"How is she?" I said.
He looked away for a while, as though wondering if he should speak.
"She'll live," he said.
"Why don't you take your mask off? I know you, don't I? Where do I know you from?"
"I need to tell you," he said. "I've been asked to dig you a hole."
"Will I be dead when they put me in it?"
"That's an interesting question."
"Will you answer it?"
"I wish I would," said the Digger.
Desmond rolled in some covered dishes on a cart.
"Sure it's safe?" I said. "I'm a psycho now."
"I'll take my chances. Anyway, they're watching us. The whole world is watching us. This is your last meal."
"Don't I get to choose?"
My last bacon cheeseburger was a bit too bacony.
"How is it?" said Desmond.
"Delicious."
"We polled the Realms. Baked Alaska got nipped at the wire. Can I have a bite?"
I tore some burger off for Desmond.
"Damn," he said. "This is the shit. All that clean Asian food around here makes me sick. You know, my father was a flavor engineer."
"I didn't know that."
"God, I remember all the crazy guys that worked at his lab. Did stuff just for a goof. One guy, he made this steak sauce. He called it Holocaust-flavored. He bottled the shit and he-"
"I think I'd like to be alone now."
"I understand. But do you mind if I ask you one question?"
"One question," I said.
"How did you go on living knowing you were going to die?"
"Was I living?" I said.
"Wow," said Desmond. "Don't talk. Don't say another thing. Those should be your last words. Mythic, man. I knew you had style."
"Fuck you," I said.
"See, you ruined it. You always ruin it, don't you?"
"We said one question," I said.
Desmond stood and raised his hand towards the wall thatch. A woman in a mink brassiere walked into the room. Fair Dinkum.
"This is Tina," said Desmond, shut the door behind him.
Tina took a seat near my bed.
"I like your tattoo," I said. "Is that a water bottle?"
"Look," she said. "I'm not attracted to you in any way, but I'm supposed to offer you some kind of final sexual favor in the way of sex and stuff. Nobody else wanted to, so, of course, I'm like, I volunteer. I'm the little trooper, aren't I? Mom? Mom? Can you hear me, Mom? She's not dead, but it's like she's hovering all the time anyway. She's like, Tina, if everybody was like I'm not jumping off the bridge, and so on. Oh, well. So, what do you think? A little hoobie doobie? Some jobby wobby?"
"Jobby wobby," I said.
"Did I say jobby wobby? I didn't mean jobby wobby. I could shit on your cock, though."
She plucked at her lip stud.
They wheeled me out to the desert in my bed. They wheeled me out across the scrub, took me up to a little hillock of hard earth. They maybe meant to murder me with sunlight. Baked Steve. Devil's Steve Cake. Old Gold and the Rad Balm girl rigged lights and video gear. Dietz squatted by my gurney, rubbed my skull.
"I'll see you on the other side, bro," he said. "Or if there's no other side, then, well, I guess I'm seeing you right now."
Trubate was sweat-resplendent in his robe. He paced about his minions, muttered something about turning water into vitamin water, hummed. It was the aardvark song. I must have hummed it in my sleep. Maybe the nation was humming it by now.
"Fiona," I said.
The Digger was nearly done with the hole. The task had maybe taken a toll on him. He fell to his knees in the dirt, let some air in under his mask. I saw an odd lump of skin there.
"We're good to go," said the Rad Balm girl.
"Fucking finally," said Bobby. "Where's Warren? Don't we get another doggie speech?"
"Warren's not coming," said the Rad Balm girl. "He says his presence would send the wrong message to his readers."
"Pussy," said Trubate. "Pussy readers."
The Rad Balm girl held me down, saw me notice the bandage on her throat, dug her thumbnail into my ear. Old Gold unbuckled my bed straps, bound me up with rope. He ripped my gown away, picked up a tray of cold grease. I could make out shreds of last night's chuck, my mythic bacon cheese. Old Gold scooped up handfuls of the stuff, smeared me down like a channel swimmer. Sunlight was too easy. They meant to bait the beasts out of the desert night, the ants and wolves and wolverines, the carrion-loving birds, all of God's meat-horny Steve-craving things.
Renee stood off and watched, crutch tips sinking in sand.
"They could have voted for something much crueler," Trubate kept saying. "You should be thankful. Grateful. Thankful."
The Philosopher stood over me with his new marvelous mouth.
"I want you to know that in all my years of science I've never come across a subject as worthy of the name as you. I'll tell them what you did here this day. At cocktail parties. At informal seminars. Do you have anything to say before the ball gag goes in?"
"Excuse me?"
"Eighty-three percent of respondents weighed in for the gag option. Seventy-four percent of those people, incidentally, also regularly purchase home decor products online. Don't know what it means, really, but the people of the Realms have spoken. Do you have anything to say to the world?"
"I'm thirsty."
"That's it?"
"The Realms is not the Realms!" I said.
"Anything else?"
"It's all hype! You're being duped! The goose has no clothes! The president is a moon rock! Eden is a fuck club!"
"Take your time."
"The server is not secure!"
"Gag him!"
The Rad Balm girl rammed the ball in my mouth, cinched it tight. Old Gold tipped me into the hole. I kept squinching my eyes, waiting for dirt to splash down, but then I remembered the cameras, the burger fat. The Digger stood staring from the lip of the hole. It would have made for a menacing shot. Maybe it did. My ball gag probably had a camera, too. The Digger leaned down and tugged his ski mask off his head. He had a nylon stocking on beneath it.
How fucked is the Subject Steve?
Hard to say. One could argue, for instance, that fuckedness is a vague concept, indefinable, and thus a meaningless point of departure for any sort of cogent analysis. Yet by the same token, one could make room for the advent of a counterargument, whereby fuckedness is posited as something else entirely. Feel free tovoice your opinion.
I shivered in my pit, stared up at the stars. There were forms now finally in these decals of the void, I could see it, a cosmos of my own, a god grid tailored to this niche of one. Up in the bitter firmament Cudahy heaved his shot and Fiona picked her pock and a box of Hinks Civic stainless nibs spilled out in milky light. Here was Renee, frozen in her sneeze of sorrow, and Captain Thornfield's captainless hat. There was Heinrich preaching from his porch, Bobby in his blazing robe, Estelle in lewd galactic concourse with her only spawn, big jiz splooging across the vaults of heaven. There was Donald, his stars stifled somehow, and the Kincaids, Big Fran and Little Fran, indistinguishable save for the far stars that looped to make the apron string bow. Here was William, young William, with his straw of happiness, his art rock toupee. Here was Maryse asquat a chamber pot filled with candied yams, a viscid bile coursing down her chin. There was my mother, the navigator, flying through the star shatter of some celestial head-on, a Ziploc bag of Cheez-Its in her fist. I saw them all up there, the Philosopher and the Mechanic, two-faced, one-hooded, a fire-sale Janus, Greta and Clarice double-dipping Jesus, Mr. Ferguson, Wendell Tarr, Dr. Cornwallis, the Rad Balm girl. There were even bears up there. I saw fucking bears up there. But where was Steve? I searched the suns of night for a constellated me.