The Subject Steve: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

let alone the extinction of a species. Especially ours. Didn't I say this? I said this."
    "So, am I dying or what?" I said.
    "God revealed it to me," said the Philosopher, "yet now I must defy God to appease the church. I shall perish from the hypocrisy . . ."
    "That film, that idiotic film," said the Mechanic. "Somebody's cousin with an educational library. Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. So now we have what? What do we have now? The answer is C: Squat. Squat is the correct answer. We had everything going for us. The two names, perfect. You need two names for a good disease. Goldfarb-Blackstone. A Jew and a white guy. What's not to trust? Can't be a conspiracy, right? I mean, sure it could be for some people, but we weren't planning on this being a black disease. They have no insurance, by and large. I mean, well, what I mean by that is by and large. I'm not a racist, you know."
    "I didn't know that," I said.
    "It's true."
    "But what about me?" I said.
    "What, you?"
    "Yeah, me."
    "Oh, you. No, you're dying. Sorry, kid. Hate to say it."
    "Dying of what?"
    "I don't know. We haven't figured it out yet. What did we call it? Whatchamacallit. Good enough name as any, I guess."
    "But you said it was a scam."
    "The scam was everything else. See, we just wanted to stick out from the others. What's wrong with that? A brand, you know? Brand recognition. Brand-what's the word-leverage. Something for people to worry about on the drive to work. Something for the pharmaceuticals to jump on, the comedians to joke about. PREXIS dot net. Lots of people die all the time from nameless, mysterious diseases. What, do we deal with even a fraction of the shit that goes on? The answer, by the way, is D: Less than a fraction of the shit. It's like all those murders. Most go unsolved."
    "What murders?"
    "Exactly."
    "So, what am I going to do?"
    "I don't know. Cry. Pray. Go see the castles of Scotland."
    The Mechanic's eye began to spasm anew, as though straining to vomit some abominable vision. The Philosopher fondled himself on the sofa.
    "Doctor, doctor," he sang, "gimme the news . . ."
    "Consider yourself the luckiest guy in this room," said the Mechanic.
    "But I'm dying," I said.
    "But nothing."
    I found new doctors, furnished myself with further opinions. They slid me through tubes, onto tables, gurneys, toggled instruments that seemed forged in sterile smithies somewhere, cold bays carved deep into germless rock. They siphoned me, decanted me, bottled and labeled me, my blood, my snot, my waste, whatever coursed through me or sat in me, vatted, casked, the distillations of the guts, the body's gurgling treatment plant. They called me back, called me in, peeked into the corridor, closed the door.
    The one with the eyeglasses sighed as she slid them off.
    The one with the mustache stroked the bristles into place.
    The fat one farted, made a meek look.
    "Who can be certain?" they all began. There was concurrence about the uncertainty of certainty. There was concurrence about me.
    I was dying of something.
    It had no name.
    Nobody wanted to venture one now.
    I thought about Greta. I daydreamed about Clarice. I wondered if their industry had a tradition of charity work. I sat at home with Cudahy waiting for the symptoms to declare themselves. There had to be symptoms. Death could not precede the symptoms. My symptoms were late bloomers, but bloom they must. They owed me that much, whatever tribe of misery they hailed from: trembling, confusion, amnesia, aphasia, fevers, nomas, blebs. Dizziness, fatigue. Labored breathing. Loosened bowels. Blindness, boils, bedsore'd ravings, sears, flares, wens. Who knew? Nobody had ever done this kind of dying. Oh pioneer, the Patient Zero, the Subject Steve, the me of my given name, the me of my given fate, the chump of mysterium, the presymptomatic simp.
    Did I deserve it?
    Sure, like you deserve it.
    Maybe only for being born.
    Maybe only for wanting to be.
    Because I did want to be. I wanted to stick around, stay in