real
.
“Jimmy?”
Jay turns to the voice of his neighbor. Barry Stone is a vague shape in the doorway of his house next door, framed by the beams of his short porch and shrouded by the darkness falling.
Splintered ghosts of Ginger and Helen watch, from behind the front window, overlaid by Jay’s reflection as he comes back up onto his own porch. Seeing them, feeling the dull weight of neighbor Barry’s vigil in the shadows, everything gone spectral, illusive, his ability to parse this world confounded by legerdemain, scrims and props, constructs and consensual lies—Jay thinks:
Oh, fuck.
Cantonese opera, with all the face paint and swordplay and caterwauling, but without the happy ending.
Or any ending.
We’re all making it up as we go along.
Helen clutches a pale stuffed animal Jay hasn’t seen before, and was, no doubt, the subject of her dogged search through all the boxes.
Is Helen real?
Clearly Ginger is a construct, captive just like him; she troubles and intrigues him, and despite her physical similarities with the girl, Jay begins to wonder if Ginger and Helen are in fact even related.
Does it matter?
Barry barks something from his porch, with an earnest tone of concern. Jay doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t care. He pretends he didn’t hear, and rolls his shoulders gently, testing the ache from his fall.
Night’s curtain drops on Avalon.
End of scene. No applause.
Jay goes inside, where his new family waits for him in the warm embrace of artificial light.
| 7 |
“TWO O’CLOCK TOMORROW AFTERNOON, upstairs, Zane Grey Building, suite number 204. Dr. Magonis. Put the BE BACK AT sign in the window, the clock hands are broken, don’t worry about it. Nobody really cares. You want me to write this down?”
No, he doesn’t.
“Why tomorrow?”
“Take a day to settle in.”
A tiny space crammed with archaic entertainment product.
Island Video.
This is Jay’s new avocation: DVD impresario. An anachronistic business model left over from the last century. Public has carted him down here from the bungalow after Helen and Ginger left for school, and now the Fed loiters behind the glass display case that doubles as a counter, absently punching the old-fashioned cash register, watching the empty drawer roll out, and pushing it back in with his stomach.
There’s a vintage landline wall telephone with a knotted, extra-long cord, but Jay holds little hope that it’s any different from the one in the house, which he already tried, as soon as he woke up, anddiscovered will connect with other phones on Catalina, but not the mainland. Not the world.
“What’s Ginger in for?” Jay appears from a narrow side aisle with a couple of old videocassettes in plastic protective box sleeves. “Or am
I
supposed to tell
you
?”
Public gives a pointedly delayed reaction. “Ha ha. That’s witty.” He shuts the drawer again with his gut. Sometimes Jay can sense something slightly off about Public; compared to the other marshals, less cop and more flimflam artist, making it up as he goes along, as if all this was just snake oil spilling off some crazy medicine wagon. But then he’ll gather and settle, clipped and officious, Eliot Ness: “Um. No. Ginger—”
“Is that her real name?” Jay interrupts.
Public ignores him, continuing, “—sort of helped her boyfriend kill a guy. So.”
The way the Fed says it,
kill a guy
, makes it sound like nothing. Like it was a household chore, folding some laundry. Jay stays between the high shelves crammed with alphabetized jewel cases, studying Public for any sign of sarcasm or fallaciousness, wondering whether he should believe this or not.
“But now she’s flipped on him for immunity, it’s all good.”
All good. Jay wonders what it means to “help.” In light of Public’s dispassionate attitude toward killing. He’s found he can’t shake a picture of the silent little girl, Helen, fragile in her new school clothes, lunchbox and backpack, holding
.
“Jimmy?”
Jay turns to the voice of his neighbor. Barry Stone is a vague shape in the doorway of his house next door, framed by the beams of his short porch and shrouded by the darkness falling.
Splintered ghosts of Ginger and Helen watch, from behind the front window, overlaid by Jay’s reflection as he comes back up onto his own porch. Seeing them, feeling the dull weight of neighbor Barry’s vigil in the shadows, everything gone spectral, illusive, his ability to parse this world confounded by legerdemain, scrims and props, constructs and consensual lies—Jay thinks:
Oh, fuck.
Cantonese opera, with all the face paint and swordplay and caterwauling, but without the happy ending.
Or any ending.
We’re all making it up as we go along.
Helen clutches a pale stuffed animal Jay hasn’t seen before, and was, no doubt, the subject of her dogged search through all the boxes.
Is Helen real?
Clearly Ginger is a construct, captive just like him; she troubles and intrigues him, and despite her physical similarities with the girl, Jay begins to wonder if Ginger and Helen are in fact even related.
Does it matter?
Barry barks something from his porch, with an earnest tone of concern. Jay doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t care. He pretends he didn’t hear, and rolls his shoulders gently, testing the ache from his fall.
Night’s curtain drops on Avalon.
End of scene. No applause.
Jay goes inside, where his new family waits for him in the warm embrace of artificial light.
| 7 |
“TWO O’CLOCK TOMORROW AFTERNOON, upstairs, Zane Grey Building, suite number 204. Dr. Magonis. Put the BE BACK AT sign in the window, the clock hands are broken, don’t worry about it. Nobody really cares. You want me to write this down?”
No, he doesn’t.
“Why tomorrow?”
“Take a day to settle in.”
A tiny space crammed with archaic entertainment product.
Island Video.
This is Jay’s new avocation: DVD impresario. An anachronistic business model left over from the last century. Public has carted him down here from the bungalow after Helen and Ginger left for school, and now the Fed loiters behind the glass display case that doubles as a counter, absently punching the old-fashioned cash register, watching the empty drawer roll out, and pushing it back in with his stomach.
There’s a vintage landline wall telephone with a knotted, extra-long cord, but Jay holds little hope that it’s any different from the one in the house, which he already tried, as soon as he woke up, anddiscovered will connect with other phones on Catalina, but not the mainland. Not the world.
“What’s Ginger in for?” Jay appears from a narrow side aisle with a couple of old videocassettes in plastic protective box sleeves. “Or am
I
supposed to tell
you
?”
Public gives a pointedly delayed reaction. “Ha ha. That’s witty.” He shuts the drawer again with his gut. Sometimes Jay can sense something slightly off about Public; compared to the other marshals, less cop and more flimflam artist, making it up as he goes along, as if all this was just snake oil spilling off some crazy medicine wagon. But then he’ll gather and settle, clipped and officious, Eliot Ness: “Um. No. Ginger—”
“Is that her real name?” Jay interrupts.
Public ignores him, continuing, “—sort of helped her boyfriend kill a guy. So.”
The way the Fed says it,
kill a guy
, makes it sound like nothing. Like it was a household chore, folding some laundry. Jay stays between the high shelves crammed with alphabetized jewel cases, studying Public for any sign of sarcasm or fallaciousness, wondering whether he should believe this or not.
“But now she’s flipped on him for immunity, it’s all good.”
All good. Jay wonders what it means to “help.” In light of Public’s dispassionate attitude toward killing. He’s found he can’t shake a picture of the silent little girl, Helen, fragile in her new school clothes, lunchbox and backpack, holding
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