A Perfect Universe

by Scott O'Connor

  Years later, he had seen the listing for the movie on a local station’s late-night schedule. From a pay phone, he had called the channel and asked to speak to the programming director. When the man answered, George told him that if the movie showed a bomb would detonate in their building. He hung up the phone and stood shaking in the booth. That night he sat up waiting, the TV the only light in his bedroom. When the hour came another movie appeared onscreen, Martians in flying saucers attacking a small Midwestern town. George sat on the edge of his bed, relieved and ashamed and afraid of himself. Such a strange feeling, fearful of what could happen in a room when he was the only one there.

  Now, in his car on Santa Monica Boulevard, he tried to imagine the scene in the near-empty theater. He had seen movies there before, remembered the musty auditorium, the high screen, the old purple curtain worn thin like a pair of jeans at the knees. He tried to imagine his other, projected self, thirty years younger, with a smoother face, darker hair, another name. The man he had become in the desert, briefly. He wondered if the courage of that other man was still apparent, if it could be transferred, absorbed in the light of the movie’s projected frame.

  * * *

  On their last night in Cape Cod, after dinner in town, they all sat out on the back deck and Eric made margaritas, heavy on the tequila. Ted had picked up a newspaper in town and they all crowded around to gawk at the ad for a drive-in up in Wellfleet, George’s face right there in black and white.

  “We should go,” James said, more than a little drunk. “We’d be walking in with a real movie star.”

  Eric and Ted agreed. George tried to argue that they were in no condition to drive, but James called for a vote, a show of hands, and then he and Eric and Ted rushed inside to get cleaned up.

  Alone on the back deck, George was surprised by how desperate he felt, how afraid. Since they had arrived on the Cape he had tried not to think of the premiere, the shame he’d sensed from the audience as they left the theater. James would see the movie eventually, George couldn’t stop that, but he could postpone it, keep it away from them here, at least. This could remain a safe place, another world of their own where they could imagine a life together, painting, dreaming, following a son’s progress up a doorframe.

  The others were in the bathroom, brushing teeth and combing hair.

  “I have a better idea,” George said.

  They stopped and turned, curious. George lowered his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper.

  “We should go out.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “The cove,” he said. “The chairs.”

  Eric smiled, his sunburned cheeks wrinkling white. Ted nodded along. James needed some convincing, he was set on the movie, so George joined him at the mirror, draping his arm over James’s shoulders.

  “We’ll see the movie,” George said, looking at their reflection. Two bodies, so close. His lips brushed James’s ear. “As soon as we get home. I promise.”

  They pulled on their swimsuits, sprayed themselves slick with bug repellant, grabbed a flashlight and the tequila. The marsh water was cool and hip-deep. They kept the flashlight off as they waded, whispering and laughing, jumping at noises in the trees flanking their approach. George led the way, holding the tequila bottle high. He stopped when they reached the opening to the cove. The dark water spread before them, rippling slowly, radar waves that grew to some unseen outer limit. The sky was clear and star-flecked; a bright half-moon sat high above. They stood looking up, breathing deeply. George took a sip from the bottle and passed it to James.

  The chairs sat above the reeds on a large, flat-topped rock. George climbed up to the first chair. He sat looking out into the cove, the open water beyond. James sat beside him and took his hand.

  Eric paddled out in front of the chairs. “It’s deep out here,” he whispered. “It drops off quickly.”

  “Can we jump?” James said.

  Eric held his breath, flipped under the water. A moment later he reemerged. “It goes way down. I couldn’t find the bottom. We could probably dive.”

  Ted was first, climbing the rock. He handed James the flashlight as he stepped up onto the arms of the chairs, one foot on each. Lifting his hands to the sky, he gave a soundless primal scream, then plugged his nose and launched up and out, tucking his knees to his chin, grabbing his ankles. The splash cracked the silence and they all stiffened, looking back through the trees toward the neighbor’s house. Ted surfaced, gasping and laughing, and Eric shushed him. After a moment, when no lights came on through the trees, George stood up on the chairs, handed James the tequila bottle, and jumped in.

  The water was a shock, colder and deeper than he’d expected. George paddled down, reaching for the bottom, finally brushing silt with his fingertips before running out of air and pushing back up. He reemerged into another world, soft and moonlit. He could see Eric’s and Ted’s heads bobbing a little ways out in the water. They were all looking at James.

  James set down the empty bottle and climbed up to jump. George heard a small wet slap when each of James’s feet touched the arms of the chairs, the little puddles they had all made there. James lifted his own arms, gave a silent, head-shaking shout, its length and ferocity surprising, the release of what looked to George like rage or frustration. He wanted to ask James what this was, if it matched some of what George had felt earlier in the house, his desire to protect something they couldn’t really have, but then James squatted on the chair arms, ready to spring out, and one foot left the wood but the other slid in the puddle and he fell back, his head hitting the seat and then the edge of the rock, a sharp snap and a dull thud, and then he was gone, underwater, leaving the surface rippling, dark rings in the moonlight.

  George dove under immediately, grasping, but there was nothing, just water. When he came up for air, Eric was coming up, too.

  “I couldn’t get him,” Eric said. “He’s way down there.”

  They went under again. George opened his eyes, but there was only inky black, swirling shadows, vague shapes. He swam down until he touched silt again, pushing himself along the floor, reaching, coming away with nothing but handfuls of mud. Then, finally, a limb, an ankle. George didn’t know if it was Eric or James but he pulled hard, swimming up toward the surface.

  It seemed like hours, a timeless expanse, climbing, reawakening from a dream.

  Then, air and moonlight. George gasped, filling his lungs, and then Eric was there, and Ted. They dragged James back to the rock, lifting him up. They laid him flat and George took James’s face gently to clear his mouth, to start resuscitation, but his hands came away glassy with blood.

  Eric was already running back, splashing through the marsh toward the lights of their house. Ted turned on the flashlight and followed, shining its beam for a path. George stayed with James, quiet for a moment, until that silence grew too loud and he had to break through it, screaming for help.

  The neighbors reached the scene first. A husband and wife, middle-aged but tanned and fit, she in a bathrobe, he in pajamas. The wife ran back to the house to call an ambulance. The man stayed, standing hip-deep in the marsh beside the rock, a fist up at his mouth, his face hard, unreadable. George knelt beside James, holding his head, pressing on the wound with his fingers, talking to him, pleading in the cool night air.

  * * *

  The doctors said that James had died on impact. It was the first hit that killed him, his head striking the chair. George could tell that this information was intended to comfort, to assure him that James hadn’t suffered, hadn’t spent those eternal minutes suffocating underwater, hoping for rescue.

  James’s parents arrived to bring his body back to St. Louis. They flew in overnight, and the next morning came to the rented house to collect James’s things. George had never met them. James didn’t like to talk about his strained relationship with his parents, the difficult phone calls and infrequent visits. They were older than George had pictured, and looked more like grandparents: gray, a little shrunken.
James was their only child and they’d had him later in life.

  James’s mother moved through the bedroom gathering books and clothes. When she saw James’s canvases she stopped, looking at the blurry landscapes, his unidentifiable portrait of George. Finally she said, “Are these his?” and when George nodded she set them on the pile of books and clothes.

  She never looked at the bed. She never looked at George, who stood just outside the doorway. He wanted to ask what she imagined they did there, how she imagined that they lived. Would she believe they were asleep by ten most nights, exhausted from sun and salt water? That they spent the mornings on the back deck with their breakfast and their books? That her son had died like a child, jumping from something he never should have climbed?

  James’s father stayed out in his rental car, the engine running, radio news so loud the muffled voices of the announcers pushed through the rolled-up windows. George watched from the house. The man’s hands never left the steering wheel.

  After they were gone, George went back to the bedroom. He tried to find any trace of James, but all that was left was his toothbrush in a glass by the bathroom sink, its bristles still caked with flecks of dried paste. George lifted the toothbrush out, then sat on the edge of the bed, holding it tightly. When he finally let go, his palm was pocked sore where the bristles had bitten his skin.

  * * *

  After each shuttle shift he searched online, but found only new, younger faces; images of more impressive technology, locations, sets. He typed in all of the names he could remember, cast and crew, but there were no links to that lost world. He typed in his own name, but stopped before sending the request, afraid now of what he wouldn’t find.

  * * *

  The night was warm; the air retained an echo of the day’s sun-streaked heat. George sat in his car across from the theater on Santa Monica. He had been drinking at a hotel bar down by the airport, but the weightlessness gained from the gin had worn off on the drive north. His body was heavy now, every joint and limb.

  He kept the window down, the radio low. A scientist on the news was talking about the NASA rover on Mars. A month or so earlier, the machine had discovered icy white patches in the Martian soil, but now those patches had disappeared. The scientist believed they had phased from ice to vapor without ever becoming water. A rare occurrence, he said. Sublimation was the word he used to describe it.

  It was nearly time for the later showing. George hadn’t seen anyone go into the theater. This was the final night of the movie’s run. Tomorrow, another would open; a classic this time, famous faces. The new poster was already up.

  His hands ached. Sometimes, he could still feel that toothbrush pressing into the skin of his palm. Such a common thing at the strangest times. Driving the shuttle, or, over the years, mornings with other boyfriends, other men. Standing at the mirror in someone else’s bathroom and having to look at his hands to reassure himself nothing was there.

  He had thought this would fade with time and it had, but not entirely. It had just grown duller, an ache instead of a burn. It was the one constant in his life. He had carried it through all of his jobs and relationships. There were times he had wanted it gone and times he was afraid it had left him. But it was always there. It had never turned into anything else.

  Horns honked as he crossed the street, the sound smearing in the air behind him. Screeching brakes, angry shouts. At the ticket booth, he slid his money through the slot in the cloudy Plexiglas. In the lobby, he walked past the concessions, the smell of old carpet and hot popcorn, and then into the theater, the cool, dim room.

  He was alone. He sat and then the room darkened even further and the curtain swung open to free the screen. From above and behind, he heard the projector whirl to life. The first bright light crossed the room, the beam rich with dust. The studio logo, the fanfare. He didn’t have to watch. If he let it, the film would pass, one last time, unobserved. He closed his eyes, weak again, shutting it all out. But then he could feel that pressure in his palm, the pain of the bristles refusing to let him slip away. He squeezed back, holding his fist tight, until the pain turned, softening, spreading, and then George could feel warmth from the seat beside him, the pressure in his palm becoming that familiar hand in his.

  He opened his eyes and the movie began.

  Soldiers

  My dad and his friends spent Saturdays drinking. Twenty years before, they’d all gone to high school up in Eagle Rock, and Denny and Rey still lived in their old neighborhood, a few blocks from the bridges crossing the arroyo into Pasadena. Denny and Rey had each been divorced a couple of times and finally ended up just buying a place together. Their house needed what my dad called a shit-ton of work. Every Saturday morning he told my mom he was going over to help them with the house, and Mom would give him that wrinkled, sour-mouthed look, like, Yeah, right. Around dinnertime he’d come home, blotchy-faced and weaving, and she’d ask him what they’d worked on and he’d laugh and say about a case apiece. Then he’d get really quiet and just stand in the kitchen, swaying a little in his work boots, staring at her, as if daring her to say something else. Usually, she didn’t. She knew better than to push it when he was like that.

  My dad worked on crews for movies and TV shows, driving actors and equipment around the set. By that Saturday in May, though, a couple of weeks before I turned twelve, he’d been out of work for months. My mom had to drive up to the farm stand in Santa Clarita and ask for her job back. “I had to practically beg them,” she told us. “I had to just about get down on my knees so I could sell fruit by the freeway.”

  That Saturday morning, my mom didn’t know what to do with me. I was supposed to be grounded, but I couldn’t go to work with her and I knew she didn’t want me hanging out with my dad at Denny and Rey’s. She wouldn’t let me stay home alone because the last time she’d done that, when my dad was away on a movie shoot, I’d set off an M-80 in the backyard and the garage roof caught fire. The neighbors saw the smoke and called 911. My mom was grocery shopping and when she got home the fire trucks were just leaving. As they pulled away, one of the firefighters leaned out the window of the cab and told her to keep a better eye on her kid.

  We stood together in the kitchen, and she looked at me, holding her car keys, already late for the farm stand. We could hear my dad calling from out in the driveway, ready to leave. Mom looked like she was going to scream or cry.

  “Frank,” she said, “what can I do?”

  I didn’t know what to say, if I was supposed to answer or not. But then she pushed her lips together and shook her head.

  “Just go,” she said. She sounded resigned, like she’d had enough of him, of me. Like she was finally giving up.

  * * *

  The day before, my mom and I sat in the principal’s office with little Curt Lin and his parents. Curt’s parents were both tall and thin, well dressed, his dad in a dark suit and his mom in a jacket and skirt and heels. My mom was wearing the denim shirt and jeans she wore up at the farm stand. She kept her hands folded in her lap, covering the raggedy, bitten ends of her fingernails.

  Curt’s mom told the principal that Curt didn’t want to go to school because his stomach hurt so much in the mornings. They hadn’t been able to figure out what was wrong. They’d even taken him to the doctor for tests. When nothing came back he finally told them the truth.

  Neither of his parents looked at me or my mom when they spoke, but I could feel how angry they were. It was like heat in the room. Curt’s dad told the principal I either needed to leave Curt alone or I should be kicked out of school. The principal said that wasn’t how things worked, but she would see to it that I didn’t go near him anymore. She told me to apologize. I looked at the scuffed toes of my sneakers and said I was sorry. “Eyes, Frank,” the principal said, so I turned to Curt and his parents to say it again, but as I started to speak they all turned away.

  Driving home from the principal’s office, my mom stared out the windshield, her fists tight around t
he steering wheel, knuckles round and white like little sand dunes. Neither of us spoke, until finally she said, “What’s wrong with you, Frank? Why would you do those things to him? Do you like when those things are done to you?”

  “No,” I said, but maybe my voice was too low. It didn’t seem like she heard me.

  “I didn’t want you to go this way,” she said. She still wouldn’t look at me. Nobody would look at me—Curt, his parents, my mom. “I didn’t want you to be like him.” Like my dad, she meant. She’d said this before, but it wasn’t until later that night, home in bed, that I realized what was different this time. Before she had always said, “I don’t want you to be like him,” and this time she’d said didn’t. Like it was too late now—it was a done deal.

  * * *

  My mom had the car, so my dad and I took the bus up to Eagle Rock. I was wearing the helmet my dad had given me when he got back from his last movie shoot. It was a new version of an old space movie that took place on this desert planet. All these scientists had gone there from Earth to try and see if they could create water so people could live there, but there was this other group of people, these terrorists, who were trying to destroy the water machine, so the scientists had a bunch of military guys guarding things. The helmet was part of a guard costume. It was sort of tannish orange, the color of sand, with a cool-looking insignia, the silhouette of this ancient armored warrior inked onto the front. With the chin straps tightened all the way, it fit pretty well. I wore it just about all the time when I was home. I think my dad liked to see it on me. It seemed to put him in a good mood. When he’d first given it to me, I asked him if it was a gift from the movie’s director or something, if everyone had gotten one. He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world and then laughed through his nose and rapped me on the side of the helmet. Nobody else got one, he said. This was the only helmet that left the set.