The Deep Whatsis

The Deep Whatsis
Peter Mattei

A gripping and hilarious satire of hipsters, consumerism, contemporary art, for fans of Bret Easton Ellis and Don Delillo. When a successful Advertising Executive meets a mischievous intern, his whole sensational existence begins to crumble around him.Eric Nye, a Chief Idea Officer at a New York advertising agency, is the ultimate corporate success story. Ruthless, talented and young, his employers pay him an extortionate amount of money to manage the ‘downsizing’ of their company, which entails firing dozens of longtime employees before their pensions kick in.It’s only when he meets ‘Intern’ that cracks begin to show in his seemingly triumphant existence. Eric could have ‘Intern’ any time he wants her. So why hasn’t he? And why can’t he stop thinking about her. Before long, what begins as sexual frustration becomes an existential crisis that causes Eric to question his careers, his relationships, even his sanity.Mattei’s addictive debut follows its anti-hero’s quest for contemporary self-identity in a toxic corporate world.

PETER MATTEI

The Deep Whatsis

Table of Contents

Title Page (#ubfa1f215-f1c2-5561-98c8-f63bb69e71d4)

Part One (#uf96dceae-2b53-556a-865e-22b5061c62e9)

Chapter 1.1 (#ub5b5c591-3100-5bae-86ac-a5dc5914de05)

Chapter 1.2 (#u5df80dff-9ae1-50ae-bcc9-932fb7d3850f)

Chapter 1.3 (#u8ced508f-688a-51ce-98c1-02e900726529)

Chapter 1.4 (#u24c3681d-fe93-5338-8c17-ab898b3941f4)

Chapter 1.5 (#ue3eb1fda-8983-5c3e-a338-e0d4183e1386)

Chapter 1.6 (#uf0ea521a-a66e-5b29-a837-f71780e5e145)

Chapter 1.7 (#ue1a45ca6-9150-5d60-b11e-4fda8e37a02b)

Chapter 1.8 (#u4dc47a9d-e39f-571f-ac8d-a509575e3a82)

Chapter 1.9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1.10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2.11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2.12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2.13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2.14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2.15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3.26 (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

part one

1.1

The intern from the edit house is so drunk she is trying to take her skin off. At least that’s what it looks like. She is already half-naked and is grabbing at her flesh trying to find the edge of the Threadless T-shirt that she lost half an hour ago. I don’t remember her name.

“What are you doing?” I ask her as she pulls at her body, but it is no use, she can’t hear me and if she can she doesn’t understand.

Certain people when they drink too much they get an idea in their head and then it forms a kind of feedback loop in which the thought just repeats itself over and over, as if their brain is trying to grip on to something, anything, for dear life, because all of reality is slipping into the void. Megan? Morgan? Caitlin? Finally she speaks and her answer is she wants to take her T-shirt off because she likes to sleep naked, she’s going to sleep now, it’s one of the checkboxes of her still-forming self, sleeping in the nude, it’s who she is, she sleeps in the nude in her sleeping bag even in winter, that’s what she is saying to me over and over out of nowhere in the dark, so I just say good night and turn the lights off. She keeps babbling and looking at me with such a confused sense of joy that I want to laugh, so I do laugh.

Then I go into the bedroom and get a pillow and go into the bathroom and get the little trash-biny thing. I slide the pillow under her head and I put the trash-biny thing next to her and I tap her shoulder and point to the thing and explain to her that if she needs to barf she should barf in that and not on the floor, if possible, especially not on the pillow—it’s Icelandic eiderdown.

She looks up at me and smiles and then she passes out.

1.2

Intern is extremely cute, alright, granted, her face at least, no question, it’s like God smiling on sunshine, and she’s cool, she quote unquote gets it, but still I plan that after this morning’s pretend-awkward good-bye, which hopefully will happen in a mere couple of hours, to never see her again. For the moment however she is totally crashed and it’s around 6 AM and I’m not really tired, which may have something to do with the stimulants we were ingesting at the bar where we met.

“What’s up?” she said as I turned around, spun really, why I’m not sure, sloshing a double Rittenhouse rocks in my right hand. I was meeting this friend of mine, Seth Krallman, playwright turned pot dealer turned yoga guru, but he was blowing me off, what a surprise.

“Don’t I know you?” she said.

“No,” I said, never having seen the girl in my life.