Iron 59
by Max Christopher
part 1
“Did Lawrence really sell a novel about aliens from Arcturus invading Earth?” June asked.
Dinner was over. Side one of Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert was spinning. God bless the return of vinyl. June’s question filled one of Jarrett’s exquisite pauses.
“Why not Arcturus?” I said.
“Arcturus is a red giant and has no planets,” June said. “If it ever did, they would have been swallowed as the star expanded. He might more plausibly have had his invaders come from the TRAPPIST-1 planets.”
“Planets settled by those monks?” I said. “Don’t the robes bunch up under the space suits?”
“The system is named for the telescope that found the planets,” June said.
“You make patient condescension sexy,” I said.
“What can I throw at you that won’t hurt?” June said.
“Paper money. Or your lovely self.”
“In Lawrence’s novel, the Arcturans have been concealing themselves,” Sydney said. “Like some people think the Martians are doing.” She tucked a foot under the other leg.
June rolled her eyes.
“Your grounding in the hard sciences has left you unreceptive to certain dramatic possibilities,” I told her.
“You look furious,” Sydney said.
Jane’s mouth quirked. “It’s come early,” she said.
Sydney’s face pinched in sympathy. “Want something?”
“Pills don’t touch it,” June said, shifting position. “Some mad publisher gave Lawrence a book contract for this?”
“Having a celebratory drink with his agent now,” Sydney said. “I spent half last night convincing Lawrence it was all real. We had to pause Seven Samurai a bunch of times because we were so excited. I couldn’t get past the—”
“Lawrence showed you Seven Samurai?” June asked.
“Sure. Why not?” Sydney said.
“She doesn’t know,” I said. “How could she?”
Sydney looked from one to the other of us, the chunky bangs of her brown pageboy flitting. “What?”
“Did you get through the whole thing?” June said. “All three black and white hours?”
“Yes.”
“Subtitles and all?” I said.
“Still yes.”
I sat back and looked at June. She looked at me.
“Let me clear the dishes,” June said.
“I’ll help you wash,” Sydney said.
I stood. “I’ll dry.’
“No!” both women said at once. June added, “Teddy, you sit down and think about power tools or something. Then I want you to tell it.”
“You know the story,” I said.
“You tell it better,” she said.
“As long as somebody tells me,” Sydney said, a flick of impatience in her voice.
With mysterious female efficiency the two women whisked all traces of dinner from the scuffed wood of the dining room table and padded — Sydney barefoot and June in silly black and yellow socks — into the kitchen.
Lawrence Barker showed Sydney Seven Samurai, I thought. I will be damned.
* * *
We were settled in the living room with glasses of cabernet. Dave Brubeck was taking five.
“This goes back a ways,” I began. “And the story is remarkably consistent in Lawrence’s telling despite the condition he was in. Remember, I’ve been hearing him tell it for years. We were seventeen then, so that’s what: fourteen years now.”
“Old men forget,” June said.
“There now, was that necessary?” I said.
“For the love of God,” Sydney said.
“Sorry. Lawrence got home stoned,” I said. “It was after eleven, and his thing was, he liked to put on channel thirty-eight at eleven-thirty and toast a bagel to eat while he watched The Twilight Zone on the kitchen TV. The old black and white ones with Rod Serling.”
“Driving high?” Sydney said.
“He got dropped off.”
“By whom?”
“Modesty forbids. You want to hear this?”
Sydney pantomimed zipping her mouth shut. It was a pretty mouth, and I envied Lawrence for a second, then felt ashamed. Not only because of June, but because of the kind of life Lawrence had lived. The disappointed expectations. The dead ends his restless intellect had led him into. The attempts to romance women who were incapable of responding. The trouble that could so easily have been avoided. Nobody knew or talked about Asperger’s syndrome while we were growing up. It was pretty cheap of me to begrudge him a nice thing.
“Only this time, when Lawrence lets himself into the house, he finds his dad still up. Not just up; Mr. Barker is sitting at the kitchen table, where Lawrence would sit and eat his bagel and watch his Twilight Zones. This was in the days when you had to wait for stuff to come on TV.”
“Those dark times,” June said.
“That was like, what, five minutes after the discovery of fire?” Sydney said.
“Closer to Thermopylae,” I said. “I heard Nero watched Rome burn on a big Motorola color set only he could afford. Although when he got the bill, the emperor had the merchant garroted. And Nero had a naked Parthian hermaphrodite change channels manually. He-she was twelve, and got a flick on the buttocks when the emperor grew bored with a program. Nero had a whip of knotted horsehair made for the purpose. The hair came from the tail of Incitatus, the racing horse Caligula made a senator.”
“How long can he go like this?” Sydney said.
“No telling. I just let it run down if there’s nothing pressing. To return to the topic, Teddy,” June said. She folded her legs under her so that she sat on her silly black and yellow socks. It made a fetching picture. I have always liked how women sit. More than their tendency to spoil the fun.
“Lawrence’s dad was sitting with a half-empty Carlsberg in front of him. There were several empties on the table. After eleven at night, a parent up, right in Lawrence’s spot, drinking heavily, what the hell? This never happened. That was why he could come home stoned. So Lawrence was both put out and freaked out. But, being Lawrence, he thought he could brazen it out.”
“He always thinks he can brazen it out,” June said. “Have you seen that, Sydney? That too-cool-for-school thing?”
“Maybe,” she said, eyes narrowed.
“He’s fine-tuned it over the years,” I said.
“Any news on Mr. Barker’s condition?” June said.
“No change as of this afternoon,” Sydney said.
“So Lawrence has squared his bony shoulders and decided to bluff,” I said. “And what’s the first thing out of his mouth?”
Sydney shook her head.
“Iron fifty-nine,” I said.
Sydney gasped.
“What?” June said.
“It’ll keep,” Sydney said. “Go on, Teddy.”
“Lawrence looks at his father and says, ‘Iron fifty-nine.’
“And Mr. Barker says, ‘What?’
“Lawrence says, ‘Iron fifty-nine. Your name is Felix. Fe is iron and LIX is the Roman fifty-nine. So you’re iron fifty-nine.’
Sydney whooped with laughter. “This is how he brazens it out. To sound not stoned.”
I said, “Not only is Mr. Barker there in Lawrence’s spot, he’s got the TV on. Channel fifty-six is showing Seven Samurai, and he’s watching it.
“‘What’s this?’ Lawrence asks his father. His dad tells him it’s a story set in feudal Japan about the virtuous few standing up to the wicked many in defense of the innocent.”
Sydney said, “His dad didn’t react to Lawrence’s loopy comment on his name?”
“Mr. Barker was preoccupied, as you will see. Lawrence says, ‘How long is it?’
“His dad says, ‘Three hours.’
“‘How far into it are you?’ says Lawrence.
“Mr. Barker says, ‘You just missed the opening credits.’
“Lawrence sags. ‘Crud,’ he thinks.
“Lawrence thinks he’s doing a swell job masking his frustration. Not even asking his dad why he can’t watch on the living room TV, or the set in the master bedroom, rather than Lawrence’s special eat-a-bagel-and-watch-Twilight-Zone-stoned spot. Also, Lawrence is high. Hard to keep track of being impatient and disappointed. He sits down at the kitchen table and starts to watch the movie. The appearance of the brigands, the unhappy villagers, the trip to see the old guy and get his advice. In his woolly way Lawrence is getting into it.
“Then his father says, ‘You bothered by the subtitles?’
“‘Naw,’ says Lawrence.
“‘That’s good,’ says his dad. ‘You know what the beauty of subtitles is?’
“Lawrence says, ‘Huh?’”
“Quick,” Sydney said.
“Mr. Barker asks again, and Lawrence starts some blather about subtitles being better than dubbing because dubbing compromises the integrity of the script and blah blah blah, and he’s tripping over his own tongue.
“‘Nah,’ says Mr. Barker. ‘The beauty of subtitles is that the spoken sounds are separated from the meaning of the words. There’s a subtle disconnect.’ This is how Lawrence reconstructs what his father said. ‘If you want, you can tune the speaker out entirely, or almost entirely.’
“‘Huh,’ says Lawrence.”
“‘Like tuning out your wife,’ says Mr. Barker.”
Sydney’s wide brown eyes popped. “What?”
“That’s what Lawrence said. Or so he remembers it. And Mr. Barker clams up for a few minutes, half an hour, who the hell knows how long. And Lawrence thinks maybe he imagined it and drifts back into his happy place.
“On TV the soon-to-be leader of the seven Samurai asks for a couple of rice balls and a priest’s robe. He shaves his head, dresses up like a Buddhist priest and rescues a child from a kidnapper.
“Then Lawrence hears a little scrape and looks down. There’s a bagel on a plate in front of him on the kitchen table. He looks at his dad, so high he can hear the strings on his eyeballs creaking.
“His dad knew, Lawrence realizes. Knew his son liked to come home and put on the TV and make himself a bagel. It’s a cinnamon-raisin with plain cream cheese, toasted. Just the way Lawrence liked it.
“‘You know,’ Lawrence says stupidly. ‘Aren’t you asleep by now?’ Meaning, aren’t you asleep by the time I get home?
“His dad smiles and sits back down. They watch some more. Lawrence munches away on his bagel. Then his dad says, ‘I know Mom tells you I tune her out.’
“Lawrence says, ‘Uh-huh.’
“‘This actor is Takashi Shimura,’ Mr. Barker says. ‘He’s terrific. He’ll turn up later as a scientist in the first Godzilla movie. See how he’s shaved his head bald now?’
“‘Yes,’ says Lawrence.
“We see his hair grow back throughout the rest of the movie. It’s a clever device to show how much time is passing.’
“Lawrence says, ‘Whoah.’”
Sydney laughed. “Oh, Lawrence.”
“He’ll be here soon,” June said. I looked at her. “Sydney’s missing him,” she said. “When she curls up tiny and rubs her arms like she’s cold, that’s her tell.”
“I’m so obvious.”
“I just know you. And it’s sweet.” She turned mock-stern eyes on me. “What’s your tell for missing me, Teddy?”
“I stare into space from the moment you leave my sight. Sometimes I soil myself. The landlady hired some kids in the building to clean me up. They go on alert when they see you leave. You see the black looks some of them give you? Your leaving means a disgusting ordeal for them, more often than not.”
“It is possible to think too fast,” June said drily.
“Says the lady who can work out Fermat’s last theorem in her head,” I said. “So Mr. Barker says, ‘You ever wonder why men tune out their wives?’
“‘I guess not,’ Lawrence says. His sluggish brain has gotten around to wondering if his dad also knows he’s high when he gets home some nights.
“‘The female voice is a powerful instrument,’ says Mr. Barker. ‘You ever think about why that is?’
“Lawrence says no around his mouthful of bagel. He’s seventeen, his thoughts about girls have little to do with their voices.
“‘There may come a time when a woman’s voice is the only thing keeping her alive,’ Mr. Barker says. ‘A time when she is unable to flee or defend herself physically. If she is in the final stages of pregnancy, or giving birth. Or for a time thereafter. Or maybe she experiences crippling pain during her menstrual period.’
“‘Guys have pain, too,’ Lawrence says, ‘and are sometimes helpless.’
“‘If a man is helpless something has gone wrong,’ Mr. Barker says. ‘A woman knows she is going to be helpless at some time or other. In the ordinary course of things. Even if she never has a baby, the anxiety about helplessness is in her wiring. Like stepping up and being the hero is in a man’s, even if he can’t open a Swiss army knife without stabbing himself in the palm.
“The samurai Heihachi here — fun but not that good — signs up all the same. Or take Kikuchiyo, the bum. Rambunctious, undisciplined, a drunkard, still wants to be a hero. Wired for it.’ As Lawrence tells it, his brain begins to wobble inside his skull at this point.”
“I bet,” said Sydney.
“‘But,’ says Mr. Barker, ‘if a woman is physically defenseless and alone, confronted with someone or something bent on killing her, how is she to defend herself? She can’t in those circumstances. Except with her voice.’
“‘Would a woman’s screaming frighten off a tiger?’ Lawrence asks.
“‘It would if I was that tiger,’ says Mr. Barker. He cocks an eyebrow. “‘Was that tiger? Should that be was or were?’
“‘I’m never sure,’ Lawrence says. ‘Like who or whom.’
“‘Don’t get me started on who or whom,’ Mr. Barker says. He gestures with his chin at the TV. Kikuchiyo is clowning it up and making the village children laugh. ‘But say it’s a man menacing her. Picture some village attacked by brigands. Or a city in riot. A woman caught by herself, all her defenders dead or captured.’
“Lawrence is still chewing the same bite. It’s mush now. His father has never spoken to him in this way.
“‘And, Lawrence, upon what being must that female voice have the strongest effect? For the preservation of the race?’
“Lawrence says, ‘Us. Guys. The male.’
“‘Full marks,’ says Mr. Barker. He drains the bottle and sets it down. ‘Think how deep in the human machinery that female ability to persuade the male with her voice resides. How they use that survival trait to keep up working, keep us giving, keep us on edge. We think their apparent inability to do this or that thing obligates us to do it for them. Change a tire, put up a shelf, install a car stereo.
“Why do we think that? They have brains and muscles and opposable thumbs. Who puts that idea into our heads? And there’s always a new thing, some fresh urgent need, often carrying the implication that it is the result of one’s failure as a man to take care of things in the first place. Subtly suggesting that we don’t quite measure up. That we need to keep repairing what we screw up. Maybe a breather here and there so we’re not worn out quite so fast as we might be. We keep hearing married men live longer than unmarried ones. Ever wonder why, if that’s true?’
“‘I dunno,’ Lawrence says.
Copyright © 2018 by Max Christopher
