Certain American States_Stories Page 16
As I lifted the phone to my ear the drone ceased, and I spoke that sad question—Hello?
Good afternoon, sir, and how are you feeling today?
I stood there with my mouth open.
Is there anything else you need? Anything at all?
I gathered myself to answer—In fact, yes—I believe, perhaps, there is something wrong with the elevator.
And what, sir, might be wrong with the elevator?
Well, in fact, it seems to be stuck on this floor, won’t allow me down to the lobby.
I don’t understand, sir—
I got into the elevator here on the twenty-ninth floor intending to go down to the lobby so I might reach the street, and—
Technically—the voice interrupted—an elevator’s job, by its very definition, is to elevate, and here at the Grand Claremont Hotel, our elevators do what they are defined to do.
Oh, I said, unable to protest such an allegiance to words, should I take the stairs down instead?
Sir, I must admit I am confused by your question. Is there anything else that you need?
That I need?
Yes—is there something unavailable to you on the twenty-ninth floor that you are trying to procure?
Well, I just thought I would go out for—
Out?
Out of the building, yes, into the street so that I could—
Sir, let’s not be so hasty. There’s no reason to take such drastic actions. We can have anything sent up that you might need or desire.
Well.
Is there anything else that you need or desire, sir?
I may have forgotten what I needed, or perhaps forgotten what a need is, what a desire is, what the difference between these things might be, but eventually I came up with the closest thing I could manage to specifically want or need or desire—a removal.
There’s a noise in this room.
A noise, sir?
Yes, a kind of … humming. It’s hard to describe. It started softly then became louder and louder, a kind of throbbing, even, though it has stopped now, though I’m sure it’s not gone, not really gone. It’s really more of a feeling, actually, than a noise—
But the line, I realized, had gone dead. I braced for the drone to reemerge, but all that came was a knock at the door—one knock—barely a knock at all. The man in the suit was there, all intent and smiling.
You’ve reported a noise, sir.
How did you get up here?
Sir?
Did you take the elevator?
Sir, I am here to attend to this issue of a noise. Would you mind if I stepped into the suite to inspect this issue further?
I stepped aside to let him in.
And will you take the elevator back down, to the lobby perhaps?
But he did not seem to hear my question or perhaps heard and ignored me. I felt distracted by his suit and realized that I too was wearing a suit like his. The maid came in, hurried past me to join the man in the suit in the sitting room, who was squinting up at each corner, staring into one then another, another. As the maid passed me two strands of hair wafted from her head. One landed on a shaggy white rug in front of me and the other on my left shoe.
For a few minutes, I felt unable to move. I stared down at those two strands of hair, black and thick, and though I realize that technically hair is dead, they each seemed to be breathing, fluttering, moving toward me, telling me something.
The man in the suit and the maid were looking around the room, looking, it seemed, for the drone or whatever had caused the drone. Some time passed in which they looked for the drone and I stared down at these hair strands. At times I would look up to see them examining something, tapping at the windows, peeking under chair cushions, under rugs.
I imagined Company Headquarters going on without me, how my old cot was sleeping its object sleep without me. There were so many people in the world for whom The Company had no use. I shut my eyes. I knew it was not the end.
What I can say now is that the view from the Grand Claremont Penthouse is magnificent—I have always been humbled by the ocean. It has always worked easily on me. True, I cannot actually see the ocean from my window in the Grand Claremont Penthouse, for this is a landlocked country and the ocean is perhaps a thousand miles from us, but I can feel it in the air, somehow. I remember it still.
I stand at the window all day, watching my breath gather wet on the glass, fade, gather, and fade again. I do not bother moving the chair anymore. I am only slightly aware of putting food or water into myself. Sometimes I think of room 807, or 2032 or 2901—but more often I find myself fixed on the memory of those two strands of hair and what they told me about living and dying, but since there is only one thing to know about living and dying, I won’t bother with it now.
Acknowledgments
Jin Auh, Jessica Friedman, and the Wylie Agency; Emily Bell, Eric Chinski, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Anne Meadows and Granta Books; the Whiting Foundation; the English Department at the University of Montana; Harper’s Magazine, Granta, Oxford American, The Atlas Review, BOMB, Tin House, The Sewanee Review, Electric Literature, Das Mag, and the Virginia Quarterly Review; Goose; and Jesse Ball, dearly, who bore and still bears many burdens.
Also by Catherine Lacey
Nobody Is Ever Missing
The Answers
A Note About the Author
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, winner of a 2016 Whiting Award and a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and The Answers. In 2017, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and fiction have been published widely and translated into Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, and German. She was born in Mississippi and is based in Chicago. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Violations
ur heck box
Certain American States
Because You Have To
Please Take
The Healing Center
Learning
Touching People
The Four Immeasurables and Twenty New Immeasurables
Small Differences
Family Physics
The Grand Claremont Hotel
Acknowledgments
Also by Catherine Lacey
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Catherine Lacey
All rights reserved
First edition, 2018
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in which these stories originally appeared, in slightly different form: Oxford American (“ur heck box”); BOMB (“Certain American States”); Harper’s Magazine (“Violations” and “Because You Have To”); Electric Literature and The Atlas Review (“The Healing Center”); Granta (“Small Differences”); The Sewanee Review (“Family Physics”); and Tin House (“The Grand Claremont Hotel”).
Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Annie Baker for permission to use an excerpt from Circle Mirror Transformation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lacey, Catherine, 1985– author.
Title: Certain American states: stories / Catherine Lacey.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017039432 | ISBN 9780374265892 (cloth)
Classific
ation: LCC PS3612.A335 A6 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039432
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eISBN 9780374714352