B008J4PNHE EBOK

by Owen King

  “Oh my God.” Tess pulled her blanket over herself.

  “Gotta chuck a shit, folks.” Wesley thumped down from his side of the bed. A moment later, the entryway light flickered on, affording Sam an unwelcome glimpse of his roommate’s hairy ass before the bathroom door shut.

  “Oh my God,” said Tess again, voice muffled by the blanket. “That is so horrible.”

  “So what’s the appeal, then?” Sam was still on E.T. Years of living together had rendered him largely immune to Wesley’s farts.

  “Of E.T.?” asked Tess. “That it’s not supposed to be your reality. It’s about what might happen to a kid like you. Not you but like you. If there was an alien he had to save. If he lived in California. If he had to rise to the occasion.” The blanket rustled. “It’s not supposed to be complex. It’s a fairy tale. It’s supposed to appeal to your sense of possible impossibility.”

  ■ ■ ■

  The men left Tess the room and descended to the lobby. Beyond the registration counter was a tiled space with a carpeted island in the center and a pair of catercorner plastic-covered armchairs. Each man took a crinkly seat. Hung on the wall above Sam’s head was the gilt-framed photograph of travelers enjoying the complimentary breakfast. Rich afternoon sun poured through the glass walls of the reception area.

  “Beautiful,” said Wesley, chinning at the photograph.

  Sam inhaled and shut his eyes.

  “How are you doing?” asked Wesley.

  “I’m magnificent. I feel like a lumberjack.”

  “Like Paul Bunyan.”

  “Just like Paul Bunyan.”

  “You don’t look like you feel like Paul Bunyan. You look like a scabby old homeless man just took a hot, leisurely piss in your mouth.”

  “My sister kicked your ass, Wesley. You got pummeled by a teenage girl.”

  “You look like you guzzled whiz, and not by choice.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I take it that it’s over with Polly?”

  “Yeah. I’m glad. I think she is, too.” Sam, eyes still closed, explained how she’d confessed that she was the one who tipped Jo-Jo to where Sam might have gone. In this light, it seemed as though maybe she, too, had had enough of the affair. Naturally, since she was Polly, a breakup note couldn’t suffice—she had to release her steroidal husband from his kennel so he could go on a hand-chopping rampage.

  “If it’s for the best, why the glum ’tude?”

  Sam opened one eye. His friend had adopted a psychiatric pose, elbow planted on the arm of the chair, chin on fist, gaze placid, lips pursed. Once again Wesley was wearing the jabot, along with a dingy Russell College sweatshirt and a pair of wrinkled Dockers.

  “Don’t,” said Sam.

  His friend shrugged and sat back.

  The lobby doors opened. A middle-aged woman, dressed for some kind of function, crossed to the front desk, the thin gold chains draped around her boots jingling in step. A son, ten or so, wearing a black suit, trailed behind her.

  While she was filling out a form, the boy strolled to the carpeted island. He scowled at the men from behind long black bangs. Sam was reminded of the recent vogue in horror films for evil ghost children.

  “What’s up?” asked Wesley.

  “Just checking out a couple of dirtbombs,” said the evil ghost child. “Dirtbombs in chairs. Illing in the hotel lobby. Being dirty. Nice napkin, dirtbomb.”

  “It’s a jabot.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  Wesley flicked a hand. “Go away. That’s not how you talk to people.”

  The evil ghost child’s mother called to him, and he departed without further comment.

  Sam peered at his friend, studying for signs of irony.

  Mildness and maturity were qualities that no one had ever attached to Wesley Latsch. Wesley had made a pastime of worrying at a large cauliflower-shaped plantar wart on his right foot. He had conserved and accumulated the dead skin until he amassed a full canning jar of fawn-colored shards. It was something he “felt compelled to do.” The jar of wart pieces lived on the shelf above Wesley’s bed, like a religious icon. In the years that Sam had known Wesley, he had never left a room by saying merely, “I have to go to the restroom/bathroom.” It was apparently incumbent upon Wesley to say specifically what it was he was going to do in the restroom/bathroom (i.e., “chuck a shit,” “tinkle the ivories,” “cast a cum spell with the flesh wand,” etc.). Not only did his mother make frequent visits—from Maryland—to do his laundry, he had no qualms about bitching her out if she couldn’t remove the stains from his favorite shirts.

  To see him behave like an adult caused Sam apprehension. “What was that?”

  Wesley made a what can you do? gesture with his hands. “Kids act out.”

  Sam craned his neck as if a bit of extra distance might reveal his friend’s game. Wesley yawned and scratched the puffy unshaved chins piled atop his jabot.

  “I call bullshit,” said Sam.

  “Whatever.” The other man shrugged. “Are we going to get something to eat before we go to the cemetery?”

  “No, no,” said Sam. “I don’t believe you. What’s the scam?”

  “No scam. I’m not here to make a scene. I’m here because someone tried to grease my main man.”

  A television was buried in the wall directly in front of the armchairs. It was set to the news and muted: there was a crowd of elderly white protestors, and at the bottom of the screen, a ticker read, TEA PARTIERS RALLY ON THE MALL. Sam noticed that the protestors were, to a one, armed with cell-phone belt clips.

  “I saw Booth watching it. Who We Are. He was laughing his ass off.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. That sucks.” Wesley picked at the fabric of his armchair. “But . . .”

  His friend of many years—dissolute, blithe, a jokester whose best joke was perhaps on the verge of not being so funny any more—met Sam’s eyes. He had a wide-open smile on his face. Wesley’s teeth were so awful, they looked singed—and yet for an instant, his expression was completely earnest, and he was Mrs. Latsch’s bright little boy. “But she came here for you,” said Wesley. “Sam, you know, I don’t think there’s a person in the world who would so much as cross the street for me. I don’t know if I’d cross the street for me. And this girl, she’s laying it all out there for you. She came all this way. She thinks you might be worth it. That’s something to be happy about.”

  The elevator bell dinged. Tess stepped out into the lobby.

  2.

  At a diner, they ate lunch and received directions to the Quentinville cemetery. The route took them a couple of miles east of the little college town, along a winding, hilly road between stands of birch trees. Near the hilltop, their progress was abruptly stayed at a high wrought-iron gate. Sam stopped the car, and they piled out.

  A laminated sign on the gate read CLOSED. A chain was padlocked across, and on either side of the road’s raised bed, the ground crumbled away into mucky gullies and a stretch of swampy forest where the standing water was carpeted in fluorescent green algae. Through the bars of the fence, they could see the road hooking into another turn, and farther on, the edge of the cemetery, where a few newer-looking headstones stood.

  “I thought the funeral was scheduled for noon,” said Wesley.

  Tess touched a fence bar. “Guess it got canceled.”

  A floral arrangement had been propped against a corner of the gate: it was of a penis and testicles. The shape was edged in red roses, and the interior was filled with white roses. A substantial tribute, the arrangement came about as high Sam’s hip, and the balls had the circumference of a truck tire. The penis was definitively erect. On the rear of the arrangement was pinned a card: In loving memory of Costas Mandell from his fans and admirers at Who We Argot.

  Perhaps because of the headstones in the distance, or the flowers, which managed to seem convincingly funereal in spite of the design, a somberness fell
over the group. That Sam hadn’t really known him was unimportant. The guy, Mandell, had lived, and now he was dead. You had to respect that.

  “I’ll shimmy under and try to deliver these,” said Tess.

  Sam thought again what a serious, straight-ahead person she was, and he appreciated that about her. There was a gap between the bottom crossbar and the pavement, which, with a fair amount of wriggling, she slipped underneath. Once Tess was on the other side, the men squatted down, but it was obvious that they weren’t going to make it.

  They carefully slid the flowers through to her. Tess tucked the arrangement under her arm and started off in search of the satyr’s final resting place. The sight was one of those that you know you’ll never see a second time: a woman on an empty road, carrying a huge flower penis under her arm, sort of like a guitar without a case but not a guitar without a case—a huge penis made of flowers. What was surprising was the melancholy of the composition: the lone figure and the vulgar flowers and the headstone-dotted field. The sun ducked behind a cloud, and the green grounds turned pewter.

  As Tess disappeared around the bend, Sam found himself wishing yet again that he had a camera.

  ■ ■ ■

  Wesley wandered off the way they had come, searching for a bar of reception for his BlackBerry. (On the drive, he had drafted a judgment on Brooklyn Aristocrat’s Basic Jabot, and read it aloud to Sam and Tess: “This anachronistic neckwear made me feel both powerful and dissolute. You cannot wear this accessory without feeling a yearning to smoke opium and sex it. Jabot flouncing in time with your thrusts, pants around the ankles, ramming the petticoated woman of your dreams—can you imagine it? People, I can’t stop imagining it! YEAH, I’LL TAKE IT!!”

  After Wesley finished reading, Tess said, “Looks like somebody just figured out what to get her dad for Hanukkah this year.”)

  Sam leaned against the hood of the car and breathed the cool, fresh air and considered Costas Mandell. He was a puzzle. What did you do after you ran around in the forest in furry chaps, jerking off, screwing knotholes, pissing on leaves, massaging your taint, popping thigh zits, waving your humongous cock at the world, and never cracking a single smile? Sam could only suppose that you did what anyone else would do: went home, guzzled a beer, relaxed, watched a movie on cable. The obituary said Mandell had been an avid moviegoer. It also said he liked to fish and had emigrated from Greece. He certainly had a colossal penis. That was about the extent of what Sam had to go on. There was no way to know if Costas Mandell had been entirely proud of what he had done, or if he had been entirely sorry, or something in between.

  In the years since his film was vandalized by Brooks Hartwig, Jr., Sam had often reflected on the day before the catastrophe struck, the afternoon when Tom and Mina visited and the movie seemed best. Earlier that day, Sam had watched the movie by himself; he hated it, disbelieved it, was sickened by it. Then, while Mina sat and wrote dismal prophesies on the head shots of the cast members, he had watched the movie with Tom and thought it was not bad. What was evident to Sam these days was that an honest accounting of his movie—the one that Brooks incinerated, that no one else would ever see—lay somewhere in between. His beloved conceit, for instance, the speeding-time effect that blended four years into a single day, was still, at least in theory, a visually appealing idea. The evolving clothes and hairstyles, the backgrounds that had no continuity, the erratic lighting, these shifting elements aggravated the eye—in a good way, because they made you want to keep watching. What was less successful—was downright juvenile, in retrospect—was the idea that those four years were the sum total of anything. The sunrise at the end of the film was blatantly symbolic: the Dawn of Adult Understanding. Sam hadn’t felt like an adult after college graduation, and he didn’t feel like one now. He felt like himself, and understanding in general remained generally elusive.

  If, therefore, you added up each column, the sum was an independent film like a lot of independent films: some interesting ideas, gestures at profundity, and actors who looked like real people as opposed to movie stars. You could easily find worse ways to expend eighty-four minutes than by watching Who We Are, and if you would get off your ass, you could easily find better ways.

  But Sam’s version of Who We Are didn’t exist; Brooks’s version did. And the movie that Brooks had cut was not like any other films. It was truly different. Mandell’s performance was singular. Mandell disturbed and he astounded and he sold every baffling word. He was magic, unreal—he was a satyr. If not for Brooks, and Mandell’s performance that Brooks had captured, Who We Are most likely would have gone unnoticed. It was Brooks and Mandell who had made the movie special. This reality might have relieved Sam, but instead, it made him a bit envious. Sam wished he had been less sure of himself when he was twenty-two and twenty-three.

  Like a siren, the memory of Booth’s crazed, guttural laughter from the night before rang in his mind—and to Sam’s surprise, even amazement—like a siren, it dispersed as suddenly as it arose. He knew that he had to be angry, yet he felt absolutely still inside. Sam didn’t know what the feeling—the lack of feeling—meant, but he was glad of it.

  ■ ■ ■

  Tess slid the flower penis back through the gap and then herself. Although there had been a couple of fresh graves, either of which might have been Mandell’s, they had lacked headstones. “I didn’t want to risk leaving a cock-and-balls arrangement on some random person’s grave.”

  Sam complimented her instinct.

  They knocked around the possibility of taking it with them, but where? Another option was to leave it against the fence where they’d found it. It was hard, though, to believe that it would ultimately pass muster with the graveyard authorities. Someone would throw it out.

  Sam suggested the swamp. Tess thought that was an okay gesture. Wesley was still off down the hill somewhere.

  Sam gingerly descended the embankment six or seven feet, reaching the platform of a few large, slick rocks at the water’s edge. Tess handed him the arrangement, and he held her hand while she picked her way down the uneven declivity. He squatted to lay the flowers on the water’s scummy surface. “Here goes.” He shoved the arrangement off. It began to drift, cutting a wedge of clear water through the green fur.

  They watched as the flowers made it through the strait between two spindly trees.

  “Okay, here’s the reason,” said Tess. “Are you ready?”

  “Kenneth Novey, we’re talking about? Why it’s not evil to enjoy his pain and suffering?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The arrangement was about a half dozen yards out now, rotating slightly. A beard of frothy green scum had already collected around its hull. Sam put on his listening face. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Don’t fall asleep, okay?” The sharp angle of her right eyebrow implied that she wasn’t attempting to lighten the mood.

  “I’m really sorry about that.” There was no defense for the window escape or the ignored phone calls, either. Then there was everything with Polly, which wasn’t a direct affront to Tess but didn’t exactly cast him in a fulsome light. While they’d known each other only a couple of days, he had already racked up a karmic debt that could take years to whittle down. He had behaved poorly. She made him feel more than naked; with Tess, he didn’t even have any skin. “Really sorry.”

  “You fucking should be.” Tess rubbed her index finger around an eye. Her visible exhaustion was attractive. There was a wrinkle at one corner of her mouth that he wanted to kiss. The top of her head came parallel to his chin. A single shimmering white hair ran to the left of her middle part.

  “Did you hurt anybody because of it?”

  He waited for her to continue, but she let the question hang until he responded.

  “Pardon?” Sam asked.

  “When you watched the show? When you watched the reenactment of the awful way that the man died? Kenneth Novey.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then it’s fine. If it’s not
hurting anyone, then it’s fine. Who does it hurt? Kenneth Novey doesn’t care. He’s history. The rest of us have to keep ourselves amused somehow.”

  “What if it hurts my soul?”

  “Uh-uh. If you want to travel that street, best of luck, but I’m staying right here. We’re blood and bones and organs. We don’t have souls. When our bodies stop, we’re gone.”

  Sam didn’t want to make her angry, but he wasn’t persuaded. It was too simple and too easy. “I feel like I have a soul. Or at least like I have to proceed on the assumption that I have a soul.”

  “Look, something terrible happened, yes. The guy got a bad, horrible, nasty deal, and he died. And we made a frivolous, trashy show about it. We sensationalized a tragedy, and you were captivated by it. But did it inspire you to go out and kill someone? Did you go out and burn down an orphanage? Did you go out and punch a kitten?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Of course you didn’t. Because it was a diversion. It was an entertainment. It was a fantasy, a cheesy reenactment that probably didn’t so much as scrape against the reality of the guy. Maybe it was a travesty. Probably it was a travesty. But it was just a show.

  “So it struck you funny. So what? Can’t you laugh? Why shouldn’t that be okay? Did you laugh at the man’s misery? No. I’ll tell you why you laughed: you laughed at his predicament. You laughed at how unfair and stupid and grotesque his predicament was. You laughed because you had to. How else are you supposed to react to exhibit number ten trillion and one that however random and mean you think life can be, it can always be far more random and way, way more mean than you could ever imagine? By curling up in a ball? By hitting yourself in the face? By kicking furniture? What would that achieve?”

  She jabbed her hands deep into the pockets of her vest. He couldn’t tell if she was furious with him or with herself. “You want something to feel guilty about? Let me help you. Feel guilty about people living beneath underpasses. Feel guilty about shortchanging some poor waitress’s tip. Feel guilty about throwing out plastic bottles. Feel guilty about something real, something current. Don’t feel guilty about some freaky, unlucky, terrible fucking thing that happened, and that no one could have seen coming, and that’s over and done with. Give to charity. Tip appropriately. Recycle.