The Glacier
Page 9
He lights another cigarette.
MR. STEVENS
This is what we do here at the Event Horizon. We engineer moments. Perfect moments for imperfect people.
He smiles broadly.
MR. STEVENS
There are people out there in the world right now, waiting for the Event. Waiting and waiting and waiting. Sitting quietly in the dark. Shivering, terrified and confused like little poodle dogs. Yet each of them is, in their own way and by their very existence, on intimate terms with the nature of the Universe and so I am asking you, a writer, in your own words, what is the nature of the Universe?
JONAH
I don’t know.
MR. STEVENS
We appreciate your application. Have a good day.
JONAH
I’m sorry?
MR. STEVENS
I said, have a good day.
Mr. Stevens returns to his paperwork, disregarding Jonah.
Jonah sits there, unsure what to do now. He watches Mr. Stevens working and considers his options. He looks at the door, he looks at Stevens, and he looks over at the metal locker which he has just now noticed is ticking from the inside with a thousand tiny ticks.
JONAH
The problem with cracking the code is that the answer is in code.
Stevens looks up from his ledger and gazes at Jonah quizzically over his spectacles.
MR. STEVENS
Fine. If you like, you can start now, for today’s Event. You’ll find a tuxedo uniform and make-up in the locker room.
JONAH
Make-up?
MR. STEVENS
Oh yes. There are no spectators here. Everyone’s a participant. Go get cleaned up and find a task out in the Main Hall.
JONAH
Thank you.
MR. STEVENS
Oh and I’m afraid I’ll need to ask for your watch.
JONAH
My watch?
He points to Jonah’s wrist.
MR. STEVENS
Your watch. No watches. Rest assured it will be in good hands.
JONAH
Oh. Okay.
He takes off his watch and hands it to Mr. Stevens.
Jonah exits the office, carefully closing the door. The door very gently clicks and latches shut.
Stevens places his burning cigarette on the edge of a large and heavy desktop ashtray, which is, needless to say, full. He crosses to the metal locker, turns the small metal key and opens it. He hangs Jonah’s watch inside the locker on a metal hook alongside hundreds of other watches on metal hooks all ticking madly.
Then he abruptly turns and glares at the office door, and the doorknob.
Outside the office, Jonah is standing in the pink hallway with his hand still on the office doorknob, looking at it, as if he’s just pulled it closed in that instant.
Inside the office, Mr. Stevens crosses to the door and places his hand on the inside doorknob.
On the outside of the door, Jonah is held there, almost magnetically, for another moment. Then he releases the doorknob and walks away.
Mr. Stevens slowly opens the door, just a crack, the way it was before Jonah arrived. Then he sits back down at his desk and smokes, visible through the door, as he was at the beginning of the scene.
***
Jonah enters the corporate crab-colored employee locker room. He walks along the rows of lockers. Unsure which locker to use, he picks one. Inside it, he finds a white tuxedo shirt, black pants, black bow tie, and a black cummerbund.
He peels off his brown construction coveralls and goes to the mirror and sink in his long underwear. He runs hot water and washes his face.
While he’s cleaning up, two chatty men enter the locker room.
SUE
I will say that it is nice to be in out of the cold. And the toast is excellent. Exactly how I like it.
They join him at the bathroom counter, running water and washing their hands in two of the other sinks.
Jonah looks up and sees them in the mirror.
GUNNER
Morning.
SUE
Morning.
But Jonah is stunned, unsure how to respond, his face dripping with rinse water.
SUE
If I had a complaint it would be about the butter. They say you can’t tell the difference but I say you can. There’s a difference.
Gunner and Sue are cleaned up, slicked, shaved, and dressed in tuxedo uniforms. Their faces are covered in white face paint, but as a pair they are unmistakable. They dry their hands and exit the locker room. On his way out Gunner looks back at Jonah.
GUNNER
It was pretty.
Then he follows Sue out the door.
Jonah is left alone with the mirror, the water faucets at all three sinks running full-blast.
***
The garage door rolls up. Robert emerges from his garage with a folded lawn chair. He’s combed and clean-shaven and he wears his best Sunday suit. He walks to the center of his dismantled yard and unfolds the lawn chair. He sits down in the chair in the dirt in front of his demolished house, and he waits.
***
Jonah enters the Main Hall of the Convention Center through large steel doors. Cleaned up and ready to go, he wears his new tuxedo uniform. His face is covered in ghostly Kabuki-white face paint. He looks out across the giant hall.
The gigantic room is beautifully set for a grand gala event. Tables are glistening with silverware, sparkling water glasses, crisply sculpted napkins, and numbered centerpieces.
At the center of the hall there is a round stage. And circling the tables, a ring of giant blank movie screens hangs from the ceiling at the perimeter.
Hundreds of waiters are moving through the room with water pitchers, filling glasses with ice water. Others are setting silverware.
The collective sound of clinking ice, glass, and silver tines creates a chaotic symphony of metallic tones and pouring rhythms building through the massive space.
From above, the collective motion of waiters moving around tables produces a cascading pattern of motion and stillness like water flowing around stones in multiple rushes and eddies.
Jonah sees a cart full of salt and pepper shakers. He grabs the cart and pushes it out into the room. He observes the activity of servers at work and then he begins placing pairs of salt and pepper shakers at the center of each table.
MR. STEVENS
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Event Horizon.
Mr. Stevens’ image appears on each of the screens circling the room, larger than life, in his black bow tie.
The servers stop working and watch the screens.
MR. STEVENS
You all look fantastic. Thanks for all your hard work. We’ve got a super program and I know we’re going to have a great year this morning. Now we’ve got a few special rules. First and foremost, as always, the best thing to do is—
CROWD OF SERVERS
Do it right the first time!
MR. STEVENS
As always, let’s be in the here and now and focus on the task at hand. After all, how can we be here if we’re somewhere else?
CROWD OF SERVERS
No watches!
MR. STEVENS
Absolutely no socializing with the Client tonight. Very important. Remember, we’re all on stage here, so let’s stick to our roles.
CROWD OF SERVERS
No talking!
MR. STEVENS
And the most critical rule of the evening concerns our dessert item.
We’re excited to be serving a very exclusive item but we have an extremely limited supply. So I’m sorry to say that the dessert item is strictly off limits to the staff.
CROWD OF SERVERS
No eating!
MR. STEVENS
All right, let’s finish up and take a complimentary meal break and then I want everybody ready to go. Let’s stand tall. Let’s be alert. And let’s have a great show!
The servers appla
ud obediently.
Jonah notices Simone, also in Kabuki white-face, applauding up at the screens.
***
A smaller corporate banquet hall is filled with rows of long conference tables where the Event Horizon wait-staff are eating their pre-shift meal.
White-faced servers are filing through a temporary cafeteria-style buffet line, serving themselves from aluminum chafing pans, and sitting at the conference tables, eating.
There’s a clock high on the back wall, ticking, like in a school classroom.
Simone files through the buffet with her plate and cup of coffee. She finds a seat at a table, submerged in the crowd.
Jonah walks down an aisle and takes a seat at the end of another long table. The room bubbles with chatter and the activity of eating, like a turkey farm feedlot.
He sips at his coffee, listening to the overtones of the collective conversation. The room swells around him and begins to sound like the amplified interior of an airplane, wavelengths canceling each other out into a wash of white noise. The sound balloons until it is overwhelming.
His sound-thought is suddenly interrupted by the bleating signal blast of a bullhorn bludgeoning the air from the back of the room.
A service captain in a black vest makes an announcement.
CAPTAIN
(through bullhorn)
Sorry to interrupt. If anyone wants to smoke, let’s do it now.
The servers stop eating and flood the exit. The room empties. Simone is revealed in the exodus, left behind, sitting a few tables away from Jonah.
She gets up to leave as well but then sees Jonah absorbed in his notebook, scribbling sentences. She stands there watching him, curious about this new person.
She waits for him to look up at her, but he does not. She quietly sits back down and takes another sip of her coffee, stalling, watching him, looking into her coffee cup.
The clock on the back wall is ticking incessantly.
Focused on his book, Jonah reaches blindly for his coffee cup. As he does this Simone summons the courage to address him and she abruptly breaks into the silence of the room—
SIMONE
Hi.
—and it scares the crap out of Jonah. He hollers and hurls his coffee. Simone also screams, managing to frighten herself in the sudden eruption.
She catches her breath.
SIMONE
Omigod, I’m sorry.
JONAH
Jesus, you scared me.
SIMONE
I’m so sorry.
JONAH
Whew.
SIMONE
Sorry.
JONAH
No, it’s okay. Seems like there’s plenty of coffee here.
She laughs out loud, nervously.
SIMONE
That’s for sure. You’re new here.
JONAH
Yeah.
SIMONE
What are you doing here?
JONAH
(confused)
Same… thing as everybody else, I guess.
SIMONE
Yeah. But I mean how did you wind up here?
JONAH
Oh. Um, for work— What do you mean?
SIMONE
I mean… This is what you do?
JONAH
Oh. No, not really. I just needed a new job.
SIMONE
Uh huh.
Awkward, he’s not sure what to say. She just looks at him directly and he can barely take it. They sit in that silence for a moment.
JONAH
No smoking for you, huh?
SIMONE
I guess not! Not today!
She laughs again nervously.
JONAH
How long have you been working here?
She bites her lip and looks up at the clock on the wall.
JONAH
No, I meant in general.
Simone nods, comprehending his meaning, but she keeps looking at the clock, as if it were a puzzle that needed to be solved, the adding and subtracting of hours passing silently across her lips.
Jonah watches her, waiting, and then he sits back and watches the clock with her. He bounces his knee absentmindedly, in a second-hand rhythm, and he rubs his left wrist where his watch used to be. He gnaws at his thumbnail and looks up at the ceiling, checking out the fluorescent lights and he scans the room until he sees something that causes him to freeze.
He is momentarily captivated like a deer in the headlights, looking intently across the room, directly into the camera.
The camera slowly pushes toward him.
Simone breaks free of the clock and looks at him and follows his gaze, so that they’re both looking into the camera, but she doesn’t see anything unusual.
SIMONE
What is it?
Jonah puts his finger to his lips, gently indicating for her to be quiet, as if some wild animal were in the room.
She looks back across the room but still sees nothing. She gestures to him…
SIMONE
(silently)
What?!
He delicately points in the direction of the camera, indicating that something is there, and that it can hear them. He silently motions for her to follow his lead. Then he cups his hands around his mouth and initiates a fake conversation as if to cover up a real one.
JONAH
(in a loud monotone voice)
HOW WAS YOUR CATERED LUNCH?
SIMONE
(mimicking him)
TERRIBLE. HOW WAS YOURS?
JONAH
MINE WAS VERY EXCELLENT. THANK YOU FOR ASKING.
SIMONE
WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THIS PLACE?
JONAH
I WILL COME HERE AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…
His voice trails off, simulating a receding echo, and he smiles at her.
SIMONE
You’re funny.
JONAH
I am?
SIMONE
I guess we both look pretty ridiculous.
They’re just looking at each other, smiling softly.
SIMONE
What are you writing over there?
He puts his hand on the book and fiddles with it.
JONAH
Oh it’s just a… thing I’m working on. Thing I’m trying to figure out.
SIMONE
What are you trying to figure out?
JONAH
(reluctantly)
Oh…
He gestures in an attempt to beg off the question, but something kicks on, and the sound of the airplane fuselage seeps back into the room. Slowly the room begins to fill up with sonic gas.
Jonah rubs at the back of his neck, suddenly wincing in a bit of neck pain. He stretches his head down, and to the side, trying to stretch it out. Then he holds himself tightly at his left arm and raises his eyes and looks at her.
JONAH
Something is happening. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Just Simone’s face. All of a face. She watches him as he continues to speak in his warm Midwestern drawl.
JONAH
It’s organizing us to build it. Self-organizing. It is us, building itself from the inside out. We’re conspiring to engineer the annihilation of ourselves. We can’t help it. We’re falling.
The sonic vacuum begins to overtake the room, very slowly drowning him out. He’s looking down into the book, reading from it.
JONAH
The shape of things is the tragedy we impose on ourselves in order to understand. The shape we take in the free-fall. Like the dihedral of migrating birds. A drop of water. Or a wavelength of sound. The atomic mythology of matter is inside us, projecting a map of itself. But the screen is actually blank and we are moths, flaming in the light of the projection, flickering in the frame-rate. On and off. On and off. Faster and faster.
The sound of white noise is traumatically loud, like a jet-turbine blasting through the room.
Simone covers
her ears, blocking out the unbearable jet wash.
On one of the tables, on a crisp white tablecloth, is a perfectly arranged table setting: Clean white plate. Shiny fork, knife, spoon. Napkin, coffee cup and saucer. Silent, civilized, horrifying perfection.
Across the room, Simone is screaming at Jonah to stop, but he can’t hear her. He’s absorbed in his book, reading aloud, inaudibly. The two of them are tiny signals enveloped within a cottony, oceanic distortion. A surreal agitation, their inability to hear each other.
JONAH
(barely audible)
It feels like it’s coming soon because it’s happening all the time now. And the closer we get to it, the slower it seems, like a wheel moving so fast it appears to be spinning in reverse. There is nothing we can do about it because there is no such thing as time. It all happened so fast, as though it happened in one instant. One instant stretched into one infinite instant filled with an infinite number of instants—
Jonah looks up and sees her screaming silently—a face of Kabuki white-face horror—and all the deafening sound is suddenly sucked out of the room—
The room is quiet.
Simone slowly lowers her hands from her ears.
And then the cockroach crawls back out of Jonah’s mouth and quickly disappears under the table.
Simone shrieks and covers her mouth.
JONAH
(quickly)
What?! What was it?!
Horrified, she gets up and leaves the room.
Jonah is left alone, sitting in the silence of the empty conference room.
***
Robert sits in his lawn chair in the front yard. He is asleep, with his head hung back and his mouth open.
A black hearse pulls up and stops quietly in front of the house. A chauffeur in a black suit gets out of the car. He shuts his door, awakening Robert from his nap, and crosses around the car to the sidewalk.
CHAUFFEUR
Mr. Adams?
ROBERT
Yes?
CHAUFFEUR
It’s time for your Last Supper.
The chauffeur opens the passenger side door.
Robert gets up from his chair, walks across the yard, and gets into the car. The chauffeur shuts the door and crosses to the driver side. He gets in and the hearse pulls away.
The lawn chair sits empty on Robert’s dirt lawn. For a moment, the chair is just a still-life, sitting in front of the house, in the dirt, in the cold air.
Then a tiny, invading wave of sound, as if bleeding and rising from the exposed ground around the empty lawn chair.