A Short Film About Disappointment

by Joshua Mattson

  He said, Nothing to fear, guapo. Have deep breaths.

  As soon as the door closed, I poked around Dr. Lisa’s office to calm myself, for a clue to her life. The east wall was papered with pages from a medieval anatomy book. A replica of a human skeleton, with its feet in a large pot, covered in creeping ivy. Eight or nine mugs sticking out their tongues of tea bags. A cheap notebook filled with her writing. It was very ugly, a wife beater’s script, and all I could decipher was, My ferns are depressed, before Dr. Lisa tapped on her office door, announcing her entrance. Moving around the desk was impossible, so I propped my elbows on her desk, tented my hands, and peered down my nose as she entered.

  I was wearing one of her white coats. The pockets were filled with gum wrappers and it smelled like it had never been washed. In the coat, it seemed like I could say whatever I wanted and the listener would accept my words as true. A stethoscope hung from my ears.

  Dr. Lisa, smiling, took a chair.

  I said, What seems to be wrong today?

  She said, What?

  When my cowardice is inflamed my voice is a whisper, a mutter.

  I said, What hurts?

  Wha hurrs.

  She said, Well, I am tired. Like so many of us, only sleep, the great medicine, can heal me.

  I said, Maybe we can do this another time.

  Maebe wae dao thiss aganover thaime.

  She said, Nonsense. You’re here, we’ve almost made it through the day. The workweek has ended. What will you do tonight?

  Though I may be a coward I am also the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of genetic information designed to perpetuate itself and this time a man’s voice issued from my chest. Within it were tonalities, reassurances, that I did not recognize in myself.

  I said, I have to review Five Hearts for my column. It’s playing at the Handel.

  She said, Oh, I’d like to see that. You’ll have to let me know how it was.

  I said, Come with. I would value your perspective.

  Dr. Lisa with pale violet crescents beneath her eyes. Although I am not among them, I know some people do not mind being asked to participate in social life.

  Motioning to the side room, where she performed examinations.

  She said, I’m taking the slingshot to the Eastern Hub for a conference.

  I said, If your capsule blows up, my day would be ruined.

  She said, You get up there, you see the Earth, you apprehend your insignificance, you don’t care if you blow up on the way down.

  I lay on the table. She turned her back to me, to cover up the indignity of trying to get on her latex gloves. They were resistant to Dr. Lisa because she washed her hands but didn’t dry them well. Now it was her turn to mumble.

  She said, Why don’t you make your next appointment at the end of the day, and we can see something.

  I said, It would be my pleasure.

  My fear receded, leaving a foam of lightness. I had startled her into an awkward moment. Later I would be suspicious of her promise, but as I was prodded, shocked, questioned, and monitored, I allowed myself contentment.

  She put the electrodes on my face and zapped the muscles to test their response.

  She said, But you have to take me to something good, not the garbage they play at the Handel.

  Zap.

  I said, Every film is a game of chance. When we say someone likes this or that subject, that they have this or that passion, we mean they are more willing to squander their time on noise for the thin possibility of transformation.

  Zap.

  She said, Has a film transformed you?

  Zap.

  I said, A couple times. Although they were powerful experiences, I doubt it is worth the ire and hatred I have expended on junk. Now that I am a little older, I understand that the only response to mediocrity is to ignore it, but I thought for many years to attack it would diminish its prevalence in the world. Mediocrity accrues more mediocrity to itself, and when you attack it, you enlarge its already considerable mass.

  Zap.

  She said, Mediocrity is the default state of existence. It can’t be avoided or defeated. It is always pulling and twisting. Without it, how would we measure what was special? Does your own mediocrity bother you?

  Zap.

  I said, Only at reviewing films. With most everything else, I am content to be average.

  Zap.

  I seemed to be speaking more coherently, as if I were guided by an entity disinterested in the outcome of the conversation but nevertheless munificent.

  Dr. Lisa touched the small muscles on the side of my face, near my temple, then behind my ear. Minute electrical charges ran from her fingertip to shoot down my neck. It was only because she was focused on my face that I felt comfortable trying to be honest about cinema. I offered none of my plans for Altarpiece. To explain to her my ambition to make films would be creating between us an intimacy I was not prepared for, an intimacy in which she would reciprocate with an ambition of her own, to paint or to pilot slingshots or to steal jewelry.

  She said, What do you say when you don’t like a film?

  I said, I almost never like a film. I think of a different way to say I don’t like it.

  She said, Try to freeze your face.

  I said, Okay.

  But I didn’t, because it did not look attractive to have one’s face paralyzed.

  Under my jaw she dug in her finger.

  She said, You never told me why you wanted to kill your friend.

  I said, I never said I wanted to kill him. I instead explored the possibility that I might be happier if he were to die in a freak accident.

  She said, When we see the film, you will have to tell me. You can think of an amusing way to tell the story. It will be part of your treatment.

  I said, Yes, Dr. Lisa.

  She said, You can call me Lisa.

  12.

  METAMORPHOSIS (BETWEEN CRITICISM AND ART)

  DIR. PAVLOS CRISTOFOROS

  25 MINUTES

  Scads of critics gave up explaining for creating. Wendell Yarrow, a church mouse in his column, was a leopard in the Southwestern Ballet Company. Lauren Rolf thought herself a savage composer rather than the food columnist for Homey Slums. John Satmost wanted to be a musician but couldn’t play an instrument. Pavlos Cristoforos, of the Eastern Hub Authority Daily Post, was so disgusted with the offerings of the contemporary film industry, he made this astonishing film to show he could do it better. Nobody, as far as I know, can deduce how he fit those elephants into the Empire State Building. (My theory: he brought them up there as calves and hid them until the time was right.) Maria Maquerone took funds out of her mother’s Review of Contemporary Detention Architecture to build her mysterious huts. Ronald Leslie, Albertine Wu, Reginald Montola. There are many precedents. That most of them were failures doesn’t concern me. If anything, they failed because they didn’t go far enough.

  13.

  FLYPAPER

  DIR. SANTITO VENICE

  98 MINUTES

  The Central Hub Slaw’s Autumn Affair was Friday. I declined the invitation ping. Wanted to see Flypaper that night. Jonson insisted I attend. Tired of having his reviews edited for length, he bought the company.

  The old owners, three sweaty brothers who inherited it from their mom, were salivating to unload.

  Jonson said, Phil Seel tipped me off that they owe some bad people money. Gambling on soccer matches they thought were fixed. I’ll flip it to an electronics conglomerate when our film comes out. It would be a conflict of interest to be in the media and in the arts. I had to reduce my liquidity for tax reasons. Steven, the old copy editor, butchered my review of Handsome Scoundrels in Middle Age. I spent hours working on that review, explaining why Marcy, the film’s antagonist, deserved the benefit of the doubt. I haven’t worked so h
ard in years. I skipped a lunch with Lucretia to finish it. After the purchase, I sent her a memo making my wishes clear.

  Marcy did not deserve the benefit of the doubt. This was Jonson’s coffee talking.

  Alaia, our editor. A person’s self-regard increases with the number of vowels in their name. I have been unable to determine if her efforts to raise our profile are cynical boosterism or a passion to let people know about the Market MicroOpera, the Peavey Place Puppeteers, and the Children’s Noh Collective. Those who took a liberal arts degree but also expect to make a living allow their public and private sides to grow together until the observer cannot distinguish if he is beholding a genuine cretin or a person whose faith in networking is akin to a religion.

  Because there are fewer opportunities for trading favors and meeting potential employers in the review of films than there are in the rest of the sections, Alaia leaves Jonson and I alone. We do not go to the office except for pilferage missions and catered lunches.

  It was I who was shortening Jonson’s reviews, including Flypaper, Maquilla’s crossover from tame pop to bland film, along with inserting belligerent asides, transposing character genders, and seeding minds with offensive slang I made up on the rail. I bribe the copy editor with leftover painkillers from my oral surgery. It is a public service I perform without expectation of reward.

  Alaia has never read our reviews. I will prove this to you. She gets cash payments from the chairwoman of the Hub Authority Governance Committee to favorably cover her crooked administration. Restaurants comp her meals and send out bottles of Fauxrdeaux, mille-feuilles, vat-grown crudo. She has Becca or Rich give them a rave. The whole Slaw being her hustle. She touches every buck. Ad money goes in her pocket. The music writers are paid by entertainment conglomerates. It’s all noise. None of the writers mind, as long as they get the attention they seek.

  When you click on my column tomorrow, you will see this review unaltered between the ads for the escorts and the pet psychics. Nobody at the aggregator reads the aggregator. It is my fantasy that all across the Hub, twice a week, theatergoers thumb down to my column in the Slaw with their morning protein goo and their coffee. I have been reluctant to ascertain my actual readership.

  At the diner, the day before the party.

  Jonson said, So why do you want to make a film about a painter? You hate period pieces.

  I said, There’s a difference between a period piece and a film woven from the tapestry of the past. Big ideas need a grand, let’s say, canvas. My theme, the everlasting power of art and its physical existence on a superior plane of reality, would tear through the tissue of a film set in the unabsorbent present.

  Jonson said, That reminds me, I had a big idea. It was for a service which would perform apologies for you. I called it Sorriest. A Sorriest rep would sit down with you, and you would delve into the real shit that you think about when you’re in bed late at night, like the time you stole Jeni Morales’s ice cream in elementary school, or if, in many moments of weakness, you strayed from your wife. The Sorriest rep would follow the hurt person around for a few weeks, observing their habits, and then they would perform a specially tailored Grand Apology as a surprise. For you, to give an example, the reps would rent out a theater, stock the bar with Choco Gongs, and screen Inquisitor. The Apologies will culminate in the customer entering in a cream caftan, arms spread for a hug, while a children’s choir sings “I Beg Your Forgiveness.” Maybe we could get a sponsorship thing going, and I could get this off the ground. How do you feel about Altarpiece: brought to you by Sorriest? Then the painter needs to apologize—

  I said, No.

  Jonson said, Well, you want to make this grand gesture, right? I could round up a lot of money for Sorriest. Cross-promotion does wonders. Haupt took Transit money for Omega.

  Philistines always pick this fact about Haupt out of their pocket, where it lies with their grimy coins and ticket stubs for blood sport.

  I said, A film of this magnitude has to be pure.

  Jonson said, I think you’ll find big ideas shrink in the dryer of the market.

  I said, What a pedestrian metaphor. Mine won’t.

  Jonson rented a town house for the party near the Zone.

  He said, People need crannies to hide and talk. A big room is like an accusation. In a way, this party was made with you in mind. When you go in, see how many places there are for you to hide without appearing weird. A successful party is designed for the comfort of its most introverted guest.

  Twenty people work for the Central Hub Slaw but a hundred fifty were in the house and yard when I arrived. Lucretia stood on the porch, looking through the front window. What was she thinking? That she was almost to another landing on the staircase to oblivion, and there she could rest? That even if she turned around, to trudge back to the surface, it was too far to be worth the effort? Her Egyptian cigarettes fogged the lawn. Her skin shone. In each shale pupil a maw of light. It was fortunate that I saw her first. I veered around the house, into the yard. If we were to come together, then we would be forced into conversation out of mutual distaste for the other partygoers.

  Behind the house. A juneberry tree strung with Japanese lanterns. Alaia on a picnic table, bare-legged. The circles closest to her were well dressed and confident. Each clique, going farther from the center, was a little dumpier and slouchier, until the circles ended at the house, where I stood.

  Through the house, opening cans of seltzer, leaving them on shelves. The snotty women who did the music calendar were passing around a vaporizer, tolerating three men, who wanted to bore them with stories of how it was done back in the day. Two boasted. The cunning one was questioning the youngest intern about procedurally generated music. Rich, one of the restaurant critics, sat in a recliner, his shoes forgotten in the yard. He stroked a vain black cat. Rich’s stories were the worst. Even Jonson couldn’t bear his anecdotes of this or that dish, retrograde gastronomy, the charming guest neighborhoods he spent his Saturday afternoons eating in without making eye contact.

  Simmons, the political reporter, mixed drinks. She does not appear to hold any strong convictions but enjoys the narcosis of political reportage. The employees of the paper have nice lives, messy lives. Animals to return to, animals to eat. Even I can not say my life is not comfortable. Threadbare but comfortable.

  The upstairs and main floor bathrooms were occupied, but I managed to find an en suite in the second basement. I drew a bath. On the toilet, I watched the water steam. A mystery for someone to find. People were exploring the house. Two men went into a closet. Laughter and rustling.

  Outside. Because the party increased my social pain, I felt willing to be lectured by Lucretia. She was gone. Dangling from the tree, lanterns shaped like gourds. How awful. Mel, who sold ads for the newspaper and liked to talk about the trivia league she organized, asked who I knew at the party that worked at the paper.

  I said, I’m Alaia’s substance abuse counselor.

  She went around the corner. I wasn’t surprised she didn’t remember me. I am, as they say, nondescript. Even my initials, N.B., lack the dash of an H.V.J., Jonson’s, or a J.O., Osvald’s, who has no middle name. Like me. Two names are enough. No need to be greedy.

  A bugless night. I was glad I came but I could not say why.

  Through the window Jonson stood with Marie, the marketing manager. His hand on her back. Jonson’s eyes were glassy. He was one drink from a lawsuit. Marie was a year or so out of Bast. A pile of books on her nightstand she did not have time to read. He seemed to be fooling her, but maybe she was the sort of person who was generous enough to offer the benefit of the doubt to buffoons. Proud to say she worked in media. Someone who knew where to go at two a.m. on a Tuesday night. Nobody but Alaia and I knew Jonson owned the paper. Maybe three or four of Alaia’s pets, which would mean everybody knew. He didn’t want to be treated any different. I went inside.

  I sai
d, Jonson, your wife wanted you to meet her at the place around the corner for a sandwich when you’re done here. She went there to get some reading done. She also said remember not to drink too much because you know what happens. Marie, can you help me for a second? I was wondering how to access the film reviews on my Pinger. I am quite stupid and can never get them to load.

  14.

  DON’T BOTHER

  DIR. LOGAN BRODER

  81 MINUTES

  This remake of Hans Rayjan’s classic takes from the original only its premise that humans receive a signal, assumed to be sentient in origin, from distant star Ceta 44. Rayjan’s film is confined to a conference center where flunkies, lickspittles, men Friday, assistant assistants, sycophants, doormats, and kiss-asses maneuver to set the terms of contact with extraterrestrials.

  Mr. Balanbalan, head of the Romanian Space Agency, argues his city should host the antenna to broadcast a signal back at Ceta 44, because Bucharest has “the bravest rocket comrades.” Dr. Tereshkova challenges June Ballou to a fistfight over the last blondie. Professor Rawls imitates his peers on prank calls to their spouses after a few drinks. At the conclusion of Rayjan’s film, the countries decide not to send a signal to the aliens, because they can’t agree on an equitable way to share the credit. It is a girl in her garage with a science-fair radio antenna who sends the message, Don’t Bother.

  The remake dispenses with the comedy in favor of an oatmeal of choral music and watery humanism. Monuments are disrespected with frequency. I will no longer be able to visit a museum or a bridge without imagining it being obliterated by a laser beam.

  Broder is among our worst directors and our most profitable. I sort of admire his financial sense, for working in the blockbuster milieu, for making the numbers work, long after their time has passed. One can’t help but root for the ambitious.