You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem Page B

“Maybe we should all go. We can leave this stuff up here for now.”
    Falmouth nodded disconsolately. The sacks of headphones and tape players seemed irrelevant now, the very medium of his great project demoted to “stuff.”
    “Do you want something to drink, Falmouth?” said Harvey.
    “I’d like some water, please.”
    Lucinda led the other two downstairs. Denise and Bedwin hovered at the base of the stair. Jules Harvey led Falmouth into the kitchen and Denise told Bedwin, speaking as if to a child, “Go with them. I’m sure Jules can help you find something.” Bedwin drifted in after Harvey and Falmouth, leaving Denise and Lucinda alone.
    “There’s an aura of doom around here,” said Lucinda.
    “I guess we all get to keep our day jobs,” said Denise.
    “By my count you’re the only one who has one.”
    “Don’t you work for Falmouth?”
    “I don’t see a big future for myself in complaints.”
    “We can all move into my apartment,” said Denise. “We’ll be one of those bands that’s also a utopian collective, an experimental group marriage, and then we can all kill one another.”
    “Don’t forget a certain, ahem, bathtub-dweller.”
    “There’s room for everyone.”
    “What’s Bedwin looking for, anyway?”
    “He wants a stool for onstage. He said playing standing up makes him feel naked.”
    Falmouth came glaring from the kitchen, startling them. “Don’t be so blatant with your mutinies,” he said ferociously.
    “What do you mean?”
    “That you imagine I’ve fallen so low I’d accept the charity of living in the squalor of your band is disgusting enough. What I really can’t fathom is how you awarded me the nickname ‘bathtub-dweller.’”
    The interns rematerialized, stopping Falmouth in his tracks. They stood like Shakespearian courtiers, waiting to deliver their report. Jules Harvey, apparently attuned to the young women by some deep wavelength, emerged from the kitchen and bowed at them to begin, ducking his baseball cap with Buddhist complacency.
    “We failed,” announced one of the interns. The other nodded, consenting that they spoke with one voice.
    “Did you fire the gun?” asked Harvey.
    “Yes. We fired the gun and opened a dialogue with what seemed like a reasonable faction.”
    “I’m surprised they don’t yet have elected representatives,” said Falmouth.
    “It also helps that Mr. Oo had the fire extinguisher,” the intern explained, ignoring Falmouth. “I think that got their attention more than the pistol.”
    “Fire extinguisher?”
    “A contingent of sound poets had lit a bonfire between two parked cars. But Mr. Oo put it out.”
    “Go on.”
    “At a certain point negotiations broke down. They figured out there isn’t anything to drink up here.”
    “That’s not necessarily the case,” said Harvey. “I always have a few bottles in reserve.”
    “You have to listen,” insisted the intern. “They don’t need us anymore. They intercepted your caterers. Someone leaked a rumor that the banquet wasn’t going to be made available to the dancers. That isn’t actually true, is it?”
    Jules Harvey looked at Falmouth, who shrugged. Lucinda was impressed at Harvey’s effect on the students. She’d never heard them speak so many words while in Falmouth’s dominion.
    “They’re having a sort of tailgate party now,” said the intern. “I think it’s even bigger than before. A couple of the servers are friends of ours from school, as it happens. They’re walking around with trays of chicken satay and tuna belly on rice crackers.”
    Jules Harvey scratched his chin and adjusted his spectacles, summoning his deepest resources. The rest of them stood twitching slightly, deferring to his turtle authority.
    “Go back downstairs, but don’t use the gun this time. What we want is more along the lines of a whispering campaign. Tell a select few that the band is about to start. Propose that they might want to get a good spot near the stage. You