The Subject Steve: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte Page B

Whew!
    "Never again, he vows. Never again. But the next day, hosing down her cage, she appears to him almost coy, lazing there in the afternoon heat, and it seems to him that with those sultry squints of her tigress eyes, those drowsy paw strokes on her smooth belly, that sexy way her feline spittle ropes out of her mouth, maybe she's . . . well, it's just a hunch, but maybe, I mean couldn't she actually be acknowledging their tryst, or, can you believe it, assenting to it! Why not? thinks the zookeeper, which I say for the sake of fable, for in truth no man can say for sure what another thinks, especially someone who doesn't exist. Still, hell, why not? Their love is forbidden in her kingdom too, right? It's probably just as thrilling.
    "The zookeeper, however, is not unwary, so that night he returns to her cage door with a double dose of cat tranks locked and loaded. He draws a bead on her exquisite rump, but finds himself unable to pull the trigger. He shudders to imagine the shock of the needle piercing her hide. He dreads that baleful look on her face as the chemicals creep through her system and shut her down in stages.
    "We are lovers now, thinks the zookeeper, we have built a trust. Or at least a tryst. So Zoo-man tosses the gun away and strips off his uniform, enters the cage armed only with his otherworldly tumescence. Do you all know what a tumescence is?"
    "A tumessens!" called Old Gold. "That's a boner!"
    "Nothing but, young Avram," said Heinrich. "Nothing but. So here we got Mr. Lonely Zoo-man with his parable-derived, parabolic boner looking down on the object of his love, the winsome, ferocity-graced tigress.
    "Come to Daddy, zookeeper coos.
    "But does Tigress come to Daddy? Does Tigress bend to Daddy's whim? Fuck no! Tigress leaps! Tigress pounces! Bitch munches him up!
    "And as the zookeeper lies bleeding to death, he sees it, his tumessens, if you will, now a pale tiny thing pinched in his pawed lover's maw.
    " 'Why?' moans the zookeeper. But as he twitches there in the corner of the cage, he remembers another ancient and oft-cited ditty about a frog and a scorpion and a not dissimilar breach of trust, and suddenly he knows perfectly well why."
    "It's a fable within a fable!" said Old Gold.
    "Avram Cole Younger Gold, we have college boys here who aren't as sharp as you. You're damn right. Fables within fables. Wheels within wheels. Such is the way to wisdom. And to madness. But back to our story. The zookeeper remembers this other little number about a frog and a scorpion, or a tarantula and newt, or a salamander, it doesn't matter. And the zookeeper, now in his pulped puppety death throes, now in what the Teutons might call
der Todeskampf
, the zookeeper says, 'I understand, my love, I understand, I know why you did this. It's because you're a tiger. That's why, right?'
    "Now the big cat leers at him, her flat eyes coins of a darker realm. You like that? Coins of a darker realm? I'm still tweaking that. But anyway, the tigress she looks at him, this dying zookeeper, she levels her leveling gaze at him.
    "'Listen, punk,' she says, 'the fact that I'm a tiger's got nothing to do with it. It's just that you got stingy with the good stuff.' "
    I laughed. It was hard to tell if it was okay to laugh. I guess it wasn't okay.
    "People," said Heinrich, "I want to welcome a newcomer among us. His name is Steve. Get up, Steve."
    "I'm Steve," I said, and stood.
    I waited for welcome, for hugs, finger gongs.
    Nobody said a word.
    "I'm Steve," I said. "Provisionally, I'm Steve, and I'm dying of something. Nobody knows what it is, but it's killing me. I don't want to die. That's about it. Thanks."
    "Sit, Steve," said Heinrich.
    Trubate tugged me to the ground.
    "Seen worse," he whispered.
    "There you have it," said Heinrich. "Provisionally Steve. A provisional man afraid to confront the truth. Pretty damn pathetic, ask me."
    "Hey!" I said.
    "Hey, what?"
    "Where do you get off with this shit?"
    "The question is," said