The Brooklyn Rail

MEET SOME FRIENDS
IONA
loves a good observation

JAKE
a sponge for pop theory

IRENE
always anticipating a punch line

THEY SIT ON
a rooftop (your rooftop)

BACK THEN…

It filled the entire sky.

IONA
It’s a classic.

/And it was. The Classic Flying Saucer hov-
ering above them was dark gray, disk shaped
and had millions of small lights bedazzled on
its belly.

Jake spoke next since he was the most
informed to interpret color patterns and
texture, having recently been completely
transformed by an immersive Van Gogh expe-
rience./

JAKE
We’re lucky, it’s friendly.
/they are/
See, I was recently at the immersive Van
Gogh experience, it’s like walking through
a painting, I think you saw my cool tote, so
now I know about how color conveys emotion.
So—

/points up/

—see how the underbelly of our Classic Fly-
ing Saucer is awash in amber and gold hues?
Derivative of the sunflower which gets its
power from the actual sun. Therefore, since
our sun brings Life to Earth—this saucer, our
saucer, comes in friendship. We’d be pretty
fucked if the light was, say, blue.

/There was no reason to challenge this expla-
nation since Jake spoke with such confidence.
It was the first truth in their new world, but
also, the others weren’t listening—
Iona massaged her temples and deepened her
breath, taking in everything the saucer had
to give. If there’d been the traditional invi-
tational beam of light, she would have been the
first to go.

And Irene, poor Irene, usually so in control of
her emotions, felt only a tremendous sadness
that was both bottomless and loving.

The Classic Flying Saucer created such a pro-
found connection to each, they were devas-
tated when it was suddenly gone. And when it
left, it took with it all desire to go down from
the roof./

NOW
/It’s been three days since the appearance of
the Classic Flying Saucer, and no one has left
the roof.

Iona’s return flight from JFK came and went

Jake blew off three Hinge dates and two doc-
tor appointments

and Irene has four hundred and thirteen
unanswered emails and one angry husband
who’d been game enough once to bring them
a couple pizzas, but that was thirty-six hours
ago.

But they don’t care, and no one complains
how sleeping on the lawn chairs is uncom-
fortable or that the morning dew is irritating.
This is the best they’ve got along in years.
The rooftop is now sacred, and though it goes
unsaid, there’s a natural assumption that any
conversation they have has the potential to be
dangerously profound.

So, Iona is in no rush as she tells the story of
that awful dad at the beach…/

IONA
—and then the dad says,
and you won’t believe it,
and then the dad says, wait,
and his son is just trailing behind him, march-
ing through the sand like the littlest soldier,
and then the dad says, wait,
and the kid’s lugging a huge shovel or some-
thing?
And the dad’s crazy and saying,
“Don’t go out too far in the water…you’ll be
swallowed up and gone forever and no one
will ever see you again, John-Ross.”

/At the very mention of the ocean, Jake can’t
stop thinking about the time his cousin Marcy
drowned in the bathtub when she was trying
to break her own record for holding her
breath. And how Uncle Ralph had sat there
timing her with that stupid stupid stop-
watch./

IONA
This kid?
This dad’s kid?
His name is John-Ross...
Fucking John-Ross?
So, then the dad says,
“John-Ross, what would your mother say?”
The kid obviously has no idea what’s going on
but the dad keeps going—
“John-Ross, do you understand how it will
make me look if you drown today?”
The kid like, does not.
“Do you realize how I’d never hear the end
of it? How I’d be in so much ‘fucking trouble’
with your mother?”
And the dad waits for an actual answer.
And this kid has no idea.
And the dad’s leaning in like John-Ross may
have something SPECTACULAR to say—

IRENE
Ha, what’d he say?

IONA
—which he does not,
so, the dad continues to paint John-Ross the
portrait of his own death saying things like
“and there you’d be, all lifeless
floating face down in seawater,
and I’d be looking at your tiny little body
thinking how lucky you are, you little bastard,
because I’m never gonna hear the end of it.”
Then John-Ross just drops to the sand like
he’s been shot, arms out, legs splayed,
face down.
And like, I get it. Fucking dad’s man—
What do they want from you.

THEN
/No one spoke for the first twenty-four hours
after the departure of the Classic Flying
Saucer.
Actually, not until they realized they could
see the screen of a neighbor’s TV through a
near window—and that to their delight, the
neighbor watched a lot of Jeopardy!/

NOW
/Their awareness was slipping, the way they
assigned meaning to words was changing and
now everything anyone chose to say electri-
fied and delighted all.

Iona’s story of the awful dad on the beach
had reminded Jake of his Uncle Ralph. Like
if someone told Jake that that dad on the
beach was a story about his Uncle Ralph? He
wouldn’t question it.

This is why a few minutes earlier, Jake
launched into the story of the stopwatch and
the bathtub and how his cousin Marcy died./

JAKE
At this point, Marcy’s been underwater for
almost three minutes. We know this because
Uncle Ralph had a stopwatch,
like an old one from when he was in high
school. He was always reminding everyone
how he’d been a major track star. The stopwatch
was big and old, just like Uncle Ralph,
which is why initially Marcy had asked, before
they decided to do this “whole thing” if it still
“worked”. To which, Uncle Ralph said some-
thing along the lines of
“it’s not like TIME has changed.”

/It was this mention of TIME that got Irene
thinking about how there wasn’t near enough
of it left—especially under the new circum-
stances. What’s even the punch line for run-
ning out of time? How will they know when
time is over?/

JAKE
Or “it’s not like TIME has an equivalent of like
INFLATION.” That’s not how seconds or even
minutes work. So, pretty sure his old fuck
buddy the stopwatch, the one he’d religious-
ly jizzed on since the age of fifteen, worked
great. And just in case you were wondering
obviously Marcy—RIP—didn’t tell me this
story, Uncle Jizz did. I’m not sure why he
included the whole back and forth about how
Marcy was questioning the validity of the
timing device, because that’s not the point
of this story of course, but I’m telling it to
you exactly how he told it to me, which is to
say I’m pretty sure Uncle Jizz just wanted to
remind me that at one point he’d been a major
track star.

IRENE
Discus? Javelin?

JAKE
Hurdler.

/Iona dry heaves.
Hurdler.
Curdler.
Warm cottage cheese./

IRENE
Is there a punchline?

THEN

On the second day on the roof, they spent
most of it making Top Five Lists. It was so
fun, just like they did in college.

An example:

TOP FIVE DOCTORS

1. Psychiatrist
2. Psychologist
3. Mixologist
4. Rosé All Day
5. Grapefruit White Claw

NOW
/The story of Marcy’s drowning and Jake’s
Uncle Jizz’s stopwatch, presumably coupled
with the whole Classic Flying Saucer busi-
ness, was ripping something like a hole in
Irene’s ability to process things./

IRENE
You guys.
You guys.
You guys.
It’s funny, or rather, not funny.
You know how I listen differently than you
both?

/They do know./

IRENE
Like you’re always listening-listening and my
brain is usually advance-listening? Working
absolutely overtime filling in the next words
or even sentences you are about to say—liter-
ally as you are speaking—in hot anticipation
of a PUNCH LINE?
/wait for it/
Well.
/wait for it/
This is it.
/wait for it/
THIS is the punch line.

/Collectively, they think on this in silence for
a few moments before a flicker of TV blue
through the neighbor’s window draws them
in. It’s become a daily ritual they now look
forward to, it’s fun! Iona even yells—/

IONA
Final Jeopardy!

IRENE
Category… Movie Quotes!

/Fuck yeah!/

JAKE
I’m nervous.

/And he is. They all are. They’ve been
through so much, now to be tested? They’d
nailed the final question the last two nights
and honestly felt fantastic about it. This
would make three in a row and for sure that
would be a sign. They knew movies, they’d
wrap this up with ease and be ready for what-
ever else life had in store.

While they wait for the question they stay in
motion. Iona does a grotesque dance; Jake’s a
pushup machine and Irene can’t stop jumping
up and down in anticipation of being able to
shout the answer she’s sure to know.

/Hey! The show’s back—
They’re mesmerized—
The question appears—/

IRENE
“This actor, playing a fictional American
President said, ‘We’re fighting for our right
to live, to exist, and should we win the day,
the Fourth of July will no longer be known as
an American holiday, but as the day when the
world declared in one voice: ‘We will not go
quietly into the night!’”

/They wince.

Once hopeful faces, now shine with
Final Jeopardy blue—

They look to each other.

The music faintly ticking through the
window—

They look around the roof.
God! It’s on the tip of their tongues!

They look to the sky
They look to the sky
They look to the sky

This will be the most unimportant moment
of their lives…and they’ll laugh and retell
and retell and retell this story to anyone who
will listen up until the day they die…how it’s
simply hysterical, uncanny, absurd that right
then, in their situation, not one them could
come up with Who is Bill Pullman? /