I peeled my shoes off and pitched them under the easel. I was shocked by my behavior, pleased by how nice it felt. This was Osvaldian. Bare-toed in public. He aired his putrid feet in theaters. We are being smeared together.
78.
THE FOX AND THE BUTTERFLY
DIR. HARRIS JONSON
TBD
Jonson, strolling through tufts of dusk beyond the Villa Disperazione, whistling. Seel’s servants have indicated he can find a serviceable bolognese, a certain bottle, down the way, turn left at the crone on the porch past the mermaid statue. Don’t look her in the eye. She’s cursed.
Despite the warning, he looks her in the eye.
His Pinger pings. Who is this? wonders Jonson. The number is not familiar.
It pinged, your wife w phil seel / NB knows
It pinged, see file on office trailer server / title: before or after understanding
It pinged, a friend wldn’t keep the truth from you / would he
It pinged, look closer @ altarpiece credit chip / where’s your $$ going
It pinged, i think yr being taken for a ride / signed a friend
Dumb of me to store my little documentary of Lucretia and Seel in the park on the server that we were using for materials related to Altarpiece. I didn’t think Jonson was going to poke around.
Jonson returns to the villa, where there is a broadband hookup. He logs into the server. It is illegal to exceed the data limitations, but rules are different for the wealthy.
My Pinger pinged. I sat in the plush gloom at my habitual picnic table. Kingdom of brush and cups. Sickly river gargling by. Carved into the top of the table NB+IS. Now the NB was getting scratched out, replaced with JO. My hand, my knife, Osvald’s guidance. Maybe it is true that we only live in solitude, in the company of our memories. What we understand to be life occurs after the event, in the afterimage and the reflection. Who was pinging me? Was it one of my friends, returning to me, whom I had missed for so long? Was it an advertisement for Millings Kiosk or the Carbon Committee? When I reached for my Pinger, the possibilities of reconciliation would collapse into one, probably commercial, reality.
I looked anyway. Jonson, from Bologna II.
He pinged, how could u / u know I was worried bout Luc
I trudged up the bank. My right boot, borrowed from Jonson, sank into the muck to my ankle.
He pinged, i can’t believe u didn’t tell me about seel / saw yr film
I yanked my leg up but the mud held firm.
He pinged, and u have been lying to me / spending my money
I pondered my options.
He pinged, i thought we were friends / why didn’t u tell me about seel
Heaved the foot once more.
I pinged, what about you and xin hi / are you telling me you are a saint
I yelled, How about that, Jonson? Here I am, thinking about the film, and you’re tucked away with your side piece, eating panini off her gut.
Jonson pinged, how dare u / how DARE u / HOW dare U
I slipped my foot from my boot.
Jonson pinged, i’m pulling funding for altarpiece / u are not allowed on the set or in the office trailer / and i’m canceling your card
My anger mounted as I hopped up the bank.
Jonson pinged, you’re lucky i don’t sue u
I pinged, you’re my friend / but don’t cry your crocodile tears to me / i think it’s ridiculous that we’re friends and you’re turning on me like this / i didn’t do anything
Jonson pinged, exactly / you didn’t do anything / you reflected upon the matter / and cracked a few jokes
My Pinger notified me, Harris Jonson has blocked you. If you have any questions, please do not contact Pinger staff. There’s nothing we can do. Have a nice day!
It was a long hop to the rail platform.
I refuse responsibility for the matter of Seel and Lucretia. Suspicions aren’t facts. Even if I had seen something more substantial, it is not clear that I ought to have intervened. And I had looked past Jonson’s personal failings. I could have observed evidence of his dalliances, but I averted my eyes. I helped him lie to Lucretia. And what about Jonson’s script, which he had never mentioned to me? I found it on the office trailer server. The Fox and the Butterfly told the story of an actress who falls in love with a rich man, opening him to the possibilities of life and his own artistic capabilities. Jonson’s bouquet of clichés was a vehicle for Xin Hi, mere wish fulfillment, but I had retained hopes that he would wake up one morning, realize it was trash, and focus on Altarpiece.
Was Jonson the pig Lucretia claimed or was he the tinsel playboy I enjoyed spending my time with, blind to the world beyond his comforts? Both, neither. Jonson could use me as his excuse to misbehave. Let him make his juvenile film, destroy his marriage, and be eaten by his insecurities.
I caught a local out to the set before Jonson had the locks changed.
Goodbye to the painter’s studio. Night and warm. I used film canisters to smash the panes enclosing the set, throwing them like the Discobolus I sometimes shove over in the Heritage Museum. A russet hen I bought from Itchy Creek Farm for company, whom I named Ludwig, snores off her feed under the table. She deposits her speckled eggs in a prop wimple. Bellono’s canvas will not be filled.
Goodbye, set. Goodbye, Altarpiece.
79.
DOWNTOWN SHOWDOWN
DIR. HARVEY SEWARD
98 MINUTES
Downtown Showdown, Saturdays, midnight, the New Old Argyle Theater. A tradition going on twenty years.
The theater was the filming location for the famous opening shoot-out in Downtown Showdown. Patrice and Regina rob the Central Hub Bank three blocks down. They run for the rail platform at Argyle and Cicero. It’s closed for repair. Regina was supposed to check the escape route. Instead, she went drinking. Regina has gotten sloppy since Matilda left the gang.
They run into the New Old Argyle. Executive Blasphemy is the matinee. The priest is casting devils from the president when the cops bust into the theater. Hundreds of shots are fired, but nobody is hit. Seward, a pacifist, couldn’t bear to portray suffering. Regina and Patrice escape.
It’s not a bad movie. Even a bad movie is preferable to my apartment.
Eating the Argyle’s mummified popcorn is like munching glass, but I thought I might get some anyway. In line. To my left, handsome, stately Rolf Millings, unshaven on a shoddy bench, his legs crossed at the knee.
I crossed the lobby.
Millings said, Isn’t this film a little too lowbrow for you?
I said, Millings, it isn’t the content of the film that matters, it’s the sentiment. Downtown Showdown is a human picture. Never mind the gunplay. Look at the faces.
He said, You’re always ready to tell me what to think.
I said, How’s the kiosk business?
He said, My wife took the opportunity, after your stunt, to take me off the board of my own company. I’m a bystander now. I quite like it.
I said, That’s lovely. I’m glad to have been of service.
He said, And you know, you might have thought you got me, but after that episode, I am still me, and you are still you, do you understand?
Millings smiled. No matter how cleverly I had managed to humiliate him, until the day of his death Millings was secure in the knowledge that he was a thoroughbred by upbringing, genetics, and inclination. I would never convince him that these things did not matter very much, and that was fine. To be secure in one’s delusions isn’t all that bad.
I said, You can’t deny it was a good joke, the whole room seeing you on camera with your pants down.
He said, It was a magnificent joke. But a joke can only do so much.
I said, A joke isn’t supposed to stick around. A little sleight of tongue, and poof, it’s gone.
He said, How’
s that film of yours?
I said, It’s nonexistent. Jonson ditched me after your anonymous tip.
He said, What tip?
I said, About his wife and Seel.
He said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t mean that in a winking way. I am truly in the dark.
His face indicated this was true. If not Millings, who was it?
I said, Jonson thought I was lying to him, so he struck off on his own with our material, permits, and equipment.
He said, I’m sorry you lost your money. I have plenty. Let’s do something together. I’m so bored these days. It was more fun when I had to spend my time pretending to work. My mother calls me in the evenings, and I have to account for my time.
I said, Millings, I’m never again going to create under the manicured thumb of another person. Shall we see this film?
He said, Yes, let’s.
80.
A REPLICATE
DIR. JAMES OSVALD
77 MINUTES
Knock at my door. A package. The courier left before I had a chance to stiff her on the tip. Lacking interest in its contents, I dragged the box into my kitchen, where Lawrence once stood. I have been mourning Lawrence at strange times. When the kiosk where I buy toothpaste reminded me to have a good day, because nobody’s days are guaranteed, I shed a few tears. I believe this is known in the literature as sublimation.
The frictionless weeks gliding on. I stopped seeing films. Jonson hadn’t gotten around to firing me from the Slaw, or perhaps this was his idea of mercy, so I filed reviews for films that didn’t exist. Good fun for a while, but in time I found it sterile. Without other people to promulgate and resist one’s passion, it becomes manageable, even routine. The stakes in such a life are no higher than those of a game of solitaire.
I opened the box.
It was an Okada Industries Filmmaking Kit, complete with tripod, two kliegs, an editing suite installed on a laptop, and a compact but impressive camera.
I set out to thank Dr. Lisa. Who else could have it been?
At the entrance to the Zone, I was detained.
The Transit agent said, Your permission to enter the Zone has been revoked.
I said, How come?
The Transit agent said, File says you smashed up a restaurant. The guest who owns the restaurant filed a complaint.
I said, My guilt hasn’t been established in that matter.
The Transit agent spun his monitor around. There was a video of me flipping tables in the dumpling house. Rolling on the floor strangling myself. The camera even got the part where Osvald was whacking me on the nose with the porno mag.
I said, I never argue with what’s on the screen.
I caught the Mauve Line back to Miniature Aleppo, as slow as was possible. A blurb of scarlet moon wove lemniscates. Children threw chunks of sidewalk at the cameras. A night for romance or at least groveling.
I pinged Dr. Lisa, i am dying / literally dying
I pinged, well i am figuratively dying / because i miss you
I pinged, jonson canceled the film because he wants to convince himself he’s in love with an actress / and i spent a lot of his money
I pinged, please meet me by the austerity monument / two hours
I pinged, i will be wearing the expression of extreme contrition / and hopelessness
No response.
She didn’t show up at the Austerity Monument.
Along with the Okada Kit there was a storage cube that I had assumed came with it. I was using it to prop a window. Arriving home from the monument, sitting at my desk, I noticed the cube was scratched up, as if it had been previously used.
On the cube, a single file, titled A Replicate, Rough Cut.
Open, Eastern Hub, drone footage. Rails coming in, rails leaving.
Here’s Osvald as the rough sculptor Billy. Isabel as Mayor Alison, hair dyed white. Isabel lost weight and Osvald found it. Neither could act, but I knew that.
When it ended, I started it again.
Woof. Osvald allowed himself three speeches. Isabel thoroughly masticates the scenery, which is a rococo fantasy of poverty. When would the urchins burst into song? The man playing Isabel’s husband, Gerald Horace, is a professional actor. Credits include Septuplets!, Octuplets!, conservation commercials. For his competence, he is awarded less than ten lines.
The best shots were mine. Osvald looted my brain. He used the triple-mirror. He used the close shots of the faces at night. He even took my argument between artist and patron, shot from the third-floor window of a building, in which it is never revealed who is doing the watching.
I was proud of my friends. The joy of creation is the only reliable joy, in my experience.
Not only was I proud, I was content, because I knew I could do much better.
The ending, sawn off Altarpiece. Mayor Alison looks on Billy’s sculpture, declares it to be a masterpiece, and has Billy jailed on trumped-up charges so he cannot top it. She does not recognize that Billy’s intentions were criminal.
Billy’s nanoprinters do not work.
What he thought would smother the Eastern Hub in filaments were actually minuscule dry-cleaning robots, meant to be released in one’s closet. Mayor Alison’s couture looks especially glamorous and wrinkle-free in the last five minutes of the film, after the release of the drybots.
Billy dies in the Eastern Hub Penitentiary, having said nothing since the unveiling of the sculpture. Silences are the wages of effort. In Altarpiece, Bellono is ordered to be hanged by Duke Giovanni for the same reason. Bellono chuckles on the gallows.
Bellono says, You can look at my painting, but you will never know it.
Final shot, his feet swinging.
On the third viewing, I slept.
More knocking at my door. I no longer had to go into the world to be disappointed. It was courteous enough to call at my apartment.
Dr. Lisa, white smock, black eye.
I said, What happened?
Dr. Lisa said, I was standing on a chair, hanging my touch-me-nots. The planter had an attitude.
I said, Would you like me to run out for an anti-inflammatory patch?
She said, I’m a doctor. Do you think I need your help performing perfunctory first aid?
I said, Need, no. Want, maybe.
She said, You haven’t been making your appointments with the doctor I transferred you to.
I said, Osvald’s gone. He was jealous of my friendship with Jonson. He pinged Jonson that I was keeping a secret from him, to break up our partnership for Altarpiece. Isn’t that funny? He steals my wife, and he doesn’t want me to have other friends?
She said, No more episodes? No more loss of bodily functions?
I said, No.
She said, That’s good. I’m happy for you.
I said, Sit, please.
She said, There’s slime on your chairs.
I said, Slime is a matter of opinion. The bed?
She said, It’s full of crumbs.
I said, The floor, then.
We sat.
She said, Are you going to apologize?
I said, No.
She said, Will you try to justify your actions?
I said, No.
She said, Will you tell me you miss me or otherwise appeal to my emotions?
I said, What makes you think I miss you?
She pointed to the small picture of her face hanging on my wall.
I said, I hardly ever look at that wall. I prefer this wall. That wall is the wall of the past. This empty wall is the future.
She said, What do you see on the empty wall?
I said, Bugs and mildew. Will you act in my film? Millings is going to fund me.
She said, I think it’s time to retire the painter.
I said, The thing I have in mind is an improvisation. Let’s forget the vanities of control.
She said, Control is impossible.
I said, We could work with mistakes. I was dreaming of it before you woke me up. A man and a woman hate cinema. They go around the Hub wrecking projectors, tearing down posters, and roughing up critics. The possibilities for slapstick, for social commentary, for spectacle, are limited only by our imaginations.
Dr. Lisa said, I’ve never acted.
I said, Anyone who has lived has acted.
That was the genesis of Rubber Paradise, our collaboration. Osvald’s crippled performance in A Replicate proved that I ought to stay behind the camera. I can’t act. Millings, unusually photogenic, agreed to play Dr. Lisa’s lover.
We filmed for two months during the magic hour, when the buttery light spreads well. Rolf and Dr. Lisa improvised the scenes. I couldn’t resist a cameo. The pair flee from the smoking ruins of the Conspicuous to their getaway dinghy. Jogging to their blue doom, they pass a man, no longer young, watching the sun slip under the blushing crepe of the horizon. In his hands, a camera. All that’s left to say is he is still dreaming his dream.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua Mattson is a novelist from Northern Minnesota. He works in the service industry and A Short Film About Disappointment is his debut. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
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