Free Home Land: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte

one who took her to that holistic abortionist and then tried to ball me?”
    “Ball?”

    “We’re saying ball again.”
    “Ditched,” I said.
    “Good. I’ll tell her you called. Oh, fuck.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Guillermo’s on the patio with matches and gasoline. I’ve got to go.”
    Quince let the receiver drop, bang down on something like a cabinet. I heard grunts, hard breathing, Quince shouting, “Guillermo, Guillermo!”
    Now a fainter voice carried over the receiver.
    “Lenny, look! Look at me, Lenny! I’m going to be a star. I’m about to blow up!”
    Dogs wailed into the telephone. Hundreds, it sounded. I’d forgotten about the dogs.
    GARY PICKED ME UP that night.
    “I’ve got a gift for you,” he said.
    We drove down Hoyt, turned off Mavis near the county line, parked outside a house on a cul de sac called Drury Court. The place sat back behind some birch trees, a modified ranch. We sneaked up to a shrub-mobbed window.
    “Consider this woe compensation,” said Gary.
    “I’m not woeful.”
    “Just fucking look.”
    It was a big room with a shag carpet, antique lamps, a cabinet TV from days when entertainment lurked in the guise of furniture. Fontana was on his hands and knees, yoked to a vacuum cleaner, naked beneath his harness. We could hear the suck and whine of the machine. A whip tip of knotted rawhide kissed his strap-reddened back. Fontana plowed out of view and now came the bare lovely legs of the living-room tiller. I jutted my head past the hedges for a better look.

    Jazz Loretta!
    The years had been kind to her. Slavish, even. Black eyes still beamy. Her body a pale and beautiful root.
    Her sorry domination of the educator Fontana, her slack way with the bullwhip, the giddy-ups, it was not good theater. Probably this pair would have been laughed out of any decent dungeon in the Northeast. But their joy looked true. Truer than mine, the peeper’s. I pulled back from the window. The Hoover howled, revved.

Tuna Melt Deluxe
    FUCK ME, Ostrokitties.
    The next batch of FakeFacts is due to Penny Bettis in a week. Landlord Pete will be knocking on the door soon, too. Whither all my bank, Catamounts? Rent, utilities, a fifth of Old Overholt, a few tacos, boom! (Message to the Old Overholt folks: How about a case of your fine rye for this excellent product placement in Catamount Notes? )
    But I’m not bitter. It’s my bed and I’m going to make it. If I’ve learned anything it’s that you must bide your time until your time comes, knowing full well, of course, your time may never come. That’s the bitch about biding it.
    These FakeFacts are killing me, though. When I agreed to this gig I figured the possibilities for cola mythography were endless. Maybe they are, maybe it’s me who’s reached the frontiers of invention. I’m no genius, after all, just sorry-ass Teabag. But still, ever
since I started writing these updates I’ve felt this godly hum in the gut. It’s all I’ve got.
    Maybe it beats what Stacy Ryson has, which is two hundred-odd pounds of pud-headed malevolence to call Honeycakes, or such appeared to be the case the last time I saw her at the River Mall. I’d hopped the bus out there to perv on rich wives from Tobias Hills, drop in on Roni’s mother at Slice of Life, cop some snatches of what contemporary amnesiacs call punk rock on those consoles at the record outlet.
    Also, I’d found myself in the market for a battery-operated pencil sharpener. There’s a top-notch Manila Mo’s at the mall. This might seem funny because Manila Mo’s is a chain, but good management makes all the difference. Those dreadlocked anarchists who follow the G-8 around like it’s a legendary acid band are right about how we’ve all crawled up to die in the anus of the oligarchy, but don’t listen to them when they carp about corporate homogeneity. Go get some Taco King in Nearmont, then get some at the mall, you’ll see what I mean. There’s a jalapeño fetishist in