A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

  “You just passed our street.”

  I drop him off at Beth’s, watch him step into her red foyer, wave to Beth as she waves to me, watch the door close, see them start up the stairs, knowing he’ll tell her everything.

  I cannot worry now.

  Not when there is Sari.

  I do not know what, exactly, Sari wants. Maybe she’s getting revenge. This could be her getting back at me for having fun with her book, making me come up to the hotel room, which will be empty. Or when I walk in, someone will douse me with something. Whipped cream. Tar. This whole thing is a big setup. It’s a trap. I would deserve it, certainly. I deserve anything, everything—no attack would surprise me. But it’s worth the risk. To be with a sexologist! She will know everything, full of tricks, tips, explosive things, will pull things out of me that I didn’t know were there—

  I call from the lobby.

  “I was about to leave. I have to catch a plane in two hours.”

  “I’m here.”

  “I’ll come down.”

  I am waiting to see the sexologist. Sari. Sexologist. Sari. Sexologist. But how bad is this? Friend in a coma, Toph at Beth’s, maybe crying, shaken up at least—it’s the first time I really exploded—did I explode? I exploded, I sounded like them—

  And I’m waiting for this woman who I have known all of three hours— The elevator splits and she is there, with the suitcase, striding toward me and, when close, smelling so good—

  We decide to skip dinner, to go straight to my house. We’ll have an hour before her flight leaves. We get in my car and there is rain, and the Tenderloin is gauzy and bright, and on the way home all the green lights are timed, and then we are alone in my room—

  I am with the sexologist! All is lush. We are progressing, still clothed but progressing—on a bed with the sexologist, on a bed with the sexologist, on a bed with the sexologist—what does that mean, to be here with the sexologist? There is nothing better, yes? This is it, right? I am not married, and I will die soon, three years, maybe five, and Shalini would be wanting us all to be enjoying ourselves, even with—especially with a sexologist in from New York, a one-in-a-million chance here, I know, Shal knows—and thus I’ll be adding joy to the world, not depriving. Deprivation does no one any good. I will be adding something to the world, this experience to the world and more so, Sari and I will be further weaving ourselves into its fabric, by doing things, anything, anything at all, one is weaving oneself into the fabric—

  It is okay for me to have sex with the sexologist while Shalini is in a coma. How could we say no? Our being together means that something is happening, and the happening of things equals a moral good, which equals an irreducible good, which = existing = defiance = pulling = pushing = proof = faith = connection + hand-holding = affirmation = swimming to the rock and back + holding breath under water all the way from one side to the other = the fighting of fights, tiny fights, big fights, any fights == the proving of points, all the time = denial of the tide = flouting of decay = force — restraint — moderation — nail-biting — no-saying + wall-punching + volume-turning-upping + quick-lane-changing + car passing + light-making + yelling + demanding, insisting, staying, getting = defiance = handprints, footprints, proof = tree-shaking, fence-cutting + taking + grabbing + stealing + running = engorging = no regretting = insomnia = blood = soaking in blood and what Shalini needs is the connection, the pumping of blood, the use of the lattice! She needs her friends not only there by her side, but she needs us being as close as possible, not only to her but to each other, creating friction, noise, and if possible, she needs us having sex, having sex with each other and projecting that energy to her, the bursting and love—it all connects, aha! Shalini would want us having sex! And then, with Sari, just mild groping at this point, with our eyes closed, then the thumping of empty shoes on the wooden floor, the thinking of all the things you think about with your eyes closed while feeling and positioning and rubbing like, for example, space travel. Walking on Mars, in a 2001: A Space Odyssey—style spacesuit, everything dusty, red. Then images from a lavishly illustrated book owned throughout adolescence positing what space travel might look like, three thousand years hence, the moon-sized spacecrafts, the towers miles high on planets heretofore uncharted; then Shalini’s eyes, closed and purple; then your lack of a condom, and then your giving AIDS to Sari, and your having to tell Sari, a year hence, when you are diagnosed, and having to wait— No, you’ll do it through the mail, being unable to face her, you will have moved to Greenland or Franz Josef Land by then, or else you will still be here, and will tell her in person, and will ask her to marry you, and together you will fight through AIDS, because—no, she won’t want anything to do with you, asshole—

  The door to the building opens and closes. Then the door to the apartment opens and closes. Then the door to the bedroom opens. Toph.

  “Oop,” he says.

  I walk out. It’s the first time he’s caught me. Not that we were all that engage. But still.

  He’s looking in his closet. Just standing, looking.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re supposed to be at Beth’s.”

  “She didn’t have any food. She sent me home.”

  “Listen, head back there and eat. Tell her she has to. Tell her to order something. I’ll come get you in an hour.”

  He leaves.

  I return to Sari. She’s standing, to go.

  Then to the airport.

  Silence. Idle talk.

  Outside the car we hug.

  She passes through the airport’s glass and I watch, blinking stupidly.

  It’s unclear what we’ve done, whether something happened, whether we broke through, whether proof was provided.

  Accompanying Adam Rich’s final interview is a full-page photo of Adam, mid-laugh. The caption reads: “Didn’t Fear the Reaper.” The spread is great. It looks perfect, everything down to the last detail—photos of him growing up, the one with Brooke Shields towering above him, even a bizarre shot of him, at age nine or so, with Moodie’s new girlfriend Michelle (she and Adam went to the same school for the arts). It’s all pitch-perfect, everything dead-on, believable. This will be big, we think. “This will be big,” we say.

  “Yes, this will be big,” we say.

  Things finally seem aligned for us, with our rental situation seemingly stable, advertising somewhat better, the staff at a maximum, with six or ten or twenty interns, and now our new East Coast helper person, a twenty-two-year-old actress/waitress named Skye Bassett whom Lance has somehow roped into running around New York for us, doing meetings, planning an upcoming party, running errands.

  “An actress?” we say.

  “Yeah, did you see Dangerous Minds? She was one of the kids in the class. It was a big role. She’s on the box and everything.”

  “So... what does she want with us?”

  It is a standard response. We are suspicious of anyone who offers to help us, worried about anyone who actually does. Those, like Zev, who move across the country to do so, for free, well...

  I rent the movie soon after and sure enough, amid the black and Latino kids—at-risk youth, see—there is a pretty white girl with dirty-blond hair. She is tough and wears too much makeup. She has speaking lines and everything, and now she’s running around New York for us. She waitresses thirty hours a week at the Fashion Cafe, acts or auditions twenty hours more, squeezes our garbage in somewhere between. When she phones she is manic and funny, with a husky voice. She is one of us, and with her, and with this Adam Rich thing, it really seems like we might be turning a corner here, maybe we should really make some kind of push, actually put together a kind of business plan and get a bunch of millions of dollars and finally dominate and have bridges and grade schools named after us, arrange for the trip in the space shuttle, and maybe Shalini will get some money, too, maybe she’ll get back in there and do her thing because Shalini has been in the com
a for about two weeks when Marny and I go one day, a bright weekday at about noon, and are led inside, where Shalini is there with her eyes open.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  We freeze. We had not been told that her eyes were open. We want to run and tell her family.

  Her eyes are open, but not open in a vacant sort of way, but open-open, absolutely. She’s looking at us! I move a little to the side to see if her eyes will follow me, and they do, slowly, slowly, but.. .she must be...

  “Hey Shal!” Marny says.

  Awake!

  We wash our hands and come over to one side of her bed— maybe we forget to wash our hands—and lean over in the usual way, holding her arm, all the while her eyes are following us, at least one eye is following us. The other eye is not moving, but she’s really watching us, with those huge eyes or eye, looking completely amazed by our presence—the stunned, mute look of a newborn. God her eyes are huge, the whites of her eyes so gigantic, bigger than before it really seems, maybe twice as big as before.

  The world is in bloom. She is back, we have not lost her, she’s obviously back, and hearing us, and will soon talk, and then, maybe in a few days, be up and about and then back to work, chatting, creating, assembling, and finally resuming the backrubs.

  One of her friends comes in. We give him an urgent sort of look, casual but urgent, not to alarm anyone, but Jesus Christ

  We tell her to wiggle her toes and she waves her foot back and forth.

  It’s spectacular.

  It’s Jesus and Lazarus and Christmas.

  Afterward, though, in the waiting room, we are told by one of the doctors that even with her eyes open and her seeming to be cognizant, she is still, technically, comatose. That it is not unusual, for someone still comatose to open one’s eyes, to respond to basic commands. We can’t for the life of us figure out what that means.

  To us it’s obvious that she is awake, is back, and that it might have been us, Marny and I, that made it happen.

  We leave, dizzy, catapulting. The cars in the parking lot shimmer, the sky is full of doves and big dancing puppies, all singing early Beach Boys songs. I put my arm around Marny as we walk to the car, and by the time we get to the car I have a fantastic idea. My idea is this: Marny and I should have sex. In the car.

  My head is on some new planet, a just-found planet that’s full of flora and fauna and winged deer and snakes that harmonize and I am so giddy that when we get in the car I just sit there and grin. At Marny. We both are alive, and have known each other for all these years, and have made it this long, so long, we are so old and tired and have not been killed and have not fallen from a bridge or balcony or rickety deck. I am really thinking that the very best way to commemorate it all is for Marny and I to be naked with each other, and sweating—at her apartment, mine, in the car, it doesn’t matter. The beach, the park.

  I need to take my clothes off. I can’t drive. We sit in the car, in the hospital parking lot. I can’t do anything else. I can’t go back to work. Sex is the right thing.

  “She was staring at us,” I say, thinking of sex.

  “It’s incredible,” Marny says, not thinking of sex.

  “She looked amazing, exactly like her—I mean, her eyes were following us!” I say, thinking of Shalini’s eyes, then of sex, and about whose apartment, mine or Marny’s, is closer.

  “Yeah, it was definitely her, so alert,” Marny says.

  I pause and look at Marny and hope that my thoughts, those relating to sex, seep into her brain, or are already there. She looks ahead, through the windshield, hoping that any moment I will start the car. When she turns back to me I am still looking at her, with the grin—I don’t know how to broach the topic—now a shy grin. Maybe a shy grin will work.

  “I know this sounds really strange,” I blurt, “but I’m really horny right now.”

  There is a short pause as she diagnoses the depth of my confusion. That I am not kidding. I am thrown, because for a minute there I thought she might be on my planet, which also has water-slides, but as it turns out she is not, after all, on my planet.

  “I think we should get back to the office,” she says. She is right. She is good. She never gets upset when I do this. It was a dumb idea, a revolting idea. All wrong. Bad!

  I ask her for a hug. She complies. While hugging, I get another very, very good idea: that Marny and I should have sex. I drag the hug out for a minute, across the bucket seats, thinking again that maybe she’s warming to the idea, that maybe she’ll change her mind and we’ll complete this circle...

  She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles. Okay. I turn the car on and back up and drive out of the parking lot, and we head back to the office, the city looming up ahead, all jagged and white, all the buildings standing there, smiling, chuckling, a bunch of huge happy people. They understand.

  Adam Rich insists on being picked up at the airport. I have paid for him to fly up, so he can come to a party for the release of the issue and do a few radio interviews. I had gently suggested that the shuttles to and from SFO were just great, and cheap, too, I take them all the time—but there had been a long pause, and he had then, as he had before, let me know that I was not dealing with just some high school friend coming into town. I was dealing with a major Hollywood presence, someone whose stamp had long ago been put on that zip code—a made man. He was Adam Rich! No airport shuttles for Adam Rich! No half-assed motel rooms for Adam Rich! Get serious!

  Perchance was Adam starting to believe the auteur bit, the genius-working-on-“Squatter Project” deal?

  I pick him up in my Civic. I am late. I am running through the carpeted hallways. I run up the escalator, to the gate, then down, to the baggage claim. I will have to page Adam Rich. He will not like this.

  “Is that you?”

  I turn around.

  “Adam.”

  “You’re late.”

  And there he is. Adam Rich.

  I guess I knew he was kind of short. I knew this. I will not act surprised. He is impeccably tanned, buff almost, with gelled hair, a goatee. He is wearing precisely the outfit he wore in the photo shoot—tanktop, surfer shorts, sunglasses. He looks pretty great.

  We walk to the car.

  When we hit San Francisco, the first thing he wants is a cigar. He must have some good cigars. He has been enjoying cigars, he insists, long before their enjoyment became so faddish, and wants me to stop at a place he knows of on Market Street so he can pick up some of this brand and that, the kind you can’t just get at the 7-Eleven.

  I have made a reservation at a hotel near Van Ness. I have never seen the hotel before, had found it in the phone book.

  “You’ll like it,” I say. “It’s close to...stuff.”

  It’s not close to anything. But it was cheaper than any other place I called, and their ad was clear, and had by far the nicest illustration.

  We pull into the parking lot. It’s a sort of Red Roof Inn, just off busy Van Ness, close to a car dealership, about three blocks from the Tenderloin. There is no air-conditioning, no pool.

  He is not happy. He is exasperated. He wants to be near the water, as he clearly indicated when we spoke on the phone. We drive to the Wharf. Once there I stop at a pay phone and look through the yellow pages. He is waiting in the car, sunglasses on. Ten minutes later I have a place, a Best Western, with A/C, a pool, five blocks from the sea lions. I drop him off and pay for the room. Over the next two days, I will do anything he wants, for we feel we owe him, because the issue, the cover of which reads:

  Fare Thee Well, Gentle Friend Adam Rich, 1968-1996 His Last Days The Final Interview The Legacy He Leaves

  has hit and hit big—relatively speaking, of course. When the issue was making its way to newsstands we sent out, from our Brother 600 fax machine, a press release to exactly one media outlet, the National Enquirer, fully intending to lie to them about the article’s veracity. In the interest of diverting questions from us, thus k
eeping the hoax alive for as long as possible, we planned to pin the story, and its fact-gathering, on its elusive British author, Christopher Pelham-Fence. All inquiries would be directed to him, though, oddly enough, he would be unavailable for a week, as he was on assignment in, we think, Romania.

  Eight minutes later there was a breathless call from a producer from Hard Copy. We had not faxed Hard Copy.

  “Why haven’t we heard about this?” he wanted to know.

  “Man, that’s a good question,” we said.

  “Have you talked to any other TV outlets?”

  “No, you’re the first.”

  “Good, good. Can you get us his family? Friends?”

  “Um, sure. Yes. Maybe. Yes.”

  The logistics were getting complicated too fast. Who will play his mom? His dad? The neighborhood grocer?

  “Well, first,” we said, “we’ll have to track down, you know, Mr. Pelham-Fence. He’s got all the details.”