Collision Theory

by Adrian Todd Zuniga

  •••

  In the morning, when I wake, I reach over and check my inbox where I find three new emails. All different responses to Sarah?

  The first:

  I figure, since I’m Sarah, it’s best I write and push things forward. So, consider forward pushed.

  The second:

  lets skip the witty email exchanges and meet soon.

  The third:

  Finally.

  Fifty

  I’m walking down Haight Street with the first of the three Sarah?s. It’s afternoon. Above me, a gray sky zips menacingly by. “Oh,” she says, “Poor Travis.”

  Travis’s picture is stapled to a piece of particle board leaned against a wall. Painted at the top of the particle board, in block letters, is “Travis RIP,” with no period after the P. On and around the board are handwritten notes from friends, a typewritten poem, and four other small pictures.

  Sarah? holds her brown hair clear of her face to get a clearer look. “This poor guy died of an overdose,” she says. My eyes blur from a burst of wind. “How awful.”

  I don’t look at the board.

  “And this girl was with him,” she says, and points. I make like I’m looking, but don’t. I look off, and nod.

  “What do you say to someone that close to death, y’know?”

  I do.

  She exhales. “That’s some intimate shit.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

  “Hey, you okay?” Sarah? says to me. “You look way pale.”

  I feel like pressure’s built up all through me, and there’s a chokehold around my throat. All I can do is nod.

  “Thomas? Do you want me to get help?”

  I shake my head, then hunch over, put my hands on my knees to help me relax.

  “Should I get help?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she says.

  A fist twists inside my chest. “Please go,” I gasp. She touches me on the back.

  “I can’t just leave you.”

  “Just go!”

  •••

  The second in the short line of Sarah?s sits across from me at Blowfish Sushi and says, “I’m so sorry that I’m late.”

  I tell her, “It’s fine.”

  “Though, sometimes when I’m late, and I know this is grim, but I’m like, what if I’m on time and a car hurtles through an intersection and takes me out?”

  The waitress appears out of nowhere and asks what we’d like to drink.

  “Oh, hi,” Sarah? says.

  We both ask for tap water.

  “It’s like we can’t know whose lives—or deaths, really—we’re participating in or denying when we step out the door,” Sarah? says. “If we’re two minutes later, two minutes earlier. If we’re on time.”

  “Are you serious?” I say.

  “Uhh, I think so?”

  The waiter sets two waters on our table. “You guys ready to order?”

  “No,” I say, without looking away from Sarah?

  “Ooookay,” the waiter says. “I’ll come back in a minute.”

  “Who put you up to this?” I ask.

  “Up to what?” she says.

  “This,” I say. I can feel myself getting hysterical. Feel that fist in my chest finding its grip.

  Sarah? looks around and asks, “Is there a Candid Camera in here, right now? Because I have no idea what you’re talking about, and you’re super hostile over I don’t know what.”

  I take a deep, centering breath. “Of course you do,” I say.

  “I believe that’s my cue.” As she pushes back, her chair noisily rakes the floor. She stands and says, “See ya.”

  •••

  The next afternoon I’m at home, readying to leave so I can face off against the third and final installment of Sarah? when Ryan comes into my room holding open my Missed Connections notebook. “Dude, what the fuck?” he asks.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it might,” he says, angry, as he hurriedly riffles through a notebook full of dated, scribbled descriptions of women I had no intention of meeting upon first sight. “I logged into your account—I’m the one that set it up, remember? It’s loaded with this shit.” He holds the notebook and shakes it at me. When I reach for it, he pulls it away. “Have you even started the Elvis script?”

  “Yeah,” I say as I look down at the tops of my shoes.

  “Show me.”

  I stammer when I tell him, “I mean, kind of.”

  “Kind of!? What the fuck!?”

  I want to lean on the excuse of my mother, she’s dead. Or Sarah, I think I’ve finally found her. Instead I turn away.

  “Oh, fuck this,” he says, and spikes the notebook on the ground. “I’ve given you all the space and time you could ever need. But you’re off wandering the fucking city, jotting down notes about a bunch of nobodies. Christ! I’m a fucking enabler!”

  “All the time and space?” I ask, turning back to him. “Netflix knocks, and you’re off to Los Angeles with barely a goodbye.”

  “That’s not fucking true.”

  “And your grand plan is I write it on my own? Like I know what the fuck I’m doing?”

  “You said you could.”

  “You said I could.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Maybe. So then why lie? Why say you’re writing it at all? Why lie to me about your mom? About Sarah? About fucking everything!?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Which is okay when you’re not fucking it up for everybody else. This project isn’t a lark for me, it’s my life. This script is due, it’s due, in three weeks. Or we get paid shit. And instead of doing it—for me, or for us, or for your own well-being—you’re off doing whatever the fuck with this Missed Connections bullshit. Which, by the way, is no kind of answer to any problem.”

  “I was close to realizing that on my own,” I tell him, calming. “But now it’s being force-figured out for me.”

  “I have no idea what the fuck that means. Which is a recurring theme, because I have no idea what the fuck anything means with you anymore. I get that you’re hurting, but any time I talk to you it’s all lies and vague bullshit. Which is painful. I don’t know what to do, or how to help, or how to be a friend to you in any way. And I can’t figure out why you can’t be straight with me.”

  “Is everything okay?” Elsa asks, peeking in, a look on her face that’s shot-through with worry.

  Ryan and I go quiet. I pick up the notebook and set it on my bed.

  “To tell the truth,” I say, “it’s almost over.”

  “What is?” Elsa asks Ryan as I brush past her on my way out of my bedroom.

  “I have no fucking idea,” Ryan tells her, and follows me into the hall.

  I open the front door to go.

  “You’re off the movie, dude,” Ryan says, exhausted. “You’ll get a few bucks. A ‘story by’ credit. But we’re done.”

  “Everything okay?” Elsa asks Ryan.

  “He hasn’t done shit on the script,” he tells her. As the door closes behind me, I hear him say, “Let’s pack up and go.”

  •••

  At a cafe around the corner from my front door, I’m feeling fragile when the third, and final, Sarah? says, “You’re not who I thought you were.”

  “Oh, really,” I say, unsurprised.

  “You’re not, no.”

  “I know your parable,” I say. “I figured you out on the walk over.”

  “My parable?” she asks.

  “Well, your script, I guess.”

  “Huh?”

  My phone rings, and it’s Ryan. I press a button to silence the ring. He calls right back, and I ignore the call. He starts texting, so I turn the p
hone off.

  “You’re here to teach me that Sarah isn’t my one true collision, because her feelings weren’t reciprocal. But what your script doesn’t say is she keeps coming back.”

  Sarah? tilts her head, searching my face for some clue.

  I ask her, “Why would she do that if there was no connection?”

  Sarah? leans forward and tells me, “If this is some kind of joke, and I’m supposed to know what you’re talking about, I don’t.”

  “Oh, that’s smart. Let me ramble on so I declare the folly of my behavior. At least tell me I’m getting warmer.”

  Sarah? says, “To get facts straight, I came here to meet a guy I met two months ago at The Cat Club. He asked for my number, and I declined because he was leaving for Istanbul for six weeks. He said when he was back he’d post only my name on Missed Connections, in case I changed my mind about the phone number. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m not your Sarah. Though I guess I’m willing to be his.”

  She stands up to go. As she heads to the exit, I tell her, “You can tell Sarah I said, fine, okay, I’m ready.”

  Fifty-One

  As I stagger slowly toward home in darkening San Francisco night, I get a call from Blocked ID.

  I answer, but instead of a hello, all I offer is my breathing.

  “Ryan reached out to me on Facebook,” Sarah says. “That time in Union Square? I get it now.”

  “That time in Union Square” was fifteen months ago—ten weeks before I relocated to San Francisco—when every rooftop felt like a threat. I’d been sitting alone on a bench in the smother of Central Park’s late-June heat when Sarah walked by. “Thomas,” she said. “What happened to your face?”

  “You saw,” I said, embarrassed.

  My face looked like the mushy remains of a rotting orange, my eyelids like crushed bees had been smeared on them, from when The Fucking Man hit and hit me just two weeks before.

  “Saw what?” she asked.

  My tongue found a healing cut inside my bottom lip where the skin was ridged and raw. The swelling had dissipated, but if I opened my mouth too wide there’d be blood.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

  The truths I couldn’t tell her: It was my fifth straight day here; I was forcing myself to leave the house; I knew she sometimes walked this route on weekdays; I wanted her to see my face, a visual of how much my heart was hurting.

  “If I could promise you one meal, what cuisine would be best?” I asked her.

  She looked at me confused. “What?’

  It was a Tuesday afternoon. I’d been telling my supervisor at the firm that I was at a psychiatrist because of the battered state of my face. I didn’t even have a psychiatrist and maybe—Sarah right here, right now—that wasn’t the best thing in the world.

  “And what’s the place you most want to go in the world?” I asked.

  Her brow darkened. People with ugly dogs on short chains walked by.

  “Next time, I need to get it right.”

  “Stop it, Thomas,” Sarah said.

  “Stop it, Thomas,” I echoed.

  I envied her outfit: denim shorts and a tank top. My jeans were so hot against my legs. I hadn’t rolled up the sleeves of my collared shirt.

  “Will you just please go see your mother?”

  “This is so weird,” I said. “I thought you didn’t talk since you jumped.”

  “What are you talking about? What the hell’s going on with you?”

  Dizzied by Sarah’s proximity, I closed my eyes and slumped down low. When I crossed my arms, I felt tinkles of sweat pop up all over my body. After a few seconds, I peeked to gauge her reaction. But Sarah was walking away, wiping her eyes.

  Now Sarah asks, “Thomas?” as I approach the front door of my apartment. “You still there?”

  I pull out my keys, and their jangling tells her I am.

  “I tried to keep going,” she says. “But since you weren’t willing to go to your mother, I couldn’t believe you’d be there when I needed you. In the end, I had no choice but to end it. I loved you, I did, I do still, but you’d built up walls so high.”

  “Where are you now?” I imagine her as breathable ether, a blend of sparkling light and calming sea mist.

  “Austin,” she says. “Still in Austin.” My throat catches. Sarah takes a deep breath, then in her serious voice tells me, “Thomas, I need you to stop pretending I’m the girl you saw jump.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, my hands shaking.

  “You do.”

  “Just meet me on my roof,” I say, before I hang up and turn off my phone. “I’ll leave the door open.”

  Fifty-Two

  It’s dark when I enter my apartment. I leave the front door cracked open, and in refracted moonlight, I feel my way to the living room. There I find Ryan’s keys on the coffee table, atop a check he’s left for the next two months’ rent. I scan the room, then look under his cot. His and Elsa’s bags are gone.

  I head to the back porch and before I’m there I hear the pat-pat-pat of feet rising up the back stairs.

  I follow, and on the roof, on the far ledge, standing with her back to me, is Sarah. From this distance she’s grayed out in the night, a dusty figure with a charcoal waterfall of hazy hair.

  I take the replicated moment in. In place of the sun-swept Brooklyn Bridge is the moon-soaked Golden Gate. Instead of a wash of sunlight, the stars are needle pricks in the black velour sky.

  I expect some seam in this world to unzip. For the scenery around me to disintegrate for dramatic effect. For invisible dust flecks to bang deafeningly together, or for the circles of my fingerprints to achieve voice.

  Then a wind gust riffles Sarah’s dress—navy flowers on ghost-white—and I snap to. I step toward her, and don’t stop.

  “I’ll dress appropriately for all occasions,” I say, as my feet grumble against the smooth stones that cover the rooftop. “I’ll leave notes on your pillow every morning.”

  When I’m close, she turns, knotted strands of hair covering her face. Her eyes fluorescent pearls. On her arm, in dry-erase marker, she’s written, It was sweet then. But stop.

  “I’m going to get it right this time,” I tell her.

  You never, ever can.

  “Let me save you.”

  Her shoulders slump and she shakes her head, she’s so perturbed. Like I ever needed saving.

  “Then I’ll come with you.”

  I take a timid step forward. Beyond Sarah, the city is dim lights. The city is damp mist fog. My teeth chatter. I’m close enough to touch her.

  Then this: Sarah reaches up with both hands to pull knotted strands of her hair away from her face. When she tucks her hair behind her ears, and looks up, I finally see this someone, this stranger—cheeks blotched red, mouth bent into a frown, Jennifer.

  A gulf expands between us.

  I teeter backward as she adjusts her feet, delicate, so she can locate the perfect spot. Then she starts to rock, left then right.

  There is no slow motion. No stalled moment of wonder.

  She looks at me, then she collapses off the ledge.

  There, then not there.

  I go to the ledge, lean out as far as I can, so I can see into the glint of the misty city. I lift my knees onto it, inch out even farther.

  But this woman, this ghost, this never-Sarah, is nowhere.

  “Thomas!” a faraway voice shouts. My father’s. “What the hell!?”

  I’m stunned to see my dad is standing on the street below, a backpack over one shoulder, looking up at me with a frightened expression, mouth agape.

  “Fuckhead!” Ryan shouts behind me. Followed by the hurried crunch of running on rooftop gravel.

  I don’t move. I don’t speak.

  Whe
n the pounding strides get close, I clench my whole body tight and lean my head back away from the ledge. From behind, Ryan grabs me by the shirt back and yanks me down. We tumble down hard onto a cold bed of stones.

  “You asshole,” he says, and punches me hard in the stomach. I exhale an oof! then double-over, trying not to vomit.

  “I was just looking.”

  “Well, stop!” he says and grabs my shirt collar. “Stop this fucking bullshit.” There are tears in his eyes.

  “Okay,” I tell him, and rest my cheek and ear on the gravel.

  “Sarah messaged me in a panic and said you’d be up here. You need to get help,” he says. “Like really serious help.”

  “I know,” I say. “I will. I swear I will.”

  Ryan slumps off me, and sits up. His arms resting on his knees. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he says.

  “I know,” I say.

  I hear the back door open. Elsa’s voice. My dad’s. Their footsteps on the deck, then their hurried trudge up the stairs.

  My father comes toward me, a hobbled run.

  “Dammit, Thomas. You scared the hell out of me,” he says. When he gets to me, he kneels. His face is streaked with panicked tears. He scoops his arm under me, and lifts, so he’s holding me. “Are you okay?”

  I nod, but it’s another lie. So I correct myself by shaking my head against him. He puts his hand on the back of my head, and draws me toward him, to settle me.

  “My son,” he says, and brings me closer. “My beautiful boy.”

  I want to tell him I’ll be okay, I just need time, that I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But my throat catches, and all I can offer up is a stifled gasp.

  “I know,” he says, to quiet me. “I know, I know, I know.”

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the people who said keep going. And yes you can. To all the people who read my work. Or asked to read my work. Who asked me questions and listened.

  Thank you to my publisher, Tyson Cornell, for saying yes to this book and making my lifelong dream come true.

  To my agent, Farley Chase, who called my writing virtuosic and restored my belief in my fiction.

  To my editor, Seth Fischer, who could see what I could not, and whose rigor and relentlessness were essential.