Fat Man and Little Boy

by Mike Meginnis

“I can get it for myself,” says Little Boy.

  “No trouble at all,” says Baker. “I’ll get it. You want one, Fat Man? Of course you do. I’ll make it two.”

  He leaves the room.

  Able says, “How often do you manage? It must be tricky with a family. Where do you do it? We bought a little island. We have a guy who flies us out and leaves us there a couple days. It’s in our contract. Contracts. All of ’em.”

  Fat Man says, “I can’t explode.”

  Little Boy says, “I’m thirsty.”

  Able laughs and slaps his knee. He looks exactly like the laughing wax beside him. “But you’re a bomb. Why, there could be nothing more natural. Have you been trying to explode? Do you feel shy about it or something?”

  “No,” says Fat Man. “No, no. I never tried to explode. I very specifically try not to.”

  Able’s face starts to look very mildly concerned, which Fat Man can tell is in Able’s case really an expression of extreme worry. Able gets up from the couch and goes to Fat Man with his hands outstretched, resembling in posture and attitude the mildly concerned wax police over Fat Man’s shoulder. He puts the back of his hand to Fat Man’s head. “Oh my, you’re burning up. And no wonder.”

  “Is John sick?”

  “You can call him Fat Man with me, Little Boy, and yes, I’m afraid he’s quite ill.”

  Now Test Baker comes back with the Cokes, and this leads to a reiteration of the state of play as Test Able understands it, and the further information that Little Boy doesn’t explode either. The entire time, Test Baker is slowly rolling a cold, perspiring Coke bottle back and forth across Fat Man’s forehead.

  Rosie is searching for Maggie. Little Boy has long insisted that she is a poor hider, which made Rosie confident that if Maggie chose to hide in the twins’ labyrinthine mansion then she would be able to find her. So far she has. But with each iteration of the game, her daughter becomes incrementally more adventurous, and Rosie suffers a slightly longer period of mounting panic wherein she believes she will never see her daughter again. Each time she finds her daughter, however, she recognizes the feeling as stupid and sends the girl to hide once more.

  The first time Maggie hid beneath the table. Rosie couldn’t help saying that it was a stupid place to hide. Maggie looked as if she might cry until Rosie covered her own eyes and started counting again, this time to fifteen instead of ten. Maggie used the extra five Mississippis to hide on the opposite end of the long table. This time Rosie congratulated her on hiding in “Just about the last place I thought of looking.” Maggie thrust out her tummy with pride and Rosie started counting again. This next time produced the first instant of mounting terror because Maggie left the room. She was only standing on her toes against the wall beside the frame of the door that led to that room, however, and when Rosie went into the room beginning to think she might cry at having lost her daughter forever, there was Maggie, tickling her mother’s butt and shouting “BOO!”

  Next Maggie found a bathroom and hid between the tub and pristine toilet. On the wall inside the shower, opposite the showerhead, was a water-damaged painting, once a watercolor, now a blur of gold and purple, red and green, the thick paper wrinkled and flaking. Rosie thought that it was maybe once a sunset.

  Next Maggie found a library down the hall. This time Rosie went the wrong way, ending up first in a room containing seven empty birdcages of various sizes, each one’s door hanging open. A large white birdcage empty. A small green birdcage empty. A hanging birdcage empty. Water dishes half-full or plain empty, newspapers sodden or fresh, some cages coated with dust, some perhaps freshly abandoned. There was a small white bird with red eyes perched atop the largest cage. It was very much still there. After a full minute of slowly mounting panic, Rosie found her little girl among the books of the twins’ library.

  Now Rosie doesn’t know where Maggie’s hiding. She genuinely does not know. She has found what she believes to be the master bedroom. She checks underneath the beds and in the adjoined bathroom, not because she believes Maggie is here—she can’t hear her daughter’s telltale breathing—but because she wants to see the way the brothers choose to sleep. There are two beds here a dozen feet apart. There is a heavy curtain between them, on runners as in a hospital, which is presently folded, but which might extend so as to divide the room. There are two matching dressers on opposite ends of the room. There is a refrigerator in the bathroom, stocked with beer and cola. There are newspaper clippings taped to the mirror. Some review the brothers’ films, though none of their recent work is represented. Some of the clippings are about bombs. Test Able and Test Baker. These clips are faded. Their ink gone gray, paper yellowed.

  Above their matching beds, one picture each. The pictures very large, say ten feet by ten. At first she mistakes them for murals. Rather they are photos inflated far beyond their natural dimensions. Savage in their grain and blur and fuzz. In each photo, a mushroom cloud billows. Gray and black in shadow. Brilliant white where light.

  One of these above each bed.

  Not matching. There are two.

  A different one above each bed.

  Rosie has never before felt what she would call a premonition. Now there is something in her knees. Her daughter is still missing.

  Fat Man paces the room with all the wax statues, trying his damnedest to explain why it’s wrong to explode, gesturing wildly with the still-closed soda bottle they were just rolling around on his face. The Hanway twins listen intently. The wax policemen are behind him, holding hands on either side.

  “People die,” says Fat Man. “Sometimes hundreds of thousands. The land and air are poisoned. People’s skin burns. They are reduced to shadows cast on cement walls. You can’t control who dies. Anyone dies. Everyone dies. You can’t stop it once it’s started. You can’t explode enough. You can only explode.”

  “That’s why you do it where there aren’t any people,” says Able.

  “Really it’s no trouble, you can both use our island,” says Baker.

  “We like to be alone when we do it,” says Able.

  “But you can go when we’re not there,” says Baker.

  “You’re not getting it,” says Fat Man. “I don’t want to explode. I hate exploding. Little Boy here won’t acknowledge that it’s ever even happened once, he hated it so much.”

  “You can’t deny who you are,” says Able.

  “Deep thought,” says Baker.

  “Any more than you can deny your skin,” says Able.

  “Not possible,” says Baker.

  “You’re a bomb,” says Able.

  “I was a bomb,” says Fat Man. “Now I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a brother.”

  “You’re a father,” says Able. “That’s true.”

  “The kid’s cute,” says Baker.

  “We know it was different for you,” says Able.

  “There were,” Baker pauses, “circumstances.”

  “A war on,” says Able. “People got hurt.”

  “So did you,” says Baker.

  “We’ve got it easy,” says Able. “We know that.”

  “What?” says Little Boy.

  Fat Man leers at him with awful violence in his eye.

  “But this not-exploding experiment, Fat Man. This thing you’re trying,” says Able. “Has it made you happy?”

  Fat Man contemplates the bottle in his hand. Its contents are warming. Its sweat mingles with his. “Nothing makes anyone happy.”

  “Who told you that?” says Able.

  “You know what makes me happy?” says Baker. “Expressing myself, listening to my body, and giving it whatever it needs.”

  “Nothing makes anyone happy,” says Fat Man. He looks to Little Boy. Asks him, “Isn’t that right?”

  Little Boy says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Little Boy says, “
I don’t understand what any of you are talking about.”

  Little Boy says, “I’m going to go somewhere else.”

  Fat Man says to Little Boy, “Don’t leave me here with them.”

  But Little Boy is going to leave.

  Fat Man slaps Little Boy’s face as he’s leaving. Little Boy walks right through it, though the impact’s awful loud.

  The twins look to each other. They approach Fat Man from both sides and rub his shoulders, so there are their wax cop selves behind him and their twin flesh selves before him, the wax selves stern, the flesh selves kind, eyes overflowing with love, misting now with sympathetic tears.

  “Hitting him won’t make you feel any better,” says Able.

  “He’s your brother,” says Baker.

  “The only one you’ve got,” says Able.

  “He’s no brother of mine.”

  “You know how we learned to be actors?” says Baker.

  “You’ll laugh,” says Able.

  They tell him the story of when they first swam to that island shaped like a kidney bean. They tell him how they looked each other in the face and saw nothing. One of them asked the other why he was looking at him that way. The other said he didn’t know what he meant. So what was his face all about, then? Well what about his face? One brother shoved the other. One brother shouted at him to stop it. One brother shouted back. Fat Man asks them don’t they know which one was which. They say that they don’t. One brother punched the other. The other brother pushed him to the ground. They were naked. Their knees beat against each other’s knees. They slapped each other’s faces, and screamed, and wailed, and wept, and rolled around in this way, beating one another. Until they realized their expressions were no longer empty.

  “We were emoting,” says Able.

  “Quite convincingly,” says Baker.

  “As far as we could tell, we were feeling things about each other,” says Able.

  Fat Man asks them what in fuck this has to do with him and Little Boy, who feels nothing for him, who doesn’t care enough even to hit him back anymore.

  Baker says, “I think you need a consultation.”

  “Madame Masumi?” says Fat Man, incredulous. “She’s a hack. She’s a man, for God’s sake. She hasn’t had her powers for years.”

  “Don’t worry,” says Able. “We’ll cover her fee.”

  Little Boy finds Keiko drinking wine alone in her room. There is a bed, a desk, a small bookshelf. Keiko’s dress is draped over the chair that sits at the desk. She’s wearing a plush gray robe. She lays on her stomach on the bed, looking at but not reading an open book, the wine glass set down on the floor when it is not in use. She kicks her feet behind her slowly, as if swimming. Little Boy watches her a little while. He appreciates her quiet.

  “Hello Matthew,” she says, without looking up. “I guess I should have known to lock my door.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m just a little boy.”

  “What about your condition?”

  “That is my condition.” He closes the door behind him. “Have I told you that you’re pretty?”

  She takes a swallow of the wine. Stops kicking her feet.

  Little Boy says, approaching the bed, “Have I told you how you look like a nurse?”

  “Will you leave me alone?”

  “I’m afraid. My brother slapped me,” he says, showing her the red palm mark on his face. “Sometimes he just explodes. Will you hold me?”

  “I thought he was your uncle.”

  “Sometimes I get confused.”

  They set up in the dining room. Madame Masumi lays down three tarot cards. The first is the tower. The second is justice. The third is the hanged man.

  The tower is a tall white tower, more an obelisk, struck by lightning, a golden dome or crown knocked from its top. Its windows lit with flame. A man and woman fall to the crags below the tower.

  Justice is a blond man with a golden crown sitting on a golden throne enrobed in golden robes, framed by two stone pillars with a golden shroud hung between them. A golden scale in his left hand. A sword with golden hilt in his right.

  The hanged man is a man hanged by his right foot. He has a golden shine around his head. He is hanged from a cross made of two trees. His hands are bound behind his back or held there. He is calm or he is dead.

  Fat Man’s eyes boggle at the clear message of the cards. “Doom, doom, doom. No great surprise there. How soon will they be here for me? Did you call them?” Whether he believes she called the cops or only wishes, he would like it over. It feels very late. His body’s exhausted. His eyes are all bleary. Masumi’s long, purple candles are producing an excess of smoke, though little light.

  “John, the news is not so grim. This is why it takes training to read the cards. The death card, for instance, means change. The tower card represents the end of a false belief or institution. Your relationship will be tested. Something you believe about yourself or your loved one will be revealed as false.”

  “Why are we talking about my marriage?” asks Fat Man. “My marriage is fine. What we’re supposed to be talking about, what you used to always want to talk about, is the fact I’m a bomb.”

  Madame Masumi places her index finger on the justice card. The long nail is painted eggshell white. “This card tells us that your life and priorities are out of balance. You need to see your loved one for who she is, anew, as if for the first time, and approach her with a fair mind and a cool heart.”

  “Look,” says Fat Man. “I’ve got your gun.” He pulls it out from underneath his shirt and jacket. Its weight is like a small rock in his hand. He nudges it toward Masumi, across the tabletop. “Go on. Threaten me like the old days.”

  “Calm down,” says Able.

  “Be cool,” says Baker.

  They both say, “Breathe.”

  “The hanged man,” says Masumi, “is amplifying the justice card. It means you need to meditate, to look at life from a new perspective, a state of calm and contemplation. Only then can you know the right approach to your romantic conundrum.”

  “I’m giving you permission to shoot me before the cops come,” says Fat Man. “You can tell them I gave you permission.”

  He reaches for Masumi, who flinches. Fat Man lifts her face by the chin; he looks her in the eyes. She’s wearing eyelash extensions. Her eyebrows are plucked to arch wisps. Her makeup applied so thickly as to smooth her face away to nothing. She has no lines, no pores. He studies her eyes.

  “Go on. For your brother,” says Fat Man. “Don’t let me explode.”

  Masumi pushes the gun back across the table.

  “This is yours, not mine,” she says. “I am a new person. So are you.”

  She lowers her face and kisses his hand, leaving a red blossom on his knuckle.

  She snuffs the candles with her fingers and shuffles all her cards together.

  The brothers pay her fee.

  She leaves.

  The gun is in Fat Man’s hands.

  “We forgive you,” says Able.

  “We forgive you,” says Baker.

  “She forgives you,” says Able.

  “Forgive yourself,” says Baker.

  “We’ll go to our island tomorrow,” says Able.

  “You can explode,” says Baker.

  “Imagine that weight coming up off your chest.”

  Fat Man tucks the gun in his waistband. His shirttails are out now, the shirt itself rumpled, the suit’s pits stained through. His soda is empty.

  He says, “There’s nothing else to me but weight. No joy or beauty. No real feeling. Only weight.”

  He says, “I’m taking my family. We’re leaving. Thank you for dinner.”

  Rosie’s been searching for Maggie twenty minutes now. There have been no clues. No snorts, no giggles, no breathing, no
scurries of small feet. The mounting terror is now only terror. All the hallways look the same. Either she’s walking in circles or there are several copies of the same painting hung on several different walls. She calls for Maggie. “It’s not a game. I’m not playing!”

  Instead John finds Rosie. He looks an awful mess, like some stumbling drunk. She asks him what’s happened.

  “We’re leaving.”

  “Did they upset you?”

  He won’t answer.

  “Were they strange? I think they’re very strange. I think their home is strange.”

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  “She’s hiding. We were playing. But now I can’t find her.”

  Rosie sees Masumi’s lipstick on his hand. He sees her see the lipstick. He wipes it on his shirt. This only leaves a vivid mark like a trail of blood down the left side of his gut.

  “Please help me,” she says.

  They look for Maggie. They open every door. Sometimes finding a room, sometimes a closet, sometimes a bathroom. Always one where there should be another. Where common sense demands an office there is a coat closet hung thickly with coats, but no little girl between them. Some of the coats belong to women. Some belong to very small people, or children.

  “Where’s Maggie?” says Rosie. “Where’s Maggie?”

  They come back to the master bedroom. There is a large window overlooking the backyard, which has a swimming pool in the shape of a star. Rosie looks out the window to see if Maggie’s crouching somewhere out there, among the flowers and the palm trees and everything else overgrown. She hears the nearest bed sigh behind her as John sits down on it.

  “Get back up. Help me find our daughter.”

  “Rosie? When I ask if you’re happy?”

  “Our daughter,” she reminds him, still searching the yard.

  “Why don’t you ever ask me if I’m happy?”

  She turns to look at him. As he slumps on the bed’s end, which sags deeply beneath him, he seems to project the mushroom cloud on the wall from his back as if he were its source.

  “Everyone knows you’re unhappy, John.”