Made to Break. D. Foy

      ADVANCE PRAISE FOR MADE TO BREAK

      “D. Foy’s writing is so rich, so saturated in both life and literature, that one is tempted to strain for comparison, to find whatever madcap equivalencies (“It’s X meets Y!”) might begin to describe it accurately. Yet its whorl and grain, the fantastical strangeness of Foy’s sentences and the astonishing accuracy of his perception, amounts to something I can only call new. Made to Break is that rare thing: a truly original, and ferociously necessary, book.”

      —MATTHEW SPECKTOR

      “Made to Break is a fearless exploration of fragility—the fragility of friendship, the fragility of romance, the fragility of human life—but the book itself, trussed by D. Foy’s lavishly constructed sentences and astute psychological observations, is built to last. Think: Céline. Think: Burroughs. Think: Denis Johnson. Or better yet, think: D. Foy, poet laureate-elect of that marginal America filled with junkies and drunks, where death is omnipresent, and the refuge of an open diner on a stormy night is the closest one gets to the American Dream.”

      —ADAM WILSON

      “While reading Made to Break I just couldn’t believe it was the author’s first novel. The characters are deadly, troubled, vibrant, and their world is suffused with evil—not the manufactured evil of a Hollywood horror movie, but the carefully paced malevolence of a world doomed to swallow its inhabitants, consuming their shallow, fucked up memories in a swell of amoral darkness. D. Foy is not just a writer. He’s the kind of archangel Stanley Kubrick would have built wings for. Don’t just read this book. Revel in it. I swear you won’t be able to stop.”

      —SAMUEL SATTIN

      TWO DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry.

      We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

      Copyright © 2014 by D. Foy

      All rights reserved

      ISBN: 978-1-937512-17-0

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930484

      Author photograph: Snorri Sturluson

      Cover photographs: (background) David Falconer, Photographer/Environmental

      Protection Agency, 1973; (overlay) NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al.

      You can see a short interview with D. Foy here: https://vimeo.com/70723153

      Typeset in Garamond, the best font ever.

      No portion of this book may be copied or reproduced, with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews, without the written permission of the publisher.

      This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s lively imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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      For Jeanine

      MADE TO BREAK TABLE OF CONTENTS

       Chapter I

       Chapter II

       Chapter III

       Chapter IV

      In no sense sober, we barbershopped together and never heard the discords in our music or saw ourselves as dirty, cheap, or silly.

      — William H. Gass

      I never said, This is nothing more than words on water, but something inside me knew it the same, like the world won’t count what isn’t there. I saw everything, but nothing made me see. I heard everything, but nothing made me hear. I knew nothing of how things begin or end, I was just an animal. Then I walked through a door in the hand of a woman who knew I’d fallen but didn’t care. In so many words she’d said, I’m with you today—isn’t that what matters? There in the midst of laughter and warmth, an unveiling had begun. All I’d known in the days before was a lie. I myself was a liar and a lie…

      CHRISTMAS EVE WORD GOT OUT LUCILLE HAD been taken by the real world, of corporate jobs and big-big coin. Christmas Day the scene was on. As for that affair, the only thing I know for sure is some time close to three or four we laid into a mound of dope. But now the New Year was two days off, and what had been a mound of dope was just a dirty mirror…

      Locked into four-by at eighty-plus, we were headed for Tahoe, and Dinky’s family cabin. The radio was playing some power-pop group, Ring Finger, I think it was.

      I gave it all up for you,

      and I’m happy today,

       yeah my sky is blue today!

      It’s true little baby,

      we’re a thing called us,

       all shiny and new—

       the brand new me

       and super new you!

      Of course by the time we hit Bridal Veil Falls, the tank was dry, and we were stuck. Hickory nudged me as she pointed to the sign.

      “Romantic,” I said.

      “Nice,” Dinky said.

      And then we were trekking through rain, to some joint up the road he thought had fuel. An hour and a half got us four blistered feet and a defunct inn that looked like a Swiss chalet. When finally a man brought us gas, we headed down the mountain for more. A pack of tourists had crowded the inn the second time round, waiting for some guy to fix their flat. Basil dropped drawer and stuck his ass to the window while Lucille assaulted the horn. “Idiots!” we shouted…

      Truth was the cabin in lights through a swirl of ice and rain. We’d nothing to do but get to the door, but the stairs slipped me up, and I collapsed, and lost my bottle, too… The stars were dead. The night was rage. The earth was sick with danger. Someone moaned, and from the blue I understood: time is a leech… And then a butcher jumped my head, a squat little man with an Abe Lincoln beard and collection of filthy knives. And then when I heard the breaking glass, the butcher turned and vanished…

      Basil had smashed a window with his hatchet after Dinky confessed he’d lost his key. Now the giant appeared at the door with an arm swept out in phony cheer. I remembered once a girl called him handsome.

      “Entrez-vous,” he said.

      “You smell that?” I said about the stink.

      “Whoo-wee!” said Lucille.

      “I smoke,” Basil said. “I can’t smell dick.”

      “I can assure you,” Hickory said. “This is not the smell of dick.”

      We headed to the kitchen for glasses and ice, the scent growing stronger, a compound more like mildew and vanilla.

      “Oh goody,”