The Atmospherians

by Alex McElroy

  “To get him into the car, he means. Leon put up a fight. You know Leon. He wasn’t gonna let them take him away. They even gave him a crack on the skull.”

  “He was bleeding,” said Peter.

  “It didn’t look good at all. Not one bit. If we had phones I would’ve recorded it. An obvious case of police brutality.”

  “Thank you, Randy,” I said. “Thank you, Peter.”

  “Should we do something?” Peter aimed the question at Dyson.

  “It’s too late tonight,” I said.

  Unpleased, Peter and Randy returned to the night.

  I collapsed on the couch. “I feel so awful,” I said. “His skull? Jesus. We should’ve lied about how many people we had. We should’ve given fake names. He wasn’t checking I.D.”

  Dyson sat on the armrest with his feet on the cushion. “We did what we had to do to get what we wanted,” he said, without inflection.

  “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” I said.

  “Do you really mean that?” he asked.

  “Don’t treat me like some kind of sociopath.”

  “Because people keep getting hurt around you,” he said.

  I sat up, angled away from him. I had never wanted to hit anyone until then. “That’s the cruelest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “There’s nothing cruel about a statement of fact.”

  “You act like I wanted Lucas Devry to die.”

  “Is that what I said?”

  “Of course that’s not what you said,” I told him. “But it is what you meant.”

  “Don’t assume you know what I mean.”

  “I have to, Dyson, because you never say what you mean. You’ve never said it. Since we were kids I’ve had to decode what you’re telling me. I’m sick of it.”

  “Arguing won’t help either of us,” he said. He stood and walked to the ladder.

  “And I’m tired of you bailing when things get difficult.”

  “Good night,” he said, and climbed up to bed.

  I stayed on the couch stewing and intermittently napping with Barney shelled on my lap. I couldn’t tell whether the distance I felt between me and Dyson was a new development or if it had always been there and was only now beginning to widen. I couldn’t tell whether I meant what I’d said: Had I spent years untangling a truer meaning from his words? Like most things, this was accurate and a lie. Yes, I often assumed some deeper meaning beneath Dyson’s words. But that didn’t mean I recognized what he wouldn’t tell me. Most interpretations are false, I tried to assure myself. Perhaps it was an objective fact: people were getting hurt around me. Even so, Dyson must’ve known how that fact, objective or not, would wound me. He couldn’t not. And that alone seemed proof of what I did not want to admit to myself. We were growing apart. We barely knew each other. Nonetheless, I was here, in his cabin, as if our friendship were fully intact.

  * * *

  In the morning, before running, Dyson delivered a speech blaming Art for Leon’s arrest. The men stood in a horseshoe formation facing us. I stood with my hands clasped behind my back, acutely aware of how deliberately Peter was focused on Dyson.

  “Flemings,” said Dyson, “fire chief in that backwoods turd of a town, came here to embarrass us. He came here because he’s stuck in the past that you all came to escape. He’s trapped in a world that doesn’t value love or community. He’s envious of us. He’s unwilling to work on himself—he wants only to hurt other people because, for him, hurting people is how you make it in life. Art is the problem we’re trying to fix in ourselves.

  “Don’t for a second think that means Leon was innocent. Leon kept an important secret from us. He didn’t disclose his man horde involvement. First thing I asked you men, before I booked your plane tickets: Have you ever been in a horde? Leon? He lied to me. He lied to all of us. He put us in danger.”

  The men grunted. They nodded. They clapped. “Fuck Leon! Fuck Leon!” Hughie Mintz chanted, hand pumping overhead.

  Dyson veered in the other direction. “But Leon wanted to get better. The right way, by learning to discard the person he’d been. He came here to do what you’re doing. For Flemings that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t stand that Leon, and men like you, cared enough to work on yourselves—he wanted to send us a message. Don’t think this wasn’t a threat. Don’t think it was not an attack on our way of living.” He stepped forward. We closed the circle around him.

  “You’re probably thinking I’m paranoid,” he said. “But I’m no paranoiac. I know how this works. Sasha and I didn’t choose to do this on a whim. We built The Atmosphere as a refuge because men like you needed someplace safe to get better. We studied the rises and falls of groups like ours and you know what always preceded their falls? The r word.”

  “Racism!” Gerry shouted, always the eager student.

  “Regulations,” said Dyson. “The communities were regulated out of existence. Their progressive efforts were sabotaged by draconian regulations. Rajneeshpuram. The Peoples Temple. The Eleven Tribes of the Sun.”

  “Weren’t those cults?” asked Dr. Mapplethorpe.

  “They are now,” said Dyson. “Because outside forces launched vilification campaigns. Those groups had their problems, sure, but the problems you’re worried about, their cultish qualities, arose as necessary protections against outside attacks.”

  “What are you suggesting?” asked Randy.

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Dyson said. “I’m insisting you all work harder and faster. I’m insisting you be honest with me. Because we’re about to enter Phase Two of your training. Reconciliation. And we can’t afford to lose anyone else to some dumb regulation or law.”

  Dyson hadn’t mentioned Phase Two before then—he hadn’t mentioned any phases. As far as I knew, The Atmosphere was free of phases, built on a continuous incline instead of the ladders and steps that defined the problematic cults that preceded ours.

  After his speech, I pulled him aside to ask how to prep for Phase Two. I spoke in a chummy and diplomatic tone to hide my anger. I was tired of feeling trapped behind a wall, with him and the men trading secrets on the other side.

  “You don’t need to prepare anything.” He patted my shoulder. “Reconciliation is between me and the men.”

  “I came here under the condition you would tell me everything.”

  “Everyone thinks they want to know everything until they know everything.”

  “What happened to cults being founded on honesty?”

  Randy and Gerry stepped closer to us.

  “Keep your voice down,” said Dyson.

  “Transparency? Capital T-R-A—”

  Dyson blew his whistle, twirled his finger. Physical Training commenced.

  “Aren’t you coming?” said Randy, jogging in place.

  “Not today,” I replied.

  Randy raced off to join the double-file worm jogging around the edge of the clearing. Dyson ran backwards, clapping overhead in an enormous circle, pushing the men to run faster. The men ran faster, enamored of Dyson. This is, perhaps, what he wanted all along. The men mindlessly trailing him in circles as I watched from a distance. I worried, briefly, that I had done something wrong—but I flicked that thought away. I hadn’t done anything wrong. This was just Dyson, the Dyson I wished didn’t exist: the Dyson who cared more about fleeting and superficial attention than he did about our friendship. This is the Dyson who moved to L.A. The Dyson who ignored me for months knowing I needed him. A Dyson I couldn’t help but resent.

  twenty-four

  I PACED ALONG the shore of the pond hoping for a call from Cassandra. Instead, Roger called me again. The idea of leaving The Atmosphere—with its hopeless men and Dyson’s secrets, his new mysterious phase—seemed more appealing than ever.

  But I couldn’t stomach abandoning Peter. I had sacrificed Leon for him—and assured myself this was because I needed someone to fuck. I didn’t want to love Peter. I didn’t want to love any man or give part of myself to someo
ne again, because I knew how deeply all men wished to hurt me. I was using Peter. Just as I used Leon to continue using Peter. This was okay because I had been used in the past—not only by Blake. There were too many men to name.

  Peter was one of those good men that men were always telling me about. “What was it like to be famous?” he loved asking me after sex, and I loved slipping back to those days when I used to wait for the future as if it were a ship that would carry me to a Caribbean island.

  Sometimes, as I hiked to the cabin after our rendezvous, I fantasized about setting the barn ablaze and running away with him. He would likely work hard for me and never complain. He wouldn’t bother me. He would love me, simply, agreeably. With him, I could do what I wished, live as quietly or extravagantly as his work allowed. I got the sense from Peter that he would have embraced this life had I asked. But I never asked, because I didn’t want a life with Peter. I only wanted clandestine hours with him. I merely wanted physical pleasure I couldn’t get anywhere else. Most men believe they want this from women, too. They don’t. They want ownership, control, the ability to leave whenever they like. Peter was no different. However, his desire manifested how it only could in sensitive men: as a self-pitying, hangdog pout.

  We met in The Crucible at our usual time the night after Leon’s arrest. The night Dyson’s Reconciliation began. It was an unreasonably hot and humid night, even for June, one of those slick, drippy evenings that makes you regret having skin—but Peter shivered bashfully when I unzipped his jacket. “I can’t do it,” he said.

  “Is it about Leon?” I asked. “Because Leon is fine. I spoke to Art Flemings this afternoon.” I hadn’t. “And Art said they’re letting him go, not pressing charges. But he can’t return to The Atmosphere. It’s a technical issue. Something with zoning.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “All’s gonna be fine.” I kissed him hard, slid a hand beneath his waistband.

  Peter unhanded me from his crotch. “I wasn’t prepared for the lecture tonight.”

  “Reconciliation,” I said, scoffing.

  “I’m not up for doing much right now. Nothing like this.”

  “Tell me what Dyson did to you.”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  I reminded him that we had something more precious than rules. “Intimacy means sharing things with your partner,” I said.

  “Do you even think of me as a partner?” he asked. “Or just someone to fuck?”

  Of course I think of you as a partner, I nearly spit. But his question was an attack; it exposed and quieted me. He was not one of those good men. He was no better than Blake. These men with their naïve vision of authenticity, their absurd demand for labels. “What a cruel question!” I shouted. “I refuse to answer something so hurtful.”

  I trekked back to the cabin, embarrassed and angry, forearming sweat from my eyes, muttering all the things I should have told him. Inside, Dyson purged jaggedly in the bathroom. “Just quit!” I shouted. But I regretted it immediately. When he slipped into bed I apologized.

  “No, you’re right,” he said, his tone as dull as a cushion.

  “I didn’t say I was wrong,” I said. I imagined a scenario in which I could reach for him, then a scenario in which he would turn toward me, kiss me—a world where I could work through the shame I felt over Peter by fucking Dyson—and I hovered my hand over his waist.

  He said, “That isn’t us.”

  * * *

  The next day, the men wouldn’t look at me. They muttered inaudibly during PIEs. Even Randy responded to my questions with sheepish deference. Together, we had been editing a movie—footage of the surrounding foliage put to Muzak, a source of joy and accomplishment for the men—but they were “too tired” to work on it today. I got the sense they were ashamed of themselves. They shifted uncomfortably when I stood close, like teenagers attracted to their teacher—but if that were an issue, wouldn’t it have revealed itself weeks ago?

  Peter couldn’t go for a walk after PIEs. He needed to focus on the garden. I apologized for shouting at him, but he said that wasn’t the problem. He forgave me. He knew I was under a lot of pressure. “Just a quick walk,” I said. “To the forest and back.”

  He refused. He needed time to himself.

  * * *

  The next day was more of the same.

  * * *

  The day after that was more of the same.

  * * *

  The day after the day after that was more of more of the same.

  * * *

  Peter quit meeting me in the night.

  * * *

  I answered Roger’s call—though I hung up before we spoke to each other.

  what the men needed to know

  There is no reason not to be honest.

  Actions are only shameful when you keep them a secret.

  Most likely no one will care if you tell anyone.

  There is nothing to be embarrassed about.

  There is no reason to be loyal to an employer—or leader.

  Leaders demand loyalty to exploit the people beneath them.

  Never trust anyone who demands loyalty from you.

  Love is far more important than loyalty.

  twenty-five

  AS THE MEN set the foundation for the ninth shed…

  as Peter fertilized his zucchini…

  as Dyson swam laps in the pond…

  I hammered a nail through a wall in the barn. I plugged a screwdriver into the hole and rotated the handle until the hole widened to the size of a dime. A scrunch of brown cloth fit in the crevice to prevent anyone from noticing.

  Dyson kept a bottle of bourbon in the living room trunk. I needed three shots to work up the courage to spy on the lecture. At the clearing, my head hot with liquor, I expected to hear revelry spewing forth from the barn. Instead, there was silence. Rain pattered on the leaves, the roof of the barn, the sheds, wetting my hair and my arms. On the far side of the barn, the brown scrap of cloth I’d used to plug the hole lay in the grass. I pressed my eye to the hole.

  IV.

  reconciliation

  THE BENCHES WERE arranged into a square stage at the center of the barn. Dyson, Peter, and Gerry stretched inside the square, hopping on their toes, jabbing as if preparing to box. “Fight Club on a farm,” I scoffed, and nearly slunk back to the cabin. The rain had intensified, though, into fat, slappy, flu-giving rain, and I pressed my body closer to the wall, reluctant to flee the dry strip of grass beneath the lip of the roof.

  The three men inside the square made exaggerated circles with their mouths. They silently read what appeared to be scripts. Dyson clapped. The men on the surrounding benches straightened their backs. Dyson said, “Today, I will play the part of Randy. Gerry will play Randy’s wife, Susan. Peter will play Randy’s daughter, Bridgett. Other parts will be played by… your imagination.”

  The men chuckled nervously.

  Randy sat on a chair propped on top of the table.

  “You ready, Randy?” asked Dyson.

  Randy nodded.

  “Showtime!” said Dyson.

  Randy cleared his throat before speaking:

  “For a long time,” he began, “people saw my life as a fairy tale. I grew up poor and unloved to a pair of alcoholics outside of Norman, Oklahoma. I was the younger of two, but my brother died at eleven. He swallowed something under the sink. Looking to get loaded, I think. There was nothing the doctors could do. I was eight, the lesser-liked child, dimly lit in the shadow of his potential—he was destined to be a major-league pitcher.

  “My parents didn’t blame me for his death. They didn’t wish me dead instead. But they couldn’t pretend my brother wasn’t their favorite, and seeing me made them feel guilty, so we avoided each other however we could. I’d follow complicated routes through the house—slipping into bathrooms as they came down the hall, hiding in the pantry if they entered the kitchen—until I became more roommate than child, especially after turning fourteen, when I b
egan paying rent for my room.”

  Dyson performed what Randy described. He inhabited Randy with a level of attention he’d never shown in his movies. He wept over Randy’s dead brother, crept through imaginary hallways, mimed handing cash to enormous parents, giggled proudly when he received his high school diploma. The performance mesmerized me.

  In his early twenties, a car accident had left Randy with a clawing pain in his neck and an OxyContin addiction. Five years revolving through rehab clinics, he finally kicked the habit after meeting the woman who would become his wife: Susan Cleary. Gerry stepped into the square and took Dyson’s hands. Susan was the humblest and most patient woman Randy’d ever met. She was the first person he’d ever loved without also fearing. He got clean for her, learned to cook for her, woke up early for her, enrolled in college for her, graduated for her. They moved to Lubbock to live near her family. “It was like being married to a TV show,” he said. Her family held weekly barbecues in the summer; sisters went shopping together; cousins called to gossip; aunts offered prayers during difficult times. Randy had never lived among people who loved unconditionally. He kept expecting her family to give him the boot (Dyson mimed getting kicked in the butt). They welcomed him deeper into their lives. He brewed beer with her cousins. Her brothers brought him on fishing excursions. His father-in-law told him he loved him. He and Susan decided to start their own family.

  “Some people are meant to be happy,” he said. “Then there are people like me.”

  Susan gave birth to Bridgett Elizabeth Dent. He lavished his daughter with gifts—clothes and dolls and candy and video games and stuffed animals and butterfly stickers—loved taking her places without telling their mother: to the park when she hadn’t finished her homework, for ice cream when she was grounded. More than anything else, though, Randy loved taking Bridgett to movies. One Friday a month, he’d pull her from school early to see a matinee in an empty theater on the outskirts of town. They’d gorge themselves on a bucket of butter-wet popcorn and a barrel of soda—Dr Pepper mixed with Sprite, her favorite—while trading contraband Peanut M&Ms and Sno-Caps and gummy worms they’d bought at a pharmacy. Most important: they never told Susan that they went. It was a small secret as secrets went, but it tightened the bond between him and Bridgett, and he prized feeling like his daughter loved him more than her mother. He cast himself as the gift giver and rule breaker, the one who let her do what she wanted—though making Susan the disciplinarian eroded his marriage.