The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan (3 page)

You can imagine this wasn’t easy on my wife’s nerves. She Who Has Thus Far Been Unnamed needs a name. She’s not Beckett’s—she’s mine. Her name is Suzette.
Ah! So you say that she and Beckett were both French? No! Beckett was as Irish as James Joyce. Ireland always pushes her young away from her bosom. In this, she and America are sisters. America only lets multi-national oil conglomerates suck on her tits. Blessed are the French, who accept us from peasant stock!
A French woman, out of some incredible generosity, took us in. We stayed in her house and were given a room with southern exposure. Suzette loved it, and brought dozens of plants: green, white, red, gold, blue.
How we met her is interesting. I was carrying a book by Raymond Federman,
Aunt Rachel’s Fur
, around, and this woman at this restaurant came over and told us she’s read it—in French, of course—and that she thought it the funniest, most ribald writing since Rabelais. We hit it off. Suzette seemed a little jealous, but when Suzette–yes, they had the same name—invited us to coffee, my Suzette immediately accepted, which allayed my fears. I love my Suzette. I would never betray her. The Suzettes became good friends, actually. They played tennis together at least three times a week.
I kept myself busy by reading avant-garde fiction—you really should read it if you haven’t. Oh, you have been?
And now, five am, after a night of writing, my demons confront me. Not with any ferocity. See? City is at the heart of many things.
For two months I had no idea that the other Suzette had known Lubjec. Lubjec had, apparently, survived and had gone underground. Literally. Supposedly he’d built himself an underground city, a project he’d been working on for twenty years. As the underground city grew, it dug deeper, because it knew the surface would crash down eventually.
Each underground city was built under a big city. When the top worlds collapsed, the lower worlds would dominate. Like icebergs, big cities showed only ten percent of their mass above surface. Then they collapsed. The lower worlders were already too deep to be affected. The upper worlders died. Most of them. A few of us made it. And we formed a resistance.
I’m their unwilling scribe, Jacobus.
Excuse me—the President’s back on. The power outages in the city are no cause for concern, he says. The city police, as always, have everything completely under control.
Control.
What a word. Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, in
Get Smart
, seem to have thought the word positive: Control were the good guys, CHAOS the bad. Others might posit "freedom" as positive, "control" as negative. What do you make of that?
Staying at Suzette’s (Suzette H., not my wife, Suzette M.) was a delightful respite from the world’s woes. That’s what I’m supposed to say. The truth is, that it was hell. My wife’s jealousy got worse. She began to imagine I was referring to the other Suzette when I called out her name in bed. It was crazy. I only think about
my
Suzette. Her face. Her smile. Her freckles. Her dimples. The curve of her mouth. The expression in her eyebrow. Her deep brown, almost black, eyes that are the abyss that can engulf a man forever. Now do you see how much I love her? My Suzette, I mean.
I must pause here.

I must panic here. The philosophy of the city: "I’m no longer myself. I’m exactly who you want."
I have been assigned to find Lubjec. I de-atomize tonight.
The process is simple. Each of my atoms will be programmed to find him. When one locates him, the rest receive the message and reassemble before him.
That should freak him out. Hopefully that alone will be enough to make him surrender.
My atoms speed into the entryway to the underground, then they disperse. They zoom down corridors.
"Halt! You can’t go in there," led to I did. A few air conditioning vents later, I found him. I was behind him, so I started toward him.
He was wearing a baseball uniform. His name was sewn onto the back. I saw a team name, the Hawkinsville Homers, so I dispersed and rethought my strategy before he saw me.
I wondered what he was doing in the city. On a hunch, I bought a paper. Sure enough, the Homers were in town to play the city’s minor league team. Lubjec was listed as P.J. Ribl, but I read anagrams. I recognized him.
Why take him so fast? I wondered. I could jinx his game, have some fun.
Great Googlymoogly! There. That ought to fix him. Now to take a seat in the stands. "Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to William Weaver Field!"
Oh, good. The starting line-ups. Excellent! Ribl was starting at second. That was a little odd, because he was normally the shortstop. But the regular second baseman, Legron, was nowhere to be seen, and the game had to be played on time. One thing for sure, Skipper Leo "Minnie" Dumocher wouldn’t have gone easy on Legron even if he had been killed in a car accident.
Oh, look at that. On a hit-and-run fly to left, on an attempt to double-up the base runner, who was already past second, Ribl had tried to back up first base. However, the pitcher had the same idea. Ribl and the pitcher collided on the other side of the first baseman, and Ribl’s staying down. The pitcher seems to be okay. He’d hit his head into Ribl’s temple. Ribl’s out. Man, a concussion at least. I hope he’s okay. Oh—better get up and go to the concession stand now. There’ll be a long wait in a few minutes. Plus there’ll be too many people in the men’s room for me to get into a stall, and I hate competition urination. Oh, that’s right. The stalls here don’t even have doors. I hate public defecation, also. I see little to be gained by humiliating the fans, but then that’s me. Others seem to get off on it.
However, there are those who try to get off on humiliating me. One favorite play is to insult me. Another is to insult my children. Any insult leveled at my children is leveled at me. My advice is not to go there.
Of course, no one listens to me. A favorite sport of those whom I know is to pretend they care about me, but when the crunch is on, to deny any knowledge of me. Before my cock crows twice, they’ve condemned me. Of course.
Not
my
cock of course. Mine crows a hundred thirty or forty times at least before I’m condemned. There’s no rule, naturally, that says women should hate their men. There are very few rules, actually.
I’ve made it too easy to hate me, haven’t I? I’d better go read some Arno Schmidt again. It’s all about the sentences we’re given.
Life. Eternity with someone who hates you. Sartre’s
No Exit
. That’s all right. If it’s a test, I’ll pass. Even when hated, I am faithful. It is the one quality consistent in me. I never betray my mate.
She, of course, despises me for it, wishing I were unfaithful so her hatred would be justified.
Her hatred of me is eye-opening! I’ve been used. Ah, well, my ship is back for me soon.
On board will be provisions for my feelings as well as my hunger and thirst. Stowaways might tell me I’m a good captain—my first mate apparently finds doing so demeaning. However, I still trust my first mate and will not find in the stowaways a replacement. As I said, I am loyal, even if no one else is. I’ll stay here and work crosswords. I’m safe in my cabin.
A knock.
I ignore it.
Another.
I ignore it, too. I have work to do. I’m not looking for love again. It becomes hate. I don’t understand the rules of trinkets, phone calls, ex-husbands, or whatever is in that jewelry box. I can announce a tornado by accident— I savvy the weather. I know when to duck. It’s duck season. I have my waders on. I crouch. Low-flying projectiles are heading at me. I’m being told again that I’m the sorriest human who has ever lived. It’s okay—I’ve been hated before. I don’t think it’s permanent.
Mark her. She’s got the ball now. Intercept it when she tries to pass.
Scootch in between the smooch? Sorry—we may be having problems, but we’re still together. You’d better keep away, or your fingers will get burned, even on the moon. Get in the way, I’ll push you aside. Sorry. I’m okay now. All is well in paradise.
Other pressing issues abound.
The fish tank is filled with shrimp. One fish is jealous of them. The other systematically spits them out of the tank. The apartment is hot. The box fans are no better than the oscillating ones. A/C? Don’t make me laugh. In those days I was lucky to have shoes.
When I walk barefoot through the apartment, shrimp squish between my toes. The smell is a little strong, but I just smoked more to cover it and went about my business as if nothing were wrong. I figured I could psych out the fish this way so that they’d stop spitting. That didn’t work.
I’m losing tenseness.
No one really believes this is happening now, does hir?
We’re afraid to go outside. Strangers are out there. They could fuck us over. So we figure out how to fuck ’em over first.
Put ’em on a starship blaster space, flang ’em toward the straysystem out alone on the edge of time: blast ’em through onto an exploding A. They grab at the cross-bar. Hold on. Implosion follows explosion. Come back out looking at the poster on the wall.
Yeah, I remember all that. City-dwelling at its alonest. Very educational, though.
Oh, the B is ’bout to go. Hold on. Oh, well. Still 24 left. The knocking on my door is getting to me. C just went. Now D. Everything’s still fine. From now it’s not. Go E. Go F. Go G. How will I try to...

She’s sleeping next to me in bed. She’s going to wake up worrying that she disappointed me by just going to sleep. She hasn’t. Just being next to her is a privilege.

I’ll be your reptile tonight
while we freeze the food.
I’m not dressing for the fashion show.

The red queen points at me
and yells, "Off with his head!" Decapitated, I have only moments to defend myself against lies, before my body collapses
on the killing floor and spasms. I voice the word, "I,"
and realize I sound pathetic, selfish, solipsistic, narcissistic. "Am" next, sounding Cartesian, pseudointellectual, unemotional, cold, uncaring, doubting.
I could stop there, but I
continue into futility, breathing a final tri-syllabic death-rattle: "innocent." By then, all have gone. No one hears the last word.

I can’t move. I’m in Earth-sha. This telepathic message will be years old before you hear it. Do not respond. I will be gone. I need to warn you. You are in danger. Don’t look behind yourself. You don’t have time. Here—this way. Maybe I can help this way. But whatever you do, don’t come looking for me. You will not be welcomed. Just listen. I’m no threat. I can’t move. I am not asking for help. I am not asking you to cure my immobility. My immobility is necessary. Forget about me, but hear me out. You also have the mark of being in Earth-sha. You are being sedentary right now.

A watched pot never grows. It’s paint-by-numbers in book form: conventional fiction. Vines are lazy plants.

Touchdown. Extra point. Kick off. Fumble. Touchdown. Extra point. Kick off. Fumble. That’s the way to win 222-0. The dog’s off chasing rabbits. Its barking awakens her. The furniture goes in the garbage. The bag of garbage

Orange juice without breakfast is like sunshine without a day. Marketeers ripped our flesh. Yeah—we’ll share time with you in hell before we buy your time share. Model airplanes were kamikaziing into alligators. Salesmen using submission holds on the elderly and on foreigners; charlatans whipping children with the children’s own eyebrows; sexist suits making jokes about menses and Mensa: you should be ashamed of the predatory nature of your occupation!