Topical Matters

Stuart should have known something would happen on that day when he opened the door in the morning to retrieve the newspaper and noticed a religious tract had been left on the porch. He bent over, winced from the pain in his back, and scooped up the pamphlet. What is the Mark of the BEAST, read the cover. All the words were white except for the last word that was an alarming red. From the stormy sky behind the message, a bolt of lightning reached down to strike a building that was half the Vatican and half the U.S. Capitol.

He erected himself and scanned the neighborhood. The sky was getting lighter in the east, but no one else was outside. He went down the front path to retrieve the newspaper from where it had landed in the grass. The paper was sopping wet from the sprinklers. At the curb, he flipped up the lid of the garbage can he had rolled out for pickup the previous evening and deposited the ruined mess. As he made his way back up the path, he shook his head. When he was a boy, he had delivered newspapers on his bicycle, and he had never been so careless. But things were different now, and that was a long time ago.

In the foyer, he paused, listening. Maureen was still asleep. Soon, she would wake up, and the noise of her chattering and making breakfast would fill the house. In the nook next to the living room, he slid onto the chair and pulled down the leaf of the secretary desk that had belonged to his grandfather. From the center drawer, he retrieved a thin metal prong. Using the prong, he released the catch of a hidden compartment shaped like a holder for papers. He slid the religious tract inside and replaced the compartment.

“Sunny side up?”

He must not have heard the faint beeping of the bedroom alarm clock. His wife was standing in the opening to the hallway, looking expectantly at him. He wasn’t sure what she had seen, if she had witnessed what he had done.

He stood and tightened the tie of his robe.

“And bacon.”

She nodded and moved past him towards the kitchen where the coffeemaker was busily percolating, having turned itself on at the preset time. He hadn’t heard that either. He wondered if he was tired or had dementia, how long he had been sitting at the desk. Sunlight was streaming in between the blinds.

“Ellie said Henry volunteers at the Y,” Maureen said from the kitchen. “Teaching kids to swim. Because he was in the Navy.” He heard eggshells cracking, and the frying pan sizzled. The smell of bacon drifted through the air. “You could teach people at the community college. English to immigrants.” On the other side of the sliding glass doors, the swimming pool was placid and still. He tried to remember the last time he had swum in it—five years, at least. Maureen had never swum in the pool. His wife did not know how to swim.

For the last thirty-seven years, Stuart had worked for an advertising company, writing copy for the print catalogues of its clients. The products about which he wrote were things about which people rarely thought: the fittings required for fluid tanks on tractor-trailers, the gaskets mandated for airplane wheels, the valves utilized in underground energy conduits. At dinner parties, if someone asked what he did for a living, Maureen would say: He sells widgets! He’s the widget king! People laughed, but he didn’t think it was funny.

At the breakfast table, she set the plate front of him. She had plated the food so the eggs resembled two eyes and the bacon strips formed a tremulous smile. To the right of the plate, a brown mug with I ♥ EWE and an illustration of a sheep on the side contained black coffee. To the left of the plate, there was a small bowl of fruit (a few slices of apple, a handful of grapes, a peeled and de-sectioned orange), the purpose of which was to address his constipation.

“So I won’t be home until after dark,” she said. He had missed what she had said before that because he hadn’t been paying attention. Why would she be gone all day? He racked his brain. It was Ellie’s birthday. She and her best friend were going to the outlet mall an hour and a half away to shop and have lunch. Typically, his wife ran errands in the morning and returned after. The day yawned open before him like an ice crevasse. He would be alone.

By the time he was finished eating, she had dressed and was moving towards the front door. The sun from the blinds cast luminous bars of light across her cornflower blue dress. She had curled her hair and put on the diamond earrings he had given her for Christmas. Somehow she had transformed into the woman he had married nearly four decades prior. With his back to the sink into which he had placed his dirty dishes, he watched her, wondering if she kept a part of herself private from him, forbidding him access.

“I love you.”

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

It was their joke. She said I love you and he said That’s what you said yesterday. This was how the script had been written. But this time, her expression changed, a flutter of disappointment surfacing from the depths and disappearing so quickly if he had blinked (and if only he had!), he would have missed it.

He opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her, but she had closed the door. At the window, he pulled apart the blinds. All he could do was look on as she reversed the cream-colored sedan down the driveway.

Then, she was gone, and the street was empty.

~

It was remarkable how many tasks one could accomplish when one had the time. Almost three months ago, he had retired. There had been a sending-off party at the office, with cupcakes, and someone had strapped a party hat to his head, but all of his coworkers were younger than him and he could not recall several of their names. The print catalogues that had been the company’s bread and butter were rarely in demand anymore, and a computer program that effortlessly spat out thoughtless prose would be his replacement.

The first month, he had tackled the garage. He had pulled the boxes down from the high shelves and reorganized their contents. He had placed the lawn care tools in the storage cabinet that he had bought at the home improvement store. He had cleared his workbench and sorted out the drawers, putting the nails with the nails, nesting the screws with the screws, and lining up his screwdriver collection by size, from the biggest to the smallest. Next to the door that led to the laundry room, he had mounted a rack for coats and hats.

The second month, he had addressed the closets. In the laundry room closet, he had situated the jugs of detergents on the top shelf, the boxes of dryer sheets on the middle shelf, and the containers of bleaches and sticks of stain removing products on the bottom shelf. In the linen closet, he had folded the towels and sheets into neat piles and stacked the toilet paper rolls into a dramatic pyramid. In the bedroom closet, he had re-hung the dresses that had slipped from their hangers and removed those ties he no longer wore.

The third month, he had focused his attention on the landscaping. A man could hire another man to maintain his property, but that didn’t mean the job was going to be done well. After Maureen had departed that morning, he had scattered several bags of wood chips in the front plant beds. In the backyard, he was standing in the patchy grass near the rear fence. At his feet, there was an outcropping of crabgrass. He could yank the stubborn weed from the dirt, but the seeds it dropped would remain, lying in wait for next year.

If, at a future date, he were asked to describe the sound he heard, he would be hard-pressed to do so. It was female, he suspected. Its origin was the other side of the fence, he was pretty sure. It was otherworldly, as if it were a language spoken on a distant planet—one populated by, say, a tribe of warrior women. For several seconds, he stood frozen, his head cocked to one side like an inquisitive dog listening to a high-frequency whistle. The sound repeated itself. He stepped closer to the fence, bent forward at a forty-five degree angle, and peered through the round hole from the missing knot in one of the wood planks.

What he saw resembled a scene out of a movie. A beautiful woman was sprawled on the lawn next to the swimming pool of the house behind theirs. Her tanned arms were askew and positioned at odd angles. Her blonde hair was fanned out around her head like a crown. She was wearing a black string bikini, and her gravity-defying breasts were pointing directly at the sky. A pool of blood had spilled out from beneath her midsection and congealed in the grass. Her eyes were closed. Her lips parted, and she moaned. That was the sound.

When he was eight, Stuart had seen Creature From the Black Lagoon, and the movie had had a profound effect on him. As he had sat on the living room carpet, he had been awestruck by the monster on the television screen. Half-fish and half-human, the Creature had probing eyes, a scale-covered body, and fearsome claws. In its arms, the monster had cradled an unconscious woman, her head thrown back and her hair cascading downward. As the men had rushed in to rescue her from the gilled-man, Stuart had longed to be a hero, too.

The six-foot fence was too high to climb and extended the perimeter of the yard. Without thinking, he started hastily toward the house. As he moved quickly through the kitchen, he noticed the pain in his back had dissipated. In the living room, he picked up his pace and made a beeline for the front door. Before he knew it, he was jogging down the path to the sidewalk. He was wearing the short-sleeved undershirt and khaki pants he had put on that morning. It was difficult to go fast in his rubber gardening shoes, he noticed. 

He reached the corner. With every inhalation of his lungs, every pump of his arms, every stride of his legs, he was leaving behind the endless monotony of the days, months, and years that came before this one. The safety of home had been discarded. He had embarked on a mission. His distant father, his depressed mother, and his disappointed wife retreated in his mind. Taking the turn, he sped faster and faster down the block. He was growing younger with every yard traversed, it seemed. A thin rivulet of sweat slid down his temple. He tucked his head, molding himself into a heat-seeking missile.

He rounded the next corner at a considerable clip. He could see the house, one of the newly constructed modern-style homes that had been built where an older house like his house had stood. As he motored down the front path, he observed the freshly installed sod was superior to his lawn; the green blades were almost artificial in their vibrant color, the meticulously trimmed edges a silent affront to his less carefully edged grass. On the doorstep, he stopped, heaving and feeling somewhat nauseated. The black eye of the smart doorbell’s camera studied him suspiciously. He reached out and banged his fist against the door.

~

The tall, muscular man was covered in tattoos. The side of his neck bore a flaming skull. Latin script ringed his collarbones. His right arm featured a devil pinup girl and an orange koi fish, and his left arm was adorned with a melting clock face and a maniacal circus clown. His black hair was cut short. His glasses had thick black frames. He was wearing a black collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, and cowboy boots. When he saw Stuart, he smiled in a manner that was reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat.

“A woman…in the grass…behind the house.” Panting from the exertion, Stuart struggled to expel the words. He pointed in the direction of the backyard.

“Oh, I see!” The man, still grinning, raised his hands so his palms were facing towards Stuart, as if attempting to placate him.

“She’s—she’s dying!” Stuart could hear himself, knew he sounded desperate and frantic, which was not very heroic, but he couldn’t fathom why this man was uncomprehending of the gravity of the situation.

“Come inside.” The man retreated into the house.

Shitbox. That was the term Stuart used to describe the hastily built houses that had cropped up like weeds and threatened to outnumber the original houses in the neighborhood. He had never set foot inside of one, merely surveyed their slick exteriors from the sidewalk. As he followed the man through the rooms, he couldn’t help but admire the spacious open floor plan, the soaring vaulted ceilings, the sleek and shiny finishes. Simply put, this house was nothing like the dated midcentury house in which he and Maureen lived.

In the backyard, there were other people he had not been able to see from his backyard beyond the fence. A man holding a camera was adjusting an umbrella with a light in it mounted to a stand. Another man was fiddling with a large circular silver light reflector. Next to the pool, the woman in the bikini was propped up on her elbows. She did not appear to be dying.

“Star!” The man’s voice was sharp and strident.

“What?” The woman shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand.

“Are you dying?”

“I don’t think so?”

The man crouched next to the woman and stuck his fingers in the blood.

“Corn syrup and red food coloring.” He waggled a red-tipped digit.

“I thought …” Stuart’s cheeks were burning.

“What’s your name?”

“Stuart.”

“Leon.” The man beckoned.

The other men watched as Stuart crossed the lawn.

“Stuart, this is Star. Star, this is Stuart.”

“Nice to meet you, Stuart.”

The woman considered him with her pale blue eyes. She was nineteen or twenty, maybe. Not old enough to drink, possibly. Her hand was soft and warm.

“Not dead at all!” Leon clapped Stuart on the back and guffawed.

When Stuart had stepped across the threshold of the house, he had experienced a sensation unlike anything he had experienced previously. The feeling was akin to an electric shock, or a power surge, but it was more profound, almost spiritual. Something very important is about to happen—that was the thought that had gone through his head. In the great overarching story of his life, there would be everything that had happened before that moment and everything that had happened after it, he had sensed. Nothing else would matter.

“We’re making a movie.” Leon winked conspiratorially.

Perched on a barstool at the kitchen’s vast marble-topped island, a dazed Stuart drank the bottled water that had been handed him. The house had been rented for the day, Leon explained. The title of the movie was Supernova, and the plot concerned itself with a young woman, played by Star, who moves to Los Angeles to become an actress. As Leon spoke, he gestured dramatically and made excited facial expressions. Stuart was inexorably drawn towards Leon, a man of strong convictions and unwavering enthusiasms. Feeling vaguely hypnotized, he wondered what Maureen was doing, or if that was relevant anymore.

Leon was the director. Star was the lead actress. Her male costar would arrive shortly. The half dozen men moving equipment in and out of the rooms comprised the crew. A redhead in an apron was the makeup artist. Sandwiches, snacks, and sodas were arrayed across the kitchen island. Several years ago, a woman had knocked on Stuart’s front door and inquired about shooting a commercial for a popular cereal in their house. Stuart had declined. His life wasn’t an advertisement. Suddenly, he regretted that decision.

“It’s nice, right?” Leon was leading Stuart on a tour of the house, and they were in the primary bedroom. “This is an en suite,” Leon said from the adjoining room, his voice echoing in the marble bathroom. Currently, the house was staged with furniture but unoccupied. Next week, it would be put on the market.

At the rear-facing, second-story window, Stuart gazed out across the yards. From this vantage point, his house looked miniature, like a dollhouse inhabited by toy figures moved around in various positions by an unseen hand. Why had he led such a small life? Somewhere along the way, he had consigned himself to playing by the rules and limiting himself to responsible decisions informed by what others expected of him. The thought of all the other lives he could have lived, bigger than the one he had chosen, overwhelmed him. He was a coward.

Leon materialized at his side. He draped an arm across his shoulders.

“Would you like to watch?” It was not a question so much as a direction.

Maybe it was the way Star’s surgically enhanced breasts threatened to spill over the top of her barely-there bikini. Maybe it was the fact that Leon’s irises were as black as his pupils. Maybe it was the pull of Stuart’s curiosity. A man was a man was a man. This was no ordinary movie, he knew. It was an adult movie.

~

At thirteen, Stuart encountered pornography for the first time. On a summer afternoon, his older sister was ensconced in their shared bathroom, preening in the mirror. Pressed by an urgent bowel movement, he ventured into his parents’ bathroom. As he sat on the toilet, he spotted a wicker basket half tucked behind the chintz shower curtain. What was contained therein was his father’s Playboy collection. He spent the rest of the summer masturbating frantically to the archive of issues. Lost in the pages of curvaceous blondes and smiling brunettes, their breasts forthcoming and ample rear ends presented, he fell in love.

At eighteen, he saw his first X-rated film. He and a friend had gone to a matinee of Flesh Gordon, a soft-core spoof of the Flash Gordon superhero movies of the 1930s, at the adult theater in the wrong part of town. The movie featured copious amounts of nudity and simulated sex; in a memorable scene, the titular hero battled a giant penis monster with an eyeball at its urethral meatus. Over the next decade, when Stuart found himself in front of an adult theater, he ducked in to watch whatever was playing. Then, in the 1980s, VHS players became widely available, and he amassed a minor collection of dirty movies.

Eventually, he met and married Maureen. Their sex life was healthy, normal, and routine. As it turned out, she was unable to bear children, so they soldiered on as a duo. Over time, they made love less and less frequently. In the Nineties, he bought a desktop computer and boarded the information superhighway. During an innocuous Internet search for mail-order mulch, he clicked a solicitous banner ad and was transported into the world wide web of online pornography. He spurned the lurid dreck in which women were throttled or hog-tied liked pigs. In the smut he preferred, women enjoyed having sex. Occasionally, he wondered if the actresses really liked their jobs, or if their pleasure was manufactured.

Of course, he hadn’t gotten up that morning and expected to find an adult movie being filmed in the house behind his. But this was the San Fernando Valley, where such movies were made. A news article he read years ago opined: “the porn video is indigenous Southern California folk art.” In other words, adult movies were to the Valley what pueblo pottery was to New Mexico. Despite having grown up in the Valley, Stuart had never been aware of a specific adult movie being made in a specific place. Still, one surmised in this part of Southern California such things were happening in its liminal spaces.

On a poker night a few months ago, Bob Freeman had sworn up and down he had seen the Eighties porn star Ginger Lynn while shopping at Vons or Ralphs or some other supermarket. I swear it was her! Bob had crowed. But Bob had a penchant for exaggeration, when he wasn’t flat out lying, and it was hard to know whether or not to believe him. People thought the Valley was America’s suburb, but behind the white picket fences, below the strip malls, underneath the acres of valley floor where orange orchards used to stand and Native Americans had roamed freely on horseback, there was a dark undercurrent.

So far, several hours had passed, and nothing had happened. The big scene would be shot in the living room. For half an hour, three crewmembers had been positioning and repositioning the white sectional sofa in the far corner. A sullen, heavy set, and bald black man, who Leon had related was the sound guy, had pulled the hood of his olive sweatshirt over his headset and sunk into one of the white armchairs, where he was fiddling with the contents of a gear bag of audio equipment from which a complex wires and cords extended. A scrawny youth with a pimply face and a Lakers baseball hat periodically resurfaced and asked Stuart if he wanted another bottle of water or a bag of chips.

“This movie is about so much more than that!” Leon emphasized every word as if the word were its own sentence. In the dining room, he and Star were sitting on opposite sides of the table, going over the script. She had changed into a yellow half-shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans shorts and was barefoot. In the movie, she was a version of herself; the script Leon had written was based on her life. (In the real world, Star was poised on the precipice of stardom, Leon had asserted confidently, and this movie would win them both accolades and awards in the adult industry.) In this scene, her ex-boyfriend would show up at her home (the rented house) and demand she abandon her acting aspirations, return to Wichita, and marry him. Star would refuse, but the two would have sex for old times’ sake.

Although the stool was uncomfortable (his back would bark tomorrow), Stuart had stayed in his seat at the kitchen island. He had been worried that he would get in the way. In fact, everyone seemed to have forgotten he was there.

“I’ll never go back to Kansas!” Star was reading from the script.

“Again.”

“I’ll never go back to Kansas!”

“More intense.”

“I’ll never go back to Kansas!”

A crewmember in a black T-shirt that read MISFITS and had a giant leering skull on the front of it stopped what he was doing. Dumbstruck, he stared at Star, his mouth agape and his arms hanging limply at his sides.

“You got it, kid.”

“Fuck yeah!” Star stood up and pumped her fists in the air. Her shirt gravitated up her torso, exposing the half moons of her underboobs.

“Irina!” The makeup artist, who was also the hairstylist and the wardrobe supervisor, reappeared. “Let’s get our girl ready for her scene.”

Leon looked at his phone.

“Where the hell is Tripp Towers?”

~

When Stuart opened the bathroom door, he discovered Tripp Towers holding his penis in his hand. With his other hand, Tripp grasped a syringe. At the moment Stuart stumbled upon this tableau, Tripp was depressing the bottom of the syringe, the needle of which was embedded in his corpus cavernosum.

“What’s up, man?” The dose administered, Tripp withdrew the needle. “Just a little boost. Don’t want to let anyone down. Know what I’m saying?”

On the one hand, Stuart understood what Tripp was saying; he, too, did not like to let anyone down. On the other hand, he did not understand what Tripp was saying; he had not held a job that required him to have an erection.

By now, it was late in the afternoon, and the sun was descending in the west. Half an hour earlier, Tripp, Star’s costar, had arrived. In his mid-to-late thirties, he had sandy blonde hair, an easy smile, and the good-natured manner of a surfer who has lost his surfboard and is making the best of the situation.

“I—I didn’t realize.”

“No problem. All yours, bro.”

After Stuart had relieved himself, he washed his hands. As he dried off with a hand towel, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the sink.

What was he doing?

Eleven years ago, seven months, and sixteen days prior, he had asked himself the same question. It was mid-January, and he had traveled to Duluth, Minnesota, to attend the annual advertising copywriters’ conference. He didn’t want to go, to leave Maureen, but his boss insisted. The third night, he was nursing a whiskey at the hotel cocktail bar when a woman from a competing advertising firm slid onto a stool. One thing led to another, and they drank a lot of drinks. In the woman’s hotel room, Stuart listed like a wobbly ship in the bathroom mirror.

For most of his life, he was a good man. First, he was a good boy for his mother who was never happy. In high school, he was a good left outfielder for his father who was never proud. For Maureen, he was a good husband and a good provider, who gave up his writerly dreams of being the next Fitzgerald or Cheever to churn out ad copy instead of literature. When she overcooked the lamb, a soufflé collapsed, or piecrust burned, he shoveled in the mouthfuls and told her he liked it anyway. Prior to marriage, he had four sexual partners. Since their wedding day, he had remained unfalteringly faithful to her. What was one slip?

That evening in Duluth, he had turned away, exited the bathroom, and climbed under the covers with the woman, whose name he had forgotten. The whole time they were having sex, thoughts of Maureen intruded like an unwanted guest. Ultimately, he was too drunk to finish and slipped out of the room after she fell asleep. Upon returning home, he acted as if nothing had happened.

In an alternate reality, he told himself, he would do the right thing. He would heed the warning of the religious tract a stranger had left on his doorstep and which he had tried to hide in hopes of concealing what it seemed to know of him. He would walk out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and through the living room. He would yank open the sliding glass door, stride purposefully across the lawn, and discard his shoes and socks. He would insert his right big toe in the hole in the fence and use the leverage to catapult his body over the top. Before the sun slipped over the horizon, he would arrive home and wait for his wife. When she walked in the door, he would tell her that he loved her.

Instead, he went in search of Leon. The director was in a chair on the edge of the living room’s white shag carpet. Star and Tripp were arranged next to the sofa, waiting to be told what to do. Two of the crewmembers were wielding video cameras. The sound guy was fiddling with the knobs of his equipment.

“Stuart! Where you been? We’re about to get started.”

Tripp whispered something to Star, who giggled.

“Roll cameras.”

“Cameras rolling.”

“Roll sound.”

“Sound rolling.”

“Action!”

“You’re coming with me.” Tripp grabbed Star by the wrist.

“I’ll never go back to Kansas!” She struggled in his grasp.

“I’m taking you and that’s that!”

Tripp pulled Star to him and kissed her.

In the backyard, Leon had told Stuart the bloody scene by the pool was the finale of the movie. Star’s character, also named Star, would reach star status, but then a rabid fan would break into her house, proclaim his undying love for her, and stab her to death in the backyard when she rejected his advances.

In the end, she dies, Leon had said somberly.

As Star and Tripp engaged in what Stuart’s dead mother would have referred to as sexual congress, Leon called out instructions—more this, less that, spread your legs honey, open your body up to the camera buddy—prompted a segue to a new position—time for mish, now cowgirl, let’s do doggie next—or checked in with a cameraman—you’re getting that shot, angle, close up right? This was work, Stuart could see, and a rather mechanical job at that. Regardless, it stirred something deep inside of him, as if a sleeping animal were being awakened.

Afterwards, he would approach Star and ask her if the numerous orgasms she appeared to be having were genuine or not, he decided. It was an anthropological query. Either she would say yes, confirming what he wanted to believe, or she would say no, dispelling his illusions. Even at this close proximity, between Star’s surgically enhanced bust, Tripp’s pharmaceutically induced erection, and the choreographed sexual origami, it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t ask, he considered. Everyone had secrets.

Soon, he would have to go home. Tomorrow, all this would be a memory. One he would revisit as he sprayed weed killer in the backyard, drove to the hardware store, or watched television with his wife in the house behind this one.