The End of FUN

by Sean McGinty

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  :(

  “Well, bring up her profile, then.”

  > error!

  unidentified!

  I thought about bringing her the coffee again, but instead I watched her read for a while. It was actually pretty mesmerizing. I’ve never thought of reading as being a particularly erotic activity, but this was something different. Take, for example, her hair: this one lock kept falling over her eyes, and then a hand would come up and tuck it back behind her ear, and slowly, slowly, slowly, it’d come loose again, and I’d hold my breath waiting for it to fall. And then the hand again. Meanwhile, her eyes didn’t lift from the page. Not once.

  And her coffee was just sitting there getting cold.

  So finally I worked up the cojones. I brought the coffee over and set it on the table.

  “Here’s your coffee.”

  The woman glanced up. Her face was kind of pink and she had these really blue eyes. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “Your coffee was getting cold.”

  “Oh, right—I didn’t really want that.”

  “No?”

  “I just wanted to give Blake a task for being a dick. If I drink coffee, I’ll be up all night.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want it? You can have it if you want.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Go on, take it. It’ll piss Blake off.”

  So I took the coffee. But I didn’t want the coffee, I wanted to talk to the woman.

  “Whatcha reading?” I asked.

  She didn’t look up, just kind of shifted in her chair and raised the cover so I could see the title: Irish Folktales Throughout the Ages.

  “Cool,” I said. “What’s it about?”

  “Irish folktales throughout the ages.”

  “Ha. I mean, like, what are the tales themselves about?”

  The woman shrugged. “You know…it’s the same story every time. A young man is in love. He goes on a quest. He wanders around the countryside solving impossible riddles—find me a song that sings itself, an egg that can’t be cracked—that kind of thing. He solves the riddles and returns home to find his love has left, and then he turns into a bird.”

  “He turns into a bird?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then what?”

  “That’s it,” she said. “He turns into a bird and flies away, the end.”

  “Oh.”

  The woman looked up, like she was waiting for me to get something. Man, her eyes were blue. Then I got it:

  Flies away.

  Oh, OK. Right.

  “Well, I should probably get back to my dinner,” I said, and flew away back to my table.

  Blake came back.

  “Guess what, Arnold? We’re out of tacos.”

  “I didn’t order tacos. I ordered nachos.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re out of those, too, Arnold.”

  Awesome. I sipped my soda. It was really turning into a lovely evening.

  But then something happened.

  Blake went away again, and the woman called over to me.

  “Hey,” she said. “Sorry about that. He’s just being a dick because of me. We have, you know, kind of a history.”

  “Actually, he was being a dick before you got here.”

  “Oh, good, then. My conscience is cleared. Thanks—what was your name again? Arnold?”

  So I had no choice but to introduce myself as my fake self, Arnold Hamilton, and then I asked her if she was from around here. No, she was from Idaho. She asked me if I was from around here, and I told her no, I was from Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Just in town for my grandfather’s funeral.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear about that.”

  She was looking at me now. It was the first time we’d really made eye contact, and I know this is going to sound cheesy or whatever, but OK: first of all, she had these really blue eyes. Like deep blue. And there was something strange about them. They were just—different somehow. Different in a good way. And then it hit me: this woman hadn’t been lensed!

  “Hey, you aren’t having FUN®,” I said.

  “No way.”

  “No way? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means,” she said, “that everyone I know who’s having FUN® acts like a complete zombie, and I don’t want to be a complete zombie, and therefore I don’t want to be having FUN®.”

  “Hey, I’m having FUN®. Am I a complete zombie?”

  “Well, I don’t know. When I walked in you were mumbling and staring off into space, waving your hands around in front of yourself—like a zombie.”

  “I was having FUN®.”

  “Right,” she said. “Having FUN®. Not actual fun. Zombie fun.”

  “Not zombie fun. FUN® fun. It really is fun, too. Most of the time. When you’re not a FAIL, that is.”

  The woman, gave me a look like ?, because she didn’t know what a FAIL was. So I started explaining to her about all the rules and consequences and how I was trying to earn my way back, but I could tell I was kind of losing her, so I stopped.

  “How about you?” I said. “What do you do for actual fun? Read actual books?”

  “Yes, as matter of fact—but this book isn’t for fun, it’s for school.”

  “Oh, you’re a student?”

  “No, I’m a teacher.”

  Technically she was a student teacher—at the same elementary school I went to—but the actual teacher got sick and by this point she was basically doing the whole thing herself. She’d moved from Idaho last fall, sight unseen, to fulfill the rural teaching part of her student loan agreement. She’d been debating between Antello and a place in Texas, and in retrospect she should’ve chosen Texas.

  The whole time she talked I was like, Yay! She’s talking to me! And I tried to keep it going by peppering her with little questions—I asked her what it was like being a first-time teacher and all that, about the tests and whatnot, but I was having a hard time following what she was saying. I was starting to TSD, aka Temporary Sense Death glitch-out, aka a sudden void of sensation leaving a strange silent hole in your brain not unlike the silence of a Vitamix® Wishspertech2™ risk-free blender (YAY!).

  Supposedly they’ve fixed the problem with more recent versions of the chip, but the chip I have is one of the originals, and even with all the updates and patches I still TSD’d from time to time if I was in an agitated state.

  It happened to me then. The woman was talking to me, and suddenly I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The audio dropped right out. She was a silent movie. I stood there and watched her talk. God, she had a beautiful mouth. I was really getting into it, just loving the way her lip kind of went up all lopsided and beautiful, and then the audio cut back in.

  “Which is why I’m reading this,” she was saying, “so I can share it at the assembly tomorrow. It’s heritage week at school; we’re supposed to present the stories of our ancestors….They told me this was a happening little college town. But the truth is there are approximately ten people here between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and so far let’s just say it’s not been what you would call stellar….”

  “Everyone OK here?” Blake was back. Standing right next to us, actually. “Is he bugging you, Katie?”

  “Him?” she said. “No.”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little. It was like, Suck on that, Blake.

  Blake went away, and I smiled at his receding backside, but then my smile went away because the woman, Katie, was putting her book in her bag and standing up.

  “I should go,” she said. “It’s late. Nice to meet you, um—what was it again?”

  And I was like, Damn, why’d I lie the first time? and told her again I was Arnold, and she gave me a wave and was gone. I sat there for maybe three minutes before I was like, You fool! Go get her contact info!

  I got lucky. I found her out in the parking lot. She was leaning against a red truck, smoking a ciga
rette.

  “Hi there.”

  She fanned away the smoke. “Don’t lecture me. I’m trying to quit.”

  “Lecture you?”

  “You know, an elementary schoolteacher who smokes…” She took another puff. “I really am trying to quit.”

  I reached down into my ballsack for some courage and asked her if she wanted to trade contact info.

  “Contact info?” she said.

  “Like your username or whatever.”

  She cocked her head and eyed me with her blue, blue eyes. “Remember? I’m not having FUN®.”

  “Right.” I’d totally forgotten. “Well, you should consider having FUN® sometime. It’s…fun. We could mindtalk™ or whatever.”

  “OK,” she said.

  “OK,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  And normally I would’ve taken the hint and just left her alone. Of course, normally I wouldn’t even have followed her to the parking lot. I can’t even explain it. But something in me was like, This girl is cool. Don’t just let her go.

  “If not a username, how about a phone number? Do you have a phone?”

  “Yes, I have a phone.”

  “You wanna trade numbers?”

  “Just in case I’m ever in Pennsylvania?” she said.

  “Right. Or, you never know when I might have to come back for another funeral. People die all the time. Or maybe I’ll set out on some kind of quest to turn into a bird or whatever.”

  She gave it some thought. “Do you have a piece of paper?”

  “Just tell it to me. I’ll input it in my address book.”

  “No, that’s OK.” She took out her notebook, scribbled something on a sheet, ripped it out, folded it up into a tiny square, and handed it to me.

  “There. Good night, Arnold. Nice to meet you.”

  “Good night, Katie.”

  And good night moon, and June, and beautiful tunes, and the bird of romance, aka the loon. Back in my room, I plopped down on the bed and started unfolding the paper. Hell yes, I’d gotten her number! She’d really folded up that paper. Finally I had it all opened and flattened out on the bed, but there wasn’t a number. Instead, there was this:

  First you must complete three tasks.

  You must bring me:

  1. A cloud that makes no rain.

  2. A needle that needs no thread.

  3. A harp that sings without plucking.

  —Katie

  I woke the next morning with Homie™ in my face giving me a special message. I’d been selected to have a spin of the Starbucks® Grand Epiphany Morning Mocha Wheel (YAY!) and possibly win some free crap, none of which actually included an actual cup of coffee—not that I even drink coffee—and while I was listening to this message I missed another one. I mean an actual one. From my sister:

  > aaron? i know you didn’t stay with dad and you didn’t stay here, either. are you even in town? you better be! it’s almost 10:00 and dad says you’re not at the church so WHERE ARE YOU???

  Speaking as a person who’s had a lot of experience with running late over the years, it’s exactly when you need everything to move smoothly that the most shit goes wrong. I scrambled out of bed and tripped over my bag, the zipper of which I discovered was stuck—and burned five minutes working to get it unstuck, and in the process broke it completely—and when I laid out my funeral outfit on the bed, I discovered that despite the white shirt, brown pants, leather belt, maroon tie, and brown jacket, a critical item was missing: Where were my dress shoes?

  I’d forgotten to pack them. So I put on my Osmos™IV running shoes—neon green with the bright white laces—and, long story short, although the church was only seven blocks away, by the time I arrived I was already ten minutes late.

  I paused for a moment in front of the big wooden doors to catch my breath and steel myself against the frosty glare of the congregation, and then I stepped inside.

  But the church was empty. I mean completely empty. No priest, no casket, no congregation, no nothing—just a milky light filtering through the stained glass windows and good old JC, savior of the world, standing at the end of it all, arms raised up in frustration like, Hey. Where’d everybody go?

  There was a time in my life when I believed in the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit and all that noise, but around age 10, after my mom left, I pretty much stopped going to Mass. Still, in all my life I hadn’t had a single experience with the Catholic Church that clocked in at under an hour. So where was everybody? Had I missed the ceremony?

  Homie™ popped up.

  > what up original boy_2?

  u r a FAIL!

  how about for once try to spin the morning mocha wheel!

  there is still time!

  “Go away. Actually, wait. Maybe I should call Evie. Oh, wait. Never mind.”

  I saw him now. At the back of the church, near the altar. Blue jeans, gray hoodie, baggy jean jacket with a lot of buttons on it. He gave me a wave. “You made it.”

  “Where is everybody?”

  “Funny story. Who were you talking to?”

  “What?”

  My dad started down the aisle. “Just now, you were talking to yourself.”

  “Um, well, yeah. I was just talking to myself. Where is everybody?”

  “Like I said. Funny story.”

  I’ll say this: a dad is a big thing. When you’re little, you think he’s a god. He is a god. But really he isn’t. He’s just a dude with a broken dream. In my dad’s case, he wanted to be a drummer in a famous rock band. But that didn’t happen. I think it almost did, but then it didn’t. Then Mom left.

  From my discussions with psychiatrists and counselors over the years, I’ve pretty confidently diagnosed my dad as your classic narcissistic Irish Catholic erratic-cycle semifunctioning alcoholic. I’m not saying he was the worst father in the world—certainly a better dad than my mom was a mom—but then again he wasn’t the best, either. I mean, he could have been better, though from what I hear his dad wasn’t exactly father of the year, either.

  “Where is everyone?”

  Dad scanned the pews like he was seeing it for the first time. “Yeah. Looks like it’s just the two of us.”

  “What about Evie? Where’s she?”

  “Sick. Caught a bad case of superpox.”

  Pretty convenient if you ask me—catching a deadly infectious disease just in time to miss our grandpa’s funeral. But Dad seemed to be buying it. Evie just has that power over him. Some kind of special father-daughter bond that remains a complete mystery to me.

  He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “You didn’t stay at your sister’s last night.”

  “Nah.”

  “You should’ve stayed at my place. I wanted to talk about some stuff. What happened? You were busy with other commitments?”

  I shrugged. It was all I could think to do. As for my dad, he just kept on looking at me. There’s this one look he has, like, Oh, right, you’re the reason I had to not become the next Johnny McDrummerson or whatever.

  “How’s school?” he asked at last.

  “Fine.”

  “You like Sacramento?”

  “It’s OK.”

  He nodded. “And your mother? How’s she?”

  I gave it some thought. At some point I was going to have to come clean and tell him what happened, so why not now? For a moment there, I almost told him the truth. Almost.

  “Mom? She’s fine. She’s, um, you know—fine.”

  His gaze wandered down to my neon-green Osmos™IVs. “Interesting choice of footwear.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Funny story. Miscommunication in scheduling. The service was held at nine instead of ten.”

  “Really? It’s over?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “If we hurry, we can still make it in time to bury the old goat.”

  Now when my dad said, If we hurry, what I thought he meant was, If we hurry…and get in my nice warm car and head on down the
road in the accustomed style. But he didn’t mean that. He meant if we hurry…and jog ten blocks to the cemetery…

  At first I didn’t want to do that because I had my bag with me, and although it wasn’t very heavy, it was definitely cumbersome. What with the broken zipper, you had to squeeze it to keep everything from falling out, and the whole situation was pretty awkward. I could tell Dad thought it was amusing, but then after a couple blocks the joke was on him, because who was the one wearing running shoes? Then the joke was back on me again because I was the one who tripped on a curb and spilled all my crap on the ground.

  Speaking of jokes, we arrived at the cemetery to find three people—a priest, a lawyer, and a cowboy—standing around an unmarked hole in the snow, like the setup of one of those jokes old people tell. It was cold out there, and it looked like they’d been waiting for a while, and that they weren’t exactly happy about it.

  As we got closer, however, I saw I’d been wrong—for one thing, the hole in the snow wasn’t a hole. It was a mound. Of dirt. Second, the lawyer wasn’t a lawyer. He was a rep from the funeral home. His lapel pin said NORTHERN NEVADA MEMORIALS, CATERING & FLORAL. The cowboy wasn’t a cowboy, either. She was a cowgirl. Or more like a cowoldlady: this tiny little woman in a cowboy hat. The priest was a priest, though, and he was the one who spoke first, thanking us for joining them on this solemn day, etc. When he spoke his mouth barely moved. You could tell he was pissed.

  “What’s going on?” said Dad. “You already buried him?”

  The funeral rep stepped forward. “I’ll apologize for that one. We thought you were a no-show.”

  “A no-show at my father’s funeral?”

  “It happens more than you’d think.”

  “What about the rites? Those over, too?”

  The priest cleared his throat. “I can do them again.”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  I’m telling you, that guy should’ve been an auctioneer. I’d never heard a person speak so fast. Our-father-who-art-in-heaven-hallowed-be-thy-ashes-to-ashes-dust-to-dust-bless-and-console-us-and-gently-wipe-every-tear-from-our-eyes-in-the-name-of-the-father-son-and-holy-etc.-amen.

  But it was freakin’ cold out there, and he couldn’t go fast enough, and all I could think about was how could some all-powerful god arrange for a day like this? Why would he? What’s the point? Here’s some dude, cold and pissed, talking on behalf of this other dude who he probably didn’t even know, and definitely doesn’t give a shit about, while all these other dudes (+1 old cowlady) who barely give any more of a shit freeze their butts off. And that’s it? That’s how you say good-bye to a life? Awesome work, God. Thanks for mosquitoes, too, by the way. And hey, when are you gonna get around to starving more homeless African kids?