They try. They try as much as Ellory can stand it, as much as Ty can stand up. They try thrice in one night, like schoolchildren, before second sleep on Sunday mornings, on midweek sick day afternoons. They try in Ottawa, Naples, Barcelona, and Miami in the rain. They try between jump cuts of a sold-out retrospective, at the investment opportunity in the Smokies, the Breck ski-in, ski-out, on the heated floors of an Appalachian glamper, in the candlelit cabanas of a private Mexican beach. They try like master and slave, barebacked runaways, they try like returning champions. But when it’s her time of the month, Ellory still isn’t pregnant.

“I must inseminate you,” Ty says. “We have no choice.”

“Take me to Tokyo.”

“My God, babe. What are we running away from? What if we did some light traveling right around here?”

They climb into their Blubaru and drive the nature preserves across the western suburbs. They skate the snowy bogs, seek sexual cover in the savannah, brushing sore genitals against prairie grass. They drive a little bit more, trying to make a baby on road trips downstate, at hick villas that once carted slaves from Kentucky to work the salt mines near Equality, Illinois. They try through the driftless area of Wisconsin, an area without trees, only minutes from the side hustles of the Mississippi.

The cabin has a poor wi-fi signal. Ty sprawls out on the couch and skims the travel guide, where he learns Sconnie prostitutes are the meanest sex workers in America. The main industry in Wisconsin has been cheese—Wisconsin and Cheese, everybody knows that—but it had also been mining, until mining labor became cheaper out west.

“That’s a reminder,” Ellory comments, uncorking another bottle of wine, “that labor arbitrage is nothing new. Today we send office jobs to Haiti, whereas yesterday we sent mining jobs to America itself. As our gorgeous empire drifted west.”

“Over there, you mean, has always been right here. God, babe. America needs us. Let’s make a healthy white kid.”

They screw twice that night on the cabin couch.

In the moon-bright morning, Ty smokes Gorilla Cheese he has illegally transported over state lines and reads on about the native history that has been erased from these parts.

“But has it been erased,” Ellory asks, stirring bitters into her coffee, “if it’s right there in the guidebook?”

Ty spews Wisconsin history. He is in that bubbly headspace of an educated man educating himself, a man preternaturally briefed, a man in denial of the fact that facts never change the world. He is just like that crazed American idealist, Black Hawk, who led a war against the United States, a nation Black Hawk hated even more than the British. “In 1832, other Indigenous nations ostensibly promised Black Hawk their support in the fight against the U.S., but the Potawatomi, Sioux, and Winnebago betrayed Black Hawk and sided with the well-armed Americans. In August of that year, at the Battle of Bad Axe on the Mississippi, Black Hawk’s women, children, and old men—even though Black Hawk’s people waved the white flag of surrender—were slaughtered by the Americans and their Sioux cohorts. The German, Swiss and Irish settlers who arrived after Black Hawk’s defeat brought their cows with them and rebranded Wisconsin America’s dairy land. And Wisconsin keeps on embracing more and more pitiful sides of its natural wealth: in the last decade, the state has rebranded for fracking…”

“…enough,” Ellory says. “I’m going coo coo bananas.”

“That’s the idea, honey,” Ty says, wigwaming the guidebook on his chest. “We sit out here in the driftless area going nuts, getting really horny because the wi-fi isn’t reliable, and then we increase our nation’s bounty without the prophylactic of Ukrainian internet porn. Why don’t you check out the treasured library of hard sci-fi novels over there, near the non-working fireplace? Even though there are few trees in this area, you’ll find several field guides to North American trees. Henry Dodge, a miner who earned a reputation during the Black Hawk war, was ordained the Wisconsin territory’s first governor, established at Mineral Point during Independence Week, 1836. The territory, previously attached to Michigan, embraced the vast area of what are now the states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and portions of North and South Dakota. I mean, how many electoral votes would that be, if all that was just one state? Six?”

“What’s Mineral Point?” Ellory brightens. “An actual town?”

“Of about 2,500 people. It brags of Wisconsin’s oldest railroad depot. Many of its structures are made from limestone originally quarried from this region.”

“So no cheese castles.”

“There’s an historical site with one of the areas only surviving miner’s cottages.”

“If there were railroads,” Ellory says, “they’ll be liquor. I’m sick of this wine, I need something to drink.”

 

The short drive to Mineral Point takes six hours. Ty wonders if there are parking meters, and Ellory, furious, says there are no parking meters in rural towns. They choose the darkest dive bar, packed with men who aren’t looking at their phones but having conversations with each other about local items in the daily newspaper. A posted sign advertises a Brat Feed, and it takes our urban heroes a few moments to realize this “feed” is a feed for humans, not for brats—$4 gets you a brat, chips, and a Miller Lite, $2 only the brat.

“Let’s be social in here, Ty. If only we just talked to people, we would learn something about them. Americans don’t want this pain. Americans are dying to talk to each other.”

“Talking is the new anal sex.”

“We must communicate with people who differ from us.”

Ellory communicates a double bourbon to the bartender and orders her husband a Miller Lite without the brat, which is a buck-fifty more than a Miller Lite with one. She kisses Ty on the cheek, on the lips, signaling to this crowd of brat-fed-men that he belongs to her.

They post up near the back of the bar. A Phish head approaches them. This lumbering, dreaded male, likely much older than he appears, wears a t-shirt that replaces ‘Patagonia’ with ‘Gamehendge’ in the Patagonia logo design.

“Your fingernails are wild,” Ellory says, taking the head’s hands in hers. “Do you play guitar?”

“No,” the head says, resting his walking stick against the wood-paneled wall. “I live it.”

“The nails on your left are longer than your right. Do you think that means you’ll die first on the right?”

“Gamehendge,” Ty says. “Hell, yeah.”

The head sparks. “You seen one, man?”

“Word. You know, I think I have. But it’s not something I’d remember at this point. God, that always sounds so funny. I kind of stopped with Phish after those ’95 jams. Shows my age. Shows. That’s funny. I’ll spin the skunky psychonautic miasma of the ’97 Great Went ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ any day of the year I’ve got twenty-three minutes to spare. But I don’t know about Phish, you know? Of course, they’re talented musicians in a technical sense. But are they actually good?”

“They fucking smoke.”

“Is this really a moment in our nation’s history when we should be privileging Phish? What would Black Hawk think?”

“Dude, you were at the Black Hawk run? Critics, man. It’s almost as if they’re pissed off so many people are enjoying something they don’t.”

“Your fingernails are so wild,” Ellory says again. “I mean, the nails on your left are so much longer than your right.”

“The suburban white kid is a part of music, man. Sorry ‘bout that. If you don’t like it,  tough shit. You’re too late.”

“Do you have any coke?” Ellory asks the head. And now, oh boy, get out your fidget spinners, fire up your personal essays about gap years in Berlin, we can all taste cocaine in our postnasal drip, taste the lung bloodiness of an after-coke cigarette.

The head nods, and Ellory follows him into the bathroom. “It’ll be quick. Order me another, babe.”

Janitorially, Ty is worried. He suspects the head has weak blow, which will loosen his wife’s bowels. Then again, Ty hasn’t taken a shit since they got back from Barcelona, and he was even more stuffed up procreating on the Amtrak from Calgary to Duluth, so maybe he’ll snort a line, too. No matter what, they need more drinks. The bartender hands them over, two beers—Ty is kind enough to buy one for the head—and a double bourbon for his wife.

“Do you have a napkin?” Ty asks.

“What do you need a napkin for?” The bartender asks.

“For the bottles. They’re sweating.”

The man on the barstool at his right perks up. “What do you mean, the bottle is sweating?”

“You see? Here? The bottle’s wet.”

“Beer’s supposed to be wet,” the man to his left says.

“It was great talking to you guys.” Ty takes the drinks back to their spot and sets them down. The head left behind his walking stick. Ty shunts the stick back and forth in his hands. It feels good in his hands. He twirls the stick like a top hat dancer, poles it through his center of gravity like a spinning virgin. He dances, faces the wall, and sings: You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you. When he snaps around, the brat-fed-men are judging him with heteronormative disgust. He frowns, places the stick back against the wall, and licks the foam off his sweating beer.

When Ellory returns from the jon with the head, Ty hands them their drinks. “Cheers. I love your walking stick, by the way. What’s it made of?”

“Polished bamboo,” the head yawns.

Ellory peels the head’s napkin off the bottle and uses it to wipe her mouth. Then she takes a big sip of the bourbon.

“What was that on your mouth?” Ty asks.

“My spunk, dude,” the head says. “Have you heard the Alpine sets from summer tour? The boys are back.”

Ty pulls his wife away from the head. She nods her assent, but raises a finger of patience, so she can drink down the last of her bourbon. He pulls her again, harder. The barstools of brat-fed-men take notice of the domestic disorder. They inch themselves ready, if needed, to protect the dignity of a white woman who has just sucked off her coke dealer in the stalls.

“Everything’s fine,” Ty yells as they leave the bar. “There’s more that urinates us than divides us.”

Outside, he keeps pulling Ellory toward the car, until she pushes him off, gesturing that she can get in herself.

“You know I feel like fucking DeNiro pulling Sharon Stone with you sometimes.”

“I told you, the night we met, that I was never going to perform any visible or invisible female labor. That includes being hopelessly devoted to you.”

“I can’t take this anymore.”

“Don’t leave me,” Ellory cries.

“Shut up. You’re going to be the one who leaves me. I get that. And so do you.”

“I’m not leaving you. We’re making a baby. That’s so important.”

“Yeah, why are we doing that again?”

“For the purity of the race.”

“Fat chance. Your womb is so polluted, you probably can’t even have a white child you can’t be sure is also Jewish.”

“Where is the womb?” Ellory asks. “Nobody knows.”

Ty revs the Blubaru’s engine over the darkening hills and carefully follows the headlights back to the cabin gate.

“I took some for us, you know. Ugh, Ty, it was horrid. That loser used his long fingernail instead of a key. He put the coke on his nail and held his fingernail up to my nose.”

“And what did you do? Refuse?”

“Oh, Ty, I’m so tired of abusing myself. Why do drugs make me feel immortal?”

“You’re such a sad ho. I thought it was interesting. What he said. About the suburban white kid being a part of music. Of course, those kids always hated me.”

“I’m so sorry, babe.”

They sit on the open-air deck. The temperature has dropped, and Ellory finds an indigenous-patterned blanket behind the bath towels. They hatefully relax in two Adirondack chairs, covered by the same blanket, looking up at the Milky Way, so ravishing in these rural parts, as they snort the remaining cocaine.

“That must be Uranus,” Ellory says, pointing to the starlight. “The planets don’t twinkle.”

“You can’t see Uranus without a telescope,” Ty says. “It’s got to be Mars or something.”

“No, it’s Uranus, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It is, baby, it is Uranus.”

“Maybe you’re right, babe. Maybe it is Uranus. I want you to peg me. I want you to enter my ass.”

“The way Rebecca T. does to Nate S. in Season Nine of Jewish Drama?”

“I’m serious.”

Ty gets on all fours and Ellory stands behind him. The night is quiet except for the bullfrogs croaking in the still small pond down the hill from the cabin, the night is dark except for the starlight. Finally, Ty thinks to himself, this man is getting fucked, so he can interiorly monologue. As a child, Ty thought his cosmological twin the white dwarf, a dead star made out of dense, degenerate matter. As Ellory is fucking him, he understands he belongs to a gaseous giant obscured by clouds. He stares at Uranus, knowing it’s without a doubt Jupiter or Mars, and he tries not to look too deeply into Uranus, he tries not to say what it looks like. Uranus just looks like Uranus. But soon enough, Uranus ends up looking like an angry set of false teeth, the only planet that does twinkle, a 747 running out of gas, and Boba Fett’s spaceship leaving Cloud City. Uranus: simpatico with the red lights flashing on the woke windmills in the farmland distance. His wife says, “I like the way you take this dick,” and his pleasure is barely recognizable. Maybe he’ll be the one who births their perfect white child. He always wanted to be a person who could become pregnant.

“More coke,” Ellory says. “Oh, why am I abusing myself?”

“Because when you abuse yourself, you feel immortal.”

“I want to stop abusing myself, babe, so I can die. I want to stop shaving my body hair.”

“Do it, babe. The kids are. They’re deadlifting. They’re keeping their bushes. You’re hot enough for down.”

“I think about not abusing myself like I think about not shaving my body hair. I’ve been starting to think, starting to think my whole life, that I’ll stop removing body hair to please men. I’ve been starting to think, starting to think my whole life, that I’ll stop abusing myself. I’ve been starting to think. I’ve been starting to think my whole life.”

“How long would it take to get to Uranus?”

“Oh baby, we’ve arrived. You can be one of those ‘persons who can get pregnant,’ and have our baby.”

“I want to.”

“Great. My pussy is really sore.”

 

In the moon-bright morning, Ty’s ass feels like opening night at a SoHo atelier that celebrates emerging artists. He is finally able to take a shit, some of his wife’s semen dribbling out. They leave the cabin for the drive back to Chicago. They steal the soap, the lotion, a guidebook to North American trees, a stainless-steel spatula, the indigenous-patterned blanket, and the loose-leaf oolong. After an hour of miles, Ellory finally sleeps. Ty looks over at his perfect woman. He sees a nasty zit surfacing above her filled-in lip, no doubt caused by the fingernail of the Phish head.

“You want anything in the store?” He asks his bride at the gas station. “This is our last stop before Illinois. I’ll pick us up a sixer of Spotted Cow.”

“Yes, babe. I want to turn down my drinking. So get Spotted Cow and No Coast Pale Ale and Moon Man. And I want a Chipwich.”

Ty fills up with money from their joint account. He uses his own money to buy the Chipwich and himself a tamarind paleta. He uses Apple Pay for the beer, which depresses him: right now their Apple savings account that gives them 2% cash back (3% at Walgreens and Nike) on every purchase, is sponsored by Goldman Sachs. But one day soon Goldman will exit the cumbersome consumer business and their savings account will be sponsored, one would imagine, by lowly Synchrony. Ty guides the Blubaru back to their inner-city duplex down, and, with renewed masculine confidence, knows he lost their baby. Tonight, he must inseminate his wife. He has no choice.

____

Stuart Ross is the author of The Hotel Egypt.