Erasure by Percival Everett

Father’s office?” She didn’t have an answer. “The fact is, you hardly ever went there when Father
was
practicing. Now, it’s completely different. It even looks different from the outside.” I reached over and took her hand. “Lisa knows what’s best.”
    “Oh, Monksie.” Mother sniffed in her tears. “You’re such a sweet child, always have been. And so smart. You get that from your father, did you know that?”
    I glanced over at Lisa to see that she was eating again.
    “Of course, we’ll sell the office.”
    “Just like that,” Lisa said. “Monk chimes in and you’re hooked on the idea. Christ.”
    Lorraine stepped into the room just in time to hear her lord’s name used in vain. She collected our plates and issued an admonishing “Hmmph, hmmph, hmmmph” as she exited.
    Mother complained of a headache and we had dessert without saying much. Then Lorraine came in and mercifully informed us of Mother’s approaching bedtime. We kissed the old lady goodnight and watched Lorraine walk her upstairs.

    Sitting in my sister’s car outside my hotel, I apologized for butting in about the sale of the office at the dinner table.
    “No, you helped,” she said. “Thanks.”
    “I’m sorry she always reacts to me like that.”
    “Monk, you’re special. I don’t mean just the way Mother, and Father when he was alive, treated you. I’ve always thought that. I just wanted you to know.”
    I looked out the window at the street. “I think the same about you, you know.”
    “Yeah, I know.” She smiled. Her smile had always been so confident that I was jealous of it. Her smile always made me relax.

    I kissed my sister goodbye, told her I’d talk to her soon and went into my hotel where I found Linda Mallory waiting in the lobby.
    “Hi, Linda.”
    “I’ve been thinking about your paper.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Would you like to go upstairs and fuck me?”
    “No, Linda.”
    “I’m having a real crisis,” she said. “I really need to have some sex. I need it for self-validation.”
    “I’m sorry, Linda.”
    She stormed past me, out the door and into the street. Then I heard my name being shouted from outside. It was a bit embarrassing as I turned to find the hotel staff and a couple of guests staring at me. I stepped out and on the narrow path leading through the yard was Davis Gimbel.
    “A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now,”
he said.
    The words had little effect on me, save to announce Gimbel’s disturbed, certifiable, and agitated postmodern state. Behind the short, bomber-jacketed academic were Linda Mallory, seething with pent-up sexual frustration, and three other intellectually homeless academics aching to see a fight.
    “What’s this all about, Gimbel?” I asked.
    “There’s nothing to compare it to now,” he said.
    “Okay.” I stepped down the steps to take the noise away from the stoop. “Listen, I’m sorry you didn’t like the paper, but I believe you misunderstood something. I don’t even think about you guys, much less write about you.”
    That really got him mad. He circled me as best he could in the small space and even pounded his chest with a closed fist once or twice. “You don’t think much of postmodern fiction, do you?” he said. “Like all avant-garde movements, we never have time to finish what we set out to accomplish.”
    I looked at his face in the street and moon lights and found it no more or less ugly for its contorted state. “What did you set out to accomplish?”
    “You know good and well. You and your kind, you interrupted us.”
    “My kind?” I let that go. “Interrupted you? By not paying attention?”
    “The whole culture. You’re just one of the sheep.”
    “What the hell are you talking about, man? Are you drunk?”
    He continued his circling. A couple of unassociated people stopped at the gate to watch. “Of course, if an avant-garde movement ever achieves its