The Last Projector

by David James Keaton

  Jack ponders this hard. Then there’s another shadow on the road, and he swerves again. More silence. Jack keeps looking at her like he wants to tell her something. Anything. He scratches at the window for a couple seconds, then nervously blurts out the most tiresome hypothetical question of all time.

  “So, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

  “You just think of that one?”

  “Does it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” Jacki says quietly, mind wandering to another memory. “If there’s a dog loose in the woods, does it make a sound…”

  “Huh?”

  Then Jack swerves again, almost taking them into a ditch.

  “What the hell?!” she yells.

  “Sorry. I thought I saw something.”

  “Why is there so much shit on the road? Are you taking a shortcut through a petting zoo?”

  Jack grips the wheel with both hands. He wants to confess all over again, but instead just keeps them talking.

  “Uh... have you noticed a lot of dogs around lately?”

  “Well, you know what they say, if you think you’re seeing a lot of dogs everywhere, then you’ll look for them, and you really will see dogs everywhere. Or something like that.”

  “I think they say that about numbers.”

  They drive on. There’s another shadow in the road, and Jack squints to see that it’s still moving, or, at the least, the wind is fluttering a broken wing. He glances at Jacki and sees her yawning with her eyes shut. So this time, he doesn’t swerve. She doesn’t notice the tiny bump under the tire.

  Jack has always thought passing a yawn back and forth was incredibly intimate. Or maybe he just always figured “I’ll take it,” when he traded them with pretty girls on trains. Then he shared one with a stray cat at one point, and the exchange lost its allure a bit.

  Jack fights it for another mile, but finally he can’t help but yawn, too. He wishes someone could harness that impulse, the infectious yawn. Harness all impulses…

  When they pull into Jacki’s driveway, they’re both so tired they don’t notice the car parked two houses down with the two shadows inside. One big. One small.

  Idling in front of her house, Jacki yawns, but Jack ignores it.

  “So you never answered me at the bar. You said you were a teacher, right?”

  “Did I?”

  “There was nothing in your garbage cans that suggested you were a teacher.”

  She smiles a bit at this, then inhales deep.

  “I was until recently. I sort of lost it on a student and retired myself early. A meeting got outta hand.”

  “No shit.”

  “No shit.”

  “Okay, in a nutty fuckin’ nutshell, I had this student who was plagiarizing like crazy, and I called him out on it when he used an old paper from another class, and got into this correspondence with him via email, only it was his mother pretending to be him, and…”

  “So she plagiarized her emails, too! That’s awesome.”

  “Not even the half of it. Just listen. Anyway, I’m emailing whoever it is. Even though it’s coming from the kid’s account, this James David Oswald – I know, I know, how am I not afraid of a kid with one of those three-name names tailor-made for assassinations. But if you’d seen him, he’s fucking adorable. At first. Anyway, at the end of his emails, the dumb bitch keeps signing them ‘Brit.’”

  “She’s British?”

  “What? No, it was short for ‘Britannica…’”

  “She’s black.”

  “No, she’s white! Shut the fuck up. So J.D. or Brit or whoever starts insisting he/she should be able to use any paper he or she wants because – and he/she actually says this – because we teachers use the same curriculum every year. So we’re plagiarizing, too, right? Also, the mother eventually emails me from her own account, also signing it ‘Brit,’ and she says she routinely helps her sons. ‘Sons,’ she says, so there’s probably fifty of them, hes, shes, hermaphrodites, he/shes, whatever, and that shouldn’t be considered plagiarism either, because they all share the same blood. And looking back, they are all definitely written by this woman.”

  “I’m convinced. Did you give it an ‘A’?”

  “I should have. That kid will be the editor of a major publishing house one day. But no, J.D. and his mom wouldn’t let it drop, and eventually I’m forced to meet with him, Brit, my Division Chair, and the Provost of our college…”

  “Wait, back up, how did you know Britannica wrote all her son’s essays?”

  “Because when you talk to this idiot, in person or via email, she sprinkles the word ‘certainly’ into every sentence.”

  “Like fairy dust.”

  “More like rat poison. But J.D. has submitted a formal appeal of his failing grade by this time, which was peppered with about nine thousand ‘certainly’s, of course, meaning the dumb ass plagiarized her plagiarism appeal! But we all meet together anyway, because they’re chickenshit at that school, and this is when Fall Fest is going on all over campus, so there’s balloons and cut-out leaves and crêpe paper all over the Provost’s office. So J.D. starts playing with balloons, because the kid’s not all there, right? And Brit just lays into me, saying I’m certainly the worst professor she’s ever had, and she’s certainly not going to pay for this class, and even though this is the third time J.D’s failed the class, the common denominator in this equation is certainly not her son. And ‘certainly certainly certainly,’ and on and on and on. And while the ‘certainly’s are flying, at one point I’m pretty sure I hear her quote Rollerball, without citing the source, of course, and I’m just thinking about how J.D. and his mom seem dead set on plagiarizing in all possible forms and trying not to snap…”

  “Oooh, please tell me you snapped.”

  “Well, we all snapped in our own way. But I had that pre-snap where I knew I would make somebody else snap with just one word, thus paving the way for my snap. You know what I mean?”

  “Hell, yeah. What was the word?”

  “What do you think? ‘Certainly.’ Turned out it was Kryptonite to this bitch. She actually got up over the table and went for my neck, even scratched me a little bit under my chin with her ghetto-ass nails. But I was married to Anthony long enough to learn how to fight back, and I caught that arm and turned it into a pretzel. But before I started breaking it, I could feel the bone in her elbow balancing on that fence - you know, this way it breaks, this way it’s fine? So we both hold that pose a couple of seconds to think about what’s next while my Division Chair and the Provost still worked their way through all the balloons to us. Do you know what I’m talking about? You know that moment when you know your knuckle is going to crack but you’re not sure if it will hurt? Seems like forever, right. I just held her eyes long enough for her to know it was going to be on purpose. Then she looked scared and exhaled and we both felt her body sink onto that bad angle and snap!”

  “Damn. You caught her epiphyseal, right over the synovial.”

  “Yeah, and the bitch bone connected to the cunt bone.”

  “Gave her an ‘uppercunt!’”

  “Whatever it was, it was like a gunshot. Then all the screaming and accusations were flying, this time coming from the colleagues who had been on my side all the way up to the snap. But through it all, J.D. said nothing. Which was crazy. Even when his own mother screamed, never a peep. He just rubbed some balloons together to make the static pull his hair up into a Mad Scientist ‘do. It looked like he’d tried to make a balloon animal of some kind, probably trying to copy the sculpture of Buffalo Bill on the Provost’s deck, but he was fucking that up, as usual. Even worse, and I don’t know if it was rubbing all those balloons on his jeans, but it wasn’t there until that bone popped, but I swear it gave the kid an erection.”

  “Hey, his body betrayed him,” Jack says after a second. “Hard to blame a kid for that.”

  They both laugh at this.

  “So,
where do you work now?”

  “For a paper mill.”

  “No shit!” Jack says, laughing, impressed all to hell. “No wonder you couldn’t take your eyes off that lumberjack contest. That job is no joke. They say the lumber industry is the second most dangerous job on earth, after crab fishing…”

  “No, a paper mill, like where freshmen buy papers.”

  “Are you serious?” Jack says, appalled.

  “Yeah, it’s good money. I get about fifty bucks a page, a hundred a page if the student needs it the next day. I’ve got good word-of-mouth, too, since I know exactly what professors are looking for.”

  “But after all that stuff about plagiarism?”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other?”

  Jack can’t answer this, no matter how hard he tries. He looks her up and down, trying not to judge, but with her blatant hypocrisy, it’s almost as if she’s just admitted to shitting her pants. He shakes off the thought, and she yawns, big and dramatic. Jack catches the yawn, then waits for her to yawn again so he can lean over to steal a goodbye smooch. He’s inches from getting his kiss when a strange electronic squawk makes Jacki jump back. She reaches down to tug on some extra electronic equipment under his radio.

  “What is that? A CB?”

  “Police scanner. Most of the staff has ‘em.”

  “I saw it flashing. I just thought it was an equalizer. Those were big in the ‘80s”

  “Ha, we were all big in the ‘80s.”

  “Really.”

  “Actually I was in England in the ‘80s.”

  “Did they have equalizers?”

  “That’s funny you called it that. Because that’s exactly what I like to call it, too. An ‘equalizer.’”

  “Why?”

  “Because if the cops know what the paramedics are up to, we figure we should know what the cops are up to. Firemen, cops, lifeguards. It’s the same food chain. Scooping up the same nutrients from the ocean, you know?”

  “Certainly,” Jacki says, forcing a smile and climbing out.

  “See ya.”

  “See ya.”

  Jack drives off, adjusting his rear-view to watch her go in, still not seeing the parked car and the headlights that pop on to follow.

  Jacki walks in the door, and the babysitter, a grinning teenage moppet curled up on the couch with her knees against her chin, quickly springs up to greet her.

  “Hey, Jacki,” she says through braces and a yawn. “Toni’s sleeping. Me, too, almost.”

  “How’d she do?” Jacki asks, looking around.

  “She was fine. We played chess. Watched E.T. Well, she wanted to play chess, but we really just played checkers with the chess pieces.”

  “That movie isn’t on video yet, is it? I thought it was still in theaters.”

  “No, it’s old,” the teen says. “We used to copy it, try to ride around with our dogs in our baskets and jump the moon. No way you can jump anything with any creature on your handlebars though.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You ever try riding with a boombox in the basket? You’ll tumble right over on your first curb.”

  “They still make boomboxes?” Jacki asks herself, walking over to the brass chess set on the coffee table and rattling around the horses. She picks up the knight, then balances it on its crown. “Yeah,” she continues. “Toni used to want me to teach her, but she can’t sit still long enough. She just plays with ‘em like army men. Her grandpa taught her that.”

  “Isn’t that what they are?” the babysitter laughs. “Army men?” Then she grabs her book bag to leave. “Okay, gotta go. She was sooo cute all night. See ya next time!”

  Jacki hands the girl the twenty-dollar bill with the ladybug President. The girl doesn’t notice the drawing, and Jacki closes the door behind her.

  She side-arms her keys on the table, knocking over the bishop, then heads for her daughter’s room. She finds Toni sitting in the glow of her tiny TV, still wide awake. Jacki gasps in mock surprise and reaches to turn off the TV, then stops.

  “What the heck are you watching, girl? This again? Are you kidding me?”

  On the screen, the studio audience of a low-brow talk show has erupted in a screaming match while the guests on the stage try to struggle loose from the security guards to attack each other. Every other word is bleeped as they unleash a flood of profanity. Jacki finally turns it off.

  “C’mon, enough of this crap, I’d rather you try to sneak a beer into bed than watch this garbage.”

  “Mommy, noooooo,” Toni whines. “Why do they make those noises? Is that what noise comes out when you get really angry?”

  “What? No,” she sighs. She’s explained this before. “Those are just, uh, bleeps.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bleeps, beeps, whatever. It’s what they do when someone says a swear word on TV.”

  “Why not just tell them they can’t swear on TV?”

  “Nobody listens. Actually, they probably tell those idiots to swear as much as possible.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know! Because people like hearing bleeps. Then they get to fill in the blanks with the nastiest words they can think of.”

  “Like what?” Now Toni is utterly fascinated.

  Jacki remembers her job training and recognizes the “teachable moment.” She turns the TV back on and sits down on the edge of her bed.

  “Okay, let’s listen, and you tell me. Every time the TV ‘bleeps,’ you try to fill in the word.”

  “Okay!” Toni is bouncing all around as her mother turns up the volume. Two people on the screen are nose to nose. The bleeps are flying. “Sounds like my Blurby!”

  “I will [bleep] on your [bleep],” one of them hisses. Then the show cuts to a commercial. Toni looks to her mother for help.

  “Uhhh...”

  “C’mon. You’re supposed to fill in the blanks. I mean ‘bleeps.’”

  “I can’t think fast enough,” Toni says, frowning.

  “Exactly,” Jacki says, smiling and turning the TV back off. “Neither can they. And that’s the whole goddamn problem.”

  Her daughter frowns as she contemplates this and climbs into bed. Her mother turns out the light and starts to leave, but Toni has one more question.

  “On that show, how come they were calling the mommy ‘mother sister?’ Can she be both?”

  “Sounds horrible,” Jacki says.

  The door closes.

  Same night. Jack locks his front door and turns to enter the apartment directly across the hall. He’s carrying a long, camouflaged bag rattling on his back. He steps into the empty apartment as he swings the bag off his shoulder, making no move for the lights as the door gently closes behind him and locks him safely in the darkness.

  Bully climbed to the top of the bunker to get the perfect view, her thumb tickling the button on her helicopter remote control.

  Then she saw the tow truck. The one with the ramp.

  She forgot about promises of fame and destruction and stopped tickling the remote control for a second so the world could catch its breath. The tow truck was leaving the drive-in, but it was still stuck at the back of the line, not quite lined up straight enough. Not yet. But it would be.

  And if a truck with a ramp was here, she knew that meant he was here, too. Her eyes watered. She had more than a little bit of affection for someone trying so hard to court her, and she thought she might wait for him to try his stunt before she hit the button marked, “Ascend.”

  But it would be hard. She couldn’t think of a more perfect word.

  VII.

  Flashbacks to the Crashbacks – That’s Not How a Rorschach Test Works, Dude – Slap! “She’s My Daughter and My Sister!” Slap! – Approaching the Ramp and Remembering Why He Should – Never Pick up Strange – Ten Dollar Private Eye – Only a Fool Wouldn’t Wish for More Wishes – In the Bunker – The Voice in His Ear That Makes Him Do What He Do Just Because – That’s Not What Her Shirt Says – I K
now an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly – Perhaps She Lied – Sun Delay – You Can’t Teach a Dead Dog New Tricks

  “Will power made that old car go

  A woman’s mind told me that, so...”

  -Lobo “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo”

  Six years ago. The crash.

  Jacki is wearing only a T-shirt, naked from the waist down, back arched against a steering wheel and riding Eric in the driver’s seat. They’re racing down a road flanked by trees. Both windows are down and the night air pulls hard on their hair.

  It was six years ago tonight...

  Don’t you wish it was a year ago tonight? Doesn’t that sound better?

  Shut up and listen.

  Jacki looks down at the driver. Some sort of “nü-metal” music fills the car while she grinds, but her face signals an approaching orgasm anyway. The new metal, too. The driver’s eyes are closing.

  He was distracted because he was coming, and I was distracted because I knew that meant I wasn’t going to be able to...

  Jacki frowns in disappointment as he finishes before her. Then she sees the driver’s eyes dilate in horror, and he shoves her off the steering wheel and into the passenger’s seat. The car is airborne, leaving the road for three glorious seconds before it tries and fails to sucker-punch the thickest tree around. Jacki is thrown forward and crushed down into the wreckage like a thumb packed her into a pipe. The crumbled car’s seat engulfs her body and she’s almost gone, part of the car now.

  I felt the car collapse around me, like someone squeezing me in a metal fist. The last thing I saw was him taking flight...

  Eric’s naked body rockets past Jacki in slow motion, bursting through the blue diamonds of the windshield. Impossibly, he rockets straight up into space.