Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

I said, I look forward to it. Once you cross my threshold, it is my legal right to stick you with whatever happens to be at hand. Jonson brought me a spear from the African Union. It’s from some printer factory in Addis Ababa, shilled to people who want to hang a piece of the Real Africa on their wall. I pass slow evenings throwing it at Lawrence, my AlmostPerson. I don’t hit exactly what I’m aiming for, but I hit something four times out of five. Up the back staircase there are no cameras.

He said, You won’t see me coming.

I said, I’ll smell that tremendous cologne you wear long before you come. Are you really still sore about the motorcycle and the fish? How do you know I had anything to do with the fish, outside the Globe Theater? Anyway, Millings, I’m trying to look at this special book, so either do your violence or go play in the street.

He said, I wouldn’t think of it, in a place like this. My mother used to bring me to bookstores when I was young. She was a specialist on Yugoni, the poet. You like him?

I said, No.

He said, Yes, he might be too populist for the likes of you. His name is easy to pronounce. I bet that turns you off.

I said, Millings, look at this image. How do you suppose Zaccardi got these colors? If there is an afterlife, I will be visiting him some afternoons.

He said, If you continue to pester me, I will make sure you get your chance to ask him soon.

I said, You can’t expect me to believe you’re going to murder me because I allegedly threw some fish on you and possibly bumped your motorcycle, which I’m sure was insured. If you will threaten me, at least make it credible.

He said, You’re right, where are my manners. I’m not going to murder you. A couple punches will suffice. If you like, you can come to my place, and I will take it easy. I am forgiving. Say one good punch to the jaw, one to the nose. You can even swing back. I’ll pour you a drink afterward. Show you how I’m living. There’s something I like about you. Anyway, here’s my card. Think about it. But don’t think too long, because otherwise who knows when it may happen. Control is very important. I would advise you, while you still have control, to make amends.

A holocard of a building with his residence within flashing in red.

He said, Good day. I have an appointment to make.

Millings stopped at the counter and arranged for a stack of photography books to be delivered to his apartment. He and the clerk shared a confidence. A blush came to her cheeks. In my peripheral, I saw him gesturing toward me, the clerk nodding. Out the door.

I said, What did he say?

She said, That guy said anything you want in the store is on him. Go ahead and charge it. His exact words were, I’ll buy him the whole store if he wants.

I said, I’ll take the Zaccardi, then. And the whole section of vintage skin magazines. Can you gift wrap and deliver the magazines by courier?

She said, Sure.

I gave him Jonson’s address.

She said, Who from?

I said, Please write, With love, the mayor’s office. And whatever else you want, for yourself.

So Millings thought himself a gentleman. Did I deserve this treatment? Neither destroying his motorcycle after the party nor throwing the herring from that apartment’s compost bin on him while he sat in the plaza were cause to put his hands on me. I had been unfair but I would never present myself at his condominium, like a supplicant, to be punched out. He would have to come find me, in the full view of the Hub cameras, to get his satisfaction.

Carrying the Zaccardi out of the shop. East up the street, toward the rail, to catch my local. The Zaccardi was heavy, so I clutched it to my chest with both arms. What treasure. Taking the corner, a detonation behind my right ear. My legs lost strength and I blacked out a moment. When I came to, I was lying on the sidewalk. It had scraped the side of my face. Some blood. In my occiput, a blustering pain. The trousers of a man in my peripheral. He picked at his cuffs.

He said, You better get over to Mr. Millings’s place.

He was holding a very large, even inappropriate, coffee. He began to turn the pages of the Zaccardi, trickling coffee on the images. One still, from The Tree Which Is the Family Property , reminded him of something, or struck him, and he spared it from the coffee. It was of a mother and two sons eating beneath the tree on a cloudy afternoon. After a while he tired of this, and dumped the remainder on my head. He walked off. A young couple turned the corner and helped me to sit against a wall.

The woman said, Do you want us to call a doctor?

I said, No. The camera is right there. If they want to come, they will come.

The man said, At least let us help you get home.

I said, Sit here with me a minute. Look at my book.

The woman said, Oh, you spilled your coffee on it. That’s too bad.

The man said, It must have been an expensive book.

The idea for the attack on me was stolen from Broder’s Capo . He knew I would be annoyed by the reference. The capo meets a snitch in a bakery, where the snitch is picking up a cake for his daughter’s birthday. The capo smiles, tells him everything is forgiven, buys a baguette. The capo drops the baguette, and the baker offers him another one, familiar with his reputation. The snitch walks around the corner, and the capo’s man stabs him in the chest. The snitch, shocked, sets the cake on the ground as gently as is possible. Then the celebrated shot of the capo’s man stepping in the cake as he runs away, which nobody mentions is stolen from Sergei Vasiliev’s High Noon in Saratov .

The night Isabel and I got together, I was pounding Bletcher’s Diet Lager in the Horoscope. She hollered across the rebarbative rail techs, an empty stool. The bartender’s pinched face, his rescue snakes the inevitable subject of his conversation. You’d leave alone, feeling okay, thinking maybe you ought to get one. Walking home, you brainstormed names that would be fit for a boa constrictor, feeling hopeful for nothing in particular.

She said, Hey, you. You look like Jeff from Secrets of Sumac Mountain.

I said, No, I don’t.

She said, Don’t I know you from somewhere?

I said, Yes, you know me from somewhere.

Et cetera. It happens every night everywhere. I can’t report with accuracy what happened. The mallet of dawn in late spring. I walked on the wet sidewalk and felt grateful. Head throbbing. Osvald complained about her slamming the door. When I returned to my room to gloat, I saw that she had left her belt, a wide white synth-leather strap flung near my desk, marring the wall where the buckle hit. She’d swept aside my clothes to draw attention to it, coiled on the floor. Women left their accessories to ensure you’d ping, but the accessories were expendable, in case you didn’t. One never found an heirloom watch in one’s sheets or a treasured necklace on one’s desk.

I can remember the terrible line I used to invite her over the following week. A twinkle of panic pressing send. The line was, I want to take you out, or in, tonight. The events of my life are smoke, floating away, rising.

Secrets of Sumac Mountain is garden-variety Salzblatt. See it Wednesday at the Old Rodeo Cinema. A sleepy town, Sumac Mountain, dew in the morning. A flour town, as they say. This was before guests made it in numbers to the small communities off of the nodes. Delivering the paper, Jeff observes a prominent businessman eating hair. How come? The entertainment options in Sumac Mountain are few. He follows the developer. He sees what might be a murder. His crush, Emilia, works at the bakery. It’s Maquilla, supposedly retired from singing, in her Serious and Dissolute Actress phase. She has a secret. They meet in a dream. The next day, Jeff is ashamed, proud.