A Short Film About Disappointment

by Joshua Mattson

  I said, Theese ess a leetle bochs. In theese bochs, the secrets of our generasion. The possebeeleties off our future weethin.

  We had met in a film class at Bast, on the first day of college. The Holy Eye: On the Religious in Science Fiction, 21 Yarl Hall, Tuesday five to ten p.m. Soon we began to make films in conjunction with or adjacent to one another, as our ideas and time demanded. We thought we would be filmmakers, as if this were a permanent condition.

  How we know our friends when we meet them. A capacity for secrets. Above everything, the ability to suspend judgment of us. Each of us can be good to a few people. If you have had the good fortune to encounter only those you can be kind to, then it is no achievement on your part.

  An eerie starship, traveling for hundreds of years, its mission unclear. A disturbed, blessed captain. Csonka has steered Inquisitor too long.

  Osvald said, Csonka is a vessel for holiness and not necessarily a person per se.

  I said, My chob ees to pretek theese bochs. Ef ew don undeerstand, the whole feuture ees contained een theese bochs.

  The adjunct asked the class what meaning we assigned to the Starboard Exhaust Manifold, where a device told the future of crew members, provided they met criteria the film does not clarify. The rituals of the ship were perpetuated by the AI to ensure long-term stability. The demands for sacrifice, taboos, and the elevation of fools to the priesthood caused political instability, so Captain Csonka maintained control. Osvald thought Inquisitor was a spoof of belief. I saw it as the expression of an ethnographic impulse.

  Whoever espouses the idiotic theory that Inquisitor populates Earth with its savage, superstitious, devolved crew is my enemy. A woman who sat near us, Miriam, introduced our class to this idea, based on the names of the two janitors, Ad’em and If. There is no proof. Osvald caught me squeezing a tube of epoxy in her bike lock.

  He said, Who does she think she is, trying to turn Verne Gyula’s profound film into an episode of Outer Space Chronicles?

  I said, It’s a shame to wreck a good lock like this.

  He said, Yes, it’s too bad.

  Then we were friends. Friendship requires conservation of resources. Something must be withheld. A lease was signed, lost. On Sunday mornings, we watched Inquisitor while convalescing from Saturday’s bitter revels.

  Osvald sent the ailing director pings about the film, if a meaning could be established, if meaning was compatible with experience. Inquisitor was made to be screened in prisons. Gyula did not respond. Osvald who took my marriage.

  16.

  THE FINAL SECRET // THEY’RE COMING FOR US!

  DIR. ANDERSON ROGIER

  40 MINUTES // 57 MINUTES

  A matinee double feature at Original Cin, playing for the next three days.

  Rachel Wilcher, a dissolute podiatrist, proved that the radio bands that allowed for wireless broadband Internet were responsible for the epidemic of credulity observed in the industrialized world twenty years ago.

  Her findings ignored, and her severe stutter mocked, she was eventually institutionalized. Rachel was the node drunk, perhaps because of her difficulties getting taken seriously. Before being put away, she could be found of an evening in the town square, tooling around on a bicycle in the raw.

  In the theater with me, a buffet of casualties. An elderly woman hooted at each factoid and spit on the floor when the government was mentioned. A couple emptied a bucket of fried lima nuggets. Authoritarian children chanted freely. I saw two Transit Authority spies, identifiable by their posture, taking notes on who was laughing and who wasn’t.

  In The Final Secret, Rogier posits that the government of the United States discredited Wilcher. He suggests the powers that be, fearing the chaos that the worldwide cessation of broadband data would engender, fed Wilcher a diet of boutique psychedelics to keep her unhinged.

  At intermission, patrons posed with a cardboard cutout of Rogier. Pictures were six dollars a pop. It seemed that an extra two feet were added to Rogier’s height. I slung my arm around his waist, like we were on a date.

  In They’re Coming for Us!, Rogier claimed that the refugees of the Confidence Crisis engineered the collapse of their countries to force the Underunited States to allow them refuge.

  After the end of the film, I was first in the lobby. Finding the cutout unguarded, I absconded with Rogier.

  He’s in my kitchen now, with Lawrence, my AlmostPerson.

  Lawrence said, Who is this gentleman?

  I said, He’s your new friend Rogier. He’s the prince of muckrakers.

  Lawrence said, He seems rather flat.

  I said, Spend some time with him, Lawrence. You’ll find he’s deeper than you might guess.

  17.

  FLOWERS WHICH EAT MEN

  DIR. ANTONIO ZACCARDI

  145 MINUTES

  I was in Windsor, Son, Uncle & Daughters Books looking through Zaccardi’s Selected Images, a large, lush volume, a thousand color pages, composed of stills from his films. The high-quality stock captured the saturation of his images, the specificity of his light. No words. For weeks it had been my habit to come to the shop and flip through their copy. The clerk tired of taking it out of storage and placing it on a lectern. It is some forty pounds. He left it in a reading nook for me, on a table, underneath dictionaries. As far as I could tell, nobody had touched it since my last visit.

  Best is the section from Flowers Which Eat Men. Zaccardi’s lovers, the performance artists Cereality, scored that film, ruining it with screeching, flushing, the breathing of a long-distance runner. Could you adore a beautiful person with a high-pitched grating voice? After their split, Zaccardi decided to redo the sound for the film but never got around to it.

  Who was this over my shoulder, looking with me? To get them to leave, I flipped to a still from The Harvests of Old Age, of a nude elderly man.

  Millings said, That motorcycle you wrecked at Jonson’s was my mother’s.

  I said, She must have been a dumb woman to give it to you.

  Millings said, You’re going to get your ass kicked.

  He picked up a copy of The Art and Science of Spreading Blame.

  I said, In front of all the cameras? Where will you find a place without a camera?

  He said, I can make the cameras go away.

  I said, No, you can’t. If you had that much juice, you would have hit me already, or you would have sent people around to my apartment.

  He said, Your place in Miniature Aleppo. I know where it is.

  I said, So?

  He said, Expect a visit.

  Flipping through the book, Millings got a paper cut on his thumb. Sucking at the blood, he looked more infant than tycoon. It was hard to feel threatened.

  I said, I look forward to it. Once you cross my threshold, it is my legal right to stick you with whatever happens to be at hand. Jonson brought me a spear from the African Union. It’s from some printer factory in Addis Ababa, shilled to people who want to hang a piece of the Real Africa on their wall. I pass slow evenings throwing it at Lawrence, my AlmostPerson. I don’t hit exactly what I’m aiming for, but I hit something four times out of five. Up the back staircase there are no cameras.

  He said, You won’t see me coming.

  I said, I’ll smell that tremendous cologne you wear long before you come. Are you really still sore about the motorcycle and the fish? How do you know I had anything to do with the fish, outside the Globe Theater? Anyway, Millings, I’m trying to look at this special book, so either do your violence or go play in the street.

  He said, I wouldn’t think of it, in a place like this. My mother used to bring me to bookstores when I was young. She was a specialist on Yugoni, the poet. You like him?

  I said, No.

  He said, Yes, he might be too populist for the likes of you. His name is easy to pronounce. I bet that turns you off.
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  I said, Millings, look at this image. How do you suppose Zaccardi got these colors? If there is an afterlife, I will be visiting him some afternoons.

  He said, If you continue to pester me, I will make sure you get your chance to ask him soon.

  I said, You can’t expect me to believe you’re going to murder me because I allegedly threw some fish on you and possibly bumped your motorcycle, which I’m sure was insured. If you will threaten me, at least make it credible.

  He said, You’re right, where are my manners. I’m not going to murder you. A couple punches will suffice. If you like, you can come to my place, and I will take it easy. I am forgiving. Say one good punch to the jaw, one to the nose. You can even swing back. I’ll pour you a drink afterward. Show you how I’m living. There’s something I like about you. Anyway, here’s my card. Think about it. But don’t think too long, because otherwise who knows when it may happen. Control is very important. I would advise you, while you still have control, to make amends.

  A holocard of a building with his residence within flashing in red.

  He said, Good day. I have an appointment to make.

  Millings stopped at the counter and arranged for a stack of photography books to be delivered to his apartment. He and the clerk shared a confidence. A blush came to her cheeks. In my peripheral, I saw him gesturing toward me, the clerk nodding. Out the door.

  I said, What did he say?

  She said, That guy said anything you want in the store is on him. Go ahead and charge it. His exact words were, I’ll buy him the whole store if he wants.

  I said, I’ll take the Zaccardi, then. And the whole section of vintage skin magazines. Can you gift wrap and deliver the magazines by courier?

  She said, Sure.

  I gave him Jonson’s address.

  She said, Who from?

  I said, Please write, With love, the mayor’s office. And whatever else you want, for yourself.

  So Millings thought himself a gentleman. Did I deserve this treatment? Neither destroying his motorcycle after the party nor throwing the herring from that apartment’s compost bin on him while he sat in the plaza were cause to put his hands on me. I had been unfair but I would never present myself at his condominium, like a supplicant, to be punched out. He would have to come find me, in the full view of the Hub cameras, to get his satisfaction.

  Carrying the Zaccardi out of the shop. East up the street, toward the rail, to catch my local. The Zaccardi was heavy, so I clutched it to my chest with both arms. What treasure. Taking the corner, a detonation behind my right ear. My legs lost strength and I blacked out a moment. When I came to, I was lying on the sidewalk. It had scraped the side of my face. Some blood. In my occiput, a blustering pain. The trousers of a man in my peripheral. He picked at his cuffs.

  He said, You better get over to Mr. Millings’s place.

  He was holding a very large, even inappropriate, coffee. He began to turn the pages of the Zaccardi, trickling coffee on the images. One still, from The Tree Which Is the Family Property, reminded him of something, or struck him, and he spared it from the coffee. It was of a mother and two sons eating beneath the tree on a cloudy afternoon. After a while he tired of this, and dumped the remainder on my head. He walked off. A young couple turned the corner and helped me to sit against a wall.

  The woman said, Do you want us to call a doctor?

  I said, No. The camera is right there. If they want to come, they will come.

  The man said, At least let us help you get home.

  I said, Sit here with me a minute. Look at my book.

  The woman said, Oh, you spilled your coffee on it. That’s too bad.

  The man said, It must have been an expensive book.

  The idea for the attack on me was stolen from Broder’s Capo. He knew I would be annoyed by the reference. The capo meets a snitch in a bakery, where the snitch is picking up a cake for his daughter’s birthday. The capo smiles, tells him everything is forgiven, buys a baguette. The capo drops the baguette, and the baker offers him another one, familiar with his reputation. The snitch walks around the corner, and the capo’s man stabs him in the chest. The snitch, shocked, sets the cake on the ground as gently as is possible. Then the celebrated shot of the capo’s man stepping in the cake as he runs away, which nobody mentions is stolen from Sergei Vasiliev’s High Noon in Saratov.

  18.

  SECRETS OF SUMAC MOUNTAIN

  DIR. GRETCHEN SALZBLATT

  80 MINUTES

  The night Isabel and I got together, I was pounding Bletcher’s Diet Lager in the Horoscope. She hollered across the rebarbative rail techs, an empty stool. The bartender’s pinched face, his rescue snakes the inevitable subject of his conversation. You’d leave alone, feeling okay, thinking maybe you ought to get one. Walking home, you brainstormed names that would be fit for a boa constrictor, feeling hopeful for nothing in particular.

  She said, Hey, you. You look like Jeff from Secrets of Sumac Mountain.

  I said, No, I don’t.

  She said, Don’t I know you from somewhere?

  I said, Yes, you know me from somewhere.

  Et cetera. It happens every night everywhere. I can’t report with accuracy what happened. The mallet of dawn in late spring. I walked on the wet sidewalk and felt grateful. Head throbbing. Osvald complained about her slamming the door. When I returned to my room to gloat, I saw that she had left her belt, a wide white synth-leather strap flung near my desk, marring the wall where the buckle hit. She’d swept aside my clothes to draw attention to it, coiled on the floor. Women left their accessories to ensure you’d ping, but the accessories were expendable, in case you didn’t. One never found an heirloom watch in one’s sheets or a treasured necklace on one’s desk.

  I can remember the terrible line I used to invite her over the following week. A twinkle of panic pressing send. The line was, I want to take you out, or in, tonight. The events of my life are smoke, floating away, rising.

  Secrets of Sumac Mountain is garden-variety Salzblatt. See it Wednesday at the Old Rodeo Cinema. A sleepy town, Sumac Mountain, dew in the morning. A flour town, as they say. This was before guests made it in numbers to the small communities off of the nodes. Delivering the paper, Jeff observes a prominent businessman eating hair. How come? The entertainment options in Sumac Mountain are few. He follows the developer. He sees what might be a murder. His crush, Emilia, works at the bakery. It’s Maquilla, supposedly retired from singing, in her Serious and Dissolute Actress phase. She has a secret. They meet in a dream. The next day, Jeff is ashamed, proud.

  The theatergoer adopts a pet auteur, a fringe artist to advocate for, to buttress his or her individuality. Salzblatt was Isabel’s. Her favorite Salzblatt was Christmas, which she saw on our catastrophic and embarrassing second date. Her popcorn forgotten. The dentist’s scene that was condemned by the mayor of the Eastern Hub.

  Isabel who was my wife. I don’t see her well anymore. Her face is like the face on a coin. The mold deforms as years of minting pass. Singing in her low voice as she brushed her hair. The curtains in our apartment were white, aspirational, billowing in the wind from ceiling to floor. Coming home, throwing her purse, a boot; next, her earrings, dress, bracelets, tights, bobby pins. Coming home, finding her naked, slumped over her Pinger, her shoulders folded in, her nose greasing the screen. A nest of wrappers marking her personal space.

  Maybe she will find Altarpiece to be not as good as Salzblatt’s best work, but better than most of her early and midperiod films.

  19.

  BRUJA

  DIR. MARIA BOQUERONES

  94 MINUTES

  Altarpiece will be made. During the previews to Bruja, Jonson agreed to finance Altarpiece up to three-point-six million dollars below the line and postproduction, with costs above the line to be negotiated as options manifest.

  After the movie, we sat
on the curb outside the Runaway Seven. From within his coat, Jonson produced for each of us a cinnabar banana. Jonson, Jonson, Jonson. Today’s locus of my affection. Who needs a person? I have my friend, my financier, the father-to-be of Altarpiece.

  He plucked at his trousers. My legs kept drifting apart and slamming together. I find underwear to be an affectation. It is his habit to suggest a drink after twenty minutes of conversation. At the sidewalk tables, men dawdled over pale ales wondering if they had what it takes to fly hydrogen blimps. Mothers presented babies with soft objects to gnaw. Farther on, couples were entangled in the riverbank’s permissive murk.

  Jonson wore a straw boater. I did not mock it, because of the financing he offered. It might be nice to char the brim. To mail it back as scraps.

  His demands include an executive producer credit, creative input, assistant director. His name would feature prominently in the opening titles. But there will be neither opening titles nor credits. Jonson made this money, hidden from Lucretia, investing in AlmostPeople.

  He said, I’m going to surprise her with the film. She’ll be thrilled. We keep talking about how we need to get serious about our cultural engagement. She wants us to donate a wing to the Facsimile Museum, but that’s too safe. Wings are stuffy. We’re young, adventurous. Wings are for people with gout and hearing loss. We didn’t even make it to the gala this year. Why spend money on the floor, on the light fixtures, when we can make something to project on the wall?

  AlmostPeople are animatronic life-size dolls, in a variety of body types, programmed to listen intently to their user’s problems and affirm them with up to twenty thousand programmed phrases, such as, That’s so true, Who does he/she think he/she is?, Don’t let yourself be treated that way, You’re better than that, and so on.

  It turns out that to have the appearance of authenticity, the listener must appear to be somewhat distracted.