Read an Excerpt

A Little More Human

A Novel

Graywolf Press

He came to on the back of a horse. Weeping into his chest. The dreams he'd had, the man he was. Where was the hurt today. The throb in his balls was disco. The throb in his head was science. He'd had too much to drink, and he felt like hell. Believed in hell. And there in the sky: a bird, a plane, or just the drone of his fantasy life taking flight.

It was nine a.m. in a park on Staten Island. The grass was splattered with light — first sun in days. He was wearing a Dodger-blue spandex bodysuit with built-in utility belt and a nylon cape hitched to his shoulders and mantled down his back. There was mud crawled up his legs and algae nooked in his gauntlets, as if he'd humped a swamp.

He popped the goggles off his face. Tears that had welled in the troughs slipped down his cheeks. Apparently, he'd been crying. He yanked at the fabric gathered around his groin. Something not right down there. A little sore. Also, the thigh of his suit was ripped, and there was blood dried along the seam and spotted down his leg.

He'd gone out last night and had arrived in the park by some means, possibly foot. But he couldn't say for sure. Actually, he couldn't say at all. On the bright side, he had to be here, anyway, in a glade where a banner flapped in the wind: Meet Brainstorm! He smiled a little. Not everyone had a weekend job as good as his. He spurred the horse toward a crowd waiting for him. Brainstorm was the season's box office hit. And his persona had been in such demand, the stores weren't all that rigorous about who they hired to play him. Hence Phil, who'd been doing this work for six months, though work made it sound like an obligation when it was more like a chance to be who he was in plain sight. Not some superhero but a guy who could do things other guys could not.

Kids in the glade, waiting. One brandished a lollipop the size of his face, another pitched his lips apart with pretzel sticks, while a third licked the powdered cheese off his snack food and flicked what was left at a bush.

Phil scanned their faces and took aim. He squeezed the canteen fastened to his hip, saw a boy in the crosshairs, and wham — nailed him in the chest.

"He got me!" the kid screamed, happy, happy, and clutched his breast and licked his palm because this brine was flavored sour grape.

One woman retrieved her Brainstorm authentication card from a plastic sleeve, as if to ensure its value years ahead of time. Another with a tripod shoved her daughter at Phil and said, "Smile! Oh, come on, baby, just smile."

The daughter looked about twelve. Braces and a palate spreader, because no way was that mouth accommodating her teeth-to-be. Phil shook his head in sympathy. He knew jaw nuts firsthand from when he was a kid, had overheard the dentist tell his own dad that he'd have to crank the winch, and had learned then that the people you loved most could betray you the worst.

He looked at this metal-faced girl and said, "Your thoughts are mine."

"Thweet," she said, and angled her forehead at him as if this made a difference.

He pressed his fingers to his temples. Closed his eyes and began his work of telepathy. It was always the same: He emptied his mind of its clutter, then ushered in what looked like a slate board, smooth and blank and ready for whatever glories wanted to alight there today. Words. Phrases. Sometimes whole paragraphs telling him what was what. The process always more beautiful than the result.

He opened his eyes and frowned. Sad. This girl — she wanted new parents for her birthday because her dad had skipped out, and now her mom slept nights in her bed just to have someone close. Phil said, "I'd better not say your thoughts out loud, little lady." She blushed and opened her mouth wide, saying thanks, and returned to her mom, who gave Phil a defeated look that said: You try raising a kid on your own.

Phil turned away. His skin felt like dried soap, and he seemed to know, even without the science, that more liquor would help. He'd gone out last night to forget his life, yes, but what he really wanted to forget was a life on the way. Any day now. Any minute. Nine months ago, his wife had bought a vial of sperm without telling him and had been counting down the days, which Phil had gotten so used to, he forgot to notice the number dwindling down to one, now none.

He checked his belt, but his phone was gone. He'd been away from home for hours and knew his wife would be thunderous with rage such that the relief of his return would still lose in magnitude to the diatribe she'd prepared for him.

Today's crowd was bigger than usual. Kids, teens. A German shepherd that wouldn't heel. A few grandparents pressed into weekend service. Sailor caps in the mix, Fleet Week. Phil looked to see if Ben was among them. He was his counterpart for these weekend shows, which was great because they also worked together at the SCET. Licensed nursing assistants: guys who had to put up with the most shit. They had a rapport.

They'd even been out together last night, but Phil had lost track of Ben somewhere between shots of Wild Turkey and "Wild Buck," a country anthem suitable for karaoke insofar as it had only one lyric: I. Am. A. Wild. Buck. No wonder Phil's balls hurt; singing that tune, you had to thrust a decent amount for showmanship and verisimilitude. Plus, he had varicoceles no one could fix and, this morning, a hide for cushion because Brainstorm road bareback. If Ben didn't get here soon, Phil would have to cancel the show. Hard to be a hero with no one to fight.

Also, he had about an hour before he had to return the horse. Phil had gotten this gig in the park only because he'd said he could supply his own horse, but this was a lie. Lulu belonged to the SCET, which was fancy, state-of-the art, and had an equestrian facility, where patients could plate a carrot for Lulu and pray something of her gratitude might contrive pleasure in the half brains they had left.

"Sign here and here," a woman said. She held out a card that fit in her palm. And then three more collector cards for the other Storms — Hail, Fire, Snow — and asked Phil to sign them all. Her son was paraplegic; he wanted his cards. She held out her phone like a mic. Said, "I'm making a podcast for my boy. So tell me, what's it like being able to read minds?"

"It's a responsibility," he said. "With great power, and all that."

"Any idea what I'm thinking now?"

He nodded. "Your son's going to be fine," he said, and put a hand on her shoulder. "The SCET does amazing work."

She put her phone in her bag. "I knew I recognized you from that place," she said. "You shouldn't be listening in on other people's business."

Phil's mouth opened slightly, but she walked away. "Next!"

The crowd thickened up, all eyes his way, so he did not sense one gaze in particular docked on him or the thrill of its landing because the guy had been waiting forever, and when the time was right: "You shitfuck," the guy said, and shoved past the sailor kids, who parted like the sea because the guy was military or ex.

"Can I help you?" Phil said, though he knew what this was about. One look at this ruin in camo shirt and cap, and he knew. The company that manufactured the Storms had realized its mistake re: Desert Storm and ditched the toy the way some buildings deny floor thirteen. But try telling that to the guys back from Iraq who'd left their limbs and, sadder still, their brains behind. Half the guys at the SCET were those guys, and none of them was buying Desert Storms for Christmas.

"Ever hear of service, shit stick?" The guy lunged at Phil, who slipped off Lulu in a hurry.

"Dude," Phil said, and spun around. But the vet was gone. What the hell. The guy had torn the arm of his suit, exposing more dried blood, though when Phil checked himself, there was only a scratch.

"Not to worry," Phil said, and held up his hands. But the show was a bust, the crowd dispersed, all but one kid, who hung on his mom's sleeve and said, "What's a shit stick?" while his mom pulled him away, saying, "It's a name for little boys who don't do what they're told." The kid glanced over his shoulder at Brainstorm with a face that said: Save me.

Phil looked away and sat in the grass. He'd still get paid for the hours, whether he saved anyone or not. On his docket: Find his phone, call Ben. Trade one costume for another and hit the SCET, where unprecedented advances in medical care were routine. The hospital specialized in the treatment of brain injuries, but it was also pioneering enhancement technologies — robotic arms, eyes, ears — that had seemed utterly fantastical just a few years ago. Even so, it was a difficult place to be. Most of the patients were in bad shape. Not everyone could be helped, which meant that all day, every day, Phil trucked in horrors that should have downgraded his own problems but seemed only to stretch the rack of pain onto which so many lives were flung.

Flung. As if he were not, in some way, responsible for being in this position. A lot of other people were responsible, but he was still big enough to recognize the ways in which he could have prevented being here, on this morning, in this mood, in this shape. He could read minds, for God's sake. Only reason he hadn't known his wife's mind nine months ago was because he had not tried. Why try? She was his wife; they trusted each other. He would no sooner have gone snooping through her email. He'd thought that was one of the cornerstones of marriage. Stupid Phil.

So now he tried to read every mind he could. And sometimes, from trying so hard, he got headaches. He took pills and told his doctor he had migraines. It was not as if he could just come out with it. His parents were neuroscientists. He'd spent his entire childhood hiding this skill from them. If he'd ever told them, they would have laughed themselves to death. His mom was already dead, so it was too late for that. As for his father, what did it matter.

There was blood spackled to his chest, but he felt no pain, though perhaps this was okay, because how many sensations could a body sustain at once. It was possible he'd been mugged, but he didn't think so. Too bad. Because if he'd been mugged and maybe broken a rib, he'd have to be hospitalized, and this was good insofar as one thing the hospital could justify was his not being home. He tried again to remember what he'd done last night and then thought maybe if he was amnesiac on the subject of recent history, he could be amnesiac on the rest. Who is my wife? I don't know. Where is my house? I don't know. What is my purpose in life? I don't know! And with this he laughed, which wasn't laughing for long.

Phil was not a drinker. He got drunk maybe once a year, and he had never blacked out. But this drunk was different. He felt as if someone had scraped his guts with a trowel.

He looked at his suit. He must have put it on at some point and then gotten Lulu, which meant he must have been in his car, which meant good thing he hadn't mowed anyone down. The suit came with footies but no piss hatch. Not the most wearer-friendly suit, but then, the logic of the suit was not to accommodate a biological man with his bio needs, but Brainstorm, who probably recycled his urine in vivo, though Phil had not read that anywhere yet.

A rule of thumb: the worst that can happen probably will. And so: just when last night's bender was about to seep down his tights if he didn't get to the Porta Potti, here came holy nine months of trouble in the guise of his wife. She huffed across the grass. She killed it with her bulk. She said, "Phil Snyder, Jr., my water broke," which so nearly synced their conditions that they were more in sync than they'd been in years, certainly months, ever since she went and got pregnant by vial number 13115.

Phil ran past her to a tree, where he slashed his suit in the right place and relieved himself.

Lisa didn't say a word, just flagged a cab joyriding through the park.

In the backseat, after getting her settled, and himself settled next to her, not too close, but close enough, Phil said, "Breathe. One, two, three."

"Oh, do not pretend like you know how to do this."

"Breathe, Lisa. It's just common sense."

Phil caught the driver's eye in the rearview, the eye attached to a head that was nodding yes, encouraging yes.

"Couldn't you have called?" he said. "Any reason you had to walk all the way to the park? What if the baby had come right then?"

"You would have caught it," she said. "Because of all the classes you took. Are you bleeding? Where were you last night? I say I feel funny, and you run out the door? I did call."

And then he remembered his lost phone. Wallet and keys. "Some vet came at me during the show. Cut my arm."

"Which bled all over your chest?"

"I can't believe I'm going to the hospital like this," he said. "Don't suppose we have time to go home?"

Lisa shook her head. Her bangs were wet with sweat and stuck to her skin. She used to be a natural blonde, but the pregnancy had done something strange to her roots.

"I'm going to my happy place," she said, and began to hum and rock, and when the thing grown tough in her belly drafted all her nerves into an army of pain that proclaimed itself in the spread of creation, she bargained away her joy, her future, her health, just to make it stop.

"You still have a happy place?" he said. Because the instant Phil had found out what she'd done, he had obliterated all his happy memories of them as a couple and assumed that in the spirit of parity or mutually assured destruction she had, too.

"Toy Polloi," she said, huffing. "Ferris wheel."

This was a low blow. The Ferris wheel at the toy store had been where he had proposed, though it was not as if she'd said yes. Not right away. They'd had to talk about it. What did it mean? What was marriage, anyway? He'd said maybe it was a commitment to try to like each other for as long as possible. She thought she could handle that. They were agreed on the big things — yes to kids, no to God — and they did love each other, albeit with a degree of practicality that twinged like buyer's remorse the second that minivan was yours.

"You call Doc yet?" he said, referring to his father.

"Here we go again," she said, booming. "I sure did! I've got his number on speed dial!"

"Sarcasm," he said. "So super funny."

"No, I didn't call him. Your father is not coming. We've been through this a million times. You are my husband. You are this baby's dad. You are the one — oh, Christ" — and she smacked the partition between the front and backseats — "can't you take a different road or something?"

More nodding from the rearview.

Phil poked around her bag for her phone but couldn't find it. Never mind. He didn't want to call his father, anyway. They'd hardly spoken in six months. His father, who had financed Lisa's procedures and donor search and not said a word. "I thought you knew" was all he'd offered when the truth came out. But Phil hadn't known. Not that his sperm was dead or that Lisa had looked elsewhere, not that the baby wasn't his or that she'd asked Doc for help.

Would he have agreed to adopt had he known? Maybe. Agreed to let some other guy father his child? Doubtful. This had been Lisa's rationale, and since the desire to be pregnant demolished whatever qualms she had about lying to her husband, and since the lying came with astonishing ease — already, I will do anything for my child — Lisa felt as if motherhood had arrogated the person she'd been, which was the natural way and evidence that she'd done the right thing. Plus, the donor's profile had said he was a science major, which mitigated the lie because Phil was into science and both had blue eyes.

He was hoping for a girl, though if Lisa knew the sex, she wouldn't say. A girl would put an end to the convoluted patrimony Doc had set in motion. A girl you could love without reference to your manhood as legacy. If you felt, already, that you'd fallen afield of the tree — and since Doc had been one of the most renowned neuroscientists in the country and since Phil worked at the Sarah Snyder Center for Enhancement Technology, which bore the family name, but was mostly seen around town in tights and cape, it was fair to say he'd fallen far — then a son was at best a chance to get back in the shade, while a girl was like planting a new tree. Of course, both options were premised on the child being your own.

"Okay, okay," Lisa said. "I think they stopped. Wow."

"Are they supposed to stop?"

---

Excerpted from A Little More Human by Fiona Maazel. Copyright © 2017 Fiona Maazel. Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---