Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good by John Gould Read Free Book Online Page A

idea—he’d been agonizing about his maybe virus, his OUZZ or LIKK or DMDM, didn’t want to pass it on by getting all kissy. She put a gentle hand to his forehead, let out a sizzling sound. He said, “This never happens.” She smiled, and she turned …
    What Matt ought to be doing right now is he ought to be arriving at Zane’s door.
    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Banana.
    Banana who?
    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Banana.
    Banana who?
    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
…
    In the old days the boys could keep this going long enough to drive everybody berserk. Endurance doesn’t seem to be Matt’s strong suit tonight, however. His tipsy exhilaration, his celibate stint on the couch … With this stranger he’s suddenly, ecstatically a stranger to himself. Could this be the whole point of the thing? Another way in, another way out? A teensy suicide, a tiny little surrender?
    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Banana.
    Banana who?
    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Banana.
    Banana who?
    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Orange.
    Orange who?
    “Orange you glad …”
    “Oh yes.” She reaches around to rake his rump. What with the height mismatch he’ll have to … maybe if he just …
    The scent hits him hard, the scents: hers, his. He recognizes neither one, his fever-body is that foreign to him. New woman, new man.
    Number five. And, in at least a handful of ways he’s already thought of, a first.

SATURDAY
    Dear Zane,
    R EASON N OT TO B E G OOD #2
    Virtue is the denial of nature, of excess, of exuberance. Virtue wants us to be other than what we are. Virtue is cruel, and cruelty is a vice. Virtue is vice. So smarten up.
    Matt
    N o birth control, for instance, that was a first. With Kim last night—with Kristin last night?—Matt had no protection. She didn’t use anything either as far as he knows, no goops, no gadgets. Matt’s always been scrupulous on this point, an avid non-reproducer. Always? Well, there was that one brief interlude with Mariko, that one patch of happy madness that went nowhere. Other than that, though, he’s thwarted every attempt his body’s ever made to repeat itself, to give the slip to its own mortality. And now? He scores some babe in an elevator and badda-bing, he’s on his way to being somebody’s dad.
    This isn’t quite the first thought to strike Matt when he wakes up in the hotel. His first thought, as a shiv of light slices through the gap in the theatre-weight drapes (a baby squinting down the birth canal), is more along the lines of
#@*!?
A comicbook coming-to. He’s rewinding and fast-forwarding, striving to locate the scene he was watching just before he drifted off.
    Time to buy a clue. He sends a hand out to recce the bedside table. This produces a clinking sound, one mini-bottle against another, gnomish chimes. Matt’s fingers move on to explore the corduroy casing of the clock radio, which (quick peek here) reads 11:11 in red LED. Then they close, ahhhh, around the comforting fistful of plastic with its Braille of buttons.
    Remote control.
    Matt’s been waking up in the wrong room for a couple of months now. He’s taken to flipping on the tube first thing, there in his study, so’s not to have to contemplate where he is or why. The idea is to pre-empt all thought, to silence his mind—the way meditation might do, for instance, if he could ever get back the gumption for that sort of thing. Another little death, another puny suicide,
goodbye, cruel world.
Well, not
silence
his mind, maybe. Jam it though, drown it in disorder. Neutralize it with input, the way a hacker will when he bombards a server with a zillion gibberish-filled emails.
Gunnysacked north of last armpit station each night of pylons
…
    It was originally supposed to be a work thing, the home theatre in Matt’s study (its screen about the size, as Mariko observed, of the pick-your-own-lobster tank in a spiffy restaurant). Matt’s rationale for investing in the system was that he could run, in the