This is Inda Cipherable, your Captain, speaking.
My captain?
We were getting closer to the girl’s face, although it was happening slowly, and maybe imperceptibly if not for the greater concentration possible in the absence of sound, and I would have bet on the presence of swelling violins.
I’ve just turned off the seat belt sign, that was the slight ding you heard. You are free to walk around. We’ll be cruising at an altitude of about thirty-five-thousand feet.
Now we were almost there, inches away, and I could see that the girl’s eyes were tearing, her lips moving slower.
We’ll be in the air several hours, long enough so you’ll feel as if the walls are closing in but not long enough that you can just go to sleep and get some real shut-eye.
The girl wasn’t saying anything now, putting me on equal footing with my fellow headphone-clad passengers. She lifted the freakish toy, which I now saw was an elephant of some sort and not purple so much as black.
Yes, beautiful Alabama, and I have some good news for our passengers who may represent components of a potential interracial marriage. Because in the two thousandth year since the birth of our Lord, Alabama became the last state to overturn its anti-miscegenation law. That’s right folks, blacks may now legally marry whites in Alabama and whites may do the same, to blacks of course.
Three more little girls entered the room carrying nothing and bringing the total to four.
I’m one of those pilots who likes to pepper his passengers with little interesting facts about their destination.
The three new girls sat with the old one and they joined hands. Then they all stood and went towards the door and out; the camera slowly tracking in futile pursuit.
In 1963, in Birmingham, a bomb went off, note the use of the passive voice, in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The bomb, well the people behind it, killed eleven-year-old Denise McNair and three of her friends.
In an unjustifiably immense three-walled kitchen, where not everything was in its place but only in a contrived orderly way, and where this kitchen was located in one of those semi-hermetic, uniformly-colored constructions meant to convey neither affluence nor abject poverty but rather the presence of a working-class, with the work referred to being precisely the type assiduously avoided by those in the classes above and below; in that kitchen stood a startlingly beautiful woman in the midst of a half-hearted attempt at looking not-beautiful. Also in that kitchen was an unmenacingly tall man patiently absorbing his enforced inactivity while the beauty-in-disguise was allowed to deliver what seemed to me like an at-least-somewhat-critical little speech in the shadow of the man’s back.
“Just tell me one thing Trevor,” she said. “Just answer me one thing after all these years, you owe me that. One damn thing.”
“What’s that?” he said, although all we continued to see of him was his back.
“Exactly what connection do we have to those four little girls just depicted in a different room in an obviously different house?”
“I don’t know and don’t call me Trevor.”
“Why not?”
“Because Trevor is one of those names given to Hollywood characters in meager attempt to depict the inanity of our world but is never actually the name given to such a character.”
“Fair enough but what about the girls?”
Trevor thought about the girls. It was impossible, at that point, to say with even the slightest certainty what connection, if any, he might have to those girls. This was so because the writer/director, in one of those either inspired or insipid moves that usually only first-time low-budgeters make, had refused to allow any of the thespian participants to see the entire script. Instead each actor was limited to his lines and those spoken in his or her presence. And the reasoning behind this was endearing enough given that such full scripts exist nowhere else in life—that is, you do not normally know what little girls, no matter how intimate the relationship you share with them, say or experience in your absence—and so, the thinking went, the lack of such a script-knowledge in that limited environment could only serve to enhance the projected apparent reality of the resulting depiction. Although, of course, it took no more than a couple seconds of thought to conclude that laser-beam-accurate depictions of reality might not be the ultimate goal of these two hour slices of images paired with chatter, as evidenced inter alia by the facts that: (1) all sorts of necessary activities that undeniably occur in reality and that in fact comprise a large percentage of that environment’s time, such as eating, sleeping, using the bathroom, and watching Television are almost never cinematically depicted at all, let alone in anything remotely resembling accurate time intervals; (2) there exists, in this cinematic world, an abundance of unexplained violations of the laws of physics, such as where an individual will pick up a ringing phone then respond verbally after one second in a manner that cannot possibly be justified by the quantum of information that can be conveyed in that second or when two people are practically screaming but cannot be heard by someone three feet away simply because the person is technically in a different room or the way bedrooms where lights have just been turned off never get entirely dark despite the absence of any visible light sources; and (3) the cinematic depictions feature an almost unfathomable incidence of heart-palpitatingly attractive women and the concomitant, almost complete, absence of the truly slovenly and unattractive.
And it took only a little more thought than that to wonder why anyone would so greatly value a high degree of verisimilitude in these situations in the first place since at least part of the idea in fictions like these was presumably to entertain on some level and yet so very few people seem enthralled by the quotidian happenings of Life itself, which of course represents the ultimate realism. But still, this and the fact that the film was shot entirely in strict sequence, another not-unheard-of-but-extremely-rare deal, certainly created, on the set anyway, the atleast-illusory notion that here was the unmitigated, unfiltered, and unadulterated procession of again Life itself and this somehow energized and pleased the cast in a way their non-set hours never did. All of which meant that when Trevor and Jackie (not coincidentally the true names of the actors as well as of the characters they portrayed) stood in that implausible kitchen they maybe weren’t so sure where exactly created artifice ceded to stark reality.
And maybe it was this indecision that was evident on Jackie’s face as she spoke. She pushed her fingers through her hair, which she tended to do in these situations, and turned away. Her eyes landed on a picture she had long ago placed on an uncrowded shelf. One she’d looked at countless times. A picture of her, alone. And though the picture had been there for years, as much a part of the room’s background as the wallpaper, she was able, as sometimes happens in these instances, to look at the picture as if for the first time. She saw that it was her in the picture but not really. She remembered why the picture was there. The picture was not taken with anything resembling a good camera or by anyone resembling a good photographer. But when she opened the Ste-D-Mart envelope that night, still dressed in whatever uniform was being imposed on her at the time, it positively jumped out at her and away from its neighbors. This was before everything this picture. It jumped because of the way she looked in it. She hadn’t kidded herself about its accuracy. She knew she was not an overly attractive woman although she certainly didn’t skew too far in the other direction either. But in the picture she was effortlessly beautiful in a Madison Avenue way. She explained this to herself, to the extent she did that sort of thing, by saying that in life there are angles and the picture just happened to capture a fortuitous one for her. And she respected that happenstance enough to put the picture up, giving it a prominent place and maybe two further thoughts since. Until that moment, when muffled language was being directed at her in futile attempt and her trembling hand was looking to stop on the kitchen’s center island. The face in the picture just seemed so much fresher, as if better lit. And though n
ot immediately visible, he had been a part of that picture in the same way he’d somehow managed to be a part of everything about her for as long as she could remember.
And so even though he could see she was not looking at him, and could hear that she wasn’t saying anything, he was not prepared to make the leap to the conclusion that she wasn’t listening to a solitary word springing from his lips and certainly he had not the slightest clue regarding the import of the photograph she appeared to be staring at, that sort of thing generally being lost on him. But he’d also decided that today was the day they were going to discuss the Thing that happened. Today. And he had hoped to do it somewhere else. Because in there, the place he’d been forced to leave if only by chivalry, he always felt diminished by the memory.
“Are you listening to me?” he finally said. “Jack?”
“Yes. Fine, take it and go.”
“No, I think we need to discuss this.”
“What?”
“Because Donna says this isn’t healthy.”
“What?!”
“I know you don’t want to hear this but . . . about Petey.”
“No, stop.”
“We need—”
“Stop it Trevor, you promised. We agreed we would never talk about this again.”
“No you agreed. You agreed. I had no choice. You said you would leave and I’d never see you again at a time when I could not have dealt with that. You forced me into it Jackie, and I said okay but now I want to talk about it, we need to.”
“No I don’t need to do anything, get away.”
“Donna says it’s not healthy, that you need to talk about it. That human beings need to talk. It’s like the way you didn’t go to the cemetery that day.”
“Shut up will you? Will you please just shut up? Please? Maybe promises mean nothing to you but they mean something to me and you promised we would not talk about this.”
“I just want to know that you’re okay about this.”
“Okay? Yes, I’m okay. So okay that you should leave me alone. And fine I’ll go ahead and say what I’m supposed to say. Here it is: I’m happy for you and Donna okay? And, of course, yes, I particularly know how happy that moment will be for her and all that. Is that enough, are we done? Because there’s only so much I can take Tre.”
“Nobody grieves forever Donna says.”
“I wouldn’t know, I don’t know anything about grief. Whatever grief is, I haven’t felt it.”
“You’re grieving.”
“No I’m not. A word has to be invented for what I’m doing. For what I felt then and still feel now, even years later. Grief won’t cut the mustard here bub, maybe torment or agony try.”
“I understand.”
“Maybe those words begin to describe what it feels like in a world that can one day contain a three-foot-high giggle named Peter and the next day not. At night, like a prisoner in solitary, I mentally cross the date off my imaginary calendar as one less day I have to endure. Do you understand? What I look forward to more than anything is death because it can’t be any worse than this here. Are you beginning to get the picture? How little resemblance my status bears to yours? And someone needs to explain to me why I feel dirty all the time. How I can shower then bathe then dress in freshly-laundered garments yet still feel unclean and troubled in my own body. And the worms. Tiny flesh-colored worms made of some unspeakable fungus that writhe and crawl just beneath my skin and out of view. I feel them all the time too. And I’ll claw and tear at my flesh to get them out but all I get in return are these marks. Also what about this empty blackness that starts in my stomach and instantly spreads outward whenever I acknowledge it, and the longest I can manage to ignore it is like a couple hours and even those hours are spent in subconscious fear of the black? And I hate how much more intelligent I’ve become, how much more I know now. Because one of the things they tell you is that time is your friend, the only thing that has the power to heal your gaping wounds. More than that really, that it will heal them. And maybe before, when I had no need for these kinds of notions, I would’ve been impressed by this thought. But now I know that the people who make these statements can call themselves scientists all they want in a vain attempt to secure the imprimatur of legitimacy the term would afford them but they cannot change the fact that they are not so in even the loosest sense of the word. You see, armed with my greater intelligence, I know that if a true scientist says with certainty that a molecule, for example, will definitely do X, then it will do X. See? Yet when these pretenders tell me that something will have a certain effect on me they’re basing that prediction on some self-help section of the bookstore they themselves circularly created. And they’re talking about those wildly unpredictable entities called humans so that whatever the percentages in their favor may be, they still tell me nothing about me and what I can do to get out of this infernal cell. And worse still, I can now say from experience that this Time they’re all so fond of is nothing but an illusion. People say years like it means something, like it represents some vast expanse. Well I’m now on the other side of those years and I can report that they do nothing, they’re no different than days, weeks, months, or even hours. Every day I wake up and feel no better, every day it happens again, his hand slips out of mine and doesn’t return leaving me grasping at empty air. Each day a freshly opened lesion. I want this pain to end even though it no longer really hurts if that makes any sense. There’s no substance, no drug, no activity or person that can help me. I see life now as it truly is, its atavistic savagery, and so feel nothing but contempt for those innocents able to view it as I once did. It’s as if everyone else is in a beer commercial and I’m the designated driver and do you realize how profane this all looks to someone who’s had their eyes wrested open to the truth? I’m afraid to move for fear of getting some of the world on me,” she slumped to the floor. “I want to be left alone. There is no help and even if there was I wouldn’t want any of it. I don’t need anything other than to be alone so I can hug my knees and cry in solitary peace without affectation or shame. I want to cry until everything inside of me is expelled, especially that which I need to live. The very blood and plasma that sustain me I want to cry right out of my body. I want to die from this loss of tears, die from a rended heart. And no I don’t need or even want someone to talk to because I don’t want to talk. What I want now is just to sit and feel this. To exercise every day the last option I have, the last thing I can do that gives me a small sense of accomplishment, a sense I might be something more than just mindless animate material; to find a way each day to avoid killing myself.”
“ . . .”
“Can you give me that? Go on. Can you at least do that you worthless, lummoxy bastard? You useless piece of shit. You shithead. That’s right, a shit head. A person whose head is composed solely or at least mostly out of actual shit.”
We are now flying over Alabaman airspace. We will soon begin our descent. Just thought y’all should know that.
So I knew I had inhaled too many of those pills when hours later I didn’t have the strongest recollection of things like picking up my bag from those cool baggage carousels airports have or getting the rent-a-car paperwork done. And either the directions I had weren’t great or their reader a true dope because I found myself basically driving around aimlessly as if touring Alabamian Highway Food & Fuel installations. After about the third or fourth time I passed the same giant overalled farmer with a burger in his hand I finally spotted a sign that said Atmore something-or-other with a picture of a tiny jail cell. I knew the hotel I was slated for wasn’t far from the prison so I took that exit in hopeful expectation I could feel my way there without the directions I’d thrown out the window in frustration.
My big break came when I saw the giant banana. And I don’t mean to suggest that I knew immediately it was a banana I was looking at when, from a considerable distance, I saw the yellow tumescent structure that menaced the clouds and partially occluded the bottom of the orange su
n. While thinking about how an establishment that sells bananas could afford such a structure I remembered that my hotel was called The Orchard and that reference had been made somewhere, maybe a brochure or something, to some kind of cognizable fruit theme. That was enough for me and I accelerated towards the banana. And as I neared the banana I saw it had friends, an apple and a peach at first and later an orange. This was The Orchard and each oversized rooftop fruit represented a different wing of this colossal hotel.
Of course the roads leading into The Orchard couldn’t be simple and direct so it took me quite some time and frustration to properly negotiate their labyrinthine excess. When I finally did park the car it felt like an upset victory. I got out with my corny little bag and my box of Kingg stuff, then entered a large room that was far more arboretum than hotel lobby. Everywhere I looked, keeping with the theme, was an indoor tree, rising towards the high ceiling and often warping towards another. And the fruit was everywhere, set out on tableclothed rectangles and inviting you to grab and ingest it. Limitless, perfectly ripe and healthy with encyclopedic variation, the fruit that was continually offered, almost pushed, by The Orchard would become one of the two entities that dominated my stay there. The other being B.M. Santangelo.
B.M. stood for Big Mac he declared as he introduced himself and I questioned, to his face, the legitimacy of using initials to shorten what, in Big Mac, amounted to a nickname itself; to which he responded that he had not the slightest idea what I was talking about since Big Mac was his true, parentally-bestowed, on-the-birth-certificate name. This exchange occurred just a few feet from the front desk, which desk was mere feet from B.M.’s little workstation, a station that reminded me of some kind of kissing booth and where B.M. was positioned to perform his duties as The Orchard’s concierge and from which I never saw him absent despite the fact that I passed said booth at all sorts of varied and unseemly hours, leading me to the near-inescapable conclusion that B.M. Santangelo worked twenty-four-hour shifts one after the other without cease or even interruption. He had shot out of that booth after hearing me give my name and other particulars—a ruddy, fit, and wide exclamation point who jutted his hand out and smiled.
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 57
