A Short Film About Disappointment

by Joshua Mattson

  Jonson hosts a dinner on the last day of each month celebrating Old Europe. One night last spring, the theme was Portugal. Salt cod, a snowy wedge of Graciosa, cloying vinho verde, an incorrect but uncorrected reference to El Greco, and a flat anecdote of a missed connection in Lisbon circulated the room.

  As a general rule, I have abandoned male conversation. I’ve heard enough about the virtues of weight lifting, yardage, beer, games, difficult books. When a man speaks to me, my instinct is to extricate myself.

  Killing time with the aperitif, in Jonson’s study. A tall, beautiful man approached me near Jonson’s collection of stuffed thylacines, where I was arranging a tryst between two of the rougher specimens and a fertility icon Lucretia had bought, probably from a bent curator. The beautiful man’s money was in his shoes. The shoes were too good. They went well past genteel prosperity into vulgarity or parody. He had the slouch common among the arrogant, the fake guy-on-the-street, trying to convey a state of relaxation, which somehow manages to be insouciant and insulting at the same time. Such persons conflate success with character.

  He said, Jonson pointed you out. You’re that other critic?

  I said, Yes.

  He said, I’m Rolf.

  I said, Hi, Ralph.

  Rolf said, Rolf Millings, of the Upper Lake Shore Drive Millingses.

  First I told him my name was Daniel Chivo. Then I said it was Jarvis Fillingswimble. After a pause for no laughter I gave him my real name, Noah Body.

  Rolf said, What do you think of Broder? He’s my favorite.

  I said, I think he’s a fraternity hack, Raul. The proprietor of a nonunion circus. A fracker of cinema for its crudest lessons.

  Rolf said, That’s harsh and misleading. His films get raves, as far as I’ve seen.

  Phil Seel said, One man’s pyrite is another’s treasure.

  Seel was paging through a catalogue of tapestries. He wasn’t interested in our conversation but had been storing this quip too long and needed to air it out before it was eaten by moths. Bespectacled, sickly, with hair the shade of instant coffee. Phil laid rail. He had been in charge of establishing the Southwestern Hub and was somewhat responsible for that region’s recent cultural supremacy. Rumors that he was in charge of opening another Hub in Canada, another in the remains of Seattle. His passions were Grecian olisbos, flight, faking an accent that couldn’t be placed.

  He said, The mythologies of copulation are the true history of our species.

  During dinner parties, it was inevitable he say this in the wilderness between the dessert and the digestif. It is easier for a busy person to have a few aphorisms than to reinvent their plastic self for every conversation.

  Phil was tan from twenty years in the Aegean sun, negotiating the purchase of antiquities for his private collection. They no longer keep tabs on their old stuff. Anyone can print their own copies now. What is the utility of the original? Seel looks like he is smiling especially when he isn’t. Every year his happiness compounding. To walk in his private museum, to look at the beautiful objects wrought by the dead, was his afterlife. There could be nothing better. Seel’s life growing in and over those objects. The earth turning over and pushing up what was buried. The pale scar slaloming over his forehead was punishment for cheating on his second wife.

  The way Jonson told it, Seel’s wife hired guys to castrate Seel. The guys thought her request in poor taste. Beneath her.

  One goon said, What’s wrong with her?

  The other goon said, We aren’t animals.

  The first goon said, I have two master’s degrees.

  The other goon said, I’m learning Mandarin.

  In the diner where they scheduled their collections, robberies, anniversaries.

  On the day of the beating Seel was buying his girlfriend orthodontia. Outside the clinic they gave him a beating, paid for with his own money. Ten thousand dollars buys a lot of violence. It was not rarefied violence but the portions were ample. Seel’s girlfriend finished her appointment, and left the clinic to witness the guys beat Seel up. Seeing the pink rubber bands in her braces, the guys laid off. Laughing. One of the guys did the gash on Seel’s forehead with his thumbnail. It was for brand recognition, nothing personal. Seel is grateful. Intense experiences justify us. He can go places he couldn’t go in comfort before: the garage, the track, certain charging stations.

  From the dining room, I heard Jonson pounding out a clumsy rhythm on his mealtime djembe. We took our seats around the table. Jonson placed placards indicating where the guests should sit.

  During the part of the meal I was present for, Lucretia and Seel did not converse for more than a few minutes, made strong eye contact, and sat apart at the table. What I would say in her position if I were accused is: nothing. I would laugh and make an incredulous face, if Osvald was feeling cooperative. Seel has such a lecherous air of scholarship about him it’s hard to imagine any woman, much less a specimen like Lucretia Jonson, taking him seriously. Although Lucretia could be tired of taking Jonson seriously. Her husband was like a strict diet. Seel the person she enjoys without intentions. We sponge whatever puddles of attention we discover.

  Earlier in the night. Jonson with his punch and fist of crudités. His wife walked by. He made a rude noise of appreciation, she smiled over her shoulder, a private smile, with promises.

  Jonson said, That poor Seel. He must be a real bore to go on a date with. Can you imagine him laying on that phony thick Greek and talking about his sailboat while you try to enjoy dinner? He’s from Dakota. Telling you how they used to eat pussy on Crete? Quoting the Odyssey? I don’t get it. The women seem to like him, though, or it’s safe to pretend they like him, because he isn’t threatening. I think it’s his sleaze. You and me, we hide it, he unbuttons his shirt further. Every year it’s another button.

  I had the poor fortune to sit next to Rolf Millings. He returned to Broder. He would not shut up about the greatness of Plunder, Broder’s heist opus about the theft of the World Seed Bank.

  Millings said, Plunder is like those Russian dolls. There’s a story within a story within a story. You keep prying the dolls open. Every time I watch it, there’s a smaller and more intricate doll. All the dolls have different faces. I never had this conception of film until Broder. To find the infinite point, like the universe before the Big Bang, in these great films, where all matter is concentrated. Whenever I go to the movies, because of Broder, I’m looking for that singularity, in which nothing can be seen and nothing understood.

  I do not brag to Dr. Lisa of correct diagnoses I have made. Rail operators are not accustomed to hearing what I think are the best stops. I don’t tell lawyers which are the most profound statutes. To musicians, I do not insist on the preeminence of a favorite chord. Each person is allowed one topic to be both mystical and smug about, and ought to choose it with care.

  Lucretia explained the function of Tut’s fake beard. His tomb had been printed last month at the Facsimile Museum, across from the Bangladeshi Quarter. Seel futzed with his Pinger during her lecture. Maybe he had heard it already. He was waiting to deliver his lines. Dinner may be a rehearsal for their privacy. I have grown to detest the word maybe.

  A mortician or a professor of dance complained about how long he had to wait for his domestic help to arrive this morning to fix his breakfast. A woman remarked to nobody in particular that dinner parties seemed to be longer when she was young, now they were so brief, it was sit down, eat, goodbye. Nobody spoke of children. The Jonsons do not invite parents to their table. Lucretia lost a child early in pregnancy.

  Jonson went into the kitchen to speak with the caterer, a moody man to whom his relationship was akin to confessor and priest. When he returned, his face was red. Broder’s knight leaned over. Lapping us with his wineglass twice, three times.

  Millings said, Come on, admit Plunder is good.

  I said, No.

>   Millings said, Don’t be pretentious.

  I said, I am giving you my honest opinion. I don’t think Plunder is a good film. I think it is a dangerous film.

  He said, A film can’t be dangerous. Picking a contrary position for the sake of coolness is the opposite of cool. I know what cool is. See me? Cool. I’m an Antarctic cucumber. I rode here on a beautiful refurbished bike, with a brand-new solar cell. How did you get here? Walk?

  I said, Yes, I walked from the rail station.

  He said, When you say that Plunder isn’t a great film, you’re saying that it is a film for the masses, and you think you’re too good to be one of us. Because, you know, cool isn’t your shit, the obscure shit, the shit you’d use to impress people, cool is what the cool people like, cool is what the masses are into, cool is another demographic, it isn’t whatever shit you were watching all alone on Friday night fifteen years ago. Cool is consensus. Cool brings us together rather than separates us into a shitty hierarchy of taste.

  Mashing his bolinhos with pewter teeth. He ought to brush. We were talking out of the corners of our mouths, at a low volume. Jonson saw my face. He shook his head. I spoke a little louder.

  I said, I have never been cool. I consider these labels not applicable to my experience. Because of how information is now available, it is easy for any person to find a group within which they belong and a group they consider worthy of attack. There has not been a consensus on hipness or fitting in for many decades now, if ever, and I’m not sure why these ideas persist.

  He said, That’s convenient. You ever been in a fistfight?

  I said, Yes.

  He said, I doubt that. You don’t look like the type.

  I said, Is fighting cool?

  Millings said, No, it isn’t. I’m never looking for a fight. There seems to be a connection between the passive, brainy approach to cinema and those types of living, and the more action-oriented, Broder-style type of living. Marrying thought to action. Like, I have my beliefs, and you better believe I’m going to back them up if I have to. What will you do, write an essay?

  Guests checked their Pingers, looked away from us.

  I said, What beliefs? I’m not sure which I have that would be worth fighting over beyond the standard, boring, universal ones. A belief, as I understand it, is flexible. It never needs to be fought for if it is self-evident. For instance, common conceptions of morality. The only worthwhile beliefs are small and not to be mentioned to others.

  Millings said, Beliefs never need to be fought over? What about freedom! What about what we have done for our guests? We went and died so they could come here and live in safety.

  I said, We, the people at this table, did not do anything. Other people died in an unfortunate geopolitical maneuver. They will continue to do so until the end of nation-states and sects and identities or until the last person has died.

  Millings said, We saved those guests from the chaos of their home countries.

  Richer guests nodded, poorer smirked.

  I said, Who created that chaos? When our guests come here, they are virtual slaves for five years. How is that freedom? Would you pick tomatoes for five years, for a room in a firetrap sixteen nodes away from the Safe Zone, where you have to be worried about being raped if you are a woman and lynched or arrested if you are a man?

  Wine gulped. Angry that I was forced into this position, to make a statement, to use words to prove what I didn’t care to prove.

  Millings said, It’s not like that here. We have peace and order.

  I said, At a cost that’s difficult for us to bear. I live in a guest neighborhood, I know what their lives are like.

  Millings said, You don’t look like a guest. You look like you grew up a hundred miles from the node and never wanted for anything.

  I said, I never made a claim to speak for them.

  He said, Broder speaks for them. He speaks to universal experiences. When I go see a Broder film, I see guests in the audience, because they’re dreamers, Broder is a dreamer, and together we are all dreaming a special dream.

  I said, Broder makes films for teenage boys. Enthusiasm for the man’s work is longing for a return to sugary breakfast cereal, a mother’s servitude, maniacal self-abuse in one’s bunk bed. What is there to like in Plunder? The expensive jackets of the heist crew? Their cars? The deforming surgeries performed on the female lead? The fascism of his set designs? The implication that the Seed Bank, a thing built in Europe, with European money, with European diligence, staffed responsibly by Europeans for decades, ought to be given to American agencies and corporations so they can fuck with what they didn’t have the foresight to save for the good of the world? Plunder was subsidized by the government. That isn’t rumor, that is a documented truth. It is propaganda as much as entertainment.

  Millings said, It doesn’t matter where money comes from. I’ve made a lot of it. It all spends the same. There are no clean dollars. Broder is a visionary. We’re talking of epic cinema. Epic cinema requires money. Anything worth doing requires money. You wouldn’t understand that, though. We’re talking about the greater good.

  I said, Epic is a word used by idiots to apply to excessive and insulting spectacles. He’s repackaging old blockbusters with updated effects. In twenty years his films will look dated and bloated.

  He said, I’ve never seen anything like it.

  A little slur. I neveh see anhthing like it. Biting off the end of his sentence like it was a piece of jerky.

  I said, That doesn’t make it special.

  He said, Every era has a Michelangelo. Broder’s ours. There’s talent and there’s people like you who have none. All you do is comment. You’re making content for people to read while they take the rail, so they don’t have to make eye contact with the person across from them. Nobody will remember who you’re watching.

  I said, Someone has to bring attention to the world’s underappreciated filmmakers. That’s why I do what I do. Your toilet will advise you to go see the new Broder every time you shit. Who is going to tell you about Weide or Haupt? Who will announce these people have something to offer the human spirit?

  Millings said, Let them disappear. Cinema is a meritocracy. The best films get seen by the most people.

  A noise as if I were being tortured escaped me.

  I said, Without the dignity of our artistic process, the Underunited States is the narcotized, militarized ghetto the rest of the world assumes us to be.

  Millings said, Listen, buddy. You better watch your mouth. You might get slapped, huh? I know a few people in the Transit Authority. You won’t see shit if you get your papers yanked. I suggest you apologize for that remark immediately.

  I opened my mouth but my Pinger went off, an emergency ping, loud enough to startle the whole table.

  Jonson pinged, i forbid you to fight this guy over a Broder flick / please make excuse and leave / sorry / will make it up to you

  I said, I have to go. I would rather staple my penis to my leg than listen to you speak.

  He said, Give Broder another shot, will you? You might see something new. We have to be willing to look. Tell you what, I’ll get your Pinger from Jonson, we’ll go together this week. I’ll get one of those private theaters down off the Drive. We’ll have a little marathon.

  Generous in victory, as his type tended to be. I felt his smile all the way down the elevator.

  Walking out. A motorcycle. Was that a brand-new solar cell? It was. I rolled it over to the sunken plaza, shoved. A series of discrete, satisfying crunching noises. Somewhere, I didn’t doubt, a camera caught it, but I was confident Jonson would pay the fine and the bill. How would they get it out of there?

  Jonson pinged, sorry / we buy out the conspicuous next weekend / you yell at the screen all nite / millings sez sorry / too much to drink

  I pinged, you got a deal / apology accepted / good
bolinhos / maybe a little more salt next time / tell lucretia thanks

  15.

  INQUISITOR

  DIR. VERNE GYULA

  236 MINUTES

  Osvald’s birthday today. Facts should be discarded when they no longer have use. Distances, measurements, Pinger IDs. Sounds and particular sentences that were formed for one’s hearing. On memories spreads pain’s mildew.

  I wonder what Isabel bought him.

  About a decade ago, for his birthday, we threw a party. There was no food. We were too young to know the manners of good hosting. Osvald arrived late to our living room, as was the style. The bargain liquor insulted one’s organs. Within an hour he was sick on the staircase. Though they were no longer dating, Karolina brought Osvald home to soil her room. She was a generous woman. She stocked the kiosks at Bast as her student job, and she would let Osvald and me loot the storeroom. I wonder what happened to her. I was saddened at Osvald’s failure to enjoy his party. These people assembled for him, sort of. He didn’t get to enjoy their affection, their kind words, their jokes. Osvald wasn’t the locus of attention. That woman that he liked with the piercings showed up two hours after he was dragged off.

  I left his gift, Haupt’s Record of a Bad Time, on his desk. The book, Haupt’s diary detailing the production of Mind Under Matter, includes notes Haupt took while spying on the actors, in his attempt to make them paranoid on-screen.

  During the party, the woman with the piercings wandered into his room, handled his things, stretched on his bed for a minute. Her joints popping. I invited her to leave birthday wishes inside the cover of the Record. She smelled like cold water and her attention span was not sentimental enough to linger anywhere too long. I let her take a nugget of talc from his desk. Osvald collected minerals.

  The next morning, he mopped. Hangovers moved through us like glaciers. I taunted him with my impression of Csonka, captain of the starship Inquisitor.