Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

I walked to a bench at a safe distance. I knew who he was. The hairy man was Seel. Philip Seel, one 1 , two e ’s. A foxtail for my garland of secrets. Prayers for bird shit went unanswered. Maybe this was none of my business. Jonson had a right to his gentleness, no less delectable for being cultivated in artificial conditions, like a hydroponic pineapple.

Was it so wrong? Two people in the park, sunbathing. It could have been that they came across each other. Healthy friendship between the sexes. Neither seemed the type to have friends outside of situations with an audience, dinners, fund-raisers, openings, funerals.

Lucretia and Philip are both specialists in antiquity. A lunch meeting, maybe. Business and the pleasure of the sun. If Lucretia were going to betray Jonson, it wouldn’t be with such a withered and pompous man.

Jonson’s pain to date included a kidney stone, six or eight aborted gardens, a dead grandmother three nodes west. He didn’t have to enter the catacombs of his marriage. Certain pains are inevitable but other pains are choices. Jonson had chosen. Had he? It seemed wrong to watch Lucretia and Seel.

East, out of the park. The Conspicuous was showing Loose Lips. Do-gooder rats out his kids for emissions crimes, becomes family pariah. I barged past the usher. Because I’ve mentioned the theater over five hundred times in this column, I get to see films free of charge with half-off popcorn. Maybe this wasn’t my business. Jonson could maintain the great lawns, the sumptuous gardens, the statuary, of his ignorance. However, said a small, pitiless voice. The lights dimming. What are friends for if not to help you suffer?

Harris V. Jonson V, my colleague, my friend, is the other film critic at the Central Hub Slaw . His position on the Slaw is for fun and appearances. Jonson does not need to work.

He was supposed to review Moonstone . He is indisposed. The benefit for the Jonson Foundation went late last night, and it would have been rude not to join the donors in convivial toasts. Jonson offered me a belt I admired last Tuesday in exchange for writing this review. It is actual leather, which means it must be at least thirty years old. My pastime, in the molasses of the afternoon, is to have a little fun under his byline. He won’t read the review. Jonson is a busy man.

Nobody’s going to read this, as far as I’m aware. In my four years of reviewing, no friend, loved one, acquaintance, enemy, or stranger has commented on my reviews. I won’t pester them for their opinions. I don’t want to hear theirs.

My colleague’s prose resembles copy for cosmetic surgery. Jonson does not pan.

He said, Why should I bring more negativity into a negative world?

I said, You don’t think negativity can be a corrective force?

He said, Positivity is a corrective force.

Allow me my Jonson impression:

Gorlan’s fifth fabulous film, Moonstone, takes as its premise the discovery of a strange stone in a university laboratory, and the conflict between Lydia, a cryptogeologist, and Roger, an extraneous minerals specialist, over its provenance. If this sounds boring, it’s not. It rocks! The tetchy professoress, Lydia, believes the rock to be the product of a terrestrial hoax. Roger thinks it comes from another dimension. They have a rocky marriage. Roger makes a beau geste, in the interest of saving his marriage, and recants his opinion. With Moonstone, The Roth Paradox, and Doctors in the Mood steaming up this awards season, I must ask: Have we reached Peak Sexy Scientist?

My thought was, I would drop off the ghostwritten review at his penthouse, inquire after his hangover, check the fridge. In person, it would be easier to deliver the bad news, and the Jonson fridge is a miracle. I would fetch Jonson a bracing glass of whatever was on hand, sit him down, and mention that I had seen his wife in the park with Seel south of the Austerity Monument, maybe it was nothing, or perhaps Lucretia and Jonson had an agreement? I would clarify that his wife and Seel were sitting in the grass, nothing nefarious was going on, no bodily contact in the couple minutes I saw them as I walked. Jonson would say, of course we have an agreement, we’re modern, thanks for looking out for me. My second thought was, it wouldn’t go like that.

My apartment, ten miles from the Safe Zone, has no furniture. The neighborhood, Miniature Aleppo, is almost completely guests from the dust of the region formerly known as Syria, now known as not much. After four years of indentured remediation, they were given apartments and semipermanent visas. My building is not a settler building, as they are called. It’s a vintage slum.

Walls on my block are papered with posters, in many languages: SHOWERS AREN’T PATRIOTIC!, THE SELFISH WOMAN GOES UNLOVED, SWEATING IS HEALTHY, BE A SPORT! REPORT USAGE VIOLATIONS!

The peace is enforced. Aside from the occasional boisterous birthday party on my street, and the midnight incursions by the riot police, it suits me. The food is good, the music piquant, and the hobbyist dronespotter will never lack for material.

The ceilings of my apartment are high and the big windows face south. A bed, a desk. Hardy plants morose with thirst. I am not inclined to explain the provenance of the Tyndale portrait, the prickly succulent, the agates. The centerpiece: a cinerary urn depicting the marriage of a forest nymph to a boy prince. Lucretia looted it from a failing museum in a defunct country during her postdoc. When the Jonsons were visiting her mother, I borrowed it without permission. One forgets one’s obligations. Carrying it up my stairs, I spilled the ashes. If there is an afterlife, then I suppose I will have to answer to whoever was once that dust for the insult.

A knock. I looked through the peephole. Jonson is nosy about a man’s debris. His knock was three bangs followed by three raps. The thump of his palm was apologized for with his hairy knuckles. He has the patience of a man who does not have to manage his time.

The urn went in the freezer, for safekeeping. Jonson can be clumsy.

Jonson entered, sat on the floor, held his hand out for a drink, was annoyed to receive a glass of water. In uncertain times it is best to keep a clear head. He couldn’t get Lucretia on her Pinger. She was in Montreal. No replies to his pings. A clear blue panic. He’d been put on hold by police, concierges, diplomats. A warmth for his pain spread under my ears, in my knuckles.

I said, How long has it been since you heard from her, Jonson?

He said, Twelve hours. She pinged me when her slingshot arrived.

I said, I could never ride one of those terrible things. What’s the value of being fired into suborbital space to save a few hours? Is your time all that precious?

He said, If your slingshot capsule explodes, then there’s no corpse for your loved ones to cry over. Much more romantic, even dashing, if you ask me.

He said, But what if Lucretia’s died?

Jonson pinged her again.

I said, How many pings have you sent, Jonson?

He said, A hundred. Hundred fifty. What if she’s with a man?

I said, I bet she’s thinking the same thing about you.

He said, Distract me.

I said, You need a challenge rather than a distraction. Let’s make a film.

Jonson said, We’re critics.

I said, I have an idea for a feature.

Jonson said, Shoot me first and then tell me about it.

I said, Why are we disbursing our creative energies on the Slaw ? Others should be reviewing us.