The Subject Steve: A Novel Read Online Free

The Subject Steve: A Novel
Book: The Subject Steve: A Novel Read Online Free
Author: Sam Lipsyte
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Psychological, Medical, Satire
Pages:
Go to
said Fiona.
    "You didn't seem so worried before," I said.
    "I didn't know how serious it was."
    "Baby, I have some bad news. About your educational opportunities."
    "It's okay. Uncle Cud told me. I hope the fucking was worth it."
    "Only time it's not worth it is when it's free," said Cudahy.
    "Daddy, I want you to know I'm going to be here for you. That part is settled. Don't argue with me. It's what I need to do now. For me as much as for you."
    "Thank you, baby," I said, and sang to her, weakly, the song about aardvarks I had sung to her in the days before her disaffection.
    Then I spit up some fennel shreds.
    The next morning Cudahy went out for food, the early papers. I watched him pilot his bulk down the stoop, disappear behind a satellite truck. My good Cudahy, back from the wide strange world.
    My fondest Fiona.
    "You'll ruin the paint with all this tape," she said, pulling my scrapbook mural down.
    I thought back to the time Fiona was six, seven, caught a double zap of chicken pox and scarlet fever. She got so quiet there on the living room carpet playing divorce with her Barbies. The sores spread and her blood boiled. We watched her body take on the silken deadness of her injection-molded friends. It all came to high drama, or my high dramatics, me running crazy through the neighborhood with my doll-daughter in my arms, Maryse screaming for me to come back.
    "I've got us a cab, schmuck!"
    The doctors shamed us for our delay. Maryse and I, we'd been inches from the abyss of nefarious parentage, practically Christian Scientists, but Fiona would live. It must have been our luck that got us so hot, basted us both in visions of hump and dazzle. Or maybe it was some awful need to screw within wad's shot of the abyss. Home, we drank a little wine, put on some of that sticky saxophone music we used to keep around to drown out the bitter squeaks in our hearts. We gripped each other's privates and started to kiss, but our mouths were pruned things, insipid divots. My wife's wetness was all for William the Fulfiller now. We conked out drunk on the carpet, woke up around dinnertime, checked in on our baby. Fiona was bent up in her fever's waning. Maryse and I held hands beside the little plaid bed.
    "I'm leaving you," said my wife.
    "I know," I said.
    Fiona claimed she remembered none of it, but she still bore a mark from those days, a pock where a scab must have flaked, smack between her dry green eyes.
    It was about the size of a sunflower seed.
    Cudahy came back with cabin food. Siege supplies. Soup cans and sandwich meats and bouillon cubes in silver foil. He pulled a newspaper from the grocery sack, folded to an item: "Doc's Prog for Our Kind: Game Over." Beneath my ex-wife's picture was a caption: "Ex-Hubby the New T. Rex."
    "Where'd they get the photo?" I said.
    "Eye in the sky, probably," said Cudahy. "Or the DMV."
    "Mom gave it to them," said Fiona. "She left a message on my cell. She's getting calls from talk shows. She wants to know how you feel about her speaking publicly on the matter."
    "You mean whoring herself."
    "Sharing her experience, hope, and strength."
    "Tell her she can do whatever the hell she wants."
    "I knew you'd say that so I already said that."
    "There's a guy out there," said Cudahy. "He's offering his help."
    "Reporter?" said Fiona.
    "Don't think so," said Cudahy. "He told me to give you this."
    It was a mimeographed brochure, lettered in splotchy monastic script.
    Have you been left for dead?
    Do you number among the Infortunate- shrugged off by family, friends, physicians, priests?
    Have you been told you're beyond all hope?
    Are you incorrigible, inoperable, degenerative, degenerate, terminal, chronic, and/or doomed?
    Are you lost, are you crazy, or just plain sick?
    Maybe you should snuff it, friend.
    Go ahead.
    Pull the Trigger.
    Turn up the Gas.
    Do it.
    Do it, coward.
    Did you do it?
    You didn't, did you?
    Okay, don't do it.
    You're not worth the mess you'll make. Not yet.
    Here's a better
Go to

Readers choose