War of the Encyclopaedists

by Christopher Robinson

  Montauk blinked a few more times. “Hi,” he said.

  “Tell us what happened,” Mani said, squeezing his right hand.

  Montauk took a moment to process the question. “I got blown up,” he said.

  “Duh,” Corderoy said. “But how?”

  “The usual, dude. IED.” Montauk seemed to finally recognize the expression on Corderoy’s face and he returned a tentative smile of his own. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “What about your head, Mickey?”

  “It’s fine,” Montauk said.

  “They said you had cerebral edema.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I looked it up. You—”

  “I’m fine, all right? Jesus. I just got my bell rung. I’m healing up. I’m really lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Corderoy said.

  “Yeah. Lucky. I’m not dead and my face isn’t melted off.”

  “Did someone die?” Corderoy asked.

  “Yeah, my gunner died. Fields. A really good guy. Just a really nice guy. Evan Fields. His girl was pregnant.”

  “Oh . . . shit. Shit, dude.”

  “Yeah. Do you know Ant? Maybe I told you about him, I don’t know. I’m a little drugged out right now. He’s here, too.”

  Mani and Corderoy looked at each other. “We’re just worried,” Mani said.

  “I get it. I’m fine, though. Everything’s fine except that my parents are pissed. They found out from the Army about our, that we . . .” Montauk glanced at Corderoy, then back at Mani.

  “He knows,” Mani said.

  “I know,” Corderoy said.

  “Oh, shit, they sent someone to your house, too, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Mani said. “At first we thought you were . . .”

  “God, I’m sorry,” Montauk said.

  “Don’t be,” Corderoy said. “We’re just glad you’re okay.”

  “Stop it, already. I’m fine. I’ve still got my face. Dick’s still attached, so your mom will be relieved, bro.”

  “My dad will be, too. They called last week. They were worried about you. So was I.”

  Montauk glared at Corderoy as though his unflinching sincerity were some kind of trick. “It was just a fucking roadside bomb,” he said. “I don’t really remember getting blown up, just getting medevaced. Whatever. Like I said. Nothing to complain about. I mean, the cast sucks, but I’m getting paid. I feel kind of guilty about it, honestly. Ant is down the hall with his fucking face burned off.”

  Mani stroked his forearm. “Well, I’m glad it’s not you,” she said.

  “What?” Montauk pulled his arm out from under her fingers.

  “She didn’t mean it that way,” Corderoy said. “We’re just glad you’re back. We should celebrate. We should throw an Encyclopaedists party. In Boston.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Montauk said.

  “We can do it at Mani’s loft. When do they release you?”

  “I’ll be outpatient soon, but I have to be in and out of here every week for rehab for like months.”

  “But you can get a pass or something, just for the weekend.”

  “I guess. Maybe.”

  “Hal’s right,” Mani said. She linked arms with him and took Montauk’s hand at the same time. “It would be good for you. Let’s throw a party.”

  Montauk sighed and turned toward the window. It was good to see his friends, but they would leave in a moment, and it would be even better for them to leave now. He hated feeling that way, but hating the feeling didn’t make it go away.

  * * *

  “Light the candles,” Ant said. Thanks to some industrial pain meds, his speech was slurred and slowed.

  “I don’t know how,” Montauk said. “Oh, wait. I found the menu. They’re lit.”

  “All right, hooah. Do you see the stereo? I think it’s by the couch.”

  Montauk clicked the action menu, and the stereo began pumping out eighties-sounding R&B. He was sitting in a wheelchair with Ant’s laptop resting on his legs.

  “Yeah,” Ant said. “Everything we’ve worked for is coming to fruition. The neighbor lady should be just outside. Go invite her in.”

  Montauk navigated Ant’s Sim outside. There was the neighbor lady. “Wow, she’s smoking,” Montauk said.

  “What’s she wearing? I forget.”

  “A blue midriff and Daisy Dukes.”

  The entire left side of Ant’s body was covered in bandages, and most of his face, including both of his eyes, was hidden behind gauze. “Not for long,” Ant said.

  Montauk looked over at him and imagined that Ant was making the slight narrowing of the eyes that conveyed satisfied recognition. Of course, he was doing no such thing. Ant was in such constant pain that he probably wouldn’t dare move any more facial muscles than necessary. Worse, he might never again be able to narrow his eyes. Montauk had seen the doctors change the bandages and reapply a salve. Most of Ant’s eyelids had been burned off.

  “Well?”

  “There’s no invite button,” Montauk said.

  “Just click on her and make her walk in the house.”

  Montauk did so. “Wait, her name is Hotass Neighborlady?”

  “Yeah. I named her that when I created her.”

  “You created Hotass Neighborlady just so your Sim would have someone to bone?”

  “Hooah.”

  “Hooah.” Montauk navigated the two Sims to the table. “Now what?”

  “Click on her. What romantic interactions do we got?”

  “Flirt. Hold Hands. Whisper In Ear. There’s a bunch, I don’t know.”

  “Definitely Whisper In Ear.”

  Montauk selected that, and Ant’s Sim leaned in for a sweet nothing.

  “Check again. We have any kiss interactions?”

  “I’m pleased to announce that Make Out is now available. Proceeding,” Montauk said.

  A few minutes later, Montauk had guided Ant’s Sim and Hotass Neighborlady out to the back patio, where Ant had previously installed a hot tub. The Sims threw off their clothes, revealing shimmering pixels of obscured nudity, and leapt in.

  “Sit next to her,” Ant said.

  “We got an option for WooHoo,” Montauk said. “You ready?”

  “Wait. Check the relationship menu. Are both their hearts red?”

  “Hers is pink.”

  “Don’t WooHoo yet or we’ll get rejected, sir. Go for Cuddle.”

  Ant’s Sim sidled up next to Hotass Neighborlady, and Montauk watched her heart symbol deepen in color. When it was finally time to engage in WooHoo, he counted down from T-minus ten before clicking the button. The Sims embraced each other, splashed, dove underwater, resurfaced, dove again, and one could only imagine how those pixelated genitals were interacting.

  “How does it feel to tap that neighbor lady?” Montauk asked.

  “Awesome,” Ant said.

  Silence descended on the room.

  Montauk looked away, both from the game and from Ant, as he began imagining Ant’s future romantic prospects. “What now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Go into Buy Mode? Maybe get a new couch?”

  Montauk navigated through the options.

  “You know, there was this girl back in Seattle that I was huge into,” Ant said. “We had a philosophy class together.”

  “Yeah? There’s a red leather couch here. Looks pretty nice.”

  “Sure,” Ant said. “She invited me to this house party, was supposed to be a rager.”

  “Looks like you don’t have enough cash for that couch,” Montauk said.

  “Ah, fuck it, then.”

  “So tell me about this party.”

  “Couldn’t go. It was the weekend after we shipped out.”

  “Sucks.”

>   “I think I coulda tapped that. I mean, it could have been something. Maybe.”

  Montauk looked out the window at a small patch of bluish D.C. sky. “My buddy wants to throw a big house party, like we used to.”

  “You should.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.”

  “What? Come on, sir, you gotta go. I’ll tell you how to get the chicks into the hot tub.”

  “I’ve still got a broken femur.”

  “Whatever. Chicks dig that shit. I’d kill to go to a party right now.”

  “I’m also pissed at my buddy. He’s banging my wife.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Well, she’s not really my wife.”

  “Wait, did you get a PFC marriage for money?”

  “That’s in the vault, Private.”

  “Sir, yes, sir.” Ant chuckled as much as the bandages and pain would allow. “Didn’t think officers did that.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “So why are you pissed at your buddy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I just want to be.”

  “Punch him in the face,” Ant said.

  “What?”

  “Then you’ll know. If you’re mad or not.”

  Montauk laughed. “Your bandage is soaking through,” he said. “I’ll call the nurse.”

  53

  * * *

  No one knew how to react. Were they supposed to look or not? Was it an art piece? A tasteless joke? Was Mickey just fucking with everyone? They felt like fools. That was the party’s theme, but still. He wore a peacoat and had a fake harpoon sticking out of his wheelchair. Mani was pushing him through the crowd. The fucked-up part was that Mickey was carrying a laptop on his legs and introducing people, via webcam, to Antonin Ant, whose bandages had been freshly removed: his eyes were lidless, and his forehead and left cheek were a corrugated and spongelike swath of moist pink, stretched taut toward his ear.

  It was a point of extreme gravity moving through a lighthearted and ridiculous party. Hal wore a pair of tights and a ragged floral shirt that drooped down to his thighs in Renaissance fashion. He had a bindle over his shoulder and a rose in his hand. He was straight out of a tarot deck. His contribution to the art on display was a small cairn of golden nuggets on a pedestal with a sign that read: TOTALLY REALLY REAL. It wasn’t real gold, but it was real pyrite. There was a sadness in his eyes that night, watching his best friend and the woman he loved at the center of so many conversations, not a sadness that life wasn’t turning out the way he’d hoped, but a sadness that sadness would be a routine part of his life. One day, perhaps, he would be able to speak about these things without the safety of intellectual abstraction. Until that day, they would remain unverifiable, neither true nor false.

  The loft space was really done up. Down the middle of the room, Mani had painted the double yellow lines of a road which ran into the wall and continued into a painted tunnel, à la Wile E. Coyote. Hal’s old professor and some handyman guy, they were standing close to it, deep in a discussion of the metaphysical implications.

  The thing about a Wile E. Coyote tunnel was that, to the outside viewer, the Road Runner, it was real enough to run right through, but to its maker, the Coyote, it remained an illusion he could never enter, always hitting the rock wall of his own artifice. There was some important idea in there about the nature of art, and Mani had painted this piece in order to help herself articulate it.

  That was the kind of night it was. Ridiculous and theoretical. And always circling back to Mickey and the laptop, Ant directing him (Hey, introduce me to that girl. Or I wanna say something to that buddy of yours that’s banging your wife). Ant seemed happy, meeting Mickey’s friends, though it was difficult to tell, through his fresh scars, whether he was smiling or scowling. Could it be both? Nearly everyone at the party took a moment to say hi. No two reactions were the same. A bashful Thank you for your service. A willfully casual Nice to meet you. An awkward Hello. Even uncomprehending laughter.

  When Tricia arrived—there were doubts all around that she’d show—she and Hal got into it about Mickey. She was wearing a bow tie and a green top hat with a card in the band that read 10/6. The thing about Mickey holding that laptop, she said, sure, maybe it’s an attempt to puncture the civilian art bubble, which is good, but it’s still vulgar. Even if it was Ant’s idea, like you say. It’s exploitive.

  On returning from Baghdad, prematurely, Tricia had been shocked and unwilling to look at the mess she’d made. That had given way to a wellspring of guilt and confusion. She’d failed to keep her professional and romantic lives separate. And Abdul Aziz had paid for that failure. That small bit of specificity, that boy’s name, made it ten times worse. The night of the party, she was trying her best to smile right through her mind’s preferred grimace. Fake it till you make it. Maybe that’s exactly what Ant was doing.

  The pug that Jenny Yi had brought crashed through the room, chasing the red dot from a laser pointer being passed around. They laughed and refilled their drinks.

  If we owe our wounded anything, Hal said, it’s that we face them with a certain disposition, a disposition that makes no assumptions. Take it at face value even when—no, especially when—the face is horribly disfigured.

  That’s nice, Tricia told him. She looked with admiration at Mani, pushing Mickey’s wheelchair through the crowd. Mani had rubbed acrylic paint all over her skin and clothes, darkening her shadows, more strongly limning her facial features. Her costume was an impressionistic portrait, the canvas was her body, and her subject was the fool she knew best: herself.

  No one knew what was going to happen between her and Hal. She caught the soft focus of his eyes and smiled back at him—the poor, sweet idiot wasn’t as much of an asshole as he liked to think. Hal thought he needed her. Maybe he really did. Whatever Mani had been through, it had left her more self-possessed; there was a nascent warmth emanating from her, a lone but not a lonely warmth, as if she had glimpsed her heart’s thermostat and knew she couldn’t reach the knob while wearing so many layers, so many sweaters and jackets of other people. There she was, pushing Mickey’s wheelchair, but he didn’t need her to, and soon she wouldn’t be. She had been so reactive, it had made her art reactive, art bent on sorting out the messy dynamics she shared with the people in her life. Perhaps she was ready now to make art not in relation to anyone, art that was causal, not caused.

  Then Hal asked Tricia about Mickey, if she was going to talk to him. And she said, Do I have to? And he said, Yes, and she said, Why? and Hal got all rom-com and said, Because that idiot’s in love with you!

  Tricia denied it, then demanded to know what Mickey had said about the two of them. Hal just raised his eyebrows.

  Everyone watched her and Mickey talk in the corner of the room once he’d handed Ant off to Hal. They tried to make out the conversation, just based on the body language: Didn’t think you would come. / Here I am. / Guess you can’t hate me now that I’m in a wheelchair. / Hal said that . . . / He said what? / I don’t know. I forgot what your smile looked like.

  And then Mickey examined her face. What was he thinking? That he’d been angry, yes, but not at her, not at anyone or anything. Anger had become a feature of his existence. A feature that, for some reason, that night, seemed to have retreated into a burrow in the back of his mind. Maybe it was thanks to Ant. No one knew what to make of the two of them at a hipster art party. Were they really wounded? Were they really soldiers? The easy definitional categories had fallen away. Maybe that’s what allowed Mickey to see himself outside of the roles he was accustomed to filling. A naked version of himself that had no use for anger, no relationship with it. It was still there, probably, hibernating.

  Then Mickey’s face took on an unfamiliar earnestness, a hint of fear. He was about to take a risk: Come get dinner with me. Next weekend.

  It could have been something l
ike that, judging by how Tricia tilted her head, dwelling in that space between yes and no. What’s he saying now? someone asked. Another chimed in to supply the answer in Mickey’s voice: I’ll pick you up in my blimp.

  But perhaps that’s far too optimistic. Perhaps they were talking about Abdul Aziz. I tried to get him released. Then Tricia tilting her head, dwelling in that space between guilt and hope. They’ll let him out, eventually. / Eventually. / I know. / And there’s nothing we can do? / I fucked up. / Gorma lied. / We fucked up. / Where does that leave us? / Free. Rich, relatively. / Whole lives ahead of us.

  It almost doesn’t make sense to ask what they were really saying in that moment, across the room. They were saying what everyone assumed they were saying. Supposition became fact.

  Later in the evening, when all the guests had gone home, when Ant had retired to the cold fluorescent light of his hospital room, Mani and Tricia went up to the rooftop, leaving Hal and Mickey to speak to each other for the first time all evening.

  So what’s the deal with Mani? Mickey asks. You back together? Not exactly, Hal says. But you’re living together, Mickey says. Today, Hal says. I think she’s gonna ask me to leave. Sometime soon. Hal’s voice is strangely calm. Shit, Mickey says. Just have that feeling, Hal says, like when you spin a coin and it starts to wobble out of control.

  Sad. Why does it have to be that way? Perhaps it’s too difficult to suspend the disbelief that everything can work out in the end—no, not in the end; there is no end, or life is just a string of ends, none of them simple, all of them seeds.

  Where does it go from here? Mickey says, I’ve been thinking about punching you in the face. Just to see. If it’s something I want to do. To have done. Hal says, Do it. Naw. I’m weak, Mickey says. And I can’t reach you from here. I’d have to get up on my crutches. And Hal leans down close and presents the side of his face. Do it. And Mickey socks him in the jaw and Hal falls backward. Fuck. Ouch. Fucking Fuck.