A Short Film About Disappointment

by Joshua Mattson

  Here, Dr. Lisa inside. My hot chocolate was gone and I sipped hers before it cooled. My favor to her. Dr. Lisa was screaming. She ought to be screaming. If she wasn’t, then she had not risked much in her life, and should be pitied. The coffee shop opened early, closed late, and the room was, except on certain exceptional days, continuously occupied.

  Some feelings you cannot allow yourself. Try it on, but if it doesn’t fit, don’t buy it. If it doesn’t thrill you, that’s how it is. Those feelings are for others. What I put my small trust in is the veracity of aesthetic experience, which is pleasure’s sister. There is nothing else, no feeling, no person, no language, that can be counted on. There is nothing else that might not be gone tomorrow. Sit with your family, your friends, your partner, look at their faces, and try to tell yourself otherwise. If you can, you can. That is no crime. For me, the privacy of aesthetic experience is the pebble of eternity I will carry in my pocket as long as I am able. Maybe my pebble of eternity is small, but it is light, and I can tuck it away where it is never seen.

  Minutes running from the tap. After screaming, crying. After crying, relief. After relief, back on the parapet to resume one’s watch. Dr. Lisa sat. Her eyes swollen. The mugs, the sleeves of her sweater. This was all. Going to eat, sleeping, fashioning something of value through repetitive movements. Feeling pain and being sure some kinds were avoidable, being unable to distinguish which.

  42.

  TRIAL

  DIR. OTTO TORONI

  27 MINUTES

  The aperture of the day opening and closing. What is life, what is living, is to come. We are in rehearsal. Rome, the year Bernini completed his titanic Saint Longinus. Jonson proud to speak the Roman dialect.

  He said, We ought to go together sometime. From the port, it’s a half-hour trip. We could leave after lunch and be sitting in the Piazza Navona by cocktail hour.

  Ignoring the ruinous expense of suborbital flight, the terrible heights, that the majority of Rome is printed, with the original artworks long buried in vaults against water and weapons.

  It reminds me of Trial. You can see Trial at the Murphy Park Library, sub-basement, Tuesday night, refreshments provided.

  Bernini was forty when he saw his little brother, twenty-five, leaving the house of Bernini’s girlfriend. Bernini chased his brother across Rome, beating him, breaking his ribs, trying to skewer him on a rapier. The murder of a brother is not so uncommon. His brother took refuge in the basilica across the street from the Bernini palazzo. Bernini waited on the steps with the patience of a great artist.

  Their mother, looking out the window, came out to break up the fight. To the papal cops she lamented what he’d become, her arrogant son, who claimed to serve their god. Bernini sent their eldest servant to his girlfriend’s mansion, bearing a gift of wine. When she took the wine from the servant, he slashed her face with a razor. Bernini, a favorite of the pope, was not punished.

  Jonson’s pinged me. Lucretia’s missing again. Got to run. I suppose I’ve given you a sense of the film, anyway.

  43.

  THE BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

  DIR. VERA DUNN

  56 MINUTES

  At the Facsimile Museum, looking for inspiration for Altarpiece.

  Guest children on school trips in the lobby. Laughing, running. The relief of being anywhere but school. Blissful teachers in the hallways. A cairn of backpacks up to the tip of the Moai’s nose. My Pinger began to whine, booting the museum’s guide. I didn’t need it. Any room would do. A guest selling hard-boiled eggs and licorice.

  I have never been to one of the great original museums. I took the elevator to the eleventh floor, period furniture. Elderly women resting. A man snored in one of the Le Corbusier couches. Overcast outside. High-rises like blades of grass. Someone’s dog wandering through the gallery.

  The wait for the printer in the Ruining Room was over an hour, which disappointed me, because I hoped to shove over a David. For hundreds of years, he received our worship and now the king suffers the indignity of being smashed every day. It is easier to think about something you have power over. This explains the explosion of interest in our historical processes since the proliferation of printed museums. One doesn’t need to bring the saccharine respect required of the original museums. One can be one’s boorish authentic self.

  Isabel had a clay Nefertiti bust she would hurl at me. When she slept, drained by her anger, I went out to the kiosk to get a replacement. The Ruining Room. A curator had printed Uccello’s Saint Paul, in which he has the sword, but the children were too frightened to approach it with their markers. They slashed Kandinsky abstractions and glopped paint on a Hals. A large Al-Bayati drawing was being torn into little strips and scribbled on.

  Jonson pinged, see yr at the museo / i am in nayborehood ;(

  I pinged, ya / almost done

  Jonson pinged, meet at older sister? found lucretia / she was at home

  I pinged, ya

  Jonson pinged, 20 mins / patio

  I was two platforms away from Older Sister but Jonson beat me to the terrace.

  Jonson’s table manners are fastidious and infuriating. He takes notes of every meal, for a vanity book he plans to publish one day, working title My Stomach and I. He had a programmer develop an app on his Pinger that automatically photographs, dates, and arranges his meals of the day so he can compare how he has eaten today with, say, last March’s breakfasts. I have entertained myself attempting to imitate his way of plucking straws from cocktails. The twitch of contempt in the lip. He lays the wet end on his napkin.

  Seel in the street. Walking over to the patio.

  He says, What are you two doing here?

  What if I said something about the female company Seel keeps? Would Jonson jump on him, abandon his manners, strike him with the carafe of mineral water? Would Seel beg forgiveness or would he sneer? Remorse does not like to be displayed for others, but is compelled to exhibit itself. A conciliating smile. A misunderstanding, gentlemen. Let’s calm down. I, the craven angel of mercy unsure when to draw my sword, strike down Jonson.

  Jonson says, Sit.

  Dropping patties of bullshit on the table. I was not issued the equipment to pretend to like a person. Seel, telling us about Greece, kept alternating between looking into Jonson’s eyes and mine. What disturbing charisma. Seel looking at the space between our eyes and eyebrows, which produced an optical effect of penetrating attention. He hasn’t bothered to get the hair treatment, but whether this is a demonstration of power or genuine indifference to his appearance is not clear. The male pattern baldness sets him apart. Maybe this is his mating strategy.

  One of Jonson’s best and worst qualities is his tendency to accept people as they present themselves, without tests or traps to see to what extent they are putting him on. He is less deceptive than the average and he doesn’t recognize deception well, unless he is so talented at his deceptions he seems like a bumbler, and doesn’t care much when he is deceived. What is a lie? Words together that, like almost all words, are not usefully true. Language in the overwhelming majority of possible combinations is without use. The theatrical generosity Jonson uses to extend the benefit of the doubt might indicate guilt or that he feels himself to be good, whatever that is.

  Again I consider, then discard, accusing Seel of fucking Jonson’s wife. I have a short film of them in the park on my Pinger. Title: Before or After Understanding. Nothing happens but that is terrible because the imagination is given charge of the second and third acts. How would he explain it away? Is it my business or am I the innocent bystander?

  Seel said, I saw The Bald Archaeologist on the rail back from the port. I don’t know why they built it all the way out there.

  Jonson said, That’s one of his favorite films.

  I said, It’s difficult to talk about something one likes very much, isn’t it, Seel? It’s almost as if, when one vocalizes
or realizes to their self what is admirable about the object of their attention, it becomes less interesting, less worthy of consideration. Almost like such things have to be kept secret. One’s pleasures are to be held closely and lightly, like a hatchling. Then you let them fly away. Now that you and Jonson know I like this film so much, how many tertiary conversations will I be yoked to, trying to capture the dissipating magic for the gratification of the listener?

  Seel said, Quite.

  I’ve noticed when I am not contributing to a conversation, the people around me will switch the topic to one they think might interest me, as if it is the factual content of the sentences spoken rather than the possible understandings generated by the juxtaposition of the participants that makes for an interesting conversation. I’m not sure if I accept the idea of an interesting conversation. The lens of personality is so thick and curved. Although penal devices can detect sociopathy, and there is an alleged database of persons with dangerous personality disorders, and said persons are not allowed to do business within this country over a certain dollar amount, I get the impression that Seel has gamed the system, and that gaming systems is necessary to his pleasure.

  Seel said, So what are all these papers on the table about? Are you two going into business together? Don’t leave me out. I’m looking for a new thing.

  Jonson said, You have to promise you won’t mention this to my wife.

  Seel said, Naturally. Send my regards, by the way.

  Jonson said, I will. She seems to like you, and she doesn’t like many people. Anyway, we’re making a film.

  Seel said, A film? Isn’t that a risky venture?

  Jonson said, It’s a passion project.

  Seel said, Really.

  Jonson said, It’s a period piece.

  Since I had made Jonson sign a nondisclosure agreement with a stiff penalty for revealing details of the plot, he couldn’t explain the plot in depth, but he somehow conveyed to Seel that there was royalty involved, and Seel offered use of Villa Disperazione, his place in Bologna II. He pulled it up on his Pinger.

  He said, My people renovated it to the specifications of the era in which it was built. There’s a printer on the grounds. Feel free to add whatever you want to make it Italianate or Spanish or British. Whatever you want. I don’t ever go there. I look at the pictures. The longing is more pleasurable, more real, than being there. It was something for my mother to brag about, but now she’s gone.

  Jonson said, It will do nicely for the duke’s place.

  I nodded. We had reached another landing on the staircase ascending to oblivion, and paused for breath.

  Seel paid our check with his Pinger.

  He said, Keep in touch, men.

  Seel walked in the direction of the rail platform.

  Jonson said, What a greasy chunk of luck. That Seel is a good guy.

  44.

  HANNAH’S GAME

  DIR. IRENE WEIDE

  96 MINUTES

  After Weide’s suicide, her fans placed offerings at the gate of her manor. Last year it was converted into a school. Weide forbade the sale or donation of her artifacts to a public institution or private collector. Her fortune was used to establish the Weide Foundation. Costumes are used in children’s plays, her thousands of location photographs cut up for collages. Strips of rushes hang from the ceiling, snipped up like memories are by the Subjective Tailor with his silver shears in The Daughter of the Queen of the Night. At graduation, the crown worn by the Daughter is set on the brow of the kindest student.

  When I moved to the Hub, I visited when I felt the need to stand in her shadow. It seems ghoulish now. One can attend the celebration of death but must never overindulge. I brought Osvald out there soon after we met. It was a Friday. We had no social obligations.

  He said, Let’s break in.

  We used a cannabinoid inhaler on the walk from the platform. Weide’s home was five nodes from the main Hub lines. A wet night, smelling of woodsmoke. Pilgrims with small hope of succor. The neighborhood was once a wealthy bedroom community but the roads had been converted for bicycles and the three-wheeled electric carts fools run their errands in, outside of the Hub. Because the police were few in the Hub and disinclined to help the secluded wealthy, whom everyone in the Hub saw as living in an antique fantasy, these communities tended to have their own private security force, unkind to visitors. We took our time ambling down a pedway. The local government converted the park in the city center into industrial greenhouses to make money, probably because the machinations of the locals had lowered property taxes to the point where they could not offer basic services.

  Flaccid mansions, rehabilitated woods. Old schools. The side gate was unlocked. A yew stood in the front yard. The house was familiar to us because it had been used as an establishing shot in Hannah’s Game. In the attic, Hannah kills the patriarch—who thinks he is going to get laid—with scissors. Inside the gate, the house did not appear as large.

  The front, back, and servants’ doors were locked. We felt it would be poor manners to break a window. A shed had a ladder. Going up the ladder, Osvald laughed. Because he was laughing, I laughed. We fell off the ladder. We brushed leaves from our jackets. As my fear increased, so did my pleasure. A window was unlocked. Upstairs were offices, storerooms. A bedroom neither of us would enter. The decor had been looted by distant relatives, who had not seen Weide’s films, and were delighted by her fortune after she died. Her batterie de cinéma remained.

  Osvald said, Don’t touch the lenses. The lenses are cursed. Don’t you remember?

  The fate of Weide’s cinematographers. Electrocution, drowning, disappearance, electrocution. None lived past a year after the conclusion of principal photography on her films. It may have been coincidence, but no doubt the directors of photography, the poor dead DPs, had the same thought before agreeing to work with Weide.

  Into a trophy room. Weide had twice life’s standard allotment. The excess was like cognac burning off in a sauté pan. Osvald drew near a large shape in the darkness. I shined my Pinger over his shoulder. Sugarloaf, Weide’s horse. Weide had her mounted after she died of colic. Osvald screamed, ran downstairs. I ran after him, out the front door, which we left wide open, over the gate. As we crossed the yard, I heard laughter issuing from inside the house.

  45.

  THE DESERT SCREWHORN

  DIR. MARIANNE HORNBILL

  113 MINUTES

  Jonson and I had a tiff over outside investment in Altarpiece. He thinks he can get another four million. We don’t need any more money. Well, we do, but not from other people.

  I said, Absolutely not.

  He said, Why?

  I said, We don’t need anyone distracting us with their suggestions. The problem with people is they have ideas.

  He said, That doesn’t cheer me. I know a man who is interested. Actually, it’s Millings. Why don’t we—

  I walked out. Left, into the guest neighborhood, so he wouldn’t follow. Jonson hasn’t learned how to interact with guests. They make him aware of his social shortcomings.

  Nice houses, fresh paint. The rails employed almost everyone on the blocks. One could tell by the late-model Pingers, the new dresses, the optimism. The Transit Authority likes to contract neighborhoods. It fosters a communal sense of gratitude. Grandmothers sunning themselves. Polite dogs.

  There is no way Millings will shove his money into my film.

  There was a Spanish multiplex past the kiosks and a couple schools. I went in. The multiplex is one of those spaces that cannot exist without becoming belligerent, militarized, like a sports arena. Totalitarianism begins where nationalism intersects with entertainment. Entertainment is a fine inoculant for totalitarianism, with its easy answers, fabular stories, insistence on the heroic self versus the fearsome other, the desire for absolutes, and so on.

  Crossing the lobby. Entering the nav
e, heartened by the nebulous enthusiasm of kids at the concession. A minority accrete into cineastes, more collapse into fandom, the rest drift in parabolas of indifference, catching watercooler flicks, evading meaning. Every life has, in a crevice or flue, a mild blessing, but few find theirs in Theater Nineteen.

  The multiplex experience allows for generous foreplay. We drifted across the savannah of the lobby, examining holo-ads, marveling at the soda machine, which allowed the user to mix up to a thousand different flavors of stimulating and relaxing beverages. Name tags listed the wearer’s favorite film. Employees may not keep their preferences to themselves. Taste will be monetized. I examined the workers in shiny, ill-fitting maroon polos, finding no trustworthy opinion. An assistant–assistant manager stocking Choco Gongs liked The Desert Screwhorn, a war film.

  Directed by Marianne Hornbill, the film follows a division in the Eastern Theater during the Confidence Crisis, led by Timofey Popov, the Desert Screwhorn. Hornbill, a war nerd, restored tanks used in the campaign at exorbitant cost. She dug them out of the Gobi Desert, near the site of the Battle of Dunhuang, where the Russian Federation lost the initiative for good. It flopped. After the release, she gave herself over to brandy and lawn games. Her insistence on authenticity in the sets gave her a reputation among studio executives, who wanted a pet they could trot out at award season, who made lean films that became profitable after winning the golden golem. She was intended to fill quotas, but Hornbill followed the imperatives of her art. Expected bromides didn’t arrive. The Pinger silent.

  When a male director blows his budget, he is a visionary. When a woman does it, she doesn’t have a head for figures. The controversy over Hornbill’s treatment of her actors never would have garnered indignation if it were a man making the decisions. She made them sleep in tents, refused to let them wash, allowed them meager canned food. If this were a man, he would be in textbooks. She punched one or two to raise authentic bruises, to put the fear of battle in them, these men pampered as pharaoh’s cats.