Collision Theory

by Adrian Todd Zuniga

  Which relaxes me.

  Ryan comes back in with a bowl full of cinnamon cereal and asks me, energy still at a ten out of ten, “What about you? You get up to anything today?”

  “I wandered,” I say. I give a paced recap and mention my drop in to the Top of the Mark, and the woman in the elevator.

  “You talk to her?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Did you like her?”

  I shrug. I didn’t think anything about her beyond she was there.

  “We should find her,” he says, as he takes a bite of cereal. “Y’know, stake her out.”

  I give him a look.

  “I’m kidding!”

  Still, he sets his bowl of cereal next to his open laptop and starts typing.

  “Don’t,” I say, like he’s going to email her direct.

  “Just come look.”

  I see Ryan’s at craigslist.org. “Missed Connections,” he says.

  “Mixed what?”

  “My sweet, flip-phone-using friend,” Ryan says as he clicks and clicks. “This has been around for the last fifteen years, so of course you wouldn’t have heard of it.”

  “Har, har.”

  “What color was her hair?” he asks.

  “Why?” I ask and slump onto the corner of the table and sigh a sigh of tortured disinterest.

  “Because you’re miserable for good reason, and maybe this will help.”

  “Her hair was…spiderweb spun charcoal,” I say to be difficult.

  Ryan starts to type. “What else?”

  “Did you write that?”

  “What else?”

  “She was, maybe, five eight? She was wearing… Wait, why?”

  “Tell me what she was wearing!”

  “A black sweater,” I say. Then squint as I recall the dress. There were no navy flowers. No slapping ripple. “A red dress,” I say in a fog. “With white circles.”

  “Thank you.”

  There were no ankle straps on her high heels. No buckle.

  “All I really said to her was bye.”

  He types more, then I see him click [ publish ]. He turns and tells me, “Congratulations. Elevator Girl at Top of the Mark is your first ever Missed Connection.”

  Thirty-Eight

  In the way-early morning, in my all-black room with my door closed, the light off, and my laptop screen dim, I click around on Missed Connections. As far as I can tell, it’s a litany of anonymous, quick-hit posts from shy, unsure idealists who, when they had the chance, didn’t meet or get contact info from a person that had them starry-eyed. So they hurried to Craigslist to post last-ditch headlines like:

  I served you at my pizza restaurant (m4m)

  I was your taxi driver (m4w)

  You started talking to me about my poetry (w4m)

  All followed by optimistic write-ups detailing their missed opportunity.

  And now, amidst those who went public with their romanticized hope, Ryan’s placed me.

  I hear him up, prepping for his 6:00 a.m. flight, so I go to his room.

  “Hey,” he says, as he finishes packing for LA. “You’re up stupid early.”

  It’s a few minutes after 4:00 a.m.

  “The girl from the elevator,” I say. “What if she doesn’t know Missed Connections exists?”

  “Everyone knows it exists.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Everyone else, then,” he says. “She hasn’t replied?”

  “No response,” I say, relieved that she hasn’t.

  “Well, that’s done, then,” he says. “But I mean, if she had written, it’d be sort of fun, right?” Ryan says as he zips up his roller bag. Then wheels it past me into the hall.

  “But there’s no…glue,” I say.

  Which stalls him. His arms go wide. “No glue?” Ryan says and turns, put off. He looses a pfft, followed by a headshake, then heads to the kitchen.

  I stay put, trying to define it. “No life to it.”

  I hear the faucet go on then off, then the sound of a glass being set on our metal dish rack. “So you’re saying you need to meet a girl on a tightrope over a pit of starving crocodiles. Or equivalent. Got it.”

  “It should just be more,” I say.

  He comes and puts his hands on my shoulders. He looks me in the eyes and asks, “You okay? With your mom and everything?”

  I seriously consider his question, which makes me space out. I race past the sight of Sarah’s arm-written Find me, drift through an image of my mom’s hand on my leg at home. I try to imagine a ledge I can grab hold of, or a space of flat, safe earth I can stand on. “I mean…” I start, expecting some words to follow, but there’s none. Just a feeling of floating. Of drift. So I’m silent.

  “I hate that I have to head out,” Ryan says to me, after a squeeze of my shoulders. “But if you need me, just say so. I know it’s a hard time, but I’m close. A short flight.”

  He grabs his laptop bag and puts it on his shoulder.

  “I should be fine,” I say.

  “Sure,” he says. “But nothing’s ever so easy.”

  Thirty-Nine

  In the days after Ryan leaves, home is still, is stale, and I find myself trapped in a pinwheel loop of recent imagery: Mom laughing at dinner; Mom’s thumb running over Joshua’s photograph; Sarah standing in moonlight; Dad’s hand atop Mom’s urn; Mom laughing at dinner; Mom’s thumb running over Joshua’s…

  For relief, I don’t write the first draft of Attack on Graceland, as I promised myself and promised Ryan. Instead, a different, shameful pattern emerges: I shower, dress, head outside with brittle-feeling bones wrapped in thinning skin. I board a bus and embark on a directionless, all-hours sift through the city’s seven-by-seven miles. All in a search for Sarah, in the hopes that I will find her and she will assuage my grief.

  Like yesterday and the day before, and all last week, the bus predictably jerks, sputters, and rumbles, but this morning it smells like sweat and rust and rainwater rot. I breathe shallow through my mouth and distract myself from the scent by pressing my thumb into the oven’s vanishing burn on my wrist, so it’ll stay. So it’ll scar.

  When the bus wheezes to a stop downtown, I shoot off, eager for an uncontaminated breath. I wander aimless, until I find myself stalled on Second Street, between Mission and Market, by a glittering sidewalk that flashes and sparkles like a Paparazzi welcome. There I lean against a brick building and watch people cascade by. Frustrated because I haven’t located unfindable Sarah, I start to create new possibilities by jotting down details of passersby. Just now, one jogs by at full speed with blue Adidas wristbands. Then a woman in a skirt and beat-up ballet flats flashes a glance at me as she strides by. I scribble down a single specific: the Long Island-shaped birthmark on her left calf.

  After two hours, I take the bus back home. En route, I flip through my notes from the last three days—Valencia Street between Fourteenth and Eighteenth, the center of Ghirardelli Square, at Lotta’s Fountain—to find a list of specifics that caught my eye. Curly red hair, railroad-spike cuff bracelet. Lime-painted fingernails, and cleft chin. Graceful strides, dark red lipstick.

  Once home, once again, I don’t open the blank Final Draft file labeled Attack on Graceland 1st Draft.fdx so I can type out the opening scene. Instead, I call my dad for my quick, semi-daily check-in, then slump onto my bed and stare at the ceiling, with my notebook open next to me. I watch as the sunlight reflects off the hardwood floor and swirls around the upper corners of the room. I try to remember how I felt before. Before Sarah. Before Mom got sick. Before Dad was alone from now on. Was I happy? Was I ever happy? Was I content or fulfilled? I remember myself as waiting. Waiting until. Waiting for. Then Sarah arrived, and every day after went by in a snap.

  My phone rings, Ryan calling. I answer with a slow hello.

/>   “Everything good?”

  “The best,” I say.

  “Script coming along?”

  “I’ll say, yes.”

  Ryan laughs, and tells me, “Looks like I’ll be gone another week. The director and I are digging deep, and it’s hard. It’s fun, really fun. It’s just so busy! And the script’s definitely okay?”

  “Peachy and keen,” I say, while I think: Tomorrow I’ll head in the direction of Coit Tower. The day after, the Ferry Building. The day after that, the de Young Museum.

  “Good, good,” he says. “Oh, and Elsa and I were texting today. She hopes you’re okay.”

  A surprise jot of light skitters across the ceiling. I watch its anxious, erratic dance. “I wish you were here to see this.”

  “See what?”

  “Just the ceiling.”

  “Oh,” he says with a laugh. “Me, too?”

  Forty

  When I pull myself out of bed, I don’t type out the title page for Attack on Graceland, or start on scene headers, or write any dialogue back-and-forths. Instead, I open my notebook to scribbles everywhere, and because so far Sarah’s nowhere, I take control by picking out a highlight from yesterday afternoon’s page—gray bell-bottomed pin-striped pants + “Are You Jesus?” T-shirt + tube-sock covered arm up to the elbow—and use it to create the headline I type into Missed Connections:

  Arm-Sock Girl at 826 Valencia (m4w)

  I follow up by typing a rundown of her clothing, write that we were both at 826 Valencia’s Pirate Supply Store in the late afternoon—while I looked through a drawer of eye patches, she covered her mouth while laughing at a drawer full of X’s that mark the spot.

  I click submit and type in my five-letter verification. I accept the terms of use, then in comes an email with a link inside. I click the link to confirm the listing, and my post goes live.

  Then I flip back a few days in my notebook and pinpoint red sweater with secondhand denim + beet-red messenger bag + hair trapped in white bandana for the headline:

  Bandana’d Damsel on Folsom (m4w)

  I go through the motions—near Edwin Klockars Blacksmith Shop just after 9:00 p.m.; you asked me directions to the Jackson Brewery Complex—then I submit, verify, accept terms of use, click a link to confirm.

  From a list of at least a dozen others, I pick one from today—black pants/boots/hair, Middle Eastern (?), reading New Yorker.

  Then my phone rings. It’s Ryan calling.

  I seize up, and my eyes lock on to the ATTACK ON GRACELAND folder on my desktop that holds the unopened file, where all of our notes are collected. To curtail immediate script-related questions—How’s the writing going? What scene are you on?—I answer with, “How’s LA?”

  “It’s good!” he says, cheery. “I had a moment to breathe, and because I’m feeling guilty that I’ve left you on the hook for the script, I did a mini-brainstorm earlier and wanted to dump some Elvis ideas on you to keep you motoring. All which you can take or leave.”

  “Shoot,” I say, holding my breath.

  “I thought earlier that the crowd that gathers outside could be a character. Like, maybe they influence what the media’s reporting, and that keeps changing? It seems funnier in my head. There are the usual fans and media, but what about the police first, like we talked about? And then maybe the FBI shows? Oh! And what if Lisa Marie Presley is behind it? Like, she wants the aliens there—maybe she used satellites to contact them? I don’t know, that’s stupid. But with Graceland’s profits slumping, she knows aliens showing up will make international news. And since all press is good press, that’ll reinvigorate people’s appetite for Elvis. But, then maybe she has to confess to the FBI—because they’re about to leave, maybe? I don’t know. But everything she planned is fucked because the aliens are a literal threat to steal her pop’s home? Does any of this make sense?”

  “I get it,” I say, but when I scan back through his ideas, all I can remember is: the crowd is a character, Lisa Marie Presley and the FBI. And Ryan asking if it made sense.

  “Cool, cool,” he says. “I’m just getting anxious because I’m buried in Netflix stuff that I can’t get away from and I just really want us to nail this.”

  “Of course.”

  “All good with you, by the way? Just, with the script and everything else?”

  “Keeping busy,” I say. I ease my notebook closed, ashamed I’m letting him down. “Or at least I’m keeping distracted.”

  “I know it’s been a rough ride,” he says. “It’s good to hear you’re in motion.”

  Forty-One

  A few days later, after three weeks away, Ryan calls to tell me he’ll be back home in San Francisco tonight.

  “Let’s go grab a drink,” he says, and when I don’t immediately say yes, he asks me, “At least one?”

  As soon as we’re off the phone, it hits me that, oh, fuck, I’ve lost three weeks to Missed Connections, so I finally open Final Draft and create a title page. I stare at the screen, uncertain. It takes a few, wasted minutes for me to will away a sense of overpowering exhaustion before I force myself to type:

  INT. GRACELAND GIFT SHOP—DAY

  LUCAS RAMSDELL (33), a handsome, slim man with a full head of brown hair and an outdated seventies style, shadily walks around the gift shop before he slips a pair of silver imitation Elvis sunglasses into his jacket pocket.

  An overweight Graceland employee—white, female, all business—hurries toward Lucas.

  EMPLOYEE

  Sir. Sir.

  Lucas holds his arms wide, a show of innocence.

  LUCAS

  You got the wrong guy!

  The woman pushes past Lucas.

  EMPLOYEE

  Sir, those are Christmas ornaments not earrings!

  The woman is talking to a man who is hooking a Graceland ornament into his eight-year-old daughter’s earlobe.

  I will myself to keep going, but I’m drawn toward the pulsing lure of my Missed Connections notebook, a distraction that’s replaced my fruitless search for Sarah. I crack it open and like that—it’s two hours later—and all I’ve got to show for my misspent time is a sense of shame and seventeen new Missed Connections posts.

  I get a text from Ryan saying he’s just off his plane at SFO and he’ll be home in half an hour. I close my laptop and sit back, as a scream of guilt sounds off in my chest. I take long deep breaths, and it’s only a few seconds before the Mom-inspired cycle of the pinwheel starts anew: Mom turning the corner when I first arrived; Mom shouting out, “Hot-wired the son of a bitch!”; Mom kissing Carl’s picture; Dad telling Elsa, “I dread going back to that house.”

  •••

  That night, Ryan and I end up at a cocktail bar a few blocks from our place. While he’s at the bar ordering our first round of drinks, I jot down the particulars of a girl across the room—oval face, glow-in-the-dark pale, Ukrainian flag necklace—when Ryan returns and tells me, “All work and no play makes Thomas a poor drinking companion. Away with the notebook!” I tuck it inside of my jacket, then Ryan gets quiet. “How are you, really?”

  I nod.

  “We haven’t really talked about it. Which is my fault. It’s hard to know when to press, or let you breathe. But I’m here to talk. In case you want to.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t,” I say. “Not yet.” Though the truth is more like, Not ever.

  Ryan nods. “Well, the offer stands. Anyway, how’s the script coming?”

  “I should be further along,” I say.

  He laughs. “Everyone who’s ever written anything thinks they should be further along. How far did you get?”

  Instead of dropping the bomb that I’m a half page in, I lie and tell him I’m up to page nine.

  “Oh,” he says, clearly concerned, then tries to mask it by shaking the ice in his drink and staring into it. Then
he turns and looks at me. “Well, it’s a start. And I’m sure those nine pages are tight. Send me what you have and I’ll read it.”

  “Not yet,” I say.

  “I totally get that,” Ryan says. “But time’s flying. I just want to make sure… I mean, you get the story, probably better than I do. But don’t worry about being meticulous. Show me stuff, even if it’s just the bones.” He pauses, and his lips go to the side. When he’s anxious, he chews the inside of his mouth. “I’ll crack on with Netflix, so we can do the rest together. But I’m here, y’know? I’m on your side. The more you share, the easier it is for me to keep the ball rolling once Pilot’s finished.”

  “I get it,” I say.

  “Okay, cool,” he says, relieved by my getting it. “Anyway, I’m glad you came with me tonight. I wish we’d done this more when I was first back, but heartbreak and thinned-out bank accounts… But it’s good to be out and meeting people.”

  But I’m out all the time, intentionally not meeting plenty of people.

  “These two,” Ryan says, and gestures in the direction of a pair of women wearing colorful, flowing dresses cut just below the knee. Before I can say no, he waves when they look in our direction.

  “Dude,” I say.

  “Excuse me,” he says to one of them.

  “Let’s not,” I say.

  “Excuse me!” he repeats to the women as he stands. “I’m sorry, but there’s space if you’d like to join us.” They pause, look at one another. “If you sit with us, you’ll get to meet my best friend. And he’s wonderful.”

  The blonde shrugs and says, “Sure.” The dark-haired one follows.

  After preliminary hellos with Colette (blonde) and Gemma (dark-haired), Ryan orders a round of cocktails for the table, then sells me by saying I’m the mastermind behind a movie concept we sold, and, no thanks to him, I’m now writing the first draft solo while he flits around LA.