Home Land

by Sam Lipsyte

  “Nutty stuff,” said Mira.

  “Nutty how?” I said.

  I CALLED GARY from the street. Nobody answered. He’d vowed to avoid the party but I needed a little pep talk. Maybe it was better nobody answered. Gary wasn’t much good for pep these days. He wasn’t much good for anything, really, save painful pauses and bad coughing fits, not since Doc Felix had hexed him with uncertainty. There’d been a dinner at Clara and Ben’s. He’d gotten his Life Saver cake, and when he’d finished his slice Clara announced he could consider himself a probationary son. They’d hugged, Gary told me, and then he’d gone home and dreamed of goats.

  Parked outside the Moonbeam was a huge silver bus, Spacklefinger painted on the side panel, a U-Haul, unhitched, behind it. Some anemic-looking teen roadies unloaded amplifiers, drums. Another fellow, lanky, his dyed hair falling over a folded bandanna, stood off beneath the eaves of the Moonbeam, smoked a cigarette.

  “Glave,” I said.

  “Hey, buddy, how are you?”

  “Glave Wilkerson,” I said.

  “Sorry, man, we’re about to set up inside. I can’t do the autograph thing right now. Check me later.”

  “Still got that sunburst?” I said. “The Les Paul?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No, I just work here.”

  “Oh, cool.”

  “You guys going to play ‘Nothing Man’ tonight?”

  “Our pop song? Yeah, I guess we have to. For the chicks.”

  “They’re all pop songs, you idiot,” I said, whipped past him into the Moonbeam.

  “Envy’s a sin!” Glave called after me.

  I FOUND DADDY MINER in the banquet hall, stooped down near the buffet table, testing the base of a soup tureen.

  “Looks great in here,” I said.

  It’s my fervent hope most Valley Cats noted the decor that night, those gold balloons and silver service trays, the high-end linen, the fresh roses in cut-glass vases. It’s not only the devil who resides in the details. Quality catering lives there, too.

  “Thanks,” said my father. “I just figured, why not go for broke? These Yups like my style I could have bookings for years to come. No more Rotary dinners. No more third-rate shamans smoking powdered beets, crapping their pants. You missed it last week. They were all on the floor having seizures, visiting ancient civilizations. What a mess. You’re early. You’d better not be bailing out. I gave you a chance. I need you now. We’re thin tonight. Rick’s in a snit, too. I wouldn’t let him put his cannibal angel painting in the dining hall.”

  “I’m good to go.”

  Some roadies lugged a kick drum past us. Glave jogged in after them.

  “Be careful with our gear! You know how much debt we’re in since our record hit?”

  “Rock stars,” said Daddy Miner.

  Rick was in the kitchen with some new prep chefs I’d never met, jumpy, pimply kids in hounds-tooth check motor caps. One hacked at slabs of uncooked chicken breast. Another slaughtered celery. Their projects were in imminent danger of overlapping as they hopped around with their jumbo knives.

  Rick wore a paper chef’s hat, carried a clipboard in the crook of his arm.

  “No go on the angels, huh?”

  “I don’t care about that,” said Rick. “This is a nightmare. I’ve got these raver clowns prepping and your old man up my ass. Plus some fucking griefer spread syphilis all through my brothel this morning. Tried to blow up my copper mine, too. Then he gets the villagers riled up about independence from the Rick hegemon.”

  “I’m sorry, come again?”

  “Oh, you don’t play Imperium Online? Doesn’t matter.”

  Roni came in with a stack of blank name tags, winked.

  “Has anyone seen my Magic Marker? Lewis, maybe it’s in the stockroom. Will you help me look?”

  We fell together under the tomato cans, the powder tubs, did as much as we could do in a few minutes, a sort of tasting menu.

  “There’s more where that came from,” said Roni, guided her breasts back into their gauzy cups.

  “How much more?” I said.

  “I have no idea. I’m not thinking this one out. Let’s just take it one burst of horniness at a time.”

  “Why do you like me, Roni?”

  “You remind me of this doll I once had, Mr. Gollington. I loved him very much, even after I pulled off his arms and legs. I knew he loved me, too. Then I ripped his eyes off and I wasn’t sure if he loved me or not. His head was just this piece of stuffed corduroy with two pale spots where his eyes had been.”

  “That didn’t really answer my question,” I said.

  “I didn’t like the question.”

  OUT IN THE DINING HALL I watched Spacklefinger sound check. Glave kept stopping the song. Not enough Glave in the monitor. The drummer rolled his eyes, twirled his sticks in the manner of a drummer who once worshipped and now disdained drummers who twirled their sticks. The lead guitarist squatted in his tangle of cords. The bassist stood off reading what appeared to be an investment brochure. I’d heard he doubled as their manager. Probably he’d be the one to steal all their money, or what was left of it.

  Stardom, I guess, does have a price, with actual numbers. Seeing them here in the Moonbeam softened me. They were old, had taken one last shot, hit big, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I guess you reach a certain age and you start rooting for your peers indiscriminately, even sworn foes.

  SOME OF YOU CATAMOUNTS arrived early to tailgate in your sports coats and dresses, guzzle carbonated tequila in the late autumn light. I watched you all from the shade of the gazebo in my short-waisted jacket and bolo tie: Bethany Applebaum filling the parking lot with her false, infectious giggles, Stacy Ryson striking sexpot poses on the hood of Philly’s Lexus, Lee Nygaard waddling from one unreconstructed clique to the next, handing out business cards. When that sloop-sized Humvee swerved into the drive, I heard the cheers go up from you twilight toasters.

  “Mikey!”

  “It’s Saladin!”

  Mikey stepped out to the macadam, bronzed, absurd, his old varsity number shaved into his head. I shuddered for the Colette Man, who’d made such poetry from the locks of the mighty. Philly Douglas bulled over for a hug and Saladin clasped the forearms of his old buddy with what looked like affectionate dread.

  Amidst the hullabaloo you probably didn’t notice Fontana’s rustshot Datsun veer past Mikey’s Humvee, pull up near the Moonbeam door.

  Fontana peeled himself out from behind the wheel, tugged at his wilted tux, crushed velvet. I trotted down from the gazebo to greet him. There was something crushed about his person, too. He’d done a real carve job shaving, stank of bourbon, breath mints.

  “Miner,” he said. “What the fuck are you wearing?”

  “My busboy uniform.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I like your vines, too.”

  “I think I got married in this suit once. Fits, too. Bought it when I still ate food.”

  “Are you going to be okay tonight?”

  “Piece of cake. I’ve got about ten minutes on my recent colonoscopy. Then another five on how men and women are different. See, for starters, they have completely different sexual organs. Did you know that, Miner?”

  “You can still cancel.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m going to kill. Where’s my dressing room?”

  “Follow me,” I said.

  I led Fontana across the banquet hall into my father’s office. Daddy Miner was thumbing through some invoices.

  “Hey, you remember Sal Fontana. Used to be principal at Eastern Valley?”

  “Nice to see you again,” said my father. “Do you need anything?”

  “A blowjob, maybe. I’m not picky. Two lips and wet inside is what I ask. Or how about a gun to blow my brains all over these good people tonight?”

  Daddy Miner looked up from his paperwork, his props. Roni did the bills around here, but the way he clicked his ballpoint pen, shuffled s
lips thick with numbers on his desk, you’d think his only joy was algebra.

  “How about some coffee?”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “What kind of educator are you, anyway? What kind of example do you provide?”

  “Well, I’m retired now. But during my career I prided myself on providing the negative example.”

  “Get him some coffee.”

  “Goddamn phony,” said Fontana, after my father had left.

  “Watch it,” I said, “that’s my progenitor.”

  “He’s still a phony. Ask him how he’s doing he’ll tell you he’s swell.”

  “Think for a moment,” I said. “Where are? When are we?”

  “I’ll need more than a moment.”

  CATAMOUNTS, as the hall began to fill it was hard not to notice how gladly you all groped for name tags at the reception table. Maybe some feared mistaken identity, so many slack bellies and hairless heads in the room, faces filigreed with worry, shame, capillary burst. Time had done an odd thing aside from the individual rot. Some alums seemed morphed into startling amalgams, especially the men. Don’t be insulted, Catamounts, and I don’t exclude yours truly, but only the pistol bulge in Special Agent Brett Meachum’s suit, for example, set him apart from his old football line mate Stan Damon. Their identical pug-nosed swaggers were intact from the old days, their hairlines in a match race to oblivion.

  Once upon a time, the age of constant measurement, I’d known the ear jut, the nasal flare, of each and every Catamount. I could have sketched the pimple distribution on the chins of boys whose names I barely knew. Now features seemed smeared, indistinct. The joggers looked like other joggers. The boozers looked like other boozers. The rich loosed the same guffaws in coded bursts. The Moonbeam seemed full of types, hugging, kissing, pointing to each other’s tagged lapels in disbelief.

  All save Mikey Saladin, that is, who stood apart and imperious, odd coif notwithstanding. He served himself spinach-stuffed chicken from the heated trays, retreated to a candlelit corner. Dozens hovered while he ate, poured his Pinot Grigio, whispered in his diamond-stabbed ear. Mikey nodded, grinned, great bright stones for teeth. It was a shame his critics could not see him here tonight, so regal in the Moonbeam. Maybe there were sugarball phenoms with buggy whip arms about to surmount him in dazzle, but for now Saladin’s throne seemed safe.

  I threaded my way to his table, nodded toward his empty plate.

  “May I take that for you, sir?”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  Proximate Catamounts may recall how long his look lingered on yours truly. “Hey,” he said. “I know you.”

  “Damn right you know him! said Philly Douglas.”That’s fucking Teabag! He’s a homo and a loser freak!”

  Saladin winced, laid his huge hand on Philly’s shoulder, shoved him, tenderly, away.

  “It’s Lewis,” he said, “right? Lewis Miner?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “I remember you. You wrote that editorial in the school paper about how we shouldn’t make racist assumptions about people.”

  “I still believe that,” I said.

  “It meant a lot to me,” said Saladin. “Because I’m all different races.”

  “I always thought it was a tan.”

  “No, I’m like my own race. And I’ve struggled at times.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I make it look easy.”

  “You’re the fucking shit, Mikey!” said Philly.

  “Yo, pindick, shut up,” said Saladin. “I’m talking to Lewis here. Lewis, it’s nice to see you. I know what this fool did to you in the locker room. I want you to know that if I’d been there I would have stood up for you, the way you stood up for different races.”

  “Mikey,” said Philly. “You’re the one who told me to do it!”

  “Shut up, yo,” said Mikey.

  “I know you would have,” I said. “And I also know you’re the best shortstop of our era, forget that kid in Detroit.”

  “He’s good,” said Mikey.

  “But you’re better. Now, may I take your plate?”

  “Let me help,” said Mikey.

  We bussed together for a while, as most of you noted with acrid bemusement. A Teabag-Mikey tandem is high comedy, I’m sure. What you may already have suppressed, however, is how much stuff Mikey dropped—platters, decanters, forks—surprising given his five gold gloves, his recent near-error-free season. I chalked it up to the wine, and, really, it wouldn’t have mattered much if he hadn’t also stopped so often to chat with everyone, pose for photographs, especially after I fetched him my Moonbeam apron to wear over his silk suit. How many pictures of Mikey pushing my bus cart with a dish towel on his arm did the Catamount community require? A multimillionaire feigning menial labor! How classic!

  Fucking showboat.

  That kid in Detroit had a much higher slugging percentage, too.

  I stepped out for some air, found Gary in the parking lot kicking an empty champagne bottle against the curb.

  “Feeling Togethered?” he said.

  Downlit in the sodium lights Gary bore the aspect of a corpse newly prized from the earth, slid into a crisp white shirt.

  “Nice shirt,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “So, exactly how high are you?”

  “One to ten?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wait, one to what?”

  “You should call Hollis.”

  “I thought you hated him.”

  “I do. But he’s your sponsor.”

  “I fired him. Conflict of interest. He’s just my dealer now. And anyway, I don’t really think he’s in the mood to talk to anyone. He’s in rant mode. He’s been oiling his mace.”

  “Is he coming here? You know Brett Meachum’s inside.”

  “I doubt Hollis will make it up off the sofa.”

  “Good. Why don’t you come inside? I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “Coffee’s a drug,” said Gary.

  “That’s why you’ll like it.”

  “Okay.”

  While you Catamounts finished your entreés (and on behalf of Rick, and Martin Miner Enterprises in general, I apologize for the parched fibrosity of the chicken), Fontana took the stage. I’d been keeping tabs on him since his meeting with Daddy Miner, watched him sip club sodas by the kitchen. Sobriety had visited him briefly, departed, like one of his resentful daughters. He was back on the blended malts.

  Fontana leapt up there now with the look of the damned, hell’s house comic, doomed to tank for eternity. He bolo’d his microphone in some bizarre approximation of baroque rock stagecraft, paid out inches of the cord with each swing. The mike gunned into the hi-hat behind him, clattered to the boards in a gale of feedback. Fontana shot a sick-sweet smile, duckwalked toward the shriek like he’d planned it, and somehow it did seem in that moment as though everything—the flopsweat, the flown microphone, the miserable grin, the stunted love, the lost savings, the wasted years, the unfinished manuscript, the hundreds of thousands of Titleists driven deep into the futile, overlit night—was some grim design, the world’s most hideous and ingeniously protracted comedy routine.

  And this before he’d even spoken.

  “Welcome,” said Fontana now.

  As I’ve mentioned, I realize a good many of you were on hand to witness all this, but I re-create the moment for those who weren’t—absent Catamounts barred from the Moonbeam by those dimensional thugs Time and Space, as well as for the youth of Eastern Valley, potential lifers of these suburban crags and lairs, who, men like Glen Menninger would have us believe, are our future, though I’ve never fallen prey to that theory myself. The youth are their future, not ours. Still, perhaps this narrative will serve as some kind of measuring stick for tomorrow’s disasters. The dead, though, I do not write for the dead. That’s Bob Price’s deal.

  “Welcome,” said Fontana again. “Welcome all and sundry to our first official Eastern Valle
y Togethering, celebrating the ongoing celebration of our lives!”

  A cheer went up and I looked about the room, saw Catamounts everywhere bathed in warm Moonbeam gels. There were Curtis Breen and Rhada Gupta, the prom dates who lasted, nuzzling each other’s necks. There was Ryan Barwood, gay tech mogul with a private jet, and Devon Leventhal, who’d lived alone our sophomore year, abandoned by his swinger father. There was Jerome Albrecht, science whiz and rare black Catamount, rumored to be perfecting nerve gas for the Pentagon. There was Vinnie Lazlo, hooks agleam, triumphally clenched, and Ms. Tabor, slim-chested once more, wrapped tight in turquoise and gold. There was Gary, listing in cross-chemical tweak. There were Stacy Ryson and Philly Douglas, Glen Menninger, Randy Pittman, Jazzes Jasmine and Brie, and, yes, there in blood-pink shadow, sipping chardonnay, was Jazz Loretta, here to partake with us, to Together with us, Aphrodite alighting from her sea-foam chariot to join a beachside wiener roast.

  Here we stood, Catamounts, or here most of us stood in glorioles of shifting hue, our scored skin smoothed, our dry throats slaked by Daddy Miner’s watery martinis, our bodies asway in the glow of the hall, us quivering and tender again, looking up at Sal Fontana, our ruined leader, who, for all his faults, had only wanted what was best for us, or, if not what was best, at least something with a minimum of degradation that reflected well on the district as a whole.

  “Can you hear me, Catamounts?” said Fontana, grunted, wheezed into the microphone.

  “For Godsakes,” said Stacy Ryson. “We hear you. Please don’t make that sound again.”

  “Shut up, Stacy!” a voice shouted.

  “Stuck-up bitch!”

  “Fucking Doctor Feelbad!”

  “Still-in-the-closet-in-this-day-and-age lesbian!”

  Cruel titters ricocheted through the crowd.

  “That’s enough, folks,” said Fontana. “Doctor Ryson has a point. I never could get that cougar sound right.”

  “Neither could we!”

  “Anyway,” said Fontana, “what a delight it is to find you all here. A delight and an honor both. I’ll be your host tonight, and, as one of my estranged daughters pointed out during a recent, strained telephone conversation, this evening really is a fitting capstone to my career here at Eastern Valley. No, I never did make superintendent, but bureaucracy was never my bag. I’m a hands-on people person. That’s what I always loved about being your principal. Back in those days you could touch kids with impunity! Just a joke, folks!”