A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (25 page)

“
Thank you.
”

John has gotten me a beer.

John is broken and I
’
ve known him forever.

He
’
s got a nice tan, as usual. He always liked to be tan.

He grew up in the neighborhood, and our parents were close. I
’
ve known him since I knew anyone. There are pictures of us under the kitchen table eating popsicles, of me in their backyard, drinking out of the bird feeder with a straw. Together, at nine, ten years old, we would painstakingly write letters to the makers of Lego, suggesting design improvements and offering ideas for future products. Enfield, Connecticut is where the Lego headquarters sit—I still remember. And I was as much his parents
’
child as he was ours, and even in junior high and on, when we had less and less to say to each other, we were still inextricably tied, were stuck with each other, our closets full of the other
’
s borrowed clothes.

His parents are gone, too. His mother, tall, blond, loud, had done cancer our second year in high school, a huge mess, bringing him even more snugly into our family. Five years later, after a year at Penn, he transferred to Illinois, to be closer to his father, who was not doing well, had had a stroke, had been treated for depression— And a year later, he went too, an aneurysm, such a fucking mess we were—it was only a few months after my own father, that whole year cloudy for both of us; we didn
’
t even see each other that much—it just made it worse, the sight of each other reminding us
only of what we had in common, and the wondering if we needed to ask how the other was doing but ending only in mumbling, hands-over-mouths, nervous sniffing—

After his dad
’
s funeral, John had missed only a few days of school, was back on Wednesday.

“
You
’
re back,
”
I said.

“
Yeah,
”
he said.

He had nowhere else to go.

“
What
’
s with the knuckles?
”
They were cut, scabbed.

“
Oh I broke a window. You know.
”

I said I did know. Did I know?

And now he
’
s out here, living in Oakland for now. After graduating he tried Chicago first, but tired of constantly running into people from Champaign. They were all there, the whole school— so few make it out of the state. To most, Chicago was Oz, anything beyond it was China, the moon.

“
So. How
’
s Toph?
”
he says.

“
Fine,
”
I say.

Pliers, handcuffs—

“
Where is he?
”
he asks.

Paint thinner, vaseline—

“
He
’
s home. Baby-sitter.
”

Other stuff—
stuff he brought from Scotland!
—

“
Oh.
”

I change the subject.

“
How
’
s the job search going?
”

“
I don
’
t know. Good maybe. I just saw a job counselor.
”

“
A what?
”

“
A job counselor.
”

“
What does that mean?
”

“
He
’
s a guy who helps you figure out—
“

“
Okay, I know, but how does it work, exactly?
”

“
You talk to him about your interests, he gives you a test—
“

“
Like, a multiple-choice test?
”

“
Yeah. It took about three hours.
”

“
He gives you a test to find out what kind of job you want?
”

“
Right.
”

“
You
’
re kidding.
”

“
Why would I be kidding?
”

We watch the crowd below. They are wearing clothes they bought secondhand in the Mission or, for twice the price, in the Haight. They have unbuttoned the first two buttons of their tight synthetic-fibered shirts, worn over T-shirts with logos for nonexistent companies. They have shaved heads or carefully messy Westerberg hair. There are young men up from Stanford in light blue oxfords with shortshorn, shiny heads, hard with gel. There are small women in big shoes, with snug, ribbed shirts.

Everyone is talking. People have come with friends and are talking with the friends they
’
ve come with. They
’
re out with people from work. They are looking into the faces they see every day and are saying things they
’
ve said a hundred times. Like us, they have in their hands beer that has been brewed on the premises.

“
Should we order some food?
”
we/they say.

“
I don
’
t know. Should we?
”
we/they say.

From here, the bar
’
s second floor, their mouths are moving, but their words are only groans, one continuous, monotonal groan, a sort of mooing, punctuated by the occasional squeal—
“
Ohmygod!
”

There
’
s too many of them, of us. Too many, too similar. What are they all doing here? All this standing, all this standing, sitting, talking. There isn
’
t even a pool table, darts, anything. Just this loitering, lolling, this drinking of beer in thick glasses—

I
’
ve risked everything for this?

Something needs to happen. Something huge. The taking over of something, a building, a city, a country. We should all be armed and taking over small countries. Or rioting. Or no: an orgy. There should be an orgy.

All these people—we should close the doors and dim the lights and be naked together. We could start with ail of us, K.C. and Jessica, go from there. That would make it all worthwhile, that would justify everything. We could move the tables, bring in some couches, mattresses, pillows, towels, stuffed animals...

But this—this is obscene. How dare we be standing around, talking about nothing, not running in one huge mass of people, running at something, something huge, knocking it over? Why do we all bother coming out, gathering here in numbers like this, without starting fires, tearing things down? How dare we not lock the doors and replace the white bulbs with red and commence with the massive orgy, the joyous mingling of a thousand arms, legs, breasts?

We are wasting this.

What could we possibly be talking about?

Pete sidles up.

“
Hey there,
”
he says, with a trace of the British accent he cultivated in high school.

“
Tell me,
”
he asks.
“
How is young Toph?
”

“
Fine,
”
I say.

“
Where is he, anyway?
”

I love Pete, and he means no harm, but why this question? Why this question twice in one night? Much like the
“
What a good brother!
”
refrain,
“
Where is your brother?
”
has become a sort of required question, but with no internal logic. Why ask me, when I am out trying to drink and incite orgies, where my brother is? What answer could Pete, could John, be expecting? A ridiculous question.
How
would be fine.
How is your brother?
makes sense, and can be answered easily: Toph is fine. But why
Where?

“
At home,
”
I say.

“
Oh. With who?
”

Razors, chain saws, freezers—

“
I have to go.
”

I plow my way to the bathroom.

These questions. These people should know better.
Are all my friends morons?

In the bathroom someone is peeing in the sink. As I am noticing that there is someone peeing in the sink, that someone notices me noticing and naturally thinks I was looking at his penis, which I was not, which was sitting there on the sink like a newborn chick, purple and wrinkled, reaching for water.

I want to leave but immediately realize that would make me look even more suspicious, as if I entered the bathroom
specifically
to see the man
’
s penis on top of the porcelain sink, and having done that—
yes, I see
—I was free to leave. I
get
a stall, close the door behind me. And there, at eye level, is one of our stickers. Screw those idiots. Might Magazine.

Moodie and I designed them a month ago, passed them out to friends with instructions to put them in bathrooms, on walls, lampposts, cars. It was to be the first step of a three-month preliminary marketing campaign, getting everyone
’
s tongues wagging with the word
“
Might.
”
What is Might?
They will ask, intrigued. /
do not know, but when it becomes clear what it is that they will be doing, I will be interested in their doings.

There was not much of a debate involved in deciding what the stickers should say. It was obvious, and as far as we were concerned, it said it all:

Screw those idiots.

But now, looking at the sticker, crookedly slapped on the cinder-block wall, I realize there
’
s a problem: It
’
s unclear
who
is being screwed. Who are the idiots that should be getting screwed? Oh fuck. Sure, we intended it to be fairly vague, the
“
idiots
”
inter-pretable as anyone—other magazines, employers, parents, hippies, the corner grocer. But now, a terrible question rears its head: Are we implying that the sticker
’
s reader should be screwing
us?

Oh God,
it
does, it does. After all, just after it implores the
reader to
“
Screw those idiots,
”
it says
“
Might Magazine.
”
We
’
re the ones to screw! It offers no choice!

It
’
s a disaster. We
’
ve covered the city with stickers telling people to screw us. There are so many ways it could have been better phrased. For instance:

Might Magazine Says: Screw Those Idiots. Or

“
Screw Those Idiots,
”
Says Might Magazine. Or

Screw Those Idiots

(
“
those idiots
”
not referring to those behind

Might Magazine, the makers of this sticker,

who are good people and should not be screwed).

This is terrible, this is Armageddon. We
’
ve already printed 500 of these things. I lean over the toilet and try to peel this one off—I
’
ll remove every one, by hand!—but it only shreds, feebly. I pick and pick, with no discernible progress, my fingernails black with gobs of sticker-matter. My shins are wet from toilet-bowl moisture. And I
’
m still hanging through my zipper.

When I leave the stall, the purple-chick-penis man is gone, and when I get back to our spot by the railing, half of the people are gone; Jenna is standing alone.

We chat idly for a good two or three minutes before:

“
So how
’
s your little brother?
”

“
Fine, thanks.
”

I am worrying, but there
’
s no way...

“
What
’
s his name again?
”

“
Toph.
”