A Short Film About Disappointment

by Joshua Mattson

  68.

  COMETH SOBEK

  DIR. JAMES BUNCE

  96 MINUTES

  Tonight at Greye’s, I was accosted as I sat on a footstool in Subterranean Nonfiction, my favorite section. Greye’s is a secondhand bookshop organized by theme. The owner, a narcoleptic, finances his stock, bought in lots from defunct bookstores, by selling his mother’s vintage pinball machines.

  It is a place to combat delative influences on one’s spirit. Third places, common areas discrete from home and work, are necessary to a healthy civic society. A third place without the insult of conversation is to be cherished.

  In my section, on my stool. Examining a poster for Cometh Sobek, trying to remember if I’d seen the film, I became aware of a person standing over me with the fragrance of power.

  I had seen it. A crocodile-headed god with a man’s body. Blood of tempura paint issuing, as from a sprinkler, from the arteries of his victims. A replica tomb is printed at the City Museum for Cultic Practices. Within the replica tomb, Sobek is summoned on accident with albino’s blood from a pricked thumb mixed with the crusts of a bologna sandwich. Sobek is a god of the proles. Temple slaves, quarrymen, left offerings. Exit the egyptologists by way of Sobek’s maw.

  A shaved calf berthed in my peripheral.

  A bit of my past stuck to Cometh Sobek. What, though? Sobek was a god. The gods of antiquity had modest demands. A roll in the hay, a goblet of wine, to eat you.

  Another customer in Greye’s is not common. Complimentary pepper spray hangs by the entrance. A trio of intimidating dogs nap in Heliocentric Fiction, Minor Homosexuals, and The Protagonist Dies, respectively. The lack of coherency does not encourage repeat customers. Greye can be rude. Sections near the back, like Sadogustation and Scurrilous Biography, smell of rotting fruit, and are never browsed.

  I could no longer postpone examining the leg’s owner. It brushed the tip of my nose. The customs of bookstores are ancient. From the golden calf emanated the odors of blood oranges, chain oil, dust. Lucretia Jonson.

  Her face is animated by a spirit of inquiry, a malignant curiosity, a determination to master, through vigorous practice, the appearance of warmth. I do not often long for other men’s domestic arrangements but I have felt envious of Jonson.

  She said, Nice to run into you.

  I said, Certainly.

  She said, How’s my urn?

  Jonson’s wife wore a trench with ketchup stains on the lapel, an Eye of Horus bracelet, Jonson’s Blackout 660s. He had a premium sneaker phase. In her pocket bulged a hex wrench. Nobody knows I go to Greye’s. The secrecy of one’s habits ought to be sacrosanct.

  I said, What brings you?

  She said, I was two blocks east lunching with the chapter president of the Hyperborean Society. He holds the Hyperboreans were lost in the tidal convulsions swallowing Ys and Atlantis and wiped from the historical record. Such nonsense is a delightful break from my studies.

  I said, Your studies?

  She said, The president mentioned Greye owned a first edition of Manzoni’s The Betrothed. The two of them got on. I came to have a look, but could not wake him up.

  I said, I know the legend of Ys from an opera recording. A sisters’ quarrel over a man destroys the city.

  The strange are affiliated through networks we are ignorant of.

  She said, I had no intention of donating, but I enjoy hearing his theories. He has those exquisite elderly person manners.

  Our mutual ambivalence had ossified. She looked at the poster.

  She said, You know that film is inaccurate.

  I said, How so?

  She explained how Bunce had debauched the facts. This topic was open-ended. Minutes of my life boiled off. I reviewed the tactics I could use to end our interaction. One, run away. Two, misdirection. Three, Seel.

  She said, You and Jonson have been spending a lot of time together.

  I said, A lot?

  She said, What are you doing?

  I said, Watching movies.

  She said, What else?

  I said, We rob banks. We plan his mayoral campaign.

  She said, Aren’t you sick of being his charity case? You live in one drafty room with no furniture, like a guest, except you don’t have the dignity of struggle to attribute to your failure.

  I said, When are you going to tell him about Seel?

  Jonson’s wife laughed.

  She said, There’s nothing to tell. We’re friends. He’s gay.

  I said, How did he get that thing on his forehead again?

  She said, He came to his sexuality later in life. The philandering was to compensate for feelings he was not ready to face.

  I said, Please don’t take it the wrong way if I say that seems very unlikely, from what I’ve seen of him.

  She said, It’s very annoying how complacent you are when you don’t see the most basic facts of what’s going on around you. For instance. Jonson has other women.

  I said, I don’t believe you. He isn’t like us.

  She said, He’s worse. Have you ever seen a video of a pig, those animals they used to eat? He’s the last pig. He eats and eats and if a hand comes near his trough, he eats that, and if a person falls in, he eats her. The world is his trough.

  69.

  PHOTOSENSITIVITY

  DIR. AMIR IRFAN

  80 MINUTES

  Mention of Lucretia Jonson used to put Isabel in a bad mood, a sooty quiet where she brooded over her own lack of credentials, her struggles to join the entitled creative class she was born into. They were briefly acquainted when I joined the Slaw. Jonson invited us over. Cocktails on the balcony, fish from their tank. Jonson had trouble filleting the tilapia, although he insisted he had done it hundreds of times.

  Lucretia said, What is it again that you do?

  Isabel said, Design.

  Lucretia said, Oh, yes. That must be very interesting.

  Isabel said, What do you do?

  Lucretia said, I do charitable work and also have ongoing postdoc research.

  Isabel said, On what?

  Lucretia said, I wrote my doctoral thesis on the growing evidence that Moses was a priest of the cult of Aten, the monotheistic sun god which the pharaoh Akhenaten decreed his subjects must worship in place of the traditional Egyptian pantheon.

  Isabel said, The goddesses of the pyramids.

  Lucretia said, Yes. After Akhenaten died, the people returned to their old forms of worship. Revisionists within the country made him out to be a criminal and a heretic, erasing his name from the records.

  Isabel said, This is the father of the famous King Tut.

  Lucretia said, When he died, his priests were expelled from the country. My research seeks to find if one of his priests was Moses, the hero of the Old Testament, who led his people from bondage. These people were the Jews. The majority of the people in the world might base their faith on the ravings of a malnourished king who lived three and a half thousand years ago.

  Photosensitivity is in wide release. It concerns a Cairo Town guest who, believing himself to be the reincarnation of Akhenaten, leads an invasion of the Safe Zone. One can’t help but suspect, from its hysterical tone and its production values, that it is funded by the Transit Authority.

  Isabel said, But you can’t do fieldwork now.

  Lucretia said, That’s the great frustration of my life. My whole career is looking at databases, trying to get closed countries to share their proprietary archaeological data, being rebuffed and insulted.

  Isabel said, That’s interesting. I’m quite interested in the—

  Lucretia’s Pinger chimed.

  She said, Excuse me.

  70.

  OFFERING

  DIR. KATJA TOD

  185 MINUTES

  In the trailer I had been editing the last equi
pment test, a nod to Tod’s classic Offering. Xin Hi, our actress from La Malinche, wanders in the woods, like Tod’s Marion. Instead of looking haunted, as Marion did in the Hairy Forest, Xin Hi fell asleep on a bench between takes. Hadn’t combed the snarls from her hair. She wasn’t going to return but Jonson tripled her fee.

  Instead of the woods, we filmed her at the conservatory. Waivers distributed. I forgot to get permission in advance. Because people were wandering through the rooms, in reverie, and did not want to be interrupted or filmed, this was a chore. Xin Hi drew the attention of the conservatory security by stealing a bag lunch from the backpack of a child on a field trip. Security ordered us to leave. We told them we were shooting a documentary about the space. We skulked to the bonsai garden, shot six feeble minutes of footage, and were ejected. In the ensuing scuffle, Jonson dropped our camera in the koi pond.

  It ranks as one of the more successful days in our partnership.

  We split up at the rail. Jonson and Xin Hi headed to the outgoing platform. Jonson was struggling to carry her Pendleshim volume. His face reddened as we stood there saying goodbye. Sweat on his brow.

  She said, I forgot my purse at the production trailer.

  Jonson said, I’ll let you in. It’s not far from my place, anyway.

  She said, Thanks. I have to get to a gig tonight and I need it before then.

  On the way in to the Zone, I couldn’t get Dr. Lisa on her Pinger. She was not a responsive person. If we made a plan, she remembered it, but she didn’t see the point of pinging when we would see one another in two hours. It wasn’t unusual that I did not hear from her.

  Sunset going into the Zone. The platforms headed out were busy. Only a few people, like Dr. Lisa, worked outside the Zone and lived within.

  She once said, Actually, I hate living here, but my partner was an anxious person, and he insisted we buy in the Zone. Then, after the split, he moved out of the Zone. I don’t have the energy to move. People who manage to move must not have much on their minds.

  My Pinger had permission to access her building. I went up to the fourth floor. The third, left. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again.

  I said, Dr. Lisa, are you home?

  She said, Go away.

  I said, Dr. Lisa, what’s wrong?

  She said, I saw the video.

  Cold voice.

  I said, What video?

  She said, The video of you hitting that old man and throwing him in the river.

  I said, Oh, that was Osvald. He took over my body.

  She said, Go away.

  I said, Millings is trying to ruin me.

  She said, That man we met at Jonson’s? Are you insane?

  I said, Dr. Lisa, please let me explain what has been happening.

  She said, There’s no excuse to attack a man like that. Go. Get another doctor.

  I said, Dr. Lisa, please.

  Osvald twisting my face. His hand on the knob.

  She said, I’m calling the police.

  I said, Then I’ll get arrested.

  She said, If you’re arrested in the Zone, they’ll take away your clearance, or worse.

  I said, Okay, Dr. Lisa, I’ll go. But if you ever want to hear me explain what happened, please contact me. I think we have something special.

  She didn’t answer.

  71.

  CAPO

  DIR. LOGAN BRODER

  291 MINUTES

  On my Pinger this morning, the invitation.

  You are expected to celebrate fifty years of Millings Kiosk in the Clawford Lounge at the Central Hub Suites on Lockwood this Thursday, the eighth of September.

  The ending of Capo, Broder’s trite gangster epic. Joey, whose rise we have witnessed in the preceding, interminable four and a half hours, knows he is going to be murdered for something we saw three hours ago, half his lifetime, that is, murdering the don’s cousin, Bragging Jeff, for beating up his little brother. Joey being a man with impulse control issues. His brother, a gambler, the stain on his reputation. At his estate, the don is throwing a birthday party for his mother. Joey arrives.

  A man says, Why don’t you go up to see the don?

  Joey says, All right.

  The camera follows through the foyer, up the stairs, down the hall. What will it be? Probably piano wire, not to ruin the don’s carpets. Although any form of murder in one’s house is uncouth. The don’s grandchildren play downstairs.

  Another man guarding the door. Joey sits to wait. This is worst of all, that they don’t have the decency to get it over with. Hasn’t he served the don these twenty years? Didn’t he spend four years in the Hub Penitentiary rather than turn witness?

  On the other side of the door, the gangsters are planning a promotion for Joey. A surprise to thank him for his hard work.

  The don says, Joey might be don after I am gone, if you give him good advice.

  The don does not know about Joey murdering his cousin.

  Joey’s nerve breaks. He enters the room.

  The gangsters look up, smiling.

  They say, Joey, hey, buddy.

  He says, Don Cazzoli, I’m sorry I shot your cousin, but he was going to kill my brother. What was I to do?

  The door shuts behind Joey.

  The lobby. My tuxedo, Jonson’s spare.

  Jonson’s wife said, Let me take a picture for you to send to Dr. Lisa. Stand over there.

  Soon they would ask where Dr. Lisa had been. For the first couple of weeks, I let myself believe she would allow me to explain. It was to be a temporary emptiness before reconciliation. This lie did not protect me long.

  In the Clawford Lounge, I left the Jonsons. I wanted to avoid Mrs. Rangor—that is, Millings’s wife—who thought I was Danny Chivo, of Chivo Industries. A hundred people or more. The bar to my left. Waiters with trays. A pianist tried to play, was shushed. These people were from the cockroach families who had survived the Confidence Crisis with their wealth. The economic realities of the present, the Zones, the guests, the remediations, were their niche. They had evolved to feed on the crumbs of civilization.

  Past knots of people congratulating one another, an ice sculpture of a kiosk, two security guards, a lectern with the Millings Kiosk logo, stood Millings with two middle-aged women. His head visible over the crowd. His temple’s gray stripe spreading. Millings’s social circle was in this room, to celebrate his wife’s business, the gift of his friendship. I caught his eye. He smiled, raised his flute in a toast. I returned the smile and the gesture. Poor Millings. If he hadn’t sent Uncle Al after me, maybe we would have been friends. He understood me better than Jonson.

  There sat Uncle Al, in a chair, looking frail, pretending not to see me.

  A man strode to the lectern.

  He said, Is this on?

  He said, Hello.

  He said, Thank you for celebrating with us tonight. We’ve been here fifty years now and we’ll be here at least fifty more. If you don’t know me, I am Jack Burles, vice president, Millings Kiosk and Millings Holdings. I worked with Mr. Millings Senior, and I’m happy to continue his work with his daughter-in-law. I’ve been to a few of these parties in my time and I must say the slideshow or historical video is pretty dry, pretty soporific, so instead of droning on about where the first Millings office was, or posting a few sales charts, I thought I would take a different direction. Instead, we’re going to look at what the Hub was like when Millings Kiosk was founded, and how the Hub has changed. Take this journey with me. Please, grab a snack, get a drink, and enjoy yourself. I speak for the Millingses, whom we’ll hear from a little later, when I thank you sincerely for being here with us tonight.

  The room darkened. A shiver of pleasure passed through the crowd at the transition into the world of permissions.

  Broder’s camera waits outside the door for twenty seconds. What do
we wait to hear? Joey begging, a gunshot. Broder hasn’t the courage to end a film with futility, so the door swings open again, Joey exits, roughed up, with three of his old buddies. Joey has broken the code. He has spilled the blood of his sworn brother. The audience yawning, thinking of possible meals. Capo is as close as Broder has come to making a compelling film. If the gangsters were to take Joey out to the pine forest, shoot him in the head, and bury him in a grave, then Broder would have been successful. Starting with the episode in the don’s room, when Joey accidentally gives away his crime, he has our sympathy. Before, he is only a stylish sociopath. Broder’s method, to make us watch Joey’s life for hours, is crude, but it almost works. But then the director falls victim to the attractions of the swelling libretto and the dapper bloodbath. Incorrigible Joey is being marched to the late-model luxury sedan when his loyal employees intervene. At least today, there will be no grave for Joey. Blam. Blam. Not the cake, too. The shot of the flowers in the blood puddle makes me laugh.

  The don says, Why, Joey?

  Blam. Blam.

  At the end of the song, Joey has become the new don. In sports films, in crime films, in war films, in films of exploration, adventure, and detections, there is the implication that there are codes of honor between men, complex, undetectable, delicate understandings that govern male conduct, that dictate how and when they conduct their violences, but this is not true. There is nothing but what one feels the right to, if one has no guiding principle. In this place, there is no consensus.

  The Millings Kiosk promotional film began with shots of the Hub fifty years ago, when it was still called Chicago, under control of a regional government after the brief collapse of the federal administration. It was an ugly city, devoted to pleasure. Chicago was a place where one was not forced to consume prudently, so nobody did.