God Jr.

  Advance Praise for God Jr.:

  “[A] genius … for dialogue … [Cooper’s] searing ironies and delicate nuances … are arresting.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Praise for Dennis Cooper:

  “Cooper’s work claims the bleakest regions of American affluence with the sureness of Faulkner staking out Yoknapatawpha County…. [Guide is] the most seductively frightening, best written novel of contemporary urban life that anyone has attempted in a long time.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Period is … heartbreaking. It’s about loneliness and desire and the ways in which they twist us in the great brutal nothing of the American soul.”

  —LA Weekly

  “Cooper’s beautifully stark prose belies an effort of construction in much the same way your favorite minimalist architect rules: it’s because he’s so sharp on classical structures that he’s able to intelligently rearrange as if by whim, or accident. Or compare him to Beckett, whose characters appear to go nowhere until you step back to examine the afterbirth of a new narrative form. Of course, Dennis Cooper does nothing by accident.”

  —i-D

  GOD JR.

  Also by Dennis Cooper:

  Closer

  Frisk

  Wrong

  Try

  The Dream Police

  Guide

  Period

  My Loose Thread

  The Sluts

  GOD JR.

  Dennis Cooper

  Copyright © 2005 by Dennis Cooper

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  The author is very grateful to Cody Reding, Ira Silverberg, Joel

  Westendorf, Amy Gerstler, Amy Hundley, Judy Hottensen,

  Morgan Entrekin, and my parents.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cooper, Dennis, 1953–

  God Jr. / Dennis Cooper.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4625-1

  1. Traffic accident victims—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Traffic accident victims—Fiction. 3. Teenage boys—Death—Fiction. 4. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 5. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 6. Sons—Death—Fiction. 7. Grief—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.O582G63 2005

  813′.54—dc22 2004065652

  Black Cat

  a paperback original imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  For Yury Smirnov

  Contents

  The Crowd Pleaser

  The Remedial Logician

  The Childish Scrawl

  GOD JR.

  The Crowd Pleaser

  I work for a company called the Little Evening Out. We make children’s clothing for special occasions. Our founder was a one-legged Vietnam vet. He passed away in ’93. Thanks to him, all of our employees are disabled. I sit in a wheelchair, but my upper body works. I can also think and talk. If I were sitting in a real chair, no one would guess I have a problem.

  It’s my day to work the showroom. Usually I’m stuck on the computer taking orders. If it weren’t for the Internet, we’d be dead. But sometimes people walk in the door.

  “How can I help you?”

  “My son needs something fancy for a wedding,” says a good-looking woman with a small blond boy. She points at the wall where we display the samples. “What is that, exactly?”

  “A bee. We do school plays.”

  “I see. And that?” she asks. She means the red molecule. That’s what we call it. Sometimes people pay us to turn their kids’ drawings into clothes. That kid was two.

  I explain what it’s called and why it came into existence.

  “You want to wear that instead?” she asks the boy, and smiles at me. “Well, you can’t. Maybe next time.”

  “No,” he says quietly.

  I never look at the kids. It’s too painful. Not even little kids like him.

  “Didn’t I see you in the paper?” she asks me after a thoughtful pause. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “You mean last Thursday’s Times.”

  “It was a fascinating story,” she says. “Very complex. We discussed it in my class. I teach ethics.”

  “What did your students think?”

  “They decided you’re a very cool father,” she says. “But they’re not sure you’re right.”

  “I’m quote-unquote obsessed.”

  “As you should be,” she says earnestly. “Whether you’re right on this particular issue or not.”

  She studies the display wall and decides she wants the little black tuxedo. Marianne, who’s learning-disabled and obese, does the fittings. So we’re done. I hand the woman my card.

  “I’d like to see what you’re building,” she says. Marianne is leading her and her reluctant son away. “Is it possible to drive by? The paper printed your address, so I’m assuming it is.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I’d like to bring my students,” she says. “Do you ever give tours?”

  “If you can give me some notice.”

  She waves my card at me. “I’ll call you?” she says.

  “Was she getting on your case?” Al asks. I guess he overheard us from the office. He lost his right leg in a boating accident. His son died young like mine, but in his case, it wasn’t his fault.

  “No, she wants to see the monument. She wants to bring her students.”

  “They’ll love it,” he says. “They’ll be all gung ho.”

  “It’s an ethics class. So maybe not.”

  “Kids love it,” he says. “My kids want to start a petition.”

  “How are they, by the way?”

  “My older girl just got accepted into UCLA,” he says. “Which reminds me. She says she met your Tommy once. She says she recognized his picture in the paper.”

  “Did she say how?”

  “No,” he says. “I should have asked. I’ll ask her.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “She likes extreme sports,” he says. “I think that might be it. She goes to those X-whatever shows. I think she’s even dating one of them.”

  “That’s probably it.”

  “They’re not bad boys,” he says uncertainly. “It’s just something new. Like soccer was.”

  “I used to think they were a bunch of lazy asses who were always stoned or drunk. I didn’t realize that if a boy that age was happy, he’d seem coarse.”

  Al’s eyes look sad now. He must think I mean Tommy. Maybe I do. “I’ll ask her,” he says gently.

  “Don’t worry. They’re harmless idiots. She’ll be fine.”

  “Sorry to mention it,” he says, and starts typing.

  We receive maybe ten online orders every day. People link to our site from disabled support sites. There’s always some imminent wedding or school play or funeral, and we’re a godsend to them. They don’t mind that the clothes won’t fit perfectly. They just need us to help them. They send us long, moving e-mails with their orders. I think most of them don’t even have children.

  “Excuse me?” asks the woman from before. She has wandered into the office. I guess the boy is still getting fitted.

  “Oh, hi. This
is Al.”

  “You’re a teacher,” Al says to her. “My wife’s a teacher.”

  “Small world,” she says, smiling. Then she looks at me. “What about tomorrow? I mean for the tour.”

  “I work until six.”

  “Of course,” she says, and cringes. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Take the morning off,” Al says.

  “I could do it in the morning.”

  “That’s perfect,” she says.

  “But I should warn you that I’m not so good with kids.”

  “That’s perfect,” she says again. “It’s a small class. Twelve students, if they all show up.”

  “Is nine o’clock okay?”

  She nods happily. “I’m excited,” she says, and grabs my hand. “This is a big, big help.”

  After they leave, the two Mexican guys who make the clothes get their instructions. They work in a small warehouse behind the office. We keep the windows closed because they always play their music. It’s cheerful to them, but those trumpets drive us crazy. Our radio is tuned to a local oldies station. Al, Marianne, and I are around the same age, meaning somewhere in our forties. The Mexicans are young illegal guys. Manuel was shot in the back when his family sneaked over the border. He’s in a wheelchair like me. His friend Jose claimed he was dying of cancer to get the job. One night his wife left us a phone message saying he lied about the cancer. She sounded drunk. Al and I wanted to fire him until Marianne started crying. So we never mentioned the call to Jose. But I like Marianne to worry we could fire him any minute.

  Al tries to grab the phone away from Marianne. She backs across the office dialing. She wants to hear the Eagles. He’s a country-music purist. I’m basically indifferent. We may look like poignant triplets, but our pasts have different soundtracks. Still, we share, or, in my case, shared children. Kids don’t care about their songs the way we care about the old ones. Music isn’t special anymore. It’s a given. It takes itself and every kid for granted, and we bear the collateral damage. The more recent the oldies, the less we mind and the more we’re in agreement.

  “Request that song we were talking about a few minutes ago.”

  “What’s it called?” Al asks me. “Quick.”

  “We couldn’t remember.”

  “Alice in Chains?” Al says.

  “That’s the band. We need the song.”

  “Stop, Marianne,” Al says. “We have a better idea.”

  “I’ll fire Jose.”

  “No, you won’t,” she says, smiling.

  I push the intercom button that sends my amplified voice into the warehouse. “Jose, to the office.”

  Marianne cups her hand around the mouthpiece. “‘Desperado’ by the Eagles?” she asks. Her voice could be easily mistaken for a child’s, so we always have her make our requests. It almost guarantees a play.

  Jose walks into the office. He’s a small, wiry guy with a boxer’s messy face and gigantic upper arms. He’s always rubbing his quote-unquote cancerous chest around us. It bothered me when I thought he was sick, and it’s intolerable now.

  I look at him. “You’re fired.”

  “Jim,” Al says sharply to me. He looks at Jose. “You’re not fired.”

  “We know you don’t have cancer.”

  “Yes,” he says sadly, and rubs his chest harder.

  “No, you don’t have cancer. Don’t have it. We know you don’t. Your wife told us you don’t.”

  “My wife?” he says. Then I see his lying eyes understand.

  “But you’re not fired,” Al says. “We forgive you.”

  Jose looks at Marianne. “It’s okay,” she says meekly. “It’s good you don’t have cancer.”

  He looks down at the floor. He stops rubbing his chest and makes a fist.

  I want Jose to cry. He cried at my son’s funeral. He cried even harder than I did. It made me feel better at the time. If I could hug him, I think he would cry. When he hugged me at the funeral, I started crying. I might have cried because I thought someone who was dying understood. But I can’t stand up and hug him without giving away one of my secrets.

  “It’s okay. Just stop rubbing your fucking chest.”

  “Jim,” Al says.

  I smile as warmly as I can. Jose looks up cautiously and sees my smile, then walks back into the warehouse. By now “Desperado” is playing. None of us has even noticed.

  “What was that about?” Al asks me. He’s typing again.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t make me think about Tommy.” I look at him, then Marianne. “For future reference.”

  We close at six but will leave earlier with the slightest excuse. It’s 5:05. Al wants to interrogate one of his daughters, so we’re done. Al and I carpool with Marianne, who drives painstakingly well. She dropped her son, Wayne, on his head when he was born. It damaged his future, so she’s always very careful with ours. Al’s house is a pint-sized Tudor. There’s a sailboat in his driveway covered with a tarp. It’s the one that took his leg off. His daughter won’t let him sell it. He’s told me several times he wishes someone would steal it. I’ve thought of hiring one of Tommy’s dodgy friends to help. I could sell the boat on eBay to help pay off the monument’s debts. But we’d have to steal the pink slip, which would mean breaking into Al’s house.

  Before the accident, I was a real estate agent. I covered part of the Hollywood Hills and did very well. Back then I bought the property just north of ours and had the house razed. I hoped to build expensive condos, but 9/11 ruined the market, and the land has come in handy. I put a fence along the street and took out all the trees and foliage. I thought the monument would fit. My first contractor assured me that it would. But we’ve had to lose most of our yard, and it needs a little piece of my neighbor’s. He’s a widower who never set foot in his yard until I offered to buy it. It’s a wasted half-acre of trees and mowed grass. He won’t be reasonable. That’s what started the ruckus with my neighbors. Before he complained, they used to tell me my son was another Frank Gehry.

  Twice every Monday through Friday, Marianne’s car inches by the spot where my Lexus hit a phone pole. I was pinned beneath some wreckage. Tommy flew through the windshield. Fifteen minutes later, we pass the public phone where he dialed 911. Some dispatcher took a call from an incoherent male. I’ve decided it was Tommy, even though we couldn’t ID his voice. Twenty minutes after that, we pass a bus bench where his body was discovered by some strangers. I’ve passed these places so many times that he has almost been erased. Soon his death will lack illustrations or even much of a story. If that was Tommy’s voice on the 911 tape, he couldn’t pronounce what he knew. I know I should have placed him in my car wreck, but I’ve never told a soul. I haven’t even told my wife. I never had to. With his head injury, you wouldn’t live that long. You couldn’t walk that far. Maybe a block, they said. So there was never any question. But I guess he was special. People seem to need tragic strangers in their lives. They’ll superimpose tragedy when there’s nothing to prevent them. Our company’s modest success is an example. Whoever people think killed my son has disappeared into oblivion. I just decided that oblivion was deciding not to walk, fuck, go to the bathroom by myself, or want to do those things again.

  Marianne parks her idling car in our driveway and helps me into my wheelchair. We’re squarely in the shadow of the monument-in-progress. It used to resemble a concise roller coaster that had partially collapsed. In the Times article, it was described as a giant piece of inedible candy. Yesterday one of the neighbors called it folk art run amok. When the massive, arched castle-style door is added tomorrow, it should refocus yet again.

  “It looks bigger,” Marianne says.

  “It’s slightly taller.”

  She smiles and waves at the workers. They’re screwing big puzzle pieces of red and yellow skin onto its crazy skeleton. They pause and glare back at her, probably because I’m late again with their paychecks.

  “They seem mean,” she says.

  “They’re jus
t mad because I’m dicking them around. I’m the one who’s mean.”

  “You were a little mean to Jose,” she says.

  “No, I was mean to you.”

  “You weren’t,” she says reassuringly.

  “Then what would you call it?”

  She smiles at me. But then she’s always smiling. According to this show I caught one time on TLC, people with low IQs fill in their blanks with an exaggerated warmth.

  “Okay, that’s a little mean,” she says.

  I can roll myself up the front walk, unlock the door, and push it open unassisted. My wife, Bette, hears my racket and walks into the entrance hall talking on her cell phone. She clicks it off and gives me her “something’s wrong” look. It always makes me think she’s figured me out. I can walk a little. That’s one of my secrets. I can walk across a room. It doesn’t even hurt. I discovered that last month. I’m constantly worried that I’ll jiggle a leg or wake up with an erection. I have to sleep on my stomach and monitor my body like a mime.

  “Let’s talk,” she says, glancing at her watch. “I’ll start. Dateline NBC is sending some people on Monday morning. Just to look.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “They called Fred,” she says ominously. “He told Jane, who told me.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “I called NBC and talked to some assistant to someone,” she says. “He said they were planning to call us today, but I fear their slant. So Jane and I are rallying the wives. That’s where I’m off to now.”

  “That’s definitely bad.”

  “You should pay the guys today,” she says. “Call Fred and make nice. Ask him not to go into the drugs thing. Ask him to show Tommy that much respect. Say the monument should be weighed on its merits. He’ll understand that. If you have to, mention his drinking.”