Luminous Airplanes (9 page)
“I really want to go there,” Shelley said. “I’ve just got to check out the scene in New York.”
“Lower East Side,” Eric said. “CBGB, right?”
I thought he meant the SeaBees, the Navy engineers. I wondered if there was a naval training center in lower Manhattan.
“When we come to New York,” Shelley said, “can we stay with you?”
“I can ask,” I said, “but my apartment is pretty small.”
We walked to the Texaco station and stood by the pumps, watching people go in and out of the convenience store. Now and then one of the group would point to a customer and murmur to the others: Known fag. Definite fag. Total fag. Once Shelley approached a couple of men in a low-slung Camaro and persuaded them to buy her cigarettes. She offered me one; I said no but this didn’t change Shelley’s mistaken idea of my status.
“I shouldn’t be smoking either,” she said. “My mom’s really on me to quit.”
We talked about what we would do if the world ended. “Like if there was a nuclear war,” Eric said, “but all the people up in the mountains were OK.”
“We’d still have democracy,” Shelley said. “You can bet the people up here would keep it going.”
“Not bloody likely,” said Kerem. “You wouldn’t have television, so there couldn’t be democracy. You can’t have democracy without television.”
“You could still vote on stuff, though,” Eric said.
“Television and the central bank,” said Kerem, who had ordered some tracts from an ad in the back of one of his
football
magazines. “Without that, you have anarchy.”
football
magazines. “Without that, you have anarchy.”
“Anarchy!” My friends knocked their beer cans together.
“What I think is, we would still be together,” Shelley said. “No matter what other people were doing, you know?”
We agreed that we would be anarchists together. Shelley would make our clothes, and Eric would provide our food, because his family had a farm farther down the valley, with cows and shit. Kerem would be the leader, because he knew the most about how anarchy was supposed to go. And I, “You’d be, like, my adviser,” Kerem said. “You’d help me plan our takeover.” Because we wouldn’t be content to be isolated anarchists. We’d get other people to join; we’d spread anarchy up and down the valley, and on the far side of the mountains. The apocalypse held no more fear for me that night. I leaned back against the convenience store’s wall and closed my eyes, warm with the knowledge that I wouldn’t ever have to be alone.
“My adviser is falling asleep,” Kerem said. “I better take him home.”
My magnum opus that summer was a game called Adventure. It was at the back of the book of programs that came with the computer, and I avoided it for weeks because it was much, much longer than any of the other programs, a thousand lines or more, an epic of code. It was written more densely than the other programs, also, so that it was hard to figure out what the game was supposed to do. I tried to make sense of the long DATA statements, the multidimensional arrays, the variables marked with unfamiliar signs, the complex string functions, the subroutines, but I kept getting lost; I hoped the Heathkit would understand it better than I did.
For a long time, Adventure did nothing at all. With each line I fixed, a new error manifested itself, more cunning than the last one had been, better at hiding its true nature, or appearing to be in one part of the program while in fact it was in an entirely different part. I was haunted by the thought that someone would turn the computer off before I was finished, or that there would be an accident, Kerem would trip over the power cord, a storm would blow down the lines that led to his house, a generator would fail, Russian missiles would arc over the horizon, civilization would collapse with Adventure still unfinished. I had stomach pains, dark circles under my eyes, and the beginnings of an irreversible stoop. My grandparents worried about me.
“What’s that Turk teaching you now?” my grandfather asked.
“He’s tutoring me in science,” I said.
“So Kerem’s good at science?” asked my grandmother.
“Yeah. He’s a whiz kid.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” my grandmother said. “I heard he was in trouble.”
She let the subject drop, but, and this was my grandmother’s usual strategy, she returned to it days later, hoping to catch me off guard. “
You’d
know,” she said, looking up from the Sunday newspaper. “How does oxygen become ozone?” Or, as she trimmed bushes in the backyard, “Maybe you can tell me, are these little critters going to turn into butterflies?”
You’d
know,” she said, looking up from the Sunday newspaper. “How does oxygen become ozone?” Or, as she trimmed bushes in the backyard, “Maybe you can tell me, are these little critters going to turn into butterflies?”
But I had learned something from Kerem. “Unh,” I said, studying the green squiggles that scurried across the underside of a leaf.
My grandmother shook her head. “Go eat something. You look as gray as a grub yourself.”
It must have been late July when I finished Adventure. Something gave, something moved, something opened. Run, I could say, and it would run. Nothing flashed across the screen, no dancing letters, no space invaders, no canary cries or ping-pong pings. Only words.
Entrance to Cave
You are standing outside a dark and gloomy cave.
There is a gold key here.
There is a gold key here.
>
I had made a world. Not a large world, not even, from any reasonable point of view, an interesting world, but a world nonetheless. Compared with the work of getting the program to run, the adventure of Adventure was absurdly simple. You typed,
>take key
and took the key; you went into the gloomy cave and crossed the subterranean river at the ford, you found the sword, surprised the troll and navigated the maze where all the rooms looked exactly alike. You entered the castle, you read the note, you opened the secret door and found the locked treasure chest. Did you have the gold key? You did, you did! The castle, the maze, the troll, the river and the cave were the whole of my kingdom, but they were, to my mind, like one of the holograms pressed into a tiny button or pin, where, as you turn it in your hands, a three-dimensional pattern seems to repeat itself in infinite space. I saw not what was there but what could be there, if only I had written it, a world of rooms where I would be free to wander as I pleased. It was as though the gray box had been working in secret to fulfill my oldest dream about its powers, although, like many dreams, the coming true bore only a metaphorical or tangential relation to the dream itself. Yes, I could know all, do all, create and destroy at my whim, I could make subways and strand my enemies within them, yes, everything, yes, only I would have to do it in the gray box. It was enough.
It was too much to take in. After I had unlocked the treasure chest and won the game twice, I needed to tell someone what I had done. I found Kerem with Shelley and Eric at the gas station.
“My game works!” I said.
“Oh?” Kerem frowned at me, as though he’d expected me to say something completely different. “Yeah, OK, that’s great. Good work.”
“We have to play,” I said, “before the power goes out.”
“Play what?” Shelley asked.
“This game I wrote on the computer,” I said.
“You wrote a computer game? Wow!” Shelley put her head very close to mine and whispered, “We’re a little stoned.”
I nodded gravely, as though Shelley had told me that the three of them had contracted an incurable disease. Their lives had become more serious, suddenly, and also more exciting. They would probably die. But secretly, if their being stoned meant that I got to have Shelley’s breath in my ear, I was all for it. Eric was hopping in tiny circles around the air pump.
“Are you ready?” Shelley asked Kerem.
“Shelley’s brother is having a party,” Kerem said. He must have felt bad that he hadn’t appreciated my game, because he added, “Want to come?”
“We’re going to have a great time,” Shelley said.
“OK,” I said. Consequences were whirling around me in a cloud of great seriousness. If, and if, else if, else. Then. Then. Then.
You are standing at the entrance to a dark and gloomy cave. Ahead of you, in the darkness, there is music.
“You’re OK?” Kerem asks. “Just be cool, and if anything happens that you don’t like, come find me. OK?”
Say OK.
“Let’s go-oo,” Shelley moans.
You follow Kerem and Shelley and Eric into the cave.
You’re in Shelley’s brother’s apartment, on the second floor of an apartment complex at the far end of Thebes, by the storage facility and the graveyard. There are many people here, and you don’t know any of them, although some of their faces are familiar from town. There’s the guy who works at the grocery store, and there’s one of the guys from the ski shop. You associate them so closely with those places that seeing them here is like being in a dream, where heads are pasted on new bodies and one city borrows the name of another. What’s more, everyone in the room is twice your size. Shelley has gone off to talk to her brother, and Eric is talking to the grocery-store guy. Only Kerem stays with you, and only because he doesn’t know anyone here, any more than you do.
“Let’s get some beers,” he says.
Follow Kerem. You follow him into the kitchen, which is, if anything, even more crowded than the living room. You are pressed by waists, hips. Girls in tall vinyl boots are laughing. Men are looking at you, they want to know what you are doing here. Kerem opens the refrigerator and gets a can of beer for himself and one for you. It tastes awful, but you hope that if you are seen drinking, people may mistake you for a midget, or a late-blooming fifteen-year-old. Kerem says something to you, but everyone is talking at once and you can’t understand him. He waves, he is leaving you, he is gone. You are alone in the forest of giants.
“Hi,” says a girl with vast blond hair. “What’s your name?”
Say your name.
“How old are you?”
Lie.
“Do you live in Thebes?”
“In New York,” you say.
“Oh, wow, that’s really great!”
You tell the tall girl about New York. She screams, “Mike!” and one of the giants turns around. “I want you to meet my new friend.”
“Hey.” Mike tips his beer toward you.
“Hey,” you say, and tip your beer toward Mike.
“He’s from New York,” the tall girl says.
This is good, Mike no longer looks at you as if you were a pituitary oddity. For all he knows, everyone in New York looks like this. It might be something in the drinking water. Keep people small to make the housing more efficient.
“The big city,” Mike says. “I love it! Wish I got there more often.”
“It’s not very far away,” you say, emboldened. “There’s a bus from Maplecrest. It’s like two and a half hours, and it goes straight to the Port Authority.”
Mike grimaces. You didn’t need to tell him about the bus. You turn to the tall girl, hoping for reassurance. “Do you ever go to the city?” She shrugs as though now she doesn’t know what city you’re talking about. “Or do you mostly stay up here in Thebes?”
You have come to a dead end.
Find Kerem? You look for him in the living room, but there are too many big people; if you go into that crowd you may never come out. You end up perched on the back of a sofa next to a kid with stripes shaved in his hair, who is willing to talk to you about the Dead Kennedys. “I kind of like the lyrics,” you say. “Like, you know, too drunk to fuck? That’s funny.”
The kid looks at you. “Have you ever fucked?”
“No,” you admit. There is a lull in your conversation. “Have you?”
The kid shrugs. “I think so.”
Much later, you’ll understand that this is what Mrs. Regenzeit meant by
only part of his head
, and you will laugh, and wish you could tell her that there is nothing to fear from the partially shaved. You excuse yourself, you have to pee. You wait on line for the bathroom.
only part of his head
, and you will laugh, and wish you could tell her that there is nothing to fear from the partially shaved. You excuse yourself, you have to pee. You wait on line for the bathroom.
Shelley is here. “Oh, my god,” she says, “it’s you!” She takes your hand. “I am so happy to see you.” Her eyes are red. “I just don’t feel like I ever got a chance to know you, and I think you’re probably a really great person.” She tells you how few great people there are in the world, and how her ambition is to own a big farmhouse somewhere in the mountains, and to get them all together, the great people, in a big sleeping loft in the barn, and, like, talk. The bathroom door opens.
“Don’t go away,” Shelley says.
She goes in, she comes out, you go in. You have never peed so quickly in your life. But she’s gone when you come out, and you can’t find her again. The apartment is crowded with strangers, and not one of them wants anything from you at all. What is this game you’re playing? Who wrote the code for it? You wish you were back in Kerem’s room, seated in front of the Heathkit H88, but you aren’t. You go back into the kitchen. Three boys are sitting at the table, taking turns throwing a quarter into a glass of beer. If the quarter goes in, they drink; if it doesn’t go in, they drink. One of them is dangerously overweight and appears to have been dipped in oil. He takes the quarter out of the glass and licks it on both sides.
“You want to play?” he asks.
You understand now that this is a game with no victory conditions. The rooms lead only to other rooms, and there is no treasure in any of them, and no way out of the cave once you have gone in. You aren’t afraid anymore, but you can’t remember ever having been as sad as you are now.
Leave world.
You can’t leave that.
Go.
Where do you want to go? The kitchen is full of smoke, and there’s no place for you to sit, and you suspect that people are looking at you again, thinking midget thoughts. You find a door that leads out to a balcony. From here you can see the graveyard, the upslope of the ski hill, the stars. A few people Mike’s size are leaning on the railing and talking. They pay no attention to you. You sit on the ground with your back to the wall. You are suddenly very tired. You fall asleep.
Time passes …
Lightning wakes you up. A storm has crossed into the valley; the wind hisses through the trees across the road. Beyond the roof’s overhang, rain falls in sheets. The big people have gone inside, sensibly. The thunder breaks over you, then the lightning, then the thunder again. You would be happy to stay here all night, watching the weather.
Shelley finds you. “Thank God,” she says. “I thought you might have left.” She sits next to you and takes your hand. “I’m so glad Kerem brought you. He’s sweet. Do you think he likes me?”
“Definitely.”
Shelley rests her head on your shoulder. “It’s just so hard, you know?” She complains that Kerem has been avoiding her; she’s afraid that he drinks too much and smokes too much pot. You aren’t sure you should hear these things, but you’re so grateful that someone, anyone, Shelley! has found you that you will listen to anything.
“You know what I think the problem is, really?” says Shelley. “Thebes is so small. Kerem needs to be somewhere big, like New York City.” She gives you an unreadable look.
Read it? You can’t. It’s unreadable.
“Do you want to kiss me?” Shelley asks. You would like to, but you don’t know how. Shelley presses her hands to your cheeks, immobilizing your head. Suddenly her tongue is in your mouth. Her eyes are closed; you stare at the smudges where her eye shadow used to be.
“Mmm,” Shelley says, and lets go of your head. “You’re a good kisser.” Compared with what, you wonder. Robots? “Don’t tell Kerem,” she says.
Shelley goes inside. A few minutes later, you go in too. The shiny boy still sits in the kitchen, resting his chins on his hands, staring at a half-full glass of beer.
“Your turn,” he says.
The living room is ruined, human beings will never live here again. Kerem and Shelley are holding hands in the middle of the room.
“Where did you go?” you ask Kerem reproachfully.
“Where did
you
go?” Kerem asks. “I spent half the night looking for you. I thought one of Mike’s friends had stuffed you in a closet.”
you
go?” Kerem asks. “I spent half the night looking for you. I thought one of Mike’s friends had stuffed you in a closet.”
“I think we should sleep here,” Shelley says. “If we go out, we’re going to get soaked.”
“Do you think Mike will let us?” Kerem asks.
You imagine the two of them lying together on the sofa, or on one of the coat-covered beds. You want to prevent them from doing this. Here’s the prompt: act promptly.
“I’m going home,” you shout. “Come on!”
Run.
The wind takes you like a downed leaf, it pushes you down the street, and when you look back, you see that Kerem is running after you. “Punk lives!” he shouts, and he kicks over a newspaper box. Copies of the
Catskill Eagle
tumble out and are blown away. You run up the hill as fast as you can, the wind very strong at your back, so that it seems as though you’re flying.
Catskill Eagle
tumble out and are blown away. You run up the hill as fast as you can, the wind very strong at your back, so that it seems as though you’re flying.
When you’re almost home, doubled over and out of breath, Kerem grabs your shoulder and presses you against a soaking tree. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone what you did tonight,” he says.
You promise, you never will.
The next morning you learn that the storm knocked down a power line, and Adventure is gone. It doesn’t matter. You have already won. Did you kiss Shelley? You did, you did!
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