my roommate rants about 9/11 while I book a flight to Newark
conspiracy & coach & covert news | short fiction
I was eating breakfast, a cherry scone, when she texted: “Found a lump. Doctor Monday. Can you come?” I’m at my computer, tounging old scone from my K9s, cursor throbbing Expedia’s search bar. She’s in White Plains…New York…do I fly to Newark? JFK? I can’t remember…Newark? I think. EWR. Eeew-err. The one that sounds like vomit? Yes. Okay. Newark. When? Now? Tonight? Can I sleep? Are you allowed to sleep when mom has a lump?
“Bro, check it out—”
He sprints into my room wearing his faux-silk bathrobe, the burgundy thing with a dragon embroidered on the back. He’s still wet from a shower, dripping black loogies into my carpet. He does this often: gets drunk, calls me “bro,” stands in front of my Sgt. Pepper’s poster and rants about 9/11.
“—look…look at Poe..see Poe?”
He puts a wet finger on Edgar’s nose. His robe is short, boxers peak under the dragon; they’re pocked with cartoon planets.
I nod and type “Newark.”
“…three assholes to his right…” he moves his finger left, Poe’s right.
I nod.
“Right here?”
I nod.
“The reptilian fuck next to Lenny?”
I nod.
“…so, like, the day after 9/11, this dude—this fucking asshat was in some interview and was like ‘oh yeah the attacks yesterday? Those were ‘the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos…’”
Expedia loads my Newark options: $340. $421. $289. $380.
I nod.
“…and that—that’s a fucking quote, bro…dude recognized that shit was art, was fucking created…designed fucking shit…”
I nod. Saturn rides high on his left buttock.
“The greatest work of art…” It’s been a while since I’ve heard that one. Last time he fingered Sgt. Pepper’s he ranted about Love and Theft being proof of Bob Dylan’s participation in conspiracy: “See Poe? Five faces to Poe’s left is Rodia…Simon ‘The Tower Builder’ Rodia, bro…and whose that emerging from The Tower Builder’s ear? Oh, no one…just the guy who, when poor fucks are splattering on the pavement is on the radio singing: high water risin’, six inches ‘bove my head…coffins droppin’ in the street…like balloons made out of lead…”
$289. Leave tonight. Redeye. Good. Fine. I click. Seat selection loads. A little airplane appears with its roof blown off. I peer down at the color-coded seats. Blue, green, grey. Every grey square is a person, a Newark-bound ass flying towards the vomit sound, vomit-bound bodies with their own conspiracies, their own moms, their own lumps…
“—thermite, bro, like, in the dust? They found fucking thermite in the dust—“
35A. Window seat. It’s near the bathroom. Ava complained if I made us sit near the bathroom: “Why are you always picking bathroom seats? We’re gonna get gonorrhea…” Is that a thing? Do piss particles and gonorrheal cocci wriggle down row 35’s urethras every time someone flushes? I guess so, the entire row’s free. Fuck it. I’ll have it to myself. Poor man’s first class, but my urethra will burn when we touchdown. My skin will be moist, slick with exotic urines. Mom will be at baggage claim. She’ll run towards me, arms wide, eyes beaming. She’ll hug me—press my face into her swollen throat because she has to, because she made me, because you gotta press your kin into burgeoning cancers, always, forever, even if he’s covered in piss.
“—unreacted thermite, which, like, that’s fucking basic proof of controlled demo—“
Row 12. Better. 12F. Window. I click the grey square. Expedia muses. My click travels through thirsty server farms—swollen, humming warehouses where my ass’s desire to occupy 12F for $289 is translated into 1s and 0s and, once okayed by Expedia’s lordship, shall return to my screen as a happy green checkmark.
“—and the way it fell, bro? Just, like straight down? That’s free fall, that’s fucking pure ass gravity, bro…zero resistance—“
He’s inspecting my bookshelf. He pulls out Catch-22, flips to a random page: “—the Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.” It took him four tries to read without slurring. He blows a raspberry and puts it back upside down. Expedia wants my credit card. I fish my Visa outta my wallet. He’s back at Sgt. Pepper’s eyeing the guru, the hookah, the snow white…the TV, the cloth snake, the French horn—
I’ve always wanted to eat Rice Krispies out of Lennon’s French horn. I’ve always wanted to steal it, fill it to the brim with milk and crisped rice and sit in my tighty whities on mom’s old leather couch, straddling the cold valves with my thighs, just sit and feel milk-cooled brass make my thighs goosefleshy, sit and binge cartoons as snaps and crackles and pops travel through the tubing and my fingers mash the valves and impose the horn’s farty grandeur upon the morning’s ricey hiss…
“—meaning the lower floors offered no resistance, meaning already destroyed, meaning blown up before the fucking collapse—“
He’s right, I guess. Mr. Greatest Work of Art Imaginable for the Whole Cosmos is right. Art is good to the extent that it modifies. A car crash that leaves you concussed? Kitsch. A crash that cleaves your leg? Art. A worm that aerates your mums? Mid. The worm that aerates your cortex? Art. Thirst? No. A body succumbing to cottonmouth? Art. A mutating cell? Dumb. Cells that die and fester and pile into a thyroidic mass necessitating a three-hour flight to White Plains? Art. Mona Lisa. David—
“—and the Pentagon, bro? We get like five frames of fucking grainy ass footage from the motherfucking Pentagon?”
I called mom after the scone. “How long have you had it?” She laughed. Nervous. “I don’t know, hon…a few months? A year? It’s nothing, it’s—no need to worry, it’s—I’m, I’m probably just…overreacting.” Someone laughs outside my window. A few months? A year? Probably overreacting…yes, probably nothing…like her “heart attack” that turned out to be trapped gas or the Christmas she mistook bad clams for stomach cancer…nothing….probably…
“…the Pentagon…aka, like the most surveilled building on the fucking planet?”
The laughter sounded like a child’s. I’m looking for it. The day is clear. Bright and quiet. The sky is nothing. Pure blue. Cloudless. A blue nothing that feels alive and carnivorous. If you stare too long, it might reach out and pull you close, drown you in its belly…
“…five frames? You’re fucking kidding me, bro, Like…you know how many fucking cameras are at the Pentagon?”
No, it’s all a trick, the sky—blue wool pulled over our eyes, divined to make us forget the gas giants, the black vacuum, the rogue stones, the belching furnaces stinking behind it. They know—they know if we woke every morning staring into black vacuums, we wouldn’t get out of bed, get to work, contribute. Therefore: blue. The blue gives us hope. We’re all little yolky babes, laid into existence by strong mamas, born safe, left to grow towards our heart’s desires, shielded by our robin-egg-blank.
“—and don’t get me fucking started on Tower Seven…like, it’s just a coincidence all the records were there? The SEC shit? The Enron shit?“
Another laugh. I turn to the window. A toddler walks by holding her mother’s hand. A plane drones overhead. The first flight was twelve seconds. One hundred twenty feet. About how far the toddler is from my window. The toddler laughs, tries to escape her mother’s grip. Her mother is a zillenial twenty-something; the girl’s age when the towers fell. I forgot her name. I’ve met them before, a few days after the incident, the thing with Ava, when my eye was fucked and purple; the toddler stared as I got my mail. “Purity, don’t be rude…no staring…” I flashed a smile and nodded. “Purity, don’t be shy…” The zillenial smiled back. “…say hi to the nice man.” Purity pressed her face into her mother’s leg and cooed a soft “Hiiiiiii.” I closed the mailbox, performed a cartoon wave. “Hi, Purity.” Purity. When those who witnessed The Greatest Work of Art shit out their kids, they named them Purity or Trust or Comfort, Unity or Mercy or Prudence. Some fuzzy infant memory of mom clutching rosaries in front of CNN makes them birth old-world comforts into meatspace, makes them grow and summon Purity to suckle trauma from their witnessing breasts, gulp the terror from our world, metabolize and forge a new world where new people board planes with their shoes on and sing Kumbaya when there’s turbulence…
“…the BBC reported building seven collapsed, like twenty fucking minutes before it actually did—like, they knew…they shot their load too quick and we saw…”
Done. I screenshot my confirmation number. Tonight, I’m flying. I’ll work and Uber to the airport; I’ll remove my shoes and put my laptop in a gray bin and walk through a machine and let 12F palm my ass for three hours while I sit in the sky Googling my name, what it means, hoping it’s something better than Purity or Trust or Comfort. And if we crash? If we’re hijacked and flown into the Flatiron or the Freedom Tower? I’ll just watch. Art. The Sistine fucking Chapel, no different than appreciating Monet. I’ll watch the wings separate from the fuselage and think about mom and her lump, how she’s responsible for birthing something who doesn’t know what its name means…doesn’t know if it’s flying to the right airport…doesn’t know how to get home…who can’t keep a thyroid from mutating and pulsing and—
“You want a hot pocket, bro?”
I turn away from the screen and look at him. He’s re-tying the robe’s sash. His bulge is exposed, stretching out Mercury. He has a big dick.
“Yeah.”
He flashes a thumbs-up, shuffles to the kitchen. The freezer opens. I Google potential causes of neck lumps. Lipoma? Goiter? Lymphoma? Another plane speeds overhead. Purity and her mom are gone. The blue looks sated; it ate them. The microwave opens, closes, hums—the smell of processed cheese seeps into my room. The greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos was a Tuesday, Tuesday morning, story time. We sat Indian on the floor, circling our teacher—a milk-smelling woman whose face memory conjures as an anonymous blob of smooth, blood-creamed skin. She was reading, Ms. BloodCream, from a nondescript book. There was a knock at the door. Loud. Twenty little necks whipped towards the door, watched it open. Mom. It was mom. She was tall, vibrant, lumpless—her heels like gunshots on the tile. As she approached, her eyes looked red, and mascara spaghetti streaked her left cheek. She handed a note to Ms. BloodCream. Her face pulsed as she read. She looked at me and nodded in affirmation. I think she was trying to smile.
We had to drive through the hills to get home. The greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos was a clear day. Through the hills, on such a day, you can see the million-mouthed flickers of Manhattan glass steaming beyond the Hudson. There was traffic, standstill. Drivers hunched and crying, pressing eel-sized phones into their heads. Cars on the shoulders, people, out, standing, hand visoring their eyes to watch the black plume. “Mom?” I said. “What’s that?” “Oh,” she turned up the radio, flashed a quick smile. “The smoke?” There was lipstick on her incisors. “Nothing, sweetheart, it’s—it’s just a little accident across the river.” I watched it billow against the blue as we inched home. I cracked the window; the world smelled like summer camp and bad eggs. Mom was quiet. Nervous. Finger-thrumming the wheel, humming nonsense along with the radio. Whenever the DJs stopped the music to speak about the plume, she’d scan until she found more music to hum to: high water risin’…silhouettes in the window…watch them ‘til they’re gone…When all the DJs quit music for good, she turned off the radio and asked about school: “So…you like your new class? Any new friends? Who was that one…that one in the blue sweater? He’s a friend right? His mother is nice…yeah…you used to play with him in Kindergarten, remember?”
It took an hour to get home. Mom wouldn’t let me turn on the TV. “Help me in the kitchen, hon.” We made dozens of pancakes and ate until the world smelled like Mrs. Buttersworth. I wanted TV, cartoons, “pleeeeeease.” She said nothing. She took my hand and led me to the couch, sat me down, kissed lipstick into my forehead. She hummed as she walked to the record player and put on Sgt. Pepper’s. The audience milled through the speakers, the orchestra tuned: it was twenty years ago today… She sat next to me, threw a blanket over us. She pulled me into her throat and smelled my hair and rubbed my back. Sgt. Pepper’s sleeve was in my lap. Staring. It’s wonderful to be here…She put her red finger on the old man floating in the top left corner, she cleared her throat, and told me whose who. We’d like to take you home with us, we’d love to take you home… There was something kind in all those faces—all the disparate faces cattle prodded and stage hooked and Bataan marched across epochs, pasted shoulder to shoulder, in a senior class photo. Gathered under the blue, the same blue outside, across the river, pregnant with smoke. Gathered to protect me from the plume, letting it steal their colors and burn their faces, so I can sit and learn their names: nothing to see here, kid, we’re here, we’ve survived—you’ll survive.
He comes back with a hot pocket bleeding grease into a Dixie. The plane’s gone. Quiet. We eat in silence, burning tongues, blowing cheese. Another plane passes. Low. I think of the people on it, coating each other with aerosolized piss. Where are they going? Who in their life is growing a lump? Is it lymphoma? It’s probably lymphoma…
“Do you ever think about how many people are just floating around the sky at any given moment?” I ask.
He looks up, a little worm of cheese twitches on his lip. “Like…”, he swallows, “thousands and thousands I guess.”
I swallow and run my tongue along my K9s, searching for scone.
“Yeah, it’s fucked up.”
He swallows again. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He sets his plate on the carpet and grabs his phone.
“—this footage is fucked up, bro, like look…you can see them—the fucking squibs, controlled fucking explosions going floor by floor—“
His phone is in my face. I take another bite and watch the fucking squibs.
The roomate is fleshier than ever, yet the text went deep inside mine, I'm sure it left bruises. Art bruises, of course.
All hits all the time. Can't wait for the book. Might need to get a new book case just for hits.