes on the wall screen. He had this look on his face, some annihilating wonderment.

"Has anyone ever explained this stuff to you?" I said.

"What, why the biotechs are diving?"

Maryse came back with a tray full of cappuccinos.

"Cinnamon?" she said. "Nutmeg? I recommend cardamom."

"She's never wrong about this shit," said William. "Am I right?"

"We used to drink instant," I said.

"Is that true, honey?"

"God," said Maryse. "I can hardly remember. Could be. It's the kind of life we were leading."

"So," said William, "what brings you to Tenakill? Not that we're not thrilled to see you. Especially, you know, considering. I mean you're really bearing up, aren't you? I mean, under the weight. The weight of your illness. Is illness okay?"

"I'm not," I said.

"Not what?"

"I'm not really bearing up. I'm gearing down. Do you get what I mean? That lap you run after the race is over?"

"The victory lap?"

"Not that one," I said.

"The cool-down," said Maryse.

"That's it," I said. "The cool-down. My race is run. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Wow," said William. "Terrific. I mean, not terrific. I mean the opposite of terrific. Do you need money? I have money."

"I know you have money."

"It's well known, I guess," said William. "My frugality is less documented. But I can do something for you. Some cash. A check. We'll call it a loan but only to call it something. Look, you're my friend. A friend is forever. Or until there's a problem with the friendship. But this isn't about friendship anyway. I can see that. Where are my glasses?"

"I don't think he wants money," said Maryse. "Am I right?"

"Yes," I said.

"I think he wants more than money. Am I correct?"

"Yes," I said.

"More than money is tough for me right now," said William.

I took a sip of cappuccino, coughed it up into the cup.

"That's not cardamom," said Maryse.

"Looks like blood," said Lem.

They gave me the guest room.

The guilt room, I heard William call it from the hallway. He'd have to work on his whisper.

His portfolio was in good shape, he told me, even in the wake of Cruel April, that rash of crashes last spring, and I was not to fret expenses. Besides, he'd had a little chat with Leon Goldfarb. Arrangements to ease various individual and collective burdens were in the offing.

"What does that mean?"

"You tell me," said William. "It sounded like Jew talk."

"Watch it," I said.

"Don't be a child," said William. "My uncle hid yids in Rotterdam."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked."

"What part of the war was this?"

"What war? This was the early seventies."

The guilt room was a good room.

I got fresh flowers, fresh linen, fresh fruit, audiotapes of tides and typhoons, waterfalls, gales, natural sounds to confirm one's droplet status in the eternal downpour. I got satellite TV, a universal remote, a Dictaphone for last words if the ligature of my pen hand failed.

I got my daughter, bedside, reading me box scores and poems. I couldn't fathom the math of either, but Fiona's voice eased the pain somehow. Maybe the pills did, too.

I sensed something torrid going on between Lem and my little girl. The idea made me glad. I liked to picture them in faraway rooms, confessing their secrets, flaunting their moles, vaulting themselves into some soulful teen future. William's place was enormous so I never saw those rooms. I was bed-bound, mostly, or wheelchair'd when my color was up and I could join them all for a few minutes at table, feign delight in food.

I was dying well, could detect a certain shimmer in the mirror, a made-for-TV terminal glow. I was going to light up the land with love and forgiveness, die with a wide wise grin. Angels in work casual sweaters would chaperon my ascent to paradise. Maybe my soul would return on occasion, spook my family into betterment. I'd smash a vase or burn a curtain and Fiona would finally know that nicotine was addictive, that sex with her soccer coach had repercussions.

Maryse was spooning broth through my teeth when she said she thought Fiona was no longer disaffected.

"She's flourishing," said Maryse.

"She's grown," I said.

"Lem seems like a good boy."

"He has a good heart."

"He's a little odd, though," said Maryse. "Is he on drugs?"

"Usually," I said.

"I guess people can change."

"Have I?"

"Have you what?"

"Changed."

"I see an arc," said Maryse. "A trajectory."

"Really?"

"Maybe not," said Maryse. "But sometimes it's about how you transform the people around you. Sometimes someone has to be the messenger."

"Is that me?"

"No," said Maryse.

"Who am I, then?"

"You're Steve."

"I refuse that," I said. "Even as life refuses me."

"Maybe it's not a refusal, Steve," said Maryse. "Maybe there is a higher power and he or she or it has plans for you."

"Do you believe that?"

"No," said Maryse.

"Van Winkie," said Lem, from the doorway.

"The Wrist," I said.