Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

Narbeard and Brackles offer Sniggs safe passage out to Heaven’s Cutlass to palaver. Sniggs’s buccaneers are entrenched on Pussy Island, but they don’t know where to dig. The island is a conch, two miles across, five long. Sniggs offers the pair of them half shares. Sniggs has thrice the men, killers all. Narbeard, believing timid men to be inconsistent warriors, hacks off Sniggs’s head. The crew is uneasy. They gave their word.

Captain Narbeard says, All’s fair, you cravens. Think of the gold! Rusty, you can buy a new ape. Hopper, a leg of ivory. Barber Jenny, the finest scissors.

The crew is swayed. They land at midnight on the conch’s spire. Throats are cut, musketoons discharged, curses spat on the breath of dying men. Come morning, Pussy Island is held by the crew of Heaven’s Cutlass , diminished by the night’s travails. More treasure for me, think the surviving pirates.

Brackles plants his spadroon in the back of Narbeard because a co-captaincy is not fitting for a rich man. Narbeard fits the treasure hole. On the tree, under the three diamonds, a crying Brackles carves Narbeard’s name. Away with the loot into the streaking equatorial sunset.

I said, Dr. Lisa, have you ever thought of acting?

Leaving the Conspicuous. Dr. Lisa wanted to see Yours for Now , the new Ikande film about the rise of the African Republic. She bought the popcorn. I am surprised the Transit Authority allowed the film to be screened in the Hub, because it is essentially an advertisement for technological socialism sutured onto a clumsy love story. Fatima, a nanotechnician, meets David, a professor specializing in the ethical programming of artificial intelligence.

Dr. Lisa said, No. Have you ever thought of being a physician?

I said, I haven’t the courage. What if I made the incorrect diagnosis?

When Dr. Lisa’s face absorbed enough pale and morose moonlight, it seemed to be its own source of illumination. I reject the stories of directors’ muses, for example, Alejandra Martillo’s beloved Henry, as corny self-mythologizing. Muses belong in the past with cigarettes and the personal automobile.

Dr. Lisa said, I’m hungry.

I said, There’s a place down Ashland I like.

Dr. Lisa and I dodged slow-moving families promenading southward. Dr. Lisa has a brisk stride. I find myself out of breath if we walk too far.

She said, Did I ever tell you about my friend Veronica?

I said, Don’t think so.

She said, We met in med school. Veronica’s mother worked for the Transit Authority, so she didn’t have to sign the public service contract. She was very smart but undisciplined. There was a lot of rote memorization. No matter how smart you are, it still takes a lot of time to get straight in one’s mind the arcana of the human body and the maladies to which it is subject.

She said, We had an anatomy test one morning. Veronica pulled me aside and she said, Look. Things are going bad with my boyfriend and I haven’t had time to study. You know I’m a hard worker. Just this once, let me copy off you?

She said, Keep up, I’m starving.

I said, We hit up that pupusería right before the movie.

She said, That was a long movie. Now, it was assumed that the medical students were honorable. We had put in so much work even at that early point, plagiarism and copying was not a concern of the faculty. But cheating happened. It was a lot of work. There were a couple times when I copied my homework, mostly for specialist things I knew I would not be practicing in. But this test was on fundamental musculature. If you did not understand a human’s abdomen, it would be very difficult to diagnose their problems, wouldn’t it?

I said, How many things could possibly go wrong with a body?

She said, I let Veronica cheat off of me. I felt bad for her. Her boyfriend, whom she later married, then divorced, was a rail tech, a job which he had only got because of Veronica’s mother, and he resented her success, earned or not.

She said, The next day, a large box showed up at my apartment.

She said, You have to walk faster. I’m going to drop dead if we don’t eat. I dragged the box into my apartment, cut it open. It was a complete set of the textbooks I was going to need for the next five years. They cost thousands of dollars. I was furious. I had tried to help out Veronica because I felt bad for her. She was paying me like I was one of her servants. Even worse, she didn’t thank me, she sent the books over like that made us even. I studied thirty hours for that test.

I said, Thirty hours and all you got was that lousy medical degree.

She said, On my way to class, I saw her in the hallway sitting with another student. She greeted me like I was her sister. I was so angry, I spat on the ground in front of her feet, told her what I thought of her family’s money, and stomped off. In class, my professor called me over. She said that she had recommended me for, and I had won, a fellowship sponsored by a textbook publisher. Part of the award was a bunch of textbooks. She said she was sorry but she had kept forgetting to let me know.

We went into Café Extra Pleasure, Osvald’s spot. Rainy days, we’d trek south for crab dumplings in saffron broth. He’d pay if I came with. The crab was imitation. Osvald would get furious when I said this. These dumplings were his big discovery. There have been few times in my life when I have been comfortable enough to decline a free meal. We would take a moment, after our meal, to browse the seedy magazines sold in the back room. Osvald liked Inflated Asses . After the Confidence Crisis, skin mags became a big business.

Dr. Lisa said, How are the crab dumplings?

I said, They’re awful. Plus, they’re imitation crab. It’s ground and dyed cricket paste. How else could they be so cheap?

Osvald erupted. My hands started to shake, as Osvald tried to assert himself.

The waitress said, What will you have?

Dr. Lisa said, I would like the family-style snapper with two bowls of rice, please. And extra chilies. And what that lady over there is having to start.

The waitress said, And you?

I said, The special.

This was too much for Osvald. That I would come all the way here without partaking of his sacred crab dumplings in saffron broth was like an insult to his mother. He threw me to the floor, beginning a protracted battle for control of myself.

From the table Dr. Lisa shouted encouragement.

She said, Remember, it’s all in your head. Go to your peaceful place.

Osvald would wrest control of a foot or a knee for a moment, before I retook my position. Noticing a woman near the back door dining on his beloved dumplings, he lunged, flipping a table in the process, and ruining the apron of the waitress. Patrons scattered. Osvald had dragged me into a number of regrettable situations, but destroying the dining room of a cheap café, while Dr. Lisa took advantage of the distraction offered by my flailing body to appropriate a pair of loose spring rolls, might have been the worst.

With a sort of metaphysical shoving motion, I managed to regain the use of my body. Unfortunately, Osvald’s abrupt withdrawal caused me to stumble through the saloon doors into the back room, knocking over sundry magazine racks containing titles like Naughty Magistrates , Girth , Nude Supportive Partners , and so on.

Osvald seized my arms. He struck me in the face with a rolled-up copy of Ripe and Rude . Welts on my forehead and cheeks. Only when Dr. Lisa pulled hard on my hair did Osvald desist.

On the rail platform, brushing my teeth, getting my hair cut, seeing Tender Fronds with Jonson, slipping threatening notes into library books, I watch Isabel and Osvald pass the time, through his eyes.