“Let’s eat, I guess.”
They went to a Japanese restaurant, a different one. The Japanese had invented female robots, that year, that danced with you, Andrew somehow knew. He had been to Japan before — once. He should be there now. He would walk on Third Avenue in Japan. There would be a Third Avenue there too. Robots would serenade him. “Japan is better than New York City,” he said. He didn’t want to elaborate. It would take forever to elaborate. Someone would eventually realize that the conversation was just a matter of semantics. Was there even a point to talking? “Never mind,” Andrew said. “I don’t know.” Not wanting to elaborate, that was the symptom of something — something bad. Andrew didn’t want to think about it. Maybe he should take antidepressant medicine. (“Alfred would bring him anti-depressants.…”) See a doctor, fill out forms, wait three weeks for it to ‘kick in’—too hard, of course. Why three weeks? Didn’t seem right. Should be gradual. Semantics, probably. ‘Kick in.’ Mark wasn’t talking anymore. It was March. March, Andrew thought. He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spiritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness — or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that? — of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think. They were staring at their menus. They weren’t talking to one another anymore. They were acquaintances. They wouldn’t hang out anymore after tonight, Andrew knew. He would never see Mark again. Also, Mark would never speak again. The waitress came. They ordered but kept their menus — to stare at.
“They gave me all the bad fish,” Mark said later about his seafood salad.
“No, you have all kinds,” Andrew said. “What do you like then?”
“Tuna, salmon.”
“You have tuna and salmon.” He did; they were both there.
“I have — what’s this? Squid.”
“Octopus,” Andrew said.
“Octopus.”
“It’s octopus,” Andrew said.
“Octopus,” Mark said.
A hamster was on the wall in the bear’s kitchen when the bear appeared.
The bear appeared sitting in a chair.
The hamster ran like a spider across the wall, the ceiling, and another wall.
The bear went to his bedroom.
“My heart is fast,” the bear said to his girlfriend.
“Your heart?” the bear’s girlfriend said.
“Why?”
“A hamster,” the bear said.
“Come here,” the bear’s girlfriend said.
“I don’t feel like sex,” the bear said.
The bear’s girlfriend took the blanket into the kitchen.
The hamster was sitting on the table.
It leapt to the wall and ran across the wall.
The bear’s girlfriend went into the bedroom.
The bear was on the bed.
The bear’s girlfriend lay on the bed.
“I don’t want to exert effort,” the bear said. “I don’t want to move or think anymore.”
“Blow-job,” the bear’s girlfriend said. “Don’t be passive-aggressive.”
“I don’t want one. I’m just saying how I feel.”
The bear’s girlfriend rolled off the bed then ran into the kitchen. The hamster was sitting on the table.
And the bear’s girlfriend put the blanket on the hamster.
The bear came into the kitchen.
“It will suffocate,” the bear said.
The hamster chewed through the blanket.
The hamster stood there.
“I didn’t know they do that,” the bear’s girlfriend said.
“I saw it before,” the bear said.
“You just said it would die,” the bear’s girlfriend said. “You said ‘suffocate.’ ”
“I forgot,” the bear said.
“I was talking about myself,” the bear said. “It feels like I’m suffocating.”
“Your conversation is interminable,” the hamster said.
“I know,” the bear said.
The bear’s girlfriend sat at the table and held the hamster.
The bear’s girlfriend slapped the hamster softly in the hamster’s face.
The bear sat at the table.
“I want to kill Saul Bellow,” the bear said. “I know he is already dead.”
“Do you still hate your novel?” the bear’s girlfriend said.
“My novel is stupid,” the bear said.
“I want to chew through something,” the bear’s girlfriend said.
“I feel like I’m upside down right now,” the bear said. “It feels bad. I feel terrible.”
The hamster was asleep.
“It fell asleep from our conversation,” the bear’s girlfriend said.
“I should take Viagra, anti-depressant medicine, Ritalin, and Caffeine tablets at the same time,” the bear said. “Then vomit in a bucket. And take a bath in the swimming pool.”
“It’s pretending,” the bear’s girlfriend said. “To avoid having to talk to us.”
“It’s making fun of us,” the bear said. “How boring we are.”
“I think I just fell asleep,” the bear’s girlfriend said. “That’s how boring this is right now.”
“I want to slap a moose,” the bear said.
Sometimes moose would be sleeping and they would feel something. They woke and were being slapped by a bear. But they were not angry. Moose had no delusions that year. They knew there were facts and that the world itself was a fact and that facts were not good or bad but just there — a worldview that happened sometimes after you suffered for a long time, alone, in your room, physically comfortable and listening to music — and so had no opinions, feelings, fear, or hatred. They saw the bears with the blankets and they said, “Thank you.”
Sometimes a bear would feel cold.
And go, “Hrr, hrr.”
And take a blanket from a moose’s head and slap the moose’s face.
The moose would say, “Thank you.”
Moose that year stood alone in shadowy alleyways. They weighed a thousand pounds, which made them not want to have thoughts. Mostly they just watched, from a distance — in blackness and without thinking. If some of the alleyway was bright and some was dark the moose would walk to where it was dark and stare at where it was bright — and not think anything at all. Sometimes an alien would stand with a moose, not because of solidarity but because of accidentally doing it. Aliens usually stood in dark doorways but sometimes got confused and stood in alleyways behind, on top of, or adjacent moose. Sometimes a bear climbed a moose and the moose would feel warm and happy, which made them run. Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only there wouldn’t be moose there and the moose would fall.
It was sad to see a moose on the ground with its eyeballs round and looking.
So a bear would sometimes put a blanket over a moose’s face.
Bears liked to put blankets on things.
Sometimes a bear accidentally wished to have Sean Penn there.
The bear would be watching TV.
Thinking about the Pulitzer Prize.
And go blank a little.
And think, “I wish I could punch Sean Penn in Sean Penn’s face.”
And Sean Penn would be there.
Sean Penn would fight the bear when it got there.
The bear would try to stop Sean Penn but Sean Penn had knives and the bear would crush Sean Penn by accident.
The bear would think, “Oh god, oh my god.”
Then put a blanket on Sean Penn’s corpse’s head.
It was a year, that year, Ellen knew, as she’d noticed from her 10th grade classmates and from observing her family — her new year’s resolution (it was stupid to have one but she was bored in class and made a list, then picked one) had been to be more alert, to think more truthfully about things, and it had affected her, she guessed, with better grades, an increase in self-esteem that was actually just a realization of how dumb everyone was, and nerdy, slightly annoying insights like this one — for doing something not even that exciting or wild and then saying, “Why not?” Or else saying, “Why not?” then doing something sort of forced and meaningless. Mostly people just went around saying, “Why not?” and, later on, when it came time to act, saying, “It’s too hard,” without ever actually doing anything.