The local news had shown a happy story, a five-minute cotton candy piece about a young girl’s cat being rescued from a tree by a Good Samaritan, on a whim Tuesday night. He was your typical schmuck – worked a 9 to 5, did the dishes at home, grilled the gall durn best burgers in this country. Nick sat mindlessly on the couch, staring at the screen, as the little girl babbled a thankless comment about Sea World. She was two.
He didn’t stay (did he stay?), he wasn’t there for the whole story. Went to get a beer or something. But it was a happy story, and it made him uncomfortable, and he didn’t know why.
He was walking to Lucas’ room, shuffling actually, because he hated checking in on his son, his sixteen year old rocket scientist. There was no doubt in his mind that Lucas possessed the most superior brain power in the family, and he had given up trying to be jealous long ago. If he had begotten Albert Einstein, he could live with it. And the kid was multi-talented, played baseball, hit .230 in his best year, but so what, Little League is about the game itself, the Great American Game, and why is it I get nervous whenever I knock on the door?
“Yeah.” Like a spike driven through the temple.
“Lucas, buddy, how’s it going? Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
The room was small, square, and perfectly angled, a prison cell designed for and by a trigonometry fanatic. The sheets were crumpled on the bed, a few books lay scattered, splayed open like dead birds, an Xbox 360, there were socks everywhere, socks socks socks, a guitar that was never played as a rule, and then of course the centerpiece of the room.
Nothing else in the room seemed to matter to Lucas. Sometimes Nick wondered if he used anything else, if his other possessions weren’t props to fill out a socially suitable life.
“Whatcha working on?” Lucas was typing, but he stopped and looked away from the screen, looked at his father, to confirm the other’s presence.
“Gambling.” He grinned, and Nick knew he was going to be anxious and fascinated by the explanation.
“It’s through a corporate crime blog. I bet you didn’t know that kinda thing existed. I’m not mocking, neither did I, I stumbled upon it while reading the bio of a former sniper, some guy nobody’s heard of but is “world famous”. His head had rotated back to the screen now, he was typing. “Buy-ins are super cheap, super simple, really interesting concept, really; you bet on the length of time before newsworthy characters will die, naturally or unnaturally. So let’s say Aaron King, he does sports for Channel 8, right? Let’s say there’s a market on him, there isn’t, but let’s say there is. He got in too deep with the Feds, right? And let’s say I bet against, huh, crematoid11 here, bet him a high wager, 20 dollars, that King would get smacked by April. Crema goes in on June. King splatters in April, I collect, splatters in May but closer to April than June, I collect, closer to June, crema collects. And so on and so forth.”
Nick peered at the screen, trying to understand. “Who? Who do you bet on? How newsworthy? And what the hell, Lucas?”
“What?” Nick knew that Lucas knew. Knew that the morality debate was coming, knew that he needed to concoct a message about the structural integrity of life and death and how this was Darwinism, evolved from the days of early man, how we decrease the surplus population nowadays by killing each other off in mass quantities and how we rise to power through wealth gained by betting on the inadequate survival skills of others and how this all played into the structural integrity of the thing and if he wasn’t clambering his way up he was likely to be crushed under the weight of it all and, if nothing else, how he wasn’t the kind of kid to drive a Chevy passengered by a pretty blonde out to Mick’s Point to drink beer and have sex and if you won’t allow me these simple, innocent pleasures what am I supposed to do?
Nick’s breath ballooned in his throat.
“Nothing. You know, nothing. Not right now.”
“Okay.”
The door seemed to shut of its own accord.
The universe has a tone, an aura, something palpable and numb, that it lends to a human being caught in the eye of philosophical fatalism. Not the philosophy itself, but the idea, the idea that nothing lasts forever and that this concept makes everything worthless in the now, that this year, this month, this moment will eventually brew up a whole lot of naught, since that is the end of everything. And the feeling informs the senses. Suddenly the trees are humming lithely, the birds are screeching lithely, people driving by are doing so in an immense computer program that is all X’s and O’s and has a final code, the end, apocalypse. The numbness transcends lack of feeling to become just the opposite, to become something felt, something that inhibits every waking second of life; it isn’t depression or repression, isn’t a verb, verbs are too dynamic, there’s no verbage in this immense hollow glow. This is a monosyllabic word uttered by the entire universe, drawn out over the course of time applied in the fatalistic realm.
The word is death.
Nick stared at his newspaper, which was set up as a sort of blind to avoid eye contact/conversation with other bus passengers, and thought about death. He was 52, a wonderful time to start thinking on the subject. Over halfway to 100, and how many people live to 100? Not many, he was watching the news last night, some lady in Omaha had gotten there. And if getting to 100 is newsworthy, there can’t be many.
Nick fingered an advertisement in the bottom corner of the page. The advertisement was for hair creme, an all-natural avocado engineered biogenetic miracle that turned the pictured celebrity into the man he is today. And all Nick could think was, What will his hair look like in a coffin?
He had read Kerouac when he was younger, had dipped into Ginsberg, a bit of Emerson, had sampled Thoreau. He had believed he could one day be a dingle-doddie slipping out of a San Fran door to catch a train going who knows where because he had vials of pure, undiluted life at his disposal, they were churning in his veins, his blood pumped fresh into his smile. The world will be mine one day, he had thought, and now here he was, using the funnies as a fortress.
What will his hair look like in 10 years, even?
He remembered his wife, girlfriend then, glorious Jodie, standing on the edge of a natural waterfall in some remote area in Michigan, her hands on her haunches, laughing in joy as he raised his hands to the heavens and drank in a draught of the purest misty oxygen on Earth. The sound of the water crashing was the most beautiful cacophony, a harangue of every musical chord at once, way better than anything Gershwin did. And he was kissed by water, and he was barefoot, he was laughing or perpetually smiling, when life and beauty were simple and pure and unchallenged.
Carpe Diem means, You’re gonna die soon, so try living now.
A man seated a few rows back coughed, and Nick quailed under the funnies, desperate to avoid viruses.
He was a skinny blond kid with long hair and a voice that Axl Rose had found charming, but his band was supposed to become famous, not just him. The bee girl, that line in the song about starting to complain when there’s no rain…how true that could be, Nick thought. How many hundreds of times had that song played on MTV on the small cereal box-sized TV in his bedroom, the dreamy guitar lick jolting into the head-and-foot-tapping refrain, and then the arpeggio chords hanging, like shirts on a clothesline, from the melancholic monologue. Shannon Hoon. Dead at 28, a cocaine overdose. Gone too soon.
Nick remembered how the rock radio in his hometown had begun franticly playing Blind Melon, as if the demise of a band member signaled the nearing destruction of that band’s music library. He remembered Other Nick at school, he was first Nick, Other Nick was “Nicky” or “Nicholas” or “Nick” if Nick wasn’t around, he remembered Other Nick talking about how cool Hoon was because he had done cocaine, and wasn’t cocaine cool? That’s the way Other Nick wanted to go out; partying like a rockstar.
Nick remembered Cobain vaguely, remembered how enamored everyone suddenly was with Nirvana, how the original fans and the new fans had fought each other. But it was Hoon that grabbed his interest when he was young, it was Hoon who had become an idol after escaping to the other side. Maybe it was the Bee Girl video, or maybe it was how melancholic the video was, Nick couldn’t say.
“…and it rips my life away, but it’s a great escay-a-aape…..es-cay-a-aape…”
The bus buggered through the rain, the wipers were gesturing wildly to no avail, water made the windshield bubbled and warped. Traffic sounds had increased with the downpour; horns called back and forth to one another, and Nick could just make out the shape of one large figure who had been irritated enough at someone behind him in the traffic jam to get wet and tell them so.
“…Ya don’t like my point of view, ya think I’m not sane. It’s not say, ayn. It’s not sane.”
By the time he got home the rain had increased, leaving damp and despair in the air. No lights were on in the house. Lucas sat at the dinner table, eating cereal.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Nick glanced at the fridge’s contents. He wondered how much cholesterol leftover pulled pork had, wondered if its duration in the refrigerator contributed to its nutritional value. He wondered what kind of life the animal had, what kind of food it ingested primarily, how it was treated by the farmers. He wondered if he could heat it up in the microwave, or if microwaves were still held in disregard by his brain after that convincing article in the medical journal he had read, years ago now, in the dentist’s waiting room. He wondered if he could pinch an inch, and if it was exactly an inch or give-take.
He decided to drink a beer and watch the news, because he knew beer was bad anyway, and because knowing others were struggling too made him feel he wasn’t alone.
Lucas had beaten him to the TV. The boy was still munching, milk dripping from his lips. His eyes didn’t shift as Nick sank into the sofa.
“Whatcha watching?”
“The news.”
“Uh-oh. There isn’t a police bulletin out for you, is there?”
The boy ignored the attempt at humor. A lame attempt, anyway.
“That website I showed you.”
“The one where people bet on the timetable of death for famous.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Well I bet.”
He turned to Nick and grinned. Nick wished he felt nausea more than whatever he felt, what did he feel?
“Jeff Downs. He’s been in the news the last week and a half, a bender with barbiturates and alcohol. Prostitutes, throwing money in clubs, naked in the streets, the whole ‘celebrity self-destruct’ scenario that occurs once annually, if we’re lucky. He’s messing with hard stuff, barbiturates, hard stuff. I bet on a time period, today through Friday.”
What did he feel?
“There’s still time to bet, ya know. Pretty easy money, if you ask me.”
Did he feel nothing?
“He’ll be front page stuff, Downs, he’s done a couple TV spots lately. A celebrity because he’s done a few movies and his personal life is such a rollercoaster. Move over, Charlie Sheen.”
He felt nothing. That was it. He couldn’t care less. And he didn’t know how he felt about feeling nothing.
“Here it comes.”
The newscaster gave a curt greeting and began to share about a war happening somewhere between someone and how somehow nothing had been resolved after weeks of treatise meetings. Lucas fidgeted. Nick took long sips of beer.
“This is it.”
The newscaster seemed haughty.
“For those of you keeping tabs on the public humiliation actor Jeff Downs is putting himself through, you have more to gossip about. Early today Downs rented out an entire club in downtown Philadelphia tonight to throw what he’s termed, ‘The party of the century’.”
Lucas was fist-pumping.
“The actor, best known for his recent roles in television series spots, has been advised by his doctors to commit himself to rehabilitation to overcome his drug and alcohol problems and has neglected their advice, saying today, ‘No one should tell me what to do, I’ll be Doctor Jeff Downs if I need to be.'”
Lucas was aglow.
The newscaster shrugged, weary after the besiegement of pop culture on the institution of news. Nick sipped beer.
“Tragedy in Houghton as a home catches fire during the night, killing a family of four.”
Lucas brought his bowl to the kitchen.
“Officers have concluded that the gas was accidentally left on, and although they aren’t sure what caused the spark they have no reason to suspect foul play.”
Silverware clinked under running water, and Nick leaned in to the television.
“Tom and Rita Jones, 45 and 43, died in the blaze, along with their children, Mindy, age 10, and Sophia, age 2.”
Son of ugh.
“Sophia was featured earlier this week after her cat was saved from a tree by a do-gooder. Sadly, the cat, Cookie, also perished in the fire.”
Son of ugh. God. God. Son of ugh.
Lucas whistled nonsensically. Nick felt nauseous now, he could puke. But he was also afraid, because he didn’t feel uncomfortable with this story, he had his beer and he was mortified, but there was no discomfort. And he felt nothing with Lucas.
The newscaster signed off, and an advertisement for the Atkin’s Diet raced across the screen, demonstrating the life inherit in the outside world, or maybe the lack thereof.
Nad Auseam 