The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

by David Arnold

  “Two bucks,” he says.

  “Oh.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s always been a buck fifty.” I point toward the sign on the door that reads THE PREMIUM CINEMA EXPERIENCE FOR $1.50. “See?”

  “We upped the price, bruh.”

  I hand over two dollars, fairly certain I’m getting taken for fifty cents from a seventh-grade clarinet player, and then head to concessions.

  Going solo at the cinema seems like it might be fun. I can just enjoy the movie, laugh at the parts I think are funny, cry if I want without wondering if whoever I’m with is laughing or crying at the same parts.

  Just the one?

  Fucking kid doesn’t know me.

  I order a small popcorn and a Coke, assure the cashier that I do in fact just want the small, which is exactly what I ordered, and yes, I say, I know it’s not the highest value in the house, but it’s all I want, and I’m not one to waste. He hands over the popcorn and Coke, and I make my way over to the guy on the stool who will take my ticket.

  This is the way of society.

  And for that matter, when did movies become like a social outing? I mean, I get the drive-through thing, or at least back in the fifties and whatnot, with the tops down, chewing gum, drinking beers, making out. That kind of social movie experience I can respect.

  “Noah!” Val, out of nowhere, runs up and hugs me.

  “Hey.”

  “You here alone?” she asks, and only now do I realize she isn’t. Right next to her is Jake Longmire’s girlfriend, Taylor Something.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Seeing movies alone is going to be my new thing, I think.” A hard sip of Coke, like that, like I’m owning it.

  “How very Noah of you.” But she says it with a smile, not in a mean way—I don’t think. Taylor Something clears her throat, and I feel bad not including her in the conversation.

  “What are you guys here to see?” I ask Taylor Something.

  “Just leaving, actually,” she says, which explains Val’s unanswered text. She refuses to pull out her phone in a movie theater.

  “So what did you see?”

  “The new Superman,” says Val, pointing a finger in her mouth and gagging. “That whole franchise is just intent on circling the drain of suckage until it sinks to the bottom of the sewer where it belongs.”

  “Ah.”

  “What about you?” asks Val. “Coming or going?”

  “Coming.”

  “Which movie?”

  “The new Superman.”

  Taylor Something chuckles, all, “I’ll meet you at the car, V,” like she can’t stand being in my presence for one more second, and also, where the fuck does this girl get off calling Val V? Val is Val, sometimes Valeria, but never V. And if she’s V to anyone, she’s V to Alan and me, which she’s not, which brings me back to, Where the fuck does this girl get off?

  “I didn’t know you guys were friends,” I say, choosing the far tamer route.

  Val looks at the ground, and suddenly the air feels thicker. “We just started hanging out recently.”

  “Oh.” Something in my brain goes off like someone flipped a switch.

  “Well, I should probably go,” says Val. A sly smirk: “Enjoy the movie.”

  “Ha. Yeah.” I give her a quick hug, and she turns to leave. “Val.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you dating Will Longmire?”

  Her face turns a little red, and at first she doesn’t answer.

  “I ask because Alan is over there for guys’ night right now. And here you are with Jake’s girlfriend.”

  “Yeah.” She nods, looks at the ground, then me. “I mean—yes, I am.”

  “Oh. Okay. I just hadn’t seen you two like that around school, so I didn’t know.”

  “It’s pretty new, but it’s something we’ve both wanted to try. Plus he was already considering USC, so if it works out, it wouldn’t necessarily be long-distance.”

  “Good,” I say. “That’s great.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t want to miss the previews, so—”

  She interrupts me with a hug, our third in the last five minutes, and when you’ve spent as much time with a person as I’ve spent with Val, you start seeing life in sentences, feel the ebbs and flows of its lyrical current, the pulse of punctuation: I don’t care that Val is dating someone, even if it is a Longmire brother, and I don’t care if he joins her new life in sunny LA. And if Alan wants to be friends with that crew, fine, but it sure feels like they’ve built this whole other canoe on the sly, and now they’re off into the great unknown, leaving me on the banks of the river, waving good-bye.

  “Bye, Noah.”

  “Bye, Val.”

  She leaves, and that’s the end of the sentence.

  * * *

  The only thing worse than an inevitably shitty movie is the slew of inevitably shitty coming attractions. And the previews are on the Discount timeline so each movie is announced as “coming soon,” even though most of them have already come and gone. Eventually the lights dim, and just as the opening credits begin—just as I’m about to switch off my phone—a Gmail notification.

  From chewie.elephant57@gmail.com.

  Subject line empty.

  The slew of elephants in the Fading Girl video, the Chewbacca figurine—it’s her, I know, but at first I can’t open it. The unread email just sits in my inbox like it owns the place, like it’s always been there, like my phone is its home and I’m an intruder. It stares back at me from the screen as if to say, And you are . . . ?

  Take a breath, click it open, and read: So what’s your question?

  I spill my popcorn on the way out of the theater.

  70 → (no subject)

  Inside my car in the Discount parking lot, I open the notes app on my phone and draft a response, going through all the various stages of suckery before landing on:

  There’s no way for this to not sound weird (and believe me, I’ve tried all the ways), so I’m just hoping you’ll appreciate this message for what it is: an honest plea. Something is happening, and even though we don’t know each other, I think you may be able to help. I would like to meet you. I’m tired too.—Noah Oakman.

  I read through it a bunch of times, but in the end figure this is my best shot. Honesty, right up front. I copy and paste the message into Gmail and press send, then proceed to stare at my inbox for a solid ten minutes.

  (No subject)

  (No subject)

  (No subject)

  I stare at it so long, the words themselves start to look silly, un-word-like: No. Subject. No. Subject. It’s harsh, really, like saying, Here’s this email with no point whatsoever. And then (No subject) turns into . . .

  (No subject)

  That simple transition from plain text to bold sets off an internal twinge of adrenaline that always seems to accompany the almighty Unread Message.

  Her response reads:

  Haughty Coffee, Inc.

  149 Concourse Ave.

  New York, NY 10029

  It’s in East Harlem, between E 116th and E 117th St.

  If you decide to come, just email a day before with what time you want to meet. Flexible schedule. If you’re a creep, I’ll stab you. For serious.

  71 → there are two kinds of plans

  Some take years to unfold, often requiring massive amounts of preparation and forethought before implementation, at which point those plans may need time to germinate for a while, soak up sun, water, and soil before bringing forth full fruit.

  “Okay,” says Mom, sitting up in bed. “Okay.”

  Dad pauses Seinfeld. “Okay.”

  After months of sideways glances and hardcore hovering, I find my parents’ reactions lacking. “Yes,” I say. “Okay.”

&nb
sp; “So you’ve given this a lot of thought, then?”

  “Yes,” I say, calculating the drive home from the Discount. There was some traffic on North Mill, so we’re looking at a full twelve minutes of thought probably. “Understand I haven’t made a decision to attend Manhattan State University.” I clear my throat and carefully recite the lines I’d memorized on the way over. “But I’ve done some research, and I think the institution has a lot to offer. Coach Tao seems to be taking the program in the right direction, and I’d like to see it for myself before making a decision.”

  The looks on my parents’ faces—both of them nodding their heads off, trying to play it cool, failing miserably—is comically restrained. I leave them like that, knowing full well they’ll be up most of the night talking, getting shit in order. My parents are driven, not prone to dally, lifelong subscribers of that other kind of plan, the kind where you get your ass in gear and get a motherfucking move on.

  The next day is Saturday.

  Dad and I eat breakfast in the airport.

  72 → what I think when I look down on the clouds

  I think I am small potatoes.

  I think small potatoes taste just as good as large ones.

  I think I should listen to jazz more often.

  There are many places I would like to live, and many times in which I would like to live, and I think listening to music that was composed in a time or place I’ve never lived is the closest I can get to making that happen.

  Stories do that too, I think. Give us new homes.

  And if someone were to ask, Noah, what’s the most important aspect of story? I would most likely answer, character, but I’m not sure that’s true, because my favorite books contain my favorite places. I do not say, I love Harry Potter, or I love Frodo Baggins; I say, I love Hogwarts, and I love Middle-earth. Thoreau’s Walden is less about the book, more about the pond. The woods.

  And so setting, I think, is the secret weapon of storytelling.

  I always want to meet new people until I’ve met them.

  I think if I spend enough time with a person so we get woven together like an old basket, eventually we’ll think in similar patterns until our various histories are apples and oranges spilling over the edge of the basket, and I think this kind of shared history is dangerous.

  I think it’s okay to recognize a thing’s faults and still like that thing. Because apples and oranges spilling from a basket can be beautiful too.

  I think I’m whatever personality hates personality tests.

  I think nostalgia is just a soul’s way of missing a thing, and like long-distance love, nostalgia grows deeper with time until the reality of what a thing actually was gets blurred to the point you miss the idea of the thing more than the thing itself.

  I like the idea of hot cocoa more than drinking hot cocoa.

  I like the idea of horror movies more than being frightened.

  I like the idea of spontaneity more than being spontaneous, and I like the idea of the outdoors more than being an outdoorsman.

  I like the idea of being an ideas guy.

  I let the jazz in, forehead against a chilly double-plated window, my thoughts multiplying with abandon—until they stop, condense, like one hundred divided by one hundred.

  And I think it took me soaring thirty thousand feet above the earth to finally dig up the root of my problem:

  I romanticize my past and I romanticize my future; right now is always the bleakest moment of my life.

  73 → planes, trains, and glockenspiels

  “You okay?” asks Dad.

  “What? Oh. Yeah.”

  The two of us hold on to a silver pole in the middle of the packed subway. I’m gripping it a little tighter than Dad, I think.

  Last time I was in New York City I was six, and Dad brought the family with him on some catering job, but since Penny was still a baby, Mom never left the room. I have vague memories of going out with Dad once or twice, but I didn’t see much, certainly nothing of the subway.

  Safe to say, New York City has effectively shorted out the cleanliness circuits in my brain.

  The train lurches and rumbles down the tracks; to be honest, the only thing more uncomfortable than the grimes and odors is the fact that no one will look me in the eye, even the people in my immediate circle whom I keep bumping into. It’s like we’re all in denial of the situation.

  Also, a guy in the corner is reciting poetry at the top of his lungs.

  Dad looks down at me, smiles with a quick wink, and I feel better; and then I feel silly for feeling better, like I’m six again and all I need to stop the bleeding of the earth is a quick wink from Daddy.

  But I mean, yeah, I’m glad he’s here.

  Last night, after telling my parents I wanted to visit Manhattan State, I went straight to my room and packed a bag: toiletries, clothes, the usual, plus the last few months’ allowance. I would need to get around without anyone knowing, which meant no credit cards. I knew full well the chain reaction I’d set off the next room over: Mom, whose work schedule was least flexible, would call Coach Tao to inform her that I would be flying to New York to visit over the weekend, which meant Dad was already packing and would book the earliest possible flight the next morning from Chicago to New York, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened. This morning before the sun came up, Dad and I were in the car to O’Hare, reviewing the ins and outs of the itinerary he’d worked up last night. We landed at JFK midmorning, took a cab from the airport to this swanky guesthouse in SoHo owned by some up-and-coming boutique hotel entrepreneur for whom Dad had recently catered some equally swanky event, “but my God,” Dad kissed the tips of all five fingers on his hand, then exploded them with a burst of Italian gusto loud enough to make the cabbie give us a look, “my simmered daikon and shiitake was on point that night,” followed quietly by, “no wonder he comped our rooms.”

  Once inside, we unpacked while I tried not to have an organizational orgasm at all the right angles, the perfectly symmetrical curtains and pillows, the unclutteredness of it all, the whole place just oozing sleek and sophisticated. Dad said, “Half hour before we need to leave for lunch and catch the train,” at which point I got out my computer and got down to business. First order: find a gap in the weekend schedule, a couple of hours where I could get away without Dad interfering. According to his itinerary, our post-lunch activities today included meeting Coach Tao for a tour of the Fighting Gophers’ swimming facilities. Their next meet wasn’t until December, but the team was back from Thanksgiving for training, which Dad and I would attend. Then, tomorrow at one thirty, we were scheduled for a tour of the campus itself. (Whether it was common practice for college tours to take place on Sunday afternoon, or just my mother’s ability to turn up the lawyer voice and get anybody to do what she wanted, I couldn’t say.) After the tour tomorrow it was back to the airport for an evening flight home. The only real time gap was tomorrow morning. Knowing Dad, he’d want to get breakfast at some obscure restaurant, but I could get out of that easy enough. I scanned the Fighting Gophers’ events calendar. It was Thanksgiving weekend, so there wasn’t much, but just when I was about to give up I found something on a community board about a Back to School Sunday Brunch scheduled for ten a.m. Obviously not geared toward prospective students, but no reason Dad needed to know that.

  Before mentioning it to him, I needed to make sure the timing would work with the Fading Girl, so I logged in to twobytwooak@gmail.com, opened the ongoing thread, and typed: In New York. Tomorrow morning, Haughty Coffee, 10 a.m.? I’ll be in a Bowie T-shirt.

  Within minutes, I had a response: Fine, see you then. (And I repeat: I am bringing weaponry. If you’re a creep, it’s over for you.)

  The guy in the corner has progressed from reciting poetry to performing one of the Cabinet Battles from Hamilton. He’s actually quite good, which I’m about to say out loud when the doors
open and Dad leads the way off the train; I follow him through the sea of foot traffic moving as one, a tide rushing onward and upward.

  At the base of the narrow cement stairs a man sits on the ground, shoeless, sockless, overgrown hair and beard, holding a glockenspiel in his lap. He doesn’t play, just cradles the instrument with both arms, a look of quiet desperation on his face that makes me wonder how long ago he gave up. As we get closer, I imagine this man’s beard and hair growing inward, and like the Fading Girl in reverse, I imagine him aging backward, his eyes brightening, shifting from desperation to expectation until he’s a small boy with a fresh face, the wide world at his feet. Closer now, and I wonder how it happened—if it was sudden, if it was downsizing, if it was drugs or bad luck, or if the world at his feet just shrank like a helium balloon with a slow leak until it dried up and shriveled into this: a voiceless old man holding a voiceless old glockenspiel.

  I don’t know if Dad does it because he sees the look on my face, or if he would have done it anyway, but as we pass, he throws a twenty-dollar bill in a cup next to the man, and together we walk up the stairs, and Dad says, “You ready?” and I wonder if such a thing as being ready is even possible given the discrepancy between the world we’ve been promised and the broken instrument we’ve received.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’m ready,” but really I’m calculating how many pairs of socks you can buy for twenty bucks.

  74 → Manhattan State University is not in Manhattan, nor is Manhattan a state

  Toss in the visual of a gopher fight, and I have to wonder if the founding fathers of MSU were simply looking to create an educational atmosphere of rampant identity crisis. If so, I’d say mission accomplished.

  “So where is it?”

  “The Bronx,” says Dad; he goes on to explain how the school was originally in Manhattan, but then moved and never changed its name, which makes me wonder what would happen if someplace like the University of Illinois relocated to Michigan but kept its name, and the utter chaos this would entail, and yes, I suppose this is the shit you think about when you visit a school you do not care to attend under the pretense of observing an athletic program for a sport in which you no longer wish to compete in the company of a father who has no idea that the real reason you’re here is to make haste to a coffee shop in East Harlem tomorrow morning so you can meet up with a perfect stranger who may or may not be the final piece of the fascinating puzzle that is the disaster of your life lo these past strange months.