Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

At his desk, Grant Mazzy sits across from the only person at Big Town TV who is willing to spend time with him.

Steve is a student volunteer, which means he is something of a slave. He’s young, eighteen or so, with an anachronistic blond pompadour, tight rockabilly pants, and pointy boots. Grant has asked himself whether this look, the way the kid features it, the way it precedes everything else about him, is trendy or disdainful of trends, or trendily disdainful of trends. Is he ultra-hip and ironically retro-quoting another ultra-hip that had hotly retro-quoted another ultra-hip that once, long ago, railed against, what? What? Uh, squares? Grant has decided, in order to get through the day, that the kid is just a bit silly looking. And that is that. Besides, because of the way Steve has followed him around and bumped against him and bobbed his head like a good dog, Grant figures those old squares, as referentially obscure as they have become, have nothing to worry about anymore, anyway.

Steve picks up the second phone on Grant’s desk and gives the “Girlfriend” signal, followed by the “Sorry dude” signal. Grant stares at the kid for a second, watching as his face crumples towards the “No, I’m really sorry, dude” signal. Grant smiles and pulls a Romeo Y Julieta Tubo out of his shirt pocket. He swings it in his fingers and taps it onto his phone to get the orchestra’s attention.

“I’m getting phone calls you wouldn’t believe. Calls from, like, look at this. Here’s an anthropologist. Here’s a linguist.”

Steve’s eyes dart quickly to the side, toward the East Indian weather person who sits quietly surrounded by unused phones.

“Semioticians, doctors, and a feminist lawyer, and, oh, this one’s rich, an art critic, an art critic who now fancies himself a virologist… now what was that about…”

Steve sits nodding at Grant.

“Here it is. Yeah, art critic, thinks the virus became contagious when Marcel Duchamp got a guy called Steiglits to photograph a urinal in 1919.”

Steve has heard the name before.

“Who?”

“Marcel Duchamp. You know, the urinal. Uh, the bride descended on the bachelor, something. Readymades, that sort of thing. A dadaist.”

Steve remembers him.

“Right. The Nude Descending a Staircase. I know. Yeah, so what does that have to do with the virus?”

“Well, this critic seems to think that Duchamp’s experiments with the fourth dimension, sending a urinal into it, somehow caused a breach of some kind. And when the piss-pot returned, some kind of illuminating gas got in through the nth door type of twilight zone shit. Anyway, in here somewhere pops a virus you catch through conversation. Crazy, eh?”

Steve smiles, “So, like, I guess this is one disease that you can catch off a toilet seat.”

“That’s right, kid, very good. Very good. Now, what am I gonna do here? The only virologist I don’t have is a virologist.”

Greg is not sure what it is that people should know. He thinks that there is certainly something. He sits in Grant’s small office drumming his fingertips against his thighs. Three weeks ago I get a fatal illness, and today I start a new career. Greg is anxious that these two clauses keep a safe distance from each other. Even though he suspects they are dependent on each other, he avoids acknowledging them at the same time.

When Greg thinks of the illness, he does so with a consciousness that is dim and oval, capable of spreading outward, yes, but with borders that he keeps visible at all times. If he thinks of the new career, he does so less in a space than in a direction. His thoughts brush towards something, incapable of wandering or examining or dissolving. He fears these thoughts are actually directionless, so he caps the furthest ones in arrowheads. When he thinks of his illness, his career is simply that unthinkable; and when he thinks of his career, his illness is also that unthinkable.

Now that he is sitting in the office where he’ll be interviewed, Greg has the sinking sensation that his arrows have abandoned him. He sits calmly at the doorway to this softly lit oval: the disease that has never manifested itself. The disease that includes him while the arrows cut him off.

The office is lit only by a long desk lamp that sheds light across surfaces, dropping two hard crescents onto the floor. Greg slides his foot out from under his chair and pushes the toe of his running shoe cozily into the sharp edge of one of the crescents.

Grant enters the office. He looks at everything, the chair, a framed photograph of man at a sink, the fax machine, the ceiling, everything except Greg.

“Hello there. Grant Mazzy.”

A hand goes out, eyes drop to a hand brushing an imagined crumb from his thigh.

“You’re Greg?”

Greg suddenly wishes he was home, sleeping in. “Uh, yes, I’m here for the volunteer.”

“Well, no, you’re here for me. Hah! You are the volunteer, right?”

Greg feels the crescent of light cut open the top of his foot.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Right?”

“Yeah.”

“OK then.”

Grant lifts and drops the tip of a pen in front of his face, following it with his eyebrows, not his eyes, which he widens to introduce Greg to new perspectives.

“I gotta tell ya, Greg. You’re gonna look back one day on this meeting and I guarantee that you’ll say to yourself one of two things: I should have got the fuck out of there as soon as I saw that guy; or, you might say, that was the day that I started livin’ for myself.”

Grant coughs up in the air, like an animal, a seal tossing a ring, a lion throwing its mane.

“And you’re gonna get all that by living for me.”

Greg can’t look straight ahead. He focuses on a silver bullet on a key-chain that lies on the desk.

“Now I’m gonna say something that offends most people. I’m gonna say this for two reasons. One, to see whether you are like most people — an unfortunate shape to find yourself in. And two, if you are like most people, I can at least have the pleasure of watching you puff up before I spin you outta here. Ready?”

Greg lowers his head slightly, scooping his jaw out in small acceptance. He pushes a scale of dried semen off his knee with the back of his thumb.

“OK. If you work out here it’s gonna be because you let two things happen. You’ll let me own you; and you’re gonna fall head over fuckin’ heels in love with me.”

Grant jabs a finger off his chin at Greg. The other hand gives a disgusted shake in the darkness above the lamp. I’m not a pussy. The world is full of pussies. I dismiss them.

“I’m gonna tell you something now. Later, if you do a few things for me, I’ll show you what I’m talking about, OK?”

Greg feels a little roll of exhilaration. Grant detects it.

“OK. This is it. You know the world you live in? You know the one. Little things going on, urgent things, terrible true tales of human struggle, reasons to go on, reasons not to go on, blah, blah. The world you live in. Well, it’s only one of, say, about fifteen or so. And each one has a serious claim on you, a vested interest in your stupidity. In fact, your world is maintained in a very deliberate way by the fourteen that you’ll never encounter.”

Greg notices that his Higher Power is standing in the corner of the room. He looks frightened.

“You watch the news, right? OK, picture this now. There’s me on the screen saying, oh, I don’t know, ‘a home invasion last night’ — blah, blah. But I’m not saying something, too. I haven’t said: ‘A prostitute was found in a dumpster with her arms severed.’ And I haven’t pointed out that this woman is the twenty-third this year! I’m not going to say that the murders are committed by a serial killer. Why am I not saying this? Can you guess? Because they weren’t. They were killed by an organization. Organized. And if it comes out, a connection is made, maybe somebody says three murders or seven in a row or whatever, then, through me, a very sophisticated solution comes along and dissolves the cell walls of this story. You may read it somewhere, but it won’t live. And it gives rise to a home invasion story — which is just a tiny version of how the other story died. Hmmm. I’m gonna take you to where things are infinitely amusing.”