The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper

before. We’d marvel, gossip, and trade anecdotes about him, clean our plates, wash them, and then never think of him again for as long as we lived.
    “Being excessively earnest, or so I’m always told, I wouldn’t know if you were kidding if I cared,” Serge said.
    Given how fiercely Azmir had punched him, I said I wasn’t shocked, and if his brain was hemorrhaging—and his ennui at my story was suspicious—what lay ahead for him was subject to truncation.
    “I was joking,” Serge said. “I told you no one ever gets it.”
    I said if he were queried out, I hoped to make short use of his dwindling capacities. Then I withdrew the group of envelopes I’d stolen from Claude’s bedroom, extracted the letter I’d previously read, and held it a reasonable distance from his face.
    I asked if what was written there were true.
    His good eye read the paper haltingly then stalled around the midway point, branching off the page and stilling in his lap, whether from retinal inertia or small penis worries or the upshot of brain damage, I’ll never really know.
    “Ask Claude,” he said nebulously.
    I asked him to confirm that he had written it.
    “Write it,” he said. “You think . . . I wrote myself a letter about . . . me?”
    I told him I was confused.
    “My face hurts,” he said, and, glancing worriedly at the back of Azmir’s head, he bit his lower lip extremely gently then attempted, I believe, not to move enough to harm himself sufficiently to cry enough to bring more pain upon him.
    I’m sparing you the convoluted turns of phrase my voice accumulates whenever I feel pressured to create a sympathetic portrait of . . . well, anyone, and that includes myself.
    Still, I know a dry approach will leave Serge unrealistic, so I’ll avoid this scene and simply say we had a brief, heart-tugging, if you wish, disintegrated, shedding conversation until his chin fell on his chest in what could charitably be called sleep.
    I tend to think dying people tell the truth, although I don’t know why truth would magically become their native language, and one should never underestimate sappy, brainwashing movies.
    I’ll consolidate the things I learned from Serge into a tentative report that virtually every word from his and Jean-Paul’s lips before I’d cleaned his out had been a lie.
    To feel the impact of this mindfuck, try imagining my voice is something more concrete and physically imposing than the book I hope it will inject then spend eternity in print. Let’s say . . . it’s a chateau, since that setting is still fresh.
    Let’s say while you’ve been reading or, as it turns out, believing you were reading, you’ve been hanging out in my chateau attentively enough to have found your way into that hidden thoroughfare I outlined, or, in this case, a confidential, wandering sentence.
    If you’re with me, my words and what they’ve detailed to this point would constitute the chateau’s furniture and so forth. I would be the building’s architect, and my story, such as it is, would form the floor plan. Serge would be the guest of honor who has suddenly gone missing or, more fruitfully, has been replaced when none of you were looking with a mannequin that duplicates his physical appearance.
    In other words, everything you’ve read thus far was more mischievous than you imagined. Since the writing hasn’t altered, and a quick recheck would find it just as stiff and slightly out of touch as ever, there’s no reason to stop reading, or, returning to the chateau allegory, to cease hanging out like you’ve been doing all along.
    Still, you’re advised that what you see around you—walls, if you’re hallucinating, or certain facts, if you’re my readers—are potentially encrypted—with passageways if you’re “chateau” guests, or subtexts if you’re with me—and certain givens such as who scarred Serge’s body, how Claude died if he’s deceased, who was with me in the hidden tunnels, Claire’s