The Ask

by Sam Lipsyte

  Wonder if it's legal. Be good to do a little time.

  It wasn't society's fault, really.

  I dozed off worried I had truly unhooked myself from the apparatus of okay. Or maybe it was the Malbec.

  I woke in silence. Light from the hallway fell on Maura and I watched her sleep, a lattice of saliva fluttering on her lips. I rose to fetch a glass of water, peeked into Bernie's room.

  They were all lovely in sleep, but none so lovely as Bernie. Here in my humble outer-borough home a godlet took his rest, a miniature deity in need of protection until he was strong enough to fend for himself and, eventually, deliver humankind from fatal folly.

  This not really working thing wasn't really working.

  Ten

  Purdy put off our meeting another few days. He'd flown out to Vail for an ideas festival, had gotten worked up over some of the ideas. He was holed up in a suite with a gorgeous renewable-energy guru. He would call when he got back, hoped I could forgive him.

  "Of course," I said.

  "You must have a lot going on back there anyway."

  "Oh, yes, absolutely," I said.

  "You should come out here, though. It's really something. I mean, these people, you read their books, their newsletters, see them on TV, but to hear them in person, chat with them. Very impressive. Do you realize that someday we will be heating our houses with trout?"

  "Is that one of the ideas at the ideas festival?"

  "It's just fantastic here."

  I almost asked him why he didn't tell Melinda about it, including the part with the guru. Maybe it was blowback from the Jolly Roger days, but I'd always grown anxious when men confided their infidelity, surged with judgment, until my inner Nietzsche called me simp. Meanwhile, I was too scared to tell Purdy his delays had put the last of our savings in jeopardy. Never let them see you sweat, countless bastards tell us, just to see us sweat.

  "I'm not really an ideas man, Purdy," I said. "I'm an action fella."

  "Yeah, right," laughed Purdy. "Oh, I've got to go. The prime minister of Norway is throwing a pool party. We'll connect up next week."

  "Sounds fine," I said. "I should be available."

  I looked at my wrist as I said it, as though I kept a large calendar there.

  I'd been back to Nearmont enough that I didn't have to plan for nostalgic reveries each time the bus passed my old high school (Go Vikings! Kill Catamounts!), or Nearmont Plaza, where once, behind Scissor Kicks, the local hair salon, I'd received the opening stages of a handjob from Sayuri Kuroki, before prowler lights stabbed us to the stucco.

  Sayuri's family moved back to Japan soon after, but from then on, whenever I pictured my penis in her hard little hand, I always made sure to insert that gray pixelated dot over it, like they did in Japanese porn. Honor is important to every culture.

  So shy and brilliant, my Sayuri, and nothing surpassed the way her black hair fell against the acid-washed jean jacket she'd adopted for life in New Jersey. While the bus pulled up to the plaza stop, I wondered where the years had led her. Maybe she was a successful businesswoman. Maybe she had a daughter who wrote cell phone novels. Maybe she was attending an ideas festival.

  It was a short walk from the plaza to the house on Eisenhower, a yellow split-level with that forbidding bedroom turret my mother had built after my father died. I guess without the heroic measures there was money for turrets, for ramparts and moats, slits for boiling oil and archers from Milan, whatever a widow's castle required. The door was open and I stepped into the foyer, turned for a sinking step into the slightly sunken living room.

  Claudia sat in her altitude tent, her body stringy and golden in her Mondrian print bikini. The tent took up a good deal of the room. Her girlfriend took up the rest. Francine was tiny but she spread herself out, her interests, her projects, calligraphy corner here, computer cranny there. Earlier, thwarted versions of this woman wove potholders. This epoch found her oscillating between soapstone carving and online pinochle while my mother toiled to meet her quota of surplus red blood cells. There was a seniors charity race a few days away, sexagenarian whippersnappers whose spirits deserved a good pulverizing.

  Francine padded over, pecked me on the cheek.

  "Beer?" she said.

  "Sure."

  But for a moment she didn't move. Together we watched Claudia breathe rather ostentatiously, palms up, eyes shut. The tent had cost my mother a bundle, a seventy-first-birthday gift to herself. I sensed the purchase had less to do with the milestone, more with the recent interment of Claudia's mother. I could picture Hilda at this very moment, a skull with orange fuzz on it, yapping at the Auschwitzers in the afterworld about the temple newsletter atrocity.

  "My beloved son," said my mother.

  "Your eyes are closed. How do you know?"

  "I'm peeking. By the way, the answer to your question, whatever the question might be, is that I wish I could. Pretty good, right?"

  "Pretty bad, Mom," I said.

  "Pardon?"

  "Pretty bad mom."

  "Would you like to come inside the tent?"

  "No."

  "There's room."

  "I don't think there is."

  "No, maybe not. There was something in the instruction booklet about that, I think. You know, when you were born they put you in something like this. An incubator. Did you incubate sufficiently? I always wondered. I always worried. Are you incubated? Are you hungry? We have some leftover Chinese. There's a fantastic place that just opened on Spartakill Road."

  "The sweet-and-sour soup!" said Francine, back in her computer cranny. "I creamed my friggin' Danskins!"

  Francine's head poked out over the piles of throw pillows and external hard drives. Through a gap in them I could make out part of the monitor. Two Filipinas had at it with a strap-on. The words "Home Aide Ho's" flashed on the screen.

  "Really great," says Claudia. "Right where the hobby shop used to be in Eastern Valley. Remember I used to take you there for your figurines? You were very particular. Very nervous they wouldn't have the Welsh Grenadiers."

  "I don't really remember you taking me," I said. "I think Dad took me once. After that I walked."

  "Memory is a tricky thing," said Claudia.

  "Could I have that beer?"

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I forgot your beer!" Francine fetched two from the kitchen. "They're from Costa Rica. I'm sure the Costa Ricans think it's piss, but I like the bottle. See that eagle on it?"

  "Thanks, Francine."

  "You're welcome, honey."

  "So," said my mother, her eyes open, "to what do we owe this wonderful surprise?"

  "What surprise? I called a few days ago and said I was coming out."

  "The plot thickens."

  "Mom," I said. "Why don't you come out of the tent? We can hug or something."

  "I can't, baby. I really can't."

  "She can't," said Francine. "She's in the middle. Her cells'll explode."

  Claudia rose from her lotus position, an old bony flower.

  "It's true we haven't been talking a lot lately," she said. "How's the boy?"

  "Bernie's fine, Mom. Why don't you come to see him sometime? He misses you."

  "He hardly knows me. How could he miss me?"

  "That's why you should come by. Spend some time with your grandson."

  "Please don't say that word. It's a cudgel. Come sit near the tent."

  I squatted on the fringed rug near the zippered door. Claudia frogged her fingers on the tent's translucent wall.

  "You're still my little boy, you know. How's the wifey?"

  "Maura's okay, Mom. You know she really admires you."

  "Why, because she's too frightened to cross over? Still thinks she needs a man in her life?"

  "Something like that."

  "She's okay. For a straight girl. She's pretty tough. You guys will be all right."

  "Mom, I don't know how to say this."

  "How much?"

  "I've never asked for-" />
  "How much? If I win the race next week it's five hundred dollars."

  "I thought it was a charity race."

  "It is. We're raising money for osteoporosis. But there's always side action."

  "Well, we're really behind. I'm not sure five hundred is what-"

  "Say a number."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Say a number."

  "Ten thousand."

  "Ten thousand."

  "You could do that for us?" I said.

  "Absolutely not. Francine and I are hitting a rough patch. The settlement from her lye burn is being delayed. Real estate is hell. My savings have been chewed up."

  "A rough patch," I said. "Okay. I understand."

  "Oh, do you, Milo? You're so selfish. You don't see the bigger picture."

  "What's the bigger picture?"

  "You're still here looking for handouts. Who's going to take care of me?"

  "I'm on my knees here, Mom. Not for me, for my family. For my wife. For a beautiful grandson you have totally ignored."

  "He's kind of a brat. I'll be in his life when he gets a little impulse control."

  "He's not even four."

  "I have needs. I'm tired of this child-worshipping culture. You're just a slave to it, Milo."

  "I'm only trying to be a decent dad."

  "Don't waste your time. It's not in your genes. Besides, try making some money. That might be a good dad move. For heaven's sake, the system's rigged for white men and you still can't tap in."

  "You're right, Mom. What can I say? But still, it would mean a lot to me if you made a little more of an effort with Bernie."

  "Bernie schmernie. This is my decade."

  "Okay, you wrinkled old spidercunt, have it your way."

  Francine sucked in her breath.

  "Holy macadamias," she said.

  Claudia regarded me somewhat clinically.

  "Spidercunt?"

  I shrugged.

  "Look, honey," she said. "I think you better go. I need to stay calm. I'll call you after I race on Sunday."

  "Mom, I'm sorry. I just-"

  "It's okay, Milo. I just need a little time now."

  "We'll call, cutie," said Francine, hugged me.

  "Okay, I'll see you guys later," I said, edged to the door. "And I'm sorry, Mom. About… about the thing. What I just said."

  "Hell, honey," says Claudia. "I murdered your father when you needed him most. I can take a few impotent barbs from my only son."

  "That's nice to hear."

  I shut the heavy oak door and walked back down the gravel drive toward the plaza. I glanced back once, spotted Francine through the big bay window, in her underwear, climbing into the tent.

  Eleven

  The next morning I sipped coffee on my stoop, waited for Nick to pick me up. Women in tight slacks charged past to the subway, supple organic forms supplemented with technological grafts-earphones, telephones, wraparound shades. I watched them and recalled those cyborg liberation essays from the postmodern feminism class I took in college. I'd run home after every lecture, jerk off on my futon in a fever dream of blinking vaginas.

  Now an old man with a ducktail haircut and rolled T-shirt sleeves sauntered by, climbed into his wine-dark beater. A retired mechanic, I figured, but not so old on second look, forty-five, forty-seven, tops. His 1950s drag-strip hood shtick had to be retro from the jump, a mid-70s reaction formation, some cold Fonzian rhapsody. The man's hands looked ruined, though, rheumatoid, nicked and pinched by gruesome machinery. I'd done many odd jobs in my life, but hardly any heavy lifting. I stared at my own hands, soft, expressive things, gifted, even, like specially bred, lovingly shaved gerbils.

  A corroded pickup slid to the sidewalk. Nick leaned out the window.

  "Get in, buddy," said Nick. "Big day ahead of us. You eat?"

  "Some cereal."

  "Cereal? Never touch the stuff. Too many carbs."

  I got in the truck and Nick pulled off the curb, steered with his belly and his forearms, his hands tasked with shoveling up a bacon-and-feta omelet from a foil container. We turned the corner and bounced, shockshot, down the boulevard. The cab smelled of breakfast and weed, and I recalled Christine once letting it slip-perhaps taking me for a potential customer-that Nick sold eighths and quarters of a few decent varieties. It was not clear whether the drugs or the decks were the sideline, but Nick, I was now to learn, had a grander dream, which he announced before we reached the next traffic light. He wanted to break into television. He watched a lot of reality shows, he informed me, especially the ones about breaking into television. He believed he had a handle on the business, the lingo. All he needed was a leg up. He already had the idea: his extravaganza would revolve around the last meals of condemned prisoners.

  "Last meals?" I said.

  "That's right," said Nick, slid another ketchup packet from the dash, squeezed it over his hash browns. "You know how they often report a con's last meal. There are even websites about it. People are obsessed. And if you followed this stuff, you'd know that these guys on death row always order fast-food crap. You ever look into this? It's always the burgers, the fried chicken. The fried shrimp. Or fried shrimp product. You know what I'm talking about, Milo?"

  "I guess."

  "You guess? I bet you know exactly what I'm talking about. Some guy is a few hours away from the Reaper's speedball and he chows down on a slab of imitation crabmeat in a hot dog bun. And fucks like you, no offense, get all sad and superior about it. These poor slobs could order anything they want, you think, but they are just low-rent and don't know any better. Because that's the story they've told us."

  "The story?"

  "That's the official story: a condemned prisoner's last meal can be anything he wants. It's the American way, right? Like that guy, the slow one that Clinton killed to show his cojones, that boy didn't finish his burger, his hoagie, whatever the fuck it was, said he'd eat the rest later. Later. That broke you up, didn't it?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I think it was a veal parm."

  I did recall that poor kid, the national cruelty so crystallized in that moment.

  "Sure, I remember."

  "Anyway, the point is, why fast food? Why the crap? Why not grass-fed Angus or Kobe beef, an '86 Mouton Rothschild? Don't look at me like that. I watch the fucking food shows."

  "So, is this a food show?"

  "Bear with me, buddy. Bear with me and answer this question. Why do these death row losers always order nuggets and dipping sauce and biggie fries for their last meal? Is it A, they are ghetto or barrio or trailer-park trash who don't know any better, who could never imagine a taste sensation transcending that of a Hot Pocket and an orange Fanta, or, B, something else entirely?"

  The truck dipped into a pothole, shot near the curb where an old woman wearing an "I'm with Stupid" T-shirt dawdled in the crosswalk. This lady was about to be with nobody ever again, but Nick righted the wheel with one of his sloping breasts, his fork work undisturbed.

  "I'm going to go with answer B," I said.

  "Well, you're not dumb," said Nick. "But then again, you've had the advantages. You've got some innate intelligence, passed down from people who probably kicked some serious ass to put you in a position to even function on this planet. Because you don't seem, how can I put this, overly equipped. You seem pretty soft. I just mean that as an observation. Of course, we'll see what we see at the site today."

  Advantages? What about Purdy? Or Sarah Molloy and the rest of them? Nick may have known that stuffed-crust pizza delivered in twenty minutes or gratis wasn't haute cuisine, but he didn't know a damn thing about advantages, couldn't comprehend the true machinations of money and power, the nuanced, friction-free nanotechnics of privilege that prevent an earnest, talented boy from doing wonderful stuff with oils. But, of course, I couldn't argue about the softness. For a time I wore only heavy, steel-toed boots because I figured if apocalyptic war broke out, sturdy footwear would be a must. Then it dawned on me that th
e better the boots, the more quickly I would be killed for them. My only shot at survival would be shoeless abjection.

  "Thanks," I said now.

  "I was complimenting your forebears," said Nick. "Anyway, you went with B. B stood for, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not, something else entirely. Any guesses?"

  "I don't know," I said. "They have no choice in the matter?"

  "Damn!" said Nick, accordioned his foil plate with his palms, veered again, nearly halved a spry South Asian mail carrier in a pith helmet. "You are impressing the hell out of me. Of course that's the reason. They have no choice. Prisoners are allowed to order their last meal only from restaurants within a three-mile radius of the prison. What kinds of joints do you think surround death houses? Ever been to Texas, those prison towns? Forget the poor dinguses waiting for the strap and needle. Nobody's doing good. No Michelin stars in those counties. Sad but true, my friend. But don't get me wrong. I'm all for capital punishment. I'm a huge death penalty guy. I like everything about it. And don't tell me how it's more expensive to the taxpayer than life sentences. Because if you ask me, we should pony up a little more. We should feel the cost of our ritual,revel in it. It was probably a drain on the Aztec economy to capture and drug all those people and carve out their living hearts, but are you going to tell me it wasn't worth it? Yes, sir, the death penalty is where it's at. Is there a chance innocent people die? I should fucking hope so! Innocent people die constantly in this world. Why should things be better for those scumbags in lockdown?"

  "But you said they were innocent."

  "Innocent? Please. No thanks, buddy. Keep that knee-jerk liberal crap on your side of the aisle. I'm not ashamed of the sacrifices a balls-out civilization must make to survive. But we're way off the food-and-death track. This show is a winner. You won't regret your involvement."

  "My involvement?"

  "Well, my sister says your wife is in marketing, and this idea, when it hits the tube, will need some all-pro marketing. And you seem like the kind of college boy who may be a broke screw-up but is ultimately part of the vast conspiracy of movers and shakers who shake and move our society. Jewish, right?"