by Gray, Amelia
Toby was smiling in his sleep. He had my satin eye pillow strapped to his face. I crawled into bed and lay my arm over him, kissing the back of his neck. When the sun came in through the windows and it got too warm, I pointed the fan towards the bed.
On the kitchen table was Toby’s stack of receipts, for groceries mostly. On the top was one from the Christian Supply. It was deducted from his total debt, refigured and circled, “$1,103.38,” in red pen.
Brenda ordered a crab cake at lunch. “How’s the inventor?” she asked.
“He’s still working on it.”
“Any day now,” she said. “You stick with a man like that, he’ll hit on something soon enough.”
“I’m starting to wonder how long I have to stick, is all.” Brenda’s crab cake arrived and she stabbed at it with her fork. “Brit had to go to the vet,” she said. “I mean, the doctor. The cat had to go to the vet.”
“What’s wrong with Brittney?”
“She stuck a ball of paper in her ear. I don’t know why she did that. They had to use long tweezers, actually. Cost me twenty dollars.”
My chicken salad came in a lump on lettuce leaves. “Why did you have a baby so young, anyway?”
Brenda speared the crab cake and lifted up the corner of it, turning the piece over with her fork.
“Were you scared of the retardation thing?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. She took a bite.
“What’s wrong with the cat?” I asked.
“Put it to sleep,” she said.
* * *
The meteorologist interrupted his weekend forecast. “It’s a dark world out there,” he said, tapping the sensor in his hand and changing the seven-day on the green screen to a picture of a vulture. “We’ve had a lot of calls and letters.” The picture faded and changed to one of a group of vultures closing in on a family. “Keep walking when you leave your house, don’t stop for anything. Carry your children and keep your pets on a short leash. Protect your backyard by putting up a chicken wire net.”
Brenda stayed five hours past close, hanging a plastic net over the daycare’s backyard. She tried to crimp the wires with her hands and ended up in the clinic for tetanus shots. After that, she refused to leave her bed until the vultures left. I had to lead classes. We fingerpainted vultures and made vulture sculptures with popsicle sticks. We drew plans in crayon detailing how to safely trap and release vultures. Robert drew his baby brother as bait. After show-and-tell, I told a story about vultures.
* * *
Once upon a time, there was a kind princess who lived in a castle protected with spiked walls and lava moats and knights. She had a beautiful garden and a stable full of prize horses but she could never leave the castle because of the killer birds circling day and night. They avoided the spiked walls and flew over the lava moat to stay warm. The knights couldn’t reach them with their swords and the situation grew desperate until one of the knights had the brilliant idea to kill one of the smaller horses and fill it with quicklime. The vultures swooped down, gorged themselves and fell dead, and the knights had the whole mess cleaned up before the princess came out for her evening walk.
* * *
Toby bought fifty golf umbrellas from a wholesaler for his vulture project. He handed me the recalculated debt when I walked in the door.
“I wanted panels of aluminum and fabric glue,” he said, “but it was impossible to cut the panels correctly. I ended up buying jumbo rolls of aluminum foil and stapling them to the nylon. That’s itemized on the second receipt.”
“The second receipt.”
“Under the first one. These will sell,” he said. A single prototype lay finished between us. “My old manager at the range said he was very interested, and all I showed him was the model.” He pointed at the mess of foil and fabric. The staples had snagged on the support poles and ripped the fabric, and he had lined the exposed rips with tape and rows of staples and more foil.
I didn’t even want to touch it. “Perhaps the model would benefit from another layer of nylon?”
“I’m doing this for us,” he said, carefully examining his work.
“I don’t need any help. Thank you, though. I would prefer to do this one for us.” He opened the umbrella, and closed it again to keep the top layers of foil intact.
“You could have bought a reflective nylon. Something that wouldn’t split so easily.”
“You’re profiting from this,” he said. “I was different before, but I’m helping us now. I’m using my intelligence, and I’m really starting something for us. Don’t shut me down already, when you haven’t even seen what I can do.”
“Listen,” I said. “I want to forgive your debt.”
Toby picked up his box of forty-nine compact golf umbrellas, his jumbo roll of aluminum foil, both staplers and three cans of spray adhesive, and walked out.
After he left, I turned on the television. The news had a camera following the meteorologist, who made a camouflage tent and camped among the nests in protest of the hunters. The Methodists were holding nightly prayer meetings and when the TV cameras arrived, they played an electric guitar. At the corner store, the shelves of bread and milk were cleaned out. The hunters were taking practice aim at the magpies in the parking lot. The meteorologist took over the camera and was speaking urgently about buckshot and environmental activism. I didn’t answer the phone when it rang and Mrs. Merkel cried from the machine that the vultures had gathered on her clothesline and weighed it down towards the candles. Her Virgin Mary rug had been burning for hours.
“Nothing can be done,” she cried.
I turned up the volume on the TV, thinking that rug must look like a miracle.
THE PIT
EXT. A GRAVEL PIT - DAY
The sun rises over what looks to be a gravel quarry. The bleak landscape stretches as far as the eye can see, dotted occasionally by a few wandering people dressed in slightly mussed business attire.
NARRATOR (V.O.)
In the near future, increasing global
tensions sparked a war among
nations spanning years. The
worldwide destruction multiplied,
spreading until the world and most
of its inhabitants were
annihilated, ground into dust by a
faceless war machine.
Close in on two men, DAVE and SAM, standing in the gravel pit. They appear to be disheveled but healthy. In different circumstances, it would look like they were waiting for a bus.
NARRATOR (V.O.) (CONT’D)
Years passed. Those that survived
had to be strong of heart and mind,
tougher than the friends and
neighbors they left gasping in the
dust. These brave men and women
found a way to survive against all
odds and emerged as the unlikely
authors of their own existence.
The men fidget, bored. DAVE checks his watch, examines it, flicks at it.
NARRATOR (V.O.) (CONT’D)
Years and years passed. With the
threat of global-nuclear conflict
gone, life regained a sense of
normalcy, of peace. The very life
which had always been so difficult
became commonplace.
DAVE
Damn.
SAM
Hmm?
DAVE
My watch broke.
He presents it to SAM, who leans over to examine.
SAM
Bummer.
DAVE
I had that watch for years. Found it on a guy.
SAM
Nice watch.
DAVE
Dead guy.
SAM
That a Rolex?
DAVE
You know, that’s what I thought, but I don’t think it is.
SAM
Did the guy seem like the kind of
guy that would wear a Rolex?
DAVE
He was wearing a suit, you know,
nice suit. Too small. But it was a
nice suit, looked authentic.
SAM
Maybe it was a Rolex.
DAVE
I know suits better than watches,
and all I know about this watch is
it crapped out on me. Supposed to
be one of those self-winding
things.
SAM
Probably got sand in it.
DAVE
I don’t even remember what it’s
like to not have sand in a thing.
Sand everywhere.
SAM
Everywhere. Hey, is that Linda?
DAVE
Where?
SAM
(pointing)
Just over the horizon.
A figure approaches from far away. It is impossible at first to see if the figure is a man or a woman.
SAM (CONT’D)
Looks like she’s headed towards us.
DAVE
I haven’t seen Linda in weeks. She
never comes around here. Are you
sure that’s her?
The men watch the figure make slow progress towards them.
SAM
No.
DAVE
Yes, it is her.
SAM
I’m not sure.
DAVE
Man, it has been forever since
we’ve seen Linda. Remember hooking
up with her during that year-long
sex orgy?
SAM
Yes. Yes I do.
DAVE
Crazy times.
SAM
Guess so.
DAVE
Linda. She was a fox and a half,
man. She found that hairbrush, and
she would brush everyone’s hair.
Everyone just sitting around in a
circle, remember? She’d circle
around and brush everybody’s hair.
SAM
I remember.
DAVE
She’s headed this way. That is definitely Linda.
The figure, LINDA, grows larger, waves.
SAM
I am in love with Linda.
DAVE turns to SAM, surprised.
DAVE
No you’re not, Sam.
SAM
Yes I am. I am in love with Linda
and I want to marry her. Is that
what people do when they’re in
love?
DAVE
Yeah, I think so.
SAM
Then that’s what I want to do.
DAVE
Dude, we haven’t seen Linda in a
year and a half. I haven’t seen her
since the sex orgy thing. Oh man,
is that weird now, that I was in a
sex orgy with Linda, and you’re in
love with her?
SAM
Yeah, that’s kind of weird.
DAVE
Man, I’m sorry. I had no idea you
were in love with her. You know I
wouldn’t have done that if I had any
idea.
SAM
That’s fine. Let’s maybe just not
mention it.
The two watch LINDA approach.
DAVE
Linda, huh.
SAM
Linda.
DAVE
Good old Linda. Pretty girl.
SAM
Yes.
DAVE
You have no idea what you’re
talking about. You don’t know who
this person is.
SAM
What? Of course I do.
DAVE
You are shitting me. You are full
of shit. I can’t believe how much
shit can be inside one man. This is
the first woman we see in weeks and
all of a sudden you’re in love with
her? I don’t think so. No, I know
what’s going on here.
SAM
What are you talking about?
LINDA steps into the scene, startling them both.
LINDA
Hi, guys.
DAVE
Hi, Linda.
LINDA
Dave, right?
DAVE
Yeah, hey, you remembered!
LINDA
I never forget. How have you been?
DAVE
Oh, you know. I live in a pit.
All three laugh, and stop laughing. LINDA turns to SAM.
LINDA
And you must be—
SAM
I’m Sam.
LINDA
Have we met?
SAM
Yeah. I think so.
DAVE
You don’t remember Sam?
LINDA
(drawing a blank)
Sure I do, I remember Sam. From,
uh, the sex orgy?
SAM
Yes. From that.
LINDA
Crazy times. There had to have been
a hundred fifty people there. Now
that was a party.
SAM
Certainly it was.
LINDA
Now Dave, I remember you from that.
You had these pasties on, right?
DAVE
I forgot all about those!
LINDA
That was hilarious. You kept
swinging them around and around—
LINDA does an impression of the man wearing pasties.
DAVE laughs and joins in.
DAVE
Hey everybody, look what I
can do!
LINDA
Wasn’t all you could do, as
I recall.
DAVE
Oh, you.
LINDA
That’s all I’m saying.
They smile at each other. SAM’s presence becomes conspicuous.
LINDA (CONT’D)
How’s tricks, Sam? Still doing your
thing?
SAM
For sure. Yeah.
LINDA
So, guys. I’ve been walking for
days.
DAVE
Yeah, what’s it like over there?
LINDA
What, back there? More of the same.
Really it’s just a big gravel pit
as far as the eye can see. Pretty
depressing. I feel like I’m going
insane, you know? Really, truly
insane, for the last time. I
thought I’d pass the time by
chewing all the skin off my arm, right?
DAVE
Gross.
LINDA
Well, yeah. I mean, it grew back, see?
She displays her arm. The men jump back but then lean in, examining.
DAVE
Oh yeah, that’s not bad.
LINDA
Your friend doesn’t say much, does he?
DAVE
He’s a thoughtful kind of guy.
LINDA
Oh yeah?
DAVE
Sure. You’d really like him if you got to know him.
LINDA
I usually don’t go for the strong, silent type, so much.
DAVE
He looks strong?
SAM
I’m right here, guys.
LINDA
Looks like a nice guy, though. You look like a nice man, Sam.
SAM
Thanks, Linda.
LINDA
Play it again, Sam!
SAM
Right.
LINDA
You ever hear that?
SAM
Maybe once.
LINDA
I always loved that movie.
Casablanca.
SAM
Hmm.
>
LINDA
They were so in love.
SAM
That’s actually a misquotation.
LINDA
What? No it’s not.
SAM
It is. A common misquotation, you know. Bogart says, “Play it once, Sam, for old times’ sake.”
DAVE
Come on.
LINDA
Sure, but later—
SAM
Later, he says: “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’” That’s what he says later.
LINDA (impatient)
But after that.
SAM is getting worked up, a function of a bad Bogart impression mixed with heartbreak.
SAM
“You played it for her and you can play it for me!”
LINDA
Are we talking about the same movie?
DAVE
I’m not sure.
SAM
“If she can stand it, I can! Play it!”
LINDA is clearly disturbed.
DAVE
Sam, I think that’s enough.
SAM (stricken)
Play it!!
LINDA
(to DAVE)
It’s all right.
I didn’t know anyone cared that much about one little quotation.
SAM
I’ve heard it a lot, is all.
LINDA
I hadn’t even seen that movie since the war, you know?
DAVE
It was a great movie.
LINDA
Yeah. Listen, I should go.
This statement takes a moment to sink in — leaving means walking many days without direction in a gravel pit.
SAM
Don’t go, Linda. I was just having a little fun.
DAVE
Come on. You just got here.
LINDA
No, it’s okay. I have this
appointment in a couple weeks. I
should really start heading in that
direction.
SAM (desperate)
Linda, I’m sorry.
LINDA
Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry.
DAVE
I am also sorry.
LINDA
