Third Class Superhero (11 page)

Hey,
she says.

Hey,
I say.

Four years.

Hey,
she says.

Hey,
I say.

How's Florence?

Is that really what you want to talk about?
I say.
For the last conversation we'll ever have?

Don't.

Don't what?

Don't be mad at me.

Okay.

No, really. You have to try not to be mad.

I thought you were coming here.
The harder I try to hide the self-pity in my voice, the worse it sounds.

Silence. Tina says nothing. Above the hiss and crackle of cosmic background radiation, I can still hear the boss. He has stopped singing. He says:
Here is just a special case of there. All heres are really theres.

I really miss you,
Tina says.

No, you don't. If you did, you'd be here. You wouldn't be there.

What's the difference if I'm here or there?

Now you sound like my boss,
I say. The boss has started singing again.

He knows what he's talking about.

Tina, he's dead. And in love with me. And crooning in the nude.

Why do you always want us to be...

Closer?

Yeah. How close is close? How close is enough?

Close enough for us to breathe the same air.

We're breathing the same air now.

You know what I mean, Tina.

Well, at some point some of the molecules of the air you're breathing were probably in my lungs. Eventually we'll breathe the same air, drink the same water, pass the same molecules through our bodies. Eventually.

You know what I mean. In the same room.

What's the difference? Anyway, we are in the same room now. A room the size of this galaxy. Why not a room the size of everything? Four walls around the cosmos.

The boss is still going at it. He's scrubbed, he's smooth, he's nude. He's singing.

"I've Got the World on a String."

"Fly Me to the Moon." Florence is circling.

But I can't see you,
I say.

You can't see me.

Right. I think of being together as being able to see you.

Is it all a question of optics, then? Of biomechanics? Of the properties of eyes? What if you could see an infinite distance? What if you could see as far as you wanted, an unbroken Euclidean line of sight, in any direction? What if you could see me right now, halfway across the galactic cluster, sitting at my desk, so long as nothing got in the way? Would that make us close?

Tina. Come on now.

No, answer me. What's close? What would be enough for you?

There are gaps. When we talk. Long gaps between everything we say to each other.

Delays are a fact. Gaps are a fact.

So it's time then. That's what this boils down to. You don't want to spend the time.

Everything has to have a cost associated with it. Everything has to cost something and time is the price mechanism for the universe. Time is not so difficult to understand. Time is not such a mystery.

Then what?

Tina says:
It's distance. Distance equals rate times time. Distance is the mystery. You're there and I'm here.

***

Four years go by. A package arrives from Aunt Betty. Vitamins and a calendar and a new toothbrush. A pair of socks. A note. "No need to visit. I'm fine. Hope you can use these." This year. This year will be the year I visit her.

And then it's almost Christmas, and, once again, it's the night of nights. A sun goes down, and then the other. The moons go down. Everything goes down. The sky comes up. It's Christmas Eve. It's been one million something thousand something years since the birth of baby Jesus. I've lost track. Everyone's lost track. I bet even my aunt Betty has lost track.

A message comes through from the boss. It's a time-delay Christmas carol for me. Away in a manger, he sang, he sings, the little Lord sleeps. It's the last Christmas Eve for another seventeen thousand years. From now until then, all Christmases will be scorching and dry and red orange with the light of two suns. After this, more than a hundred centuries of blistering Christmas Days, fiery and interminable. But for now, it's night and it feels like time has stopped.

Tina is out there somewhere, whatever that means, and I am right here, whatever that means, and my boss is nowhere but a song he sang some years ago, a song he recorded for me about the baby Savior, a song he is singing while dancing naked for me, his penis and testicles flapping like a pink, gummy marsupial, a song just now arriving, color and melody at the speed of light. Florence is swimming toward me in her silent arc, sweeping through the mute, dark, frigid, motionless water, looking at me with those eyes, and I wonder if I leave if she will be okay. I wonder if I were ever to leave if she would even notice. I wonder if she knows I am here, knows what I am, if she knows anything at all. What is she doing here, out in space, on a planet by herself, in an isolated pool of water, no food, no mates, no connection to anything at all? How long has she been here? What would she have done if I had never found her? What is she? What is a shark? Do I know anything about sharks? Do I know anything about anything? I don't. My boss sang and sings and will be singing for who knows how long. My boss sang and the song is still coming, my aunt prayed and I hope she's still praying.

Tina is moving away at the speed of light, and if only I could see across the room, if only I could see across the universe, I could watch her. Florence is circling. Another card from Aunt Betty. I have a stack of them in the corner of the control room. Four feet high. That's it. No more screwing around. I resolve to go see my aunt Betty. I open the card. It says: "Didn't want to trouble you. I know you have your own life. Wished I could have seen you, but I know you're busy. I'm going to the Yttang-67 Loop. I have an old grammar school friend there. I hope she remembers me. Take care. Your aunt Betty." I ignored her one day too long. I was going to go. I really was, but I ignored her and she gave up on me and she moved away. Four minutes go by. Four minutes, four minutes, four moments. Four milliseconds go by. It's official. Florence is another year older. I sing to her. Happy birthday, dear Florence. She swims in her circle. A nearby world explodes. Happy birthday to Florence and to the baby Jesus. I have a goose and a ham and beets and sparkling apple juice and a beer and then a couple more. Somewhere, sometime ago, or now, or in the future, Aunt Betty is praying for me. She prays, she prayed, she will pray. Me and my boss, we sing a little harmony, thousands of years apart. We sing, Florence circles. I cut the cake. I eat it. It's good. I get ready for bed. I brush my teeth. I hit the sack. Another world explodes. Something happens. Somewhere. Four years go by.

Man, 46, at some point in his life, looks around and says, How did I get here? A quiet boy grown up into an even quieter man.

An October afternoon, a Sunday, a narrow one-story house.

A living room, a couch, some chairs. An accumulation of nouns and furniture.

An ordinary moment in an ordinary life.

He notices the woman sitting next to him, looking somewhat concerned.

"This is the story of our lives, isn't it," he asks. Not really a question.

"Yeah," she says.

"And you're my wife in this story."

The woman nods and smiles the saddest smile he has ever seen, a smile so sad that he realizes, for the first time, that all smiles are sad, and in the way she turns down the corners of her eyes when she smiles he can see that he has put her through a lot and that he will continue to put her through a lot, and she knows this, and she will never leave him.

"Yeah," she says.

"You love me very much," the man says.

"I do. Very much."

The way she says "very much" sounds like the truth. It's the truth like he has never heard the truth before. She doesn't mean it with sentiment or virtue, doesn't want credit in the big book of good deeds or bonus points toward Heaven. She doesn't regret it or begrudge him a single minute of her life. Her love for him is not something that can be changed—it's physics, not emotion: It's the atomic weight of radium. It is vast and it is exact. It is tender and finite and inexhaustible. Her love for him is a fact. Her love for him is a brutal fact about the world. "It's not enough for me, though," he goes on, getting the hang of it. "It's not enough, is it?"

"No," she says, "no, it's not," and he is going to ask her why, but he looks at her and he knows that she understands him better than he will ever understand himself, and for some reason, he understands that it works better that way, and he knows that even if she tried to explain it to him, he wouldn't understand.

"Is this how it always is?" he asks. But he has a strong feeling it is. Beginnings are easy, endings even easier. The hard part is the middle, and for Man of Quiet Desperation, it goes from middle to middle, it always goes from middle to middle to middle.

The City
Man, 46, is in the city. At some point in his life, looks around, thinks to himself,
All I do is look around and think to myself.

The Movies
Man, 46, is at the movies.

At some point in his life, he looks around, says to himself:

"At what point in my life did I start saying things like
at some point in my life?
"

That's the problem right there, he thinks. He's always starting out with
at this point in my life, at some point in my life, my life up to this point.

The West
Man of Quiet Desperation has come out west. Way out west, farther west than he ever thought he would be. The mythical west. The sky is pitched over him like an infinite tent, and it's been frozen into a blue so cold it has turned three shades darker than black.

Just on the other side of the dry riverbed is the Land of the Imperfect Past Tense, of ghosts and romance. On the other side the story moves and flows and overlaps onto itself, a ribbon, a wave, a swirling cumulus of loss, while on this side he can only watch, watch and look, trapped in the static present, the desperate moment of right now, and right now, and right now.

The City
Man of Quiet Desperation is in the tired city. On the bus full of defeated strangers.

This is not the bus that takes you to new places. This is the bus that takes you home. The older woman who wears a tattered hat takes this bus. Up close, she smells like day-old urine. There is a permanent smile on her face, but after looking at it for a while, Man of Quiet Desperation sees that the woman isn't smiling at all. She has all of the ingredients, the technical requirements of a smile, the muscular contractions. But something is missing. Her smile frightens everyone on the bus but she does not stop smiling. He thinks he can make her stop, if he could only make her look at him, he would smile at her and she would see him and stop, but she won't look at him. She just keeps smiling. She smiles and smiles and smiles.

The Motel Room
Man of Quiet Desperation has a room at the roadside motel. This is the room where people go to say things they have never said. This is the room where prayers are spoken, in earnest, by the sink, in front of the leaky faucet, knees on the grime-covered floor tiles, faces flush with alcoholic heat pressed against the cold porcelain. This is the room with an ashtray, a television suspended from the ceiling, a drape that hides the sun and stores the lingering odors of what happened the night before.

He calls the front desk. The stringy-haired girl-woman picks up, talks low and close to the phone, as if preparing to tell a secret, as if everything might be a secret.

"I'm in
The Motel Room,
" he says.

"Of course," she says.

"How do you know?"

"You're the Man of Quiet Desperation."

"What do you think I should do?" he asks her.

The stringy-haired girl breathes into the phone. "Stop running," she says. But he can't stop.

The West
Man of Quiet Desperation is back in the west. In the middle of the night, a noise wakes him. He thinks he hears someone for a moment, but then the footfalls are softer and softer and then all he can hear is the fire and his sleeping horse. The fire is alive, a small creature with ambition and a plan. His horse exhales soft, warm, wet breaths into the still night air. Everything is a secret. Everything.

The Movies
Man of Quiet Desperation is inside the theater. It is very dark, darker than usual. It smells like rancid butter and smoke—someone has actually lit a cigar.

Onscreen, thin, well-dressed rich people mutter ambiguously hurtful things to each other.

He: [something about the limits of language]

She: That's always been true.

He: [something about the nature of distance]

She: What do you want from me?

He: [something about the unknowability of the human heart/brain/soul]

She: (sobs)

He: (sobs)

She: [something about his family, his nose]

The Motel Room
Man of Quiet Desperation is in the motel room. The sink is dripping. Someone calls on the phone and says, You don't have to be alone tonight. Through the drapes, Man, 46, can see the moon. The front desk calls and says nothing, just listens to him lying there, breathing like a sleeping child.

In the middle of the night, the television wakes him up. It's a commercial for a magic pill. A pill that makes you feel better.

"This is for you," the television man says, mouthful of teeth and headful of hair. "It will help you stop running."

The West
Man of Quiet Desperation is back out west. The allegorical west, where everything means something else. The horse is the man's weary heart. The sky is the duration of his life. The cold is the truth. The black storm cloud is the impossibility of consistency. The water frozen solid inside the flesh of the cloud is self-consciousness. The border is a map of desire. In the west, almost everything means something, but the Man of Quiet Desperation is a quiet, desperate man. Some things are just themselves.