And that’s about when your mom got all kinky again. She went out, bought this one device, it was kind of like a swing, where there was this harness and—
Fine. You don’t need to know that. But the harness figures in, because that’s when your mother had the idea — some of her best ideas happened when she was lying down — to make it illegal to have more than one president from the same immediate family. That was just a personal gripe she had. We’d had the Adamses and Bushes and we were about to have the Clintons and your mother just got pissed. What the fuck? she said. Are we gonna have a monarchy here or what? Are we that stupid, that we have to go to the same well every time? This isn’t an Aaron Spelling casting call, this is the damned presidency! I said What about the Kennedys? And she said Screw ’em! Or maybe she didn’t say that, but that was the spirit of it. She’s a fiery one, your mom, a fiery furnace of—
Ahem. So yeah, she pushed that through, a constitutional amendment.
That led to another busy period. One week, we made all the cars electric and put waterslides in every elementary school. We increased average life expectancy to 164, made it illegal to manufacture or wear Cosby sweaters, and made penises better looking — more streamlined, better coloring, less hair. People, you know, were real appreciative about that. And the last thing we did, which I know I’ve told you about, was the program where everyone can redo one year of their childhood. For $580, you could go back to the year of your choice, and do that one again. You’re not allowed to change anything, do anything differently, but you get to be there again, live the whole year, with what you know now. Oh man, that was a good idea. Everyone loved it, and it made up for all the people who were pissed when we painted Kansas purple, every last inch of it. I did the period between ten-and-a-half and eleven-and-a-half. Fifth grade. Wow, that was sweet.
Speaking of ten-year-olds, here comes your brother. And Uncle Frank! We didn’t have to wake you up! Hola hermano, tios! Esta la noche de los nachos! Si, si. And here’s your mother, descending the stairs. With her hair up. This I was particularly proud of, when I convinced your mother to wear her hair up more often. When she first did it, a week before our wedding, I was breathless, I was lifted, I felt as if I’d met her twin, and oh how I was confused. Was I cheating on my beloved with this version of her, with that long neck exposed, the hair falling in helixes, kissing her clavicles? She assured me that I was not, and that’s how we got married, with her hair up— that’s how we did the walk with the music and the fanfare, everything yellow and white, side by side, long even strides, she and me, your mother and I.
NAVEED
STEPHANIE IS in her own bedroom, among her things, and in her bedroom is James, whom she knows through friends and who has perfect forearms. Tonight they found themselves the last two at a party for a friend, who is leaving the country to go to Bolivia to raise llamas, or perhaps coffee. They are now in her bedroom, Stephanie and James, because they like each other a great deal, especially tonight, when his forearms looked truly exceptional. But James is only in Stephanie’s city for one more week, at which time he will leave for Oregon to live as a forest-fire watchman of some kind. The point is that together they have no future, but Stephanie badly wants to have sexual intercourse with James. But if she does, James will bring her total number of sexual partners up to thirteen, which is, she thinks, too many. Not too many for herself — for she regrets only two of the men in question, both named Robert, both with too much back-fat — but too many for whomever she finally marries. She can already hear the conversation, a year or five years hence, with the man of her future, whoever he may be — he too will have amazing forearms — when after much fumbling and guessing and suspecting, they finally agree to exchange information about past partners: numbers, names, frequency, locales. And she knows now that thirteen will seem excessive. She believes that even twelve, where she is now, seems too much, will likely scare off a man who is not very secure in himself. But thirteen is something else, with other, more sinister complications. Thirteen is a baker’s dozen, and it is this phrase, “baker’s dozen,” which is the problem. She knows that she will marry a well-adjusted and self-secure man with a sense of humor, and a man with a sense of humor will hear the number thirteen and will, she can be certain, make a joke involving the phrase “baker’s dozen.” And though they both will laugh when the fiancé utters the phrase, and laugh some more as he conjures the image of actual bakers, in their white outfits and hats and powdered hands, lining up for a crack at Stephanie — ha ha ho ho! — both Stephanie and her beloved will be privately sickened by the image and the phrase at its root and it will thus be the beginning of a quick unraveling of their love and respect for one another. They will not recover from the thought of her and these many baking men, of her being covered in flour, or pushed around in dough, or the inevitable, it would seem, incorporation of a rolling pin. All of this leaves her no choice, for the sake of her future: She must sleep not only with James, but with whomever becomes handy next weekend. His name will be Naveed and he will, she realizes in a moment of lustful revelation, give her fourteen, not thirteen, and for fourteen there are no expressions involving bakers, none involving tradesmen of any kind.
NOTES FOR A STORY OF A MAN WHO WILL NOT DIE ALONE
AROUND 8,000 words.
Quick-moving. Simple language. No descriptions of rooms or furnishings.
The man is in his seventies. He’s spry, lucid.
Possible names: Anson. Or Basil. Greg.
He doesn’t want to die alone.
More than that, he wants to die surrounded by as many people as possible. The story is about if and how he might achieve this.
Why does he want to be surrounded by so many people? Many reasons, fear of course being high among them. He likes people. He likes to meet people. On a day when he meets fifty people, as at a church mixer or when getting signatures on a petition, he’s much happier than on days when he meets no one. He leaves the TV on when he goes to sleep. This is one image/motif that recurs throughout. Many of us leave the TV on when we go to sleep. Some of us do it only when in hotels. But why do we do it, why did we do it as kids? Why, when young, did we take the greatest comfort in falling asleep under the dinner table with guests all around? Or on the coarse couch while our family watched a movie? Because we don’t want to be alone when we leave the waking world?
Story takes place in Memphis. Should incorporate that huge glass pyramid, the one by the river, under the bridge.
Basil.
Basil has a terminal illness. Bone cancer. But this story shouldn’t be about a suicide. There must be a way that he knows that he’ll die, and that he can arrange or try to arrange a death surrounded by thousands, without actually taking his own life.
It starts with his having the idea one day. Maybe he’s had shadows of the notion for many years, but it crystallizes now, and he goes to tell his children and brother. He has one brother, a bit older than himself, and three kids: two girls, who are now in their fifties, whom he raised with his longtime wife, who died twenty years ago now. She was taller than him. She smelled of lilacs. She had vitiligo. He also has a son, much younger, about twenty-three, whose mother was much younger than Basil. It was an affair. She is now remarried and lives in Tokyo.