King of Joy

by Richard Chiem

Perry asks, What the fuck is happening?

  Corvus looks up at the glowing black chandelier and stops blinking.

  I think we’ve made it, she says. I think we’re happy.

  Shit, Perry says.

  Yeah, she says, I think we’ve made it.

  Happy, he says. We’re happy.

  Perry looks away. Perry looks at Corvus.

  We’re happy. She can feel herself nodding, she can feel her eyes getting brighter after taking a deep breath. Euphoria warms the blood and her ears pop.

  CHAPTER 3

  TRANSFIXED BY A HOLE IN HIS SHIRT, CORVUS TELLS PERRY a small white lie: that she saved a man from blindly crossing the street and getting hit by a car. She lies because she doesn’t know why—she’s bored and it’s barely a conscious thing. He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking across the living room at a mirror, trying to tie his tie. Pretzel purrs by her feet and twists around her ankles in a figure-eight pattern. A firetruck banshees by; the radio is playing the weekend update.

  Perry doesn’t ask much about the man almost getting hit by a car, stays quiet, and finishes his knot. He touches her back and kisses her goodbye, and Corvus regrets the white lie almost immediately. They both leave for work, unlocking fingers and departing from the door in opposite directions. She looks at the sky and it’s a good sky. Her bus is right on time and it’s empty. The clouds move slowly.

  After a few hours of staring at a blank wall in complete silence in his studio, Perry walks down the fire escape to smoke a spliff. He chooses a spot of torn bricks on the building across the way from his studio and he zones off. His eyes get heavy in his favorite way, and he turns up the music in his headphones. All he needs to do today is write a few pages for a new play. That’s all he needs to do today, he thinks. Perry paces the sidewalk and feels a great dread.

  If he has time today, he could go for a run. He has to keep up his momentum or all is lost. Perry thinks, If I have time, I’ll go for a run. He touches his stomach underneath his shirt on the way to the corner store, feeling his baby fat, stoned and worried.

  Walking through the brightly lit convenience store, Perry takes a long time in the freezer aisle. He pays in cash and says thanks to the young clerk, a woman with tattooed sleeves of cityscapes. When she asks him what he’s listening to, tapping her ear, Perry writes the name of the musician down on the back of his receipt and leaves the store. It’s not until he opens the door to his studio that he realizes he has not done a single productive thing all day. He has not done shit and now he feels like complete shit. He has ice cream for dinner and goes back to the wall. His mind wanders to the mostly blank storyboard, scribbles on Post-it notes and nothing else. He hasn’t written anything real in months. He wants something else from the convenience store and feels pangs of remorse.

  Poise. Poise. Poise. Talking to herself under her breath, Corvus leans against the warm popper and watches the clock. Ten more minutes before the doors close. The theater is dead but there are a few people here for the late show: a young posh couple, an elderly punk couple, and a few lone birds. A customer tells her she should smile more. Corvus imagines bashing his face in as she squirts butter into his popcorn and slides his change to him on the counter. Enjoy the show, she says, still not smiling. Fuck this dude, she thinks.

  After the last customer pays and walks off with concessions, Mary runs downstairs from the manager’s office red in the face and powers through the glass double doors crying. The door frame shakes a little, and Corvus leans over the counter, watching Mary run through the dark parking lot. Corvus imagines herself shouting after Mary but instead says nothing. Mary disappears into light fog, the surreal orange glow of parking lot lamps.

  Dick comes down a few moments later to start closing the theater for the night. He stares out to the parking lot as though he can still see Mary running. When he collects her till, he avoids looking Corvus in the eye and says, Mary and I stopped fucking.

  What? Corvus asks. What?

  Dick says, You know what.

  He knocks the counter with his knuckles, holding the cash till. His voice is cracked and tender. His nose is running.

  Let me know when everything’s clean, he says. Let me know when the last customer is gone. I’ll lock the doors then.

  Corvus can see his eyes are red and nods.

  When she hears his door lock upstairs, it triggers a sweet feeling: it’s her time, closing time. Corvus runs the mop water, doorstops all the doors, and plays Bright Eyes loudly on the stereo tucked under the counter. As though taking a deep dive underwater, Corvus takes a breath and starts sweeping the popcorn into the trash bin, wishing she were back home with Perry. She mouths all the songs echoing in the lobby, wiping down everything spotless. She feels the same but brand-new. Fuck smiling, though. Poise. Poise. Poise. Fuck smiling.

  Losing his grip and focus, Perry takes another break from writing his new play and packs a bowl, does a line, and rolls on his back with his arms outstretched. Ten fingers, tall hands outstretched. The city loses daylight through the open blinds of his wall-length window and the floor darkens with stripes. The cool breeze takes him over. He has done absolutely nothing today: complete madness. Absolutely nothing, he thinks. Fucking useless.

  Obsessive-compulsive, Perry barely moves and anticipates the time. He knows NPR is airing a review of his play in a few minutes and Perry has everything synced to record. The little red light turns on when the radio announcer’s voice comes on air. He takes another quick hit and holds the smoke in, plugging in his headphones and homing in. His eyes seem to open a little wider during the broadcast.

  When the segment is through, Perry rewinds the tape and listens again. America hates the play. All the people being interviewed hate the play.

  I didn’t understand what the BEEP was going on.

  REWIND

  The little girl disturbed me.

  REWIND

  No. No, no. Not for me, man. Refund.

  Although originally drawing record-breaking crowds during its opening week, audiences are now fleeing from the controversial drama Corvus, the story of a young girl’s suffering.

  Perry takes off his headphones and lights a cigarette and closes his notebook. He is visibly shaking. The tape plays again without him listening, the wheels are spinning. Instead of calling Corvus, he turns his phone off and paces around the studio. He feels blank and hot, anxious and suffocated. Perry sits cross-legged on the floor and dives into his usual stupor: Klonopin, cocaine, weed, a bottle of red wine, and a Diet Coke.

  A secret movie geek, Corvus likes never saying a fucking word about it, but she loves being around movies, she loves hearing people talk about movies. She builds her perfect house in the woods in her mind while she sweeps the floor and looks every customer in the eyes while she serves concessions. Corvus kicks open each bathroom stall door to make sure no one is there and nobody’s there. Toilets and more toilets. She catches herself in the dirty wall mirror and shakes her head, smiling. The pay sucks, the customers are often rude, but there is a calm here.

  There are moments she gets to have to herself that she can’t duplicate anywhere else.

  The last two people leave the lobby, the older punk couple. Through the glass lobby doors, he has his hand on the small of her back and they’re walking in that daze you wander into after seeing a movie. Eyes adjusting, fresh air.

  Holding a yellow flashlight, Corvus watches them waddle away before turning off the house lights. She waves at the surveillance camera and calls upstairs.

  Dick, I’m doing theater checks, she says.

  Do it, says his voice on the phone.

  Paradise: The moment when she’s alone, when nobody knows what she’s doing. The surveillance camera is cheap and only films the main lobby, and Corvus knows all the blind spots. Turning on her flashlight, she unbuttons her uniform and starts to relax. She puts a cigarette in her mouth but doesn’t light it. She thinks about Perry and whether he’s waiting up for her, as she props open the
theater doors.

  Little lights illuminate the walking path, a single emergency exit light reaches the high ceiling. After a few paces, Corvus is already walking on top of the seats. She jumps from row to row, armrest to armrest, her favorite kind of special rebellion. Alone with three hundred seats. She does her job and checks for wallets, lost and found things, and to see if anyone is hiding in the empty theater. She feels safe in a space so large, standing on the seats in the front row, looking at the lit blank screen. Corvus makes circles with her flashlight against the walls and seats and takes her time on her way back.

  In the last theater, Corvus opens the back exit door and finally lights her cigarette, staring at the orange moon. Fuck, she says.

  Corvus knocks on the manager’s office door but Dick doesn’t seem to be there. She knocks again before she elbows her way in, breaking through the cheap lock. Nothing, no Dick, but the lights are on, the TV is still on.

  Walking to the projection booth, she doesn’t call for him and walks slowly. There is a figure in the ether, and the projectors are all still running hot. He’s sitting in the dark on the old torn couch and he’s not moving. Corvus flashes her light over him and asks, What the fuck?

  Dick raises a wine bottle to his mouth and takes a swig. He looks up at her and raises the bottle.

  No, man, she says, no, thanks, and she sits down next to him, turning on a lamp. Are you doing okay?

  Dick looks ahead and takes another swig from the bottle. Underneath the hundreds of movie posters, the walls are paisley. He says, I was closing out and Mary called me, crying. I don’t know what to do.

  Corvus watches Dick pack his purple bong, which has been hidden in plain sight next to the lamp.

  She told me she was hanging out with Louis, Dick says.

  Corvus says, Wait. Like hanging out, hanging out?

  Yeah. I don’t know, Dick says. Yes. His voice breaks when he says yes.

  Dick raises the bong to his mouth and inhales smooth thick smoke. He looks up at her and stares at the little distance above her head and raises the bong to her.

  Corvus takes the bong and lights the bowl and takes a bigger hit. She coughs just once and cannot help but tear up and smile, eyes tired and dilated.

  I can stay here and chill with you if you want.

  No, that’s okay, Dick says. No worries. He wipes his face with both hands and shakes his head. I can finish closing out if you want to leave.

  Corvus stands up and smooths out her jacket. They fist-bump and she asks, Are you okay?

  Dick nods without looking at her and starts packing another bowl. He turns off the lamplight and breathes in.

  When Corvus finally makes her way out to the street, the bars are closing, and the moon looks even bigger and brighter than usual. The sidewalks are filled with people howling at the moon, jumping up and down, and smoking cigarettes. She has to weave in between drunk bodies and conversations, tired as fuck. No one wants to move for her. Corvus lips a new cigarette, looks around, and says, I used to love Saturdays.

  Topless women with their faces painted white ride on the shoulders of men dressed as priests on the corner where Corvus waits for her crosswalk light to turn green. Corvus thinks about asking the women, not the priests, what’s going on tonight, if there’s a party or celebration or something, but instead, she just wonders if they’re feeling cold or not.

  Before she can get a steady flame from her cheap lighter, Corvus notices a man walking unknowingly into traffic. He looks sad and distracted and moves in this swift motion as though he expects the crowd to follow him across the street. A new row of cars accelerates drunkenly fast across the intersection. Dropping her lighter to the pavement, Corvus screams, Hey, HEY!

  The man stops and looks up and sees her. The cars speed by, nearly colliding with him, pulling his jacket with the force of the wind. The look on his face is as pale white as the painted women standing next to Corvus. He looks up again and waves at Corvus and continues walking. He screams, Thank you! and disappears into the flow of people.

  Her light turns green and Corvus walks across the street so completely dazed, it takes her an extra twenty minutes to find her route home. She tries to light another cigarette but realizes she forgot to pick up her lighter. When she comes home in the dead of night, she notices right away that Perry’s car is not there. In a panic like someone was following her home, Corvus rushes to unlock the front door and runs upstairs, her pulse beating in her ears. Opening the door, looking at the bed: He’s not there.

  Passed out for hours on the floor, Perry wakes up in a sweat. There are lines and creases on his face and arms: he’s dehydrated. It’s already the next morning, bright and sunny. He rushes out the door, still putting on his jacket as it slams shut behind him. All his electronics, all the lights in his studio remain on. He worries about Corvus being worried sick and turns on his phone as he races down the stairs.

  Perry feels helpless and misunderstood. He wants his body to fall out of time so he can play catch-up or hide inside his mind and shut down. He thinks, There’s no time for anything. There’s no time for anything.

  On the way to his car, Perry runs through the convenience store for something to drink. He has three voicemails waiting for him. The little phone icon pulses like a heartbeat. When he goes to pay, the clerk reaches for his hand. The touch is so soft and gentle, it’s startling.

  Perry looks up: it’s the same young woman with the tattooed cities. No name tag.

  She lets go of his hand. She says, I love that record.

  What? asks Perry.

  She takes the cash he was holding in his frozen fingers and rings up his Diet Coke. The register dings, and she slides him back his old paper receipt. In his handwriting, he reads what he was listening to the other day: Elliott Smith, New Moon.

  I forgot I gave you this, he says.

  I love him, she says. I thought you were listening to him. The clerk takes Perry’s hand again and pulls up her sleeve. She points to a skyscraper on her arm, bright red as though raw.

  This is the newest one, she says.

  Perry nearly reaches out to touch her skin but stops. The clerk smiles for the first time.

  She gives him his change and Perry leaves the convenience store; the door sensor chimes and echoes. There is a noticeable breeze and he cannot move. Holding his phone and standing on the corner of the busy street, Perry loses himself and forgets what he was doing. The traffic flows, steady currents of shiny cars and people. The stupid daze leaves his eyes, finally, and he drops the change from his hand, a dime and a few pennies.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE LAST SCENE IN PERRY’S PLAY COMES IMMEDIATELY after the intermission: right when the audience has just gotten comfortable and back to their seats, although some are caught mid-conversation in the dark, others even still walking back in. The house goes completely black, dead emergency lights and everything.

  A bright blue light shines on center stage and it’s the same sad girl again. She looks a little older, her dress is ragged, and her hair is longer. Gigantic white projector screens slowly tongue down from the ceiling, and an electronic motor is the only thing heard for a full minute.

  Then suddenly images appear, washing the screens and the girl at center stage: the play happening all over again, playing from the very beginning at 100x speed. The girl looks as though she is being pummeled by the movies. Dancers with gauze wrapped around their faces flow from her mind to the screens and back and forth again, over and over again. The girl fights for her knees not to buckle and her nose begins to bleed, which projects live onto the screens. A close-up.

  Corvus and Michelle are sitting close together in the front row. Michelle has her hands gripping tightly on to Corvus’s sweater, so automatic.

  Then nothing, the movie stops, the whirring motor dies. The screens surrounding the girl are now completely blank. The girl wipes her face with the long sleeves of her wool sweater and finally lies down.

  She places the tape recorder on th
e ground and presses a button.

  Perry’s voice plays overhead, the blue light goes out:

  I keep everything that horrifies me a secret. I pretend that everyone around me is having the worst day of their life. These are etiquettes I practice to weave in and out of the world. I wait in lines in public and lament my past lives. To the woman standing next to me at the bus stop, the lonely cashier at the food co-op, the crowd on the street that pours around me: I imagine you’re having the absolute worst day and I won’t mess with you. I won’t add to your day. I see everyone with the sun in their eyes and I look back at them.

  Corvus stretches out in the hallway. She’s wearing a new black dress under my sweater that’s hers, lying on the floor, full body stretch. The dress is off the shoulder, the floor is wall-to-wall carpet. I have been away and we have been apart and because we are hard, sad people, I feel fragile when I come into the room. Seeing Corvus brings me immediately home, our inner lives come to life. We shut the blinds. Smoke. Fuck. Smoke. Drink. Fuck. Smoke. Perfect cartwheels in bed. Champagne and serial television.

  My usual anger: it opens like a flower and evaporates and vacates. Corvus reaches for me and we go to our desired stupor.

  She says, Fuck me numb. The day keeps tearing at me.

  With words half in me, I can’t quite trace my steps once I get home, and I leave my mind with Corvus. I still wonder. I keep going. I keep going, I keep going.

  She whispers in my ear, I admire the way you whittle. All the way down.

  The tape recorder clicks off. The screens pull back to the ceiling, the normal house lights click back on. Muscles reawaken, the dream cloud lifts.

  The girl, frozen at center stage, doesn’t move a beat and her eyes are still shut. The dazed audience, which has dwindled to just a few dozen per showing, watches her and waits for any sign of life. Corvus wonders, How still can she stay? How long can she stay still like that?