The Subject Steve: A Novel (4 page)

Already I was nostalgic for my sorrows. I wanted to savor heartsmash again, desertion, distraction, desolate nights, all the aches and bruises, love's bunions, the mind's bum knee. My mouth watered for bitter fruit. My belly panged for crow. There were no disaffected daughters in the patent-pending nonstate, no wife-pilfering Williams, no medallions of pampered meat. There were no tax forms to fudge, no binges to regret, no sweet depletions of the soul. There was nothing save a nothingness shot through with utter nothingness.

I wanted to keep myself in the realm of somethings, even all the awful somethings.

I wanted the cure.

I got curatives. I got pills, chemical injections, cautious portions of radiation served up by aproned technicians, junior chefs in the kitchens of deep frequencies. I got everything everyone got for dying of everything else, of known killers, named decimations.

I was still insured and they had all sorts of notions at their disposal, long shots, Hail Marys to spare.

"Nothing to lose," was their mantra. "Everything to be gained."

Loss gained. Loss never paused. Nothing took. The pills, the shots, rays, they made me sick. The symptoms! The symptoms had arrived! I thinned, I curdled, I shed.

Cudahy nursed me, nurses doctored me, and all seemed for naught. I was some sort of deliquescing human unit shuttled between home sofa and hospital cot. I sipped nutritional shakes from tin containers, dribbled them out on bathroom tiles, Cudahy's shoes. It was Cudahy who stood by me, truly, in toilet stalls, in taxi lines, in vestibules of vague stink. Maybe we were bound together by the beet fields of our boyhood, or the sweaty secrets of our fathers. I didn't think too hard about it. I was too weak, too grateful. I'd sent Fiona home. I required a secret fiefdom of shamelessness now.

The Further Opinions admitted to varying degrees of bewilderment. A surgeon named Lovinger wanted to cut. She just appeared one day, a voluptuous phantom there in x-ray where I loitered in my paper smock.

"I want to gut you," she said, "get a look-see. I've got a hunch. I'm a good huncher. This conversation is just between us. I can cut like nobody's business. Can I cut you?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I'm your last best hope."

Lovinger laid her hands on my shoulders. Supple, milky hands. A tiny Hebrew letter on a chain swung above the slope of her breast. She said it stood for life. It looked like a little ski-lift chair. I pictured us in it, an Alpine idyll with my surgeon-lover, Lovinger.

"Okay," I said. "Let's cut."

I was borne off in a whirl of orderlies to the new meat ward. My suitemate was an old man, a warren of tubes, puffs of rotted hair. The skin on his face looked blasted underneath, blood bombs gone off in secret detonations. The Los Alamos of all of us. Other men, younger men, slightly less ravaged versions of him, sat grave and dainty on the edges of his bed.

"You're just here for the money," the man said. "Save your breath. It's all going to the Elks. And the black kids. I promised scholarships."

"Dad, we really should discuss this."

The old man turned to me. I saw arid eons in his eyes.

"Fathers and sons," I said.

"The daughters killed me, too. And the daughters-in-law. All of them. Everybody. Except the Elks. I extend my gratitude to the Elks. They made a place for me. Saturday nights, some cards, some laughs. I'm a businessman, but I never forgot where I came from. I used to go down to the tough schools and make speeches to the black kids. They understand hardship. I told them if they didn't get knocked up or join those machine-gun gangs I'd send them to college. Maybe it's a waste, but if we get one good fellow out of it, one Washington Irving, it'll all be worth it."

"Dad, please."

"The papers are drawn up, Randy. You're Randy, right?"

He put out a crusted hand. The nearest son took it, started to cry.

"Christ," said the old man, "what I wouldn't give for a tough black son."

I slid out of bed, stood.

"Where you going?"

"I smell encroaching nothingness," I said.

"I know what you're smelling," said the old man. "It's not my fault. It's because the girl hasn't come. I keep pushing the button and she never comes."

The surgeon Lovinger caught up with me in the lobby.

"You've got to let me cut," she said. "I've got us a room and everything."

Cudahy was waiting for me out on the curb. The taxi driver took us through the park.

"Detour," he said. "Parade."

"What parade?" I said.

"Landlord Day," said the driver. "See the float?"

A great papier-mache tenement house was rolling down the avenue. Men in matching motor caps carried signs: "Rent Control Is Mind Control."

"It's all about the little man," said Cudahy.

"The little man?" said the driver.

"The little lord," said Cudahy.

There was an old movie on TV about android gladiators. It was set in the future, the late seventies. Cudahy sat beside me, cubing feta cheese.

"You know," he said, " 'robot' is a Czech word. I can't remember what it means. Here, this came."

He pushed an open envelope across the cutting board, shrugged when he saw me rub at the vinegar stains.

Dear Enrollee:

This notice hereby notifies you that your health plan has reached its maximum amount of maximum expenditure. We want to thank you for being such a faithful and valued customer.

_Sincerely,

Fran Kincaid

Accounts Representative_

"This," said Cudahy, knifing at the screen, "is where the android's faceplate comes off to reveal a menacing tangle of wires. It's like a simile for our technology-crazed society."

"Insurance company cut me loose," I said.

"You're better off. I don't have any coverage. Look at me. I'm fine."

"I was fine, too."

"Fran Kincaid," said Cudahy. "Accounts representative. What do you think old Fran is doing right now? Slipping into her home-from-work dungarees, whipping up a little din-din, maybe?"

"What?"

"I can almost smell it," said Cudahy. "Garlic potatoes. Yum. Another tough day at the office, and now Fran's unwinding with a little Chablis, calling her sister, the perennial grad student. 'So, what's up, sis?' 'Not much, how's by you, Fran?' 'Oh, the usual, bringing ruin down on the poor slobs of the republic.' Am I right? Fucking Fran."

"Who?" I said. "Grad student?"

" 'Look, sis,' " Cudahy went on, doing voices now, twitching up his mouth, "'you've got to find something and stick with it. The rest of us Kincaids, we work.' 'Up yours, Fran, everything's so easy for you, you don't get my deal at all.' 'Mom was right about you, sis. You're not as smart or as pretty as you think you are, but not dumb and ugly enough to take care of yourself. It's sad, really.' 'At least I didn't marry what's-his-name.' 'At least I didn't fuck my high school trivia team coach.' 'Finger-fucked.' 'Titter titter. Mmm.' 'What are you cooking, Fran?' 'Garlic potatoes.' "

"Cudahy," I said. "Hey."

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know. It just wells up in me sometimes."

It was the last thing I'd ever hear him say. I nodded off while the androids praised Caesar in transistorized Elizabethan, woke to a bad stench. Cudahy's beautiful heart must have blown on a sprint to the john. His pants were at his ankles. I'd never noticed how hairy and slender his ankles were. All that grunt and shove of him rising up from those tender stalks. A new roll of toilet paper lay near his hand. I turned Cudahy over, saw a bubble on his lips. The bubble probably meant he was still breathing. Somebody said that, later. I sat there with his bright enormous head in my lap.

"What words could even begin to capture the indomitable spirit of our beloved Cudahy?"

I'd rented out a so-called intimately priced room in the basement of Ferguson's Funerary. Now I stood beside a wreathed easel festooned with snapshots slipped from a binder I'd found under Cudahy's bed. Shot-putters, mostly, a few light-damaged Latvian brides.

"He was a huge man with a huge heart," I continued. "He had no coverage."

I looked out to Fiona, my only fellow mourner, apart from Ferguson. Somebody else loomed up in the shadows behind her, a tight bloat of a man in aviator shades. He must have sneaked in while I'd been fussing with the easel. His shirt looked damp from the sink, his white-yellow hair tucked beneath a vintage derby. A great berry-colored stain fell down his cheek. Fiona's new beau? A far-flung colleague of Cudahy? Some wet brain weeping at the wrong bier? Ferguson had hinted he could hire grievers. Maybe this freak was on the house.

"Welcome," I said. "Thank you for coming."

The stranger gave a nod of grim salute and I resumed my address, but as I started talking I got the odd sense he was taunting me somehow. His eyebrows pogo'd up past his sunglass rims. He did some herky business with his elbows. Tremors, I figured, tried to ignore it, prattled on for a while about the birches and the beet fields and the moth cocoons. Most of it went dead in my mouth. This wasn't any kind of eulogy, more like a pitch, a campaign presentation. Sell the suits on how you mean to sell the legacy. Keep it punchy. Avoid the coy. I wished I had some graphics with me, visual backup, some fresh data, too. What was the mourning-Cudahy demo, anyway? His folks were dead and his family scattered. I sputtered onward into Cudahy minutiae-shoe size, culinary proclivities-groped for a grace note, a tag.

"So long, Cud," I said.

I signaled Ferguson, a tiny man with a sun-peeled nose. Ferguson made for the urn, a Florentine, he'd called it earlier, flourishing his line of them, but the stranger beat him to it, lifted the lid, peered in.

"What the hell are you doing?" I said.

"Not really what you'd call ashes. There's bone chunks in there."

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," I said.

"When, man?"

"When what?"

"When are you going to ask me to leave?"

"Now," I said. "Leave."

The stranger made a gentle scooping noise in his throat, prelude to a loogie.

"Don't," I said.

"Lovely service," he said. "Very moving."

"You're in deep shit, son," said Ferguson. "I do cop funerals."

"You don't scare me because you're so midgety," said the stranger. "Are you aware of how midgety you are?"

"Please," said Fiona. "Please leave."

The stranger regarded Fiona with not a little tenderness. He tipped his sunglasses down to maybe do something cunning with his eyes. The stain on his cheek had a glittery quality.

"I'm Dietz."

"Fiona," said my daughter.

"Tell your father over there I have a message for him. The only cure is the disease."

"All right," I said. "That's it. Get out of here. Go."

"Relax," said Dietz.

"I'll relax when I'm dead," I said.

"That's original. Just remember what I said."

"What did you say?"

"Goddamn," said Dietz, and all his swagger seemed to drain from him at once.

He smacked at his head with the heel of his palm.

"You don't remember what you just said."

"I told them I wasn't ready for the people world."

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"The fucking clusterfuck is what I'm fucking talking about."

Dietz froze for a moment, then broke into a dead run out of the room. Ferguson locked the door behind him.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, "I thought he was a friend of the deceased."

"It's okay."

"If I'd known he was going to pull a stunt like that I would have booked him a seat on the pain train."

"You?"

"I used to be a jockey," said Ferguson. "It's all just in the knees. You should see what I can do to a coconut."

"Do you need money?" Fiona asked me on the cab ride home. "How much was the cup?"

"It's called an urn," I said. "Who was that guy?"

"Forget him," said Fiona. "Probably busted out of some psych ward. Where'd you get the cake for the urn?"

"Cake? You sound like a venture capitalist with a coke habit."

"I was dating one for a while. During the boom."

"I don't want to hear about it."

"Of course you don't. Look, it's not my fault I had an early puberty. I didn't put the hormones in the milk supply."

"Can't I just not hear about it?"

"Here you are not hearing about it. Happy?"

"Within parameters," I said.

"So?"

"Cudahy had some cake on him. I used most of it for the cup."

"I can borrow from Mom."

"I wouldn't hear of it."

"William's loaded."

"William fulfills."

"I'm serious."

"I'm sure you are. Why don't I just move in with them?"

"I'll ask."

"I'm kidding."

"I'm not. Daddy, you're very sick. You need people around."

"What about you? I thought you were going to take care of me."

"I'm in a weird transitional place, right now. I don't think my presence would be good for either one of us. I need space to work it all through."

"Work what through?"

"My hatred for you."

"You hate me?"

"I didn't say that," said my daughter, diddled her pock.

I sat up the night with Cudahy's vodka, his videotapes. Shoot-outs, showdowns, duels in the sun. Frontier dust and destiny. No transitional spaces or places. Nothing to work through. Draw. Slap leather. Fill your hand. Cudahy believed in that kind of clarity.

Never could myself.

When Fiona was born I worried about the bills, my paternal deficiencies, my potential usurpation in the eyeshine of my wife.

"You are blessed," said Cudahy.

When I made team leader I grew furtive, paranoid, teased out every encounter for portents of sedition.

"Relax," said Cudahy, "you're a winner."

When Maryse left me, Cudahy drank to her riddance. Then he drank a shitload more and confessed to having loved her and even licking her ear one Thanksgiving while she tested the yams with a fork.

"There was a negligible amount of ass play, too," he said.

The truth was I knew all about it, but I let Cudahy confess and I forgave him. Forgiveness, like sin, is maybe just a matter of dwindling alternatives. Hell, it was only an ear, some ass, and Cudahy was no William, either.