The Ask

by Sam Lipsyte

  "Here we go," I said.

  "Okay, scratch that. All I'm saying is I need to make the right connections to make this thing happen."

  "Make what happen?"

  "You repeat this to anybody, I will make a deck, a beautiful Mission-style deck, out of your bones. Weatherproof that shit, too."

  "Of course."

  "Dead Man Dining."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Working title."

  "I'm lost."

  "Be found. The world's top chefs prepare exquisite last meals for condemned prisoners. Stuffed quail for the auntie slasher. Baked Alaska for the office party Uzi sprayer. Chicken a la Berkowitz. Death and food. The only things we can be certain of, right? What's it like to be sitting next to a future billionaire?"

  I wondered then if Nick's stomach could also brake the truck. Because in that moment I wanted very much to climb out, hike home, or maybe just stand on the Boulevard of Death, huff exhaust.

  "We better get started on that deck, no?" I said.

  "Deck?" said Nick. "Sure, but what about my idea? Do you know some people? From the city? People I could talk to? Do a deal memo with? I read about deal memos. I've got one of those books for dummies. That tells you about the Hollywood business for dummies. A deal memo is before you actually sign the contract, right? So everybody's protected? I'm not some jackass they can pat on the head, send on his way, and then rip off."

  "I don't know deal memo," I said.

  "Of course you do."

  "No," I said. "I'm just a regular guy. I don't know all these people you think I know."

  "No, I guess you don't," says Nick. "I'm sure you don't. I'm sure none of your college buddies are at all involved with the media."

  "Really, I wish I could help."

  "Really, I bet you do."

  Nick laid his hands on the wheel, perhaps for the first time the entire trip, drove us into a giant parking lot. We looped around some superstores to a loading bay, parked near a pallet piled high with lumber.

  Nick nodded over to the pallet.

  "Load that shit up, Mr. Regular-Guy-No-Connections-Working-Stiff."

  I studied the pallet, the area around the pallet.

  "Is there a hand truck or something?"

  "A hand truck? What's that? For jerking off? For jerking off trucks? Load the wood, Joseph Fucking Sixpack."

  I hopped out of the cab, barked my shin on the runner. I limped over to the woodpile, looked back at Nick, shrugged, yanked the lightest-looking beam to my shoulder. My knees buckled. I staggered to the truck bed. Nick sat bent over the steering wheel, heaving. For a moment I thought it might be a coronary. Then I saw him wipe the tears from his eyes, roll down the window.

  "Hurry up, you prick!" he said, his voice breaking.

  I rushed back to the pallet. It took me an hour to load the truck. My hands peeled and bled. My shoulders burned, my legs quivered, my vision grew blurry. I puked on Nick's grille.

  It was time to start work.

  "I'm so sorry," said Maura.

  She rubbed ointment into my neck, some over-the-counter heat cream, and I recalled how much I'd loved this very scenario as a child, that commercial about an aching jackhammer operator and his masseuse of a spouse. I'd always figured the secret to life had something to do with brutal vibratory stress and a wife handy with balms. This crap, however, did nothing but crank up my nausea.

  "It's okay," I said, kneaded my hands together, my wounded gerbils. "I guess I'm not cut out for this kind of work."

  "What kind of work?"

  "The physical kind. You know, the kind that all humans once had to be capable of."

  "I believe in you. You will be a mighty deck builder yet. Just pray to the spirit of the spirit level."

  "That's good," I said. "But how can you believe in me? You don't believe in God, but you believe in me?"

  "I had certain expectations with God. Come on, let's go to bed."

  She laid her hand on my shoulder, slid it down toward my crotch.

  "I thought you were touched out," I said.

  "Maybe you could touch me back in."

  "You mean an appointment? A real appointment?"

  "Yes."

  The fluttery ear kisses, the sweet pull and bend of Maura as I tugged on the brass hoop of her belt buckle, the downslide of her jeans, the up-peel of her sweater, the sweet chalky stubble under her arms, these are the things I wanted to remember when memory was all I had left, besides catheters and hospital lasagna, awkward visits from stunned progeny. There was no God and being was just a molecular accident, but I still hoped my crawl through the illusory tunnel of retina-annihilating light would end with my face buried in some post-life facsimile of Maura's ass.

  Our lives hinge on these moments of quiet tenderness. We stand or fall on them. I passed out on mine. Even as I slipped off my sock I dropped into soft buzzy sleep. A deck builder's slumber. Maybe Maura kept the appointment with herself.

  I woke up with a heart attack. It was definitely a heart attack. Death was definitely a battering ram. My fortress doors creaked with each strike. I was really dying now. Death was a punch in the chest. Death was also, strangely enough, an odd slurping sound, a rustling of sheets. There was no tunnel, no annihilating light. No ass, even. Maybe it was not a heart attack. Maybe, in fact, it was Bernie, lying between us in bed, nursing, firing mule kicks into my sternum with each suck.

  Kid had rhythm.

  "Baby," I whispered. "What the hell are you doing? You weaned him. He's weaned."

  "I know he's weaned."

  "What are you doing?"

  "We're snuggling."

  "He's sucking."

  "No, he's not."

  "I'm not," said Bernie.

  "Maura, come on, stop it."

  "It's okay. It's just a little regression. It's normal. I read about it. I don't have any milk anyway."

  "That makes it worse."

  "Go back to sleep, Milo."

  "Yeah, Daddy, go back to sleep."

  I rolled to the edge of the bed, listened to the soft, wet noises behind me.

  My phone throbbed on the nightstand. Purdy's name glowed in the sea green display.

  Twelve

  An hour later I stood in a bright, enormous candy shop on the East Side. It was late and the clerks seemed eager to close. Purdy shuffled down rows of bins, sampled the designer licorice and mocha clusters, scooped all manner of lacy goo into baggies. He was unshaven, his linen shirt soiled, limp. The look rather suited his ravening.

  "Try the caramel turtles," said Purdy.

  "That's okay."

  "Really. Try them. They melt in your mind. Do you like that? That's funny"

  "Purdy."

  "Ever been to this place? It's amazing, right? I come here every few months. Whenever I'm just itching to score some blow, which I know would be a bad thing, and really piss off Melinda, and fuck me up for like three or four days because, let's face it, I'm not a young man anymore, even though I look like one, I come here instead. You've been here, right? This place is famous."

  Purdy tacked down another aisle, tossed handfuls of chocolate-dipped filberts in his sack.

  "I've seen it before," I said. "From the outside it looks like that giant makeup store in SoHo. They are both like these overlit oases of-"

  "Sonofabitch."

  Purdy stood before one of the last bins with a queasy look.

  "It's that marzipanny shit. I don't like it."

  "Skip it," I said.

  "My flow is broken. I won't get it back. Let's go to the register."

  We walked back up the gleaming aisle. Purdy's mania seemed to subside, the dope scorer's calm after the dope has been scored. He clamped his hand on the back of my head.

  "What's that you were saying about oases? I love it when you rip into those eighties pomo raps."

  "Oh, it was nothing."

  "No, really, I enjoy them. They bring me back. I remember, I couldn't sleep, I'd just track you down, feed you some bong hits,
and you were good to go. We kept it hyperreal, didn't we?"

  "Don't forget Charles Goldfarb," I said. "That guy could talk your ear off."

  "Pretty dry. All theory. No poetry."

  "Billy Raskov was the true king of bullshit, though," I said.

  "Billy Raskov! I just saw Billy Raskov!"

  "Yeah? How's his Parkinson's?"

  "Huh? No, really, he was just in town. He had a gallery show. I'm helping him make his movie. Shit, we should all get together, Milo. I should call him now."

  "It's two in the morning."

  "Bet the fucker's up. He's not a sleeper. He's like me. You're a sleeper, Milo. That's the truth about you."

  "Lots of people sleep," I said.

  "It's okay," said Purdy. "The main thing is you got out of bed. You came."

  We reached the counter and Purdy dumped the candy on it, tossed a credit card onto the pile.

  "So," said Purdy. "Should we talk?"

  We walked the night city. Purdy gorged on his sweets. I outlined some ideas about his give, careful not to corner him on numbers. We needed a new screening auditorium, maybe a digital art center. These could be significant naming opportunities for Purdy. We wanted to get global, create programs in Europe and Asia and the Middle East, establish alliances with other mediocre universities around the world.

  "Sure," said Purdy, pinched a mass grave's worth of gummy frogs into his mouth. "We can do that."

  "Which?" I said, waited for him to finish chewing.

  "I don't know. All of it?"

  "All of it? No disrespect, but-"

  "You don't even know, man," said Purdy. He sounded a little sugarshocked. "My pockets run deep. Even these days."

  He turned out a pocket and a few loose red hots popped to the pavement.

  "Did I pay for those?"

  "I think so," I said.

  I had to take him at his word about the give, at least for now.

  "This is great news," I said. "This is fantastic. We can go into greater detail later but it sounds like what you're saying is-"

  "Shit, Milo, don't give me the boilerplate. Let's be people. I didn't hear you say anything about painting. Figured that'd be your interest. Need new studios or something? How about a huge prize? Don't be bashful. You want a sour worm?"

  "No, I'm cool."

  A police cruiser slowed beside us as we made our way down Madison and I wondered what the cops made of us, if they could see how much fucking candy Purdy was eating, if there were any laws about that. The cop peeled away and Purdy coughed. Dark gobs sprayed out of his mouth.

  "Sorry."

  "Won't that stuff keep you up?" I said.

  "I can't sleep."

  "Right."

  We'd been walking in endless rectangles and now we were near the candy store again. The lights were out, the security gate down. We leaned up against the wall of a bank and I could feel the cool stone on my back, the billions of dollars thrumming through wires beneath and behind me, or on the night waves above. I wasn't quite sure how they traveled. Or how much they got out anymore.

  Now a town car pulled up to the curb. The driver had one scrawny arm out the window. Something about his frizzy hair and enormous eyeglasses seemed familiar.

  Purdy pushed off the bank wall.

  "Hi, Michael," he said, turned to me. "Can I drop you anywhere?"

  "I don't think so, no."

  "Please, Milo," said Purdy. "Our meeting isn't over."

  "Okay."

  I slid in after him. We sailed down the avenue.

  "Michael," said Purdy. "Do you want some chocolate or licorice? I know you don't approve of the gummy stuff."

  The frizzy head shook in front.

  "Your loss. So let's head down to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, take this man home."

  "Good idea," said Michael.

  "Really," I said, "you don't have to."

  "I know," said Purdy. "But I want to tell you something."

  "What's that?"

  "I want to tell you a story."

  "I don't like stories," I said.

  "Everybody likes stories. It's part of being human. We tell each other stories."

  "Then I guess I'm not human. Maybe I'm descended from ancient astronauts."

  "Please, no ancient astronauts. No crop circles. Let's leave Maurice out of this."

  "Maurice Gunderson?"

  "He's a prophet, haven't you heard? A pied piper for the psychonautic Mayan rapture set."

  "I heard him talk about this once. I didn't understand it."

  "Forget Maurice. You were telling me why you don't like stories."

  "They take so long," I said. "Most of them are a waste of time. I like jokes. Can you tell me your story in joke form?"

  Purdy grinned.

  "What is it?" I said.

  "Nothing. You just reminded me of the way you were back in school. It's been a while."

  "We had dinner last month."

  "It's been a while."

  Purdy tossed down some jellybeans, stared out the window where the towers on York shot past. This had always been my favorite part of driving over the Queensboro Bridge at night, catching sight of the lives in those lighted boxes, the chandeliers and paintings (always the same art-boom disaster in a shit brown study), the custom shelving, the enormous video screens, the well-off dozing on their leather thrones.

  "Well, what's your fucking story then?" I said.

  "So aggressive. I'm trying to put it in joke form here. Give me a second."

  "How about just an elevator pitch?"

  "Elevator pitch. Nice. Very 1989."

  "What do you call them now?" I said.

  "Stories. It's all about stories, man. Stories are money. Money is a story. I actually once hired a Ghanaian griot for our Friday meetings. It was great."

  "Fine," I said. "Tell me the story."

  "You don't like stories. Let's stay with the pitch."

  "Wonderful."

  "Good. Here we go. A rich boy goes to college. He makes a lot of friends. They all think they are special and that they suffer in distinct ways, but they are all hurtling down the same world-historical funnel. They will attempt to professionalize their passions, or else just get jobs. Some will do better than others. Some won't have to do better because of their trust funds. Despite what are often radically different fashion aesthetics, not to mention politics, they are all fundamentally the same."

  "Elevator's nearing the lobby, pal."

  "I do this for a living," said Purdy. "I know when the lobby comes."

  "Sorry."

  "They are all the same except for one girl, or woman, though, really, at this point, girl. Her name is Nathalie. Nathalie Charboneau. Scholarship kid. They meet in the library, the rich boy and the scholarship girl. In the smoking lounge of the library. That dates this, doesn't it? Anyway, they meet. They talk. They smoke. They keep talking. She's reading Schopenhauer. She tells the boy about Schopenhauer. He explicates some economic models he's been studying. They don't really converse so much as listen to each other. They like listening to each other. They agree to meet for coffee. She tells him a bit more about herself. She's from the area, a few towns away. It's a crappy town, the kind of town the town the college is in would be if there were no college in it. She lives in a crappy apartment above a crappy pharmacy with her mother and sister. Her bitter mother. Her junkie sister. But not quite those things."

  "They fall in love," I said. "I think I remember her."

  "You don't remember her."

  "I think I do. I think I remember her, or saw her once."

  "Trust me, you don't remember. You never saw her because I-I mean, the boy, not me, the boy-"

  "Whoa, there, storyteller!"

  "Fuck this," said Purdy, jerked back in his seat. "I thought you could do this for me. Help me."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Really. Please. Finish."

  Purdy stared wordless out the window. The river glittered.

  "Melinda's pregnant," he said.
r />   "Congratulations."

  "Thanks," said Purdy.

  "Aren't you happy?"

  "Yes."

  "The drugs worked. You didn't have to go to Mars."

  "That's true."

  "You're going to love fatherhood."

  "I don't need the line," said Purdy.

  "Sorry."

  "Let me finish my story."

  "Your pitch."

  "Yes," said Purdy. "My pitch."

  It took a while. Maybe it had been designed for a very slow elevator. Or maybe it was really a story, no joke.

  The rich boy, who of course became Purdy as the telling continued, fell in love with the scholarship girl. They had no secrets from each other, but Purdy kept her a secret from everyone else, from his country club set and his jet-set club and even from the faux-bohos he visited to cure his insomnia. The clubs and sets would never accept her, especially in lieu of one of their own. The arty types would, but in a manner that would be despicable, and he also might run the risk of losing her to somebody, like the ridiculous but faintly charismatic Maurice, or, more precisely, something, such as Billy Raskov's tremulous hunt for authenticity. Even Constance's revolutionary socialist pigtails seemed a threat.

  "Shit," I said. "You were even more mysterious than I could have guessed."

  "It wasn't a game," said Purdy. "I really cared about her. But I was too callow to handle it. She didn't want anything to do with my friends, though, so it was easy to just disappear together. We spent some time with her family. Her mom was sweet. Her sister was a little whacked. Of course, it ended after a few months. I didn't see it then, but the time limit was built into it. I'm not sure if that makes sense."

  "I think it does."

  "Whatever. She dumped me. Sent me packing. Did it wonderfully."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It was no-fault. She was sending me back to my kind. It felt like science fiction. You must return to your planet. Please tell them of us, we who live in crappy towns and struggle to get by."

  "I'm on that planet right now."

  "But you're not quite a native, are you?"

  "But she was on scholarship. She was going to get out. Better herself, right?"

  Suddenly I wanted to see this girl, this woman, Nathalie, place her somewhere I had been, the House of Drinking and Smoking, one of those theory seminars, the refectory, but I couldn't find her anywhere. How was that possible? How could you evade all overlap? I guess that was one of Purdy's gifts.