The Laughter of Strangers (20 page)

Recover: the memory of a recent argument with a certain someone.

The medicated numbness pulls back as I am reminded of what’s missing.

Recover: the memory of Spencer being absent from recent events, Spencer and the kidnappings; the kidnappings and how they are escaping and what that might mean for Spencer and our professional relationship and the friendship as a whole.

Recover: enough to send me into a sprint around the house, listening for those footsteps.

I run to one end of the hall and wait.

Listen.

I hear footsteps trailing behind me, stopping, mimicking my own.

Don’t move. Wait.

The footsteps begin up the steps to the second floor. Each step creaks with deliberate purpose. Direct me to where I need to be.

I run up the steps, feeling nauseous due to the increase in heart-rate after having been medicated and stationary for so long.

I really shouldn’t be running around like this, not while on this sort of medication, but who’s going to stop me? Myself?

Yeah right.

No trust there.

The second floor hallway is lightless and dark.

The stairs continue to creak long after I’ve climbed them.

Annoyed, I shout:

QUIET!

And the house is still.

Tune into the atmosphere. I merge into the cadence of the house.

I open the one door that leads to the one room that matters most.

Sarah sits in a rocking chair, talking to herself, “Yeah it’s going to be a great day! I like swing sets!”

She sees me and I freeze, as if not wanting to be found out.

She continues talking, “He’s finally here.

“Yeah he looks better than he was.

“Yeah he doesn’t know.

“Yeah he’s not going to take the news very well.”

I make a face, “What are you doing? Stop talking to yourself!”

Sarah tilts her head to one side, “Look who’s talking.”

“Yeah he hasn’t noticed.”

“What?
What
?”

Sarah addresses the area to her left, “Should I tell him?”

I shake my head, “Is it James again? More of your imaginary friends?”

Sarah replies with an even tone, “Dad says you need to start listening if you want to keep the story going.”

You can say I’m a little startled, “What do you mean?”

I look around the room, “Who are you talking to?”

Taking a few steps forward, “Who are you talking to Sarah?”
Sarah says, “Dad wants to know if you remember anything?”

“Spencer?”

Sarah nods, “He’s right here.”

“Where?”

“Dad says you can’t see him.”

“But you can?”

Sarah grins, “You wrote him out of your life. He doesn’t exist anymore.”

“I don’t…” I trail off, shaking my head.

Recall what I said about confusion. It’s all coming back to me now.

“Dad says he’s teaching James how to box like a well-rounded fighter.”

“What?”

She nods, “Yeah, Dad says James can be even better than you. Dad says he’s more dedicated.”

What I feel isn’t quite anger but it’s not far off.

“Dad says he’s even got a good alias for James.”

“Oh yeah, and what is it?”

“Dad says it’s ‘Dynamite.’”

Her words send shivers down my spine.

I sit down on the edge of her bed.

I listen to Sarah talk to her father, getting only one side of the conversation. Amid the space of a haunting, Spencer has sought revenge for being unwritten from my career.

And yes, I did that.

I ignored him.

I didn’t appreciate him.

What is James but another imposter?

 
THE SILENCE I DESIGN

It’s not what I choose to remember but rather that I remembered anything at all. When everything eventually falls silent, the fact that I can retain the texture of a surface and the pitch of a tone, the smell of a scent and the resonance of an emotion, is more than enough. I should be content that I am able to retain any fragment of my past. I mean, right?

That’s why we have photo albums, flash drives, and home videos.

What else am I missing?

The silence I design comes from the memories I derive.

SILENCE

In each moment of silence, I pull from a memory I never knew I had.

They haunt me like the hauntings continue to linger around the house. I no longer question whether the hauntings or the memories are real or fake. The fact that they remain in my mind is enough and I hope it is enough for you.

But then why Spencer, why now?

Why James, who does he think he is?

SILENCE

“He seems to think he’ll be a better version of you,” Sarah says. She sneaks up behind me, grabs my hand, looks at my reflection in her vanity mirror. I look down at her and ask, “So you hear them then? It wasn’t your imagination?”

She grins, “Do you want to play a game?”

When I turn to look back at myself in the mirror, I discover that my reflection is already staring back at me.

“Umm…”

Sarah looks, “Oh, you can see him! Yay!”

“What?”

“James, say hi!”

My reflection steps to the side, waves and says, “Hello, my name’s Willem.”

I hear him, his voice tinny and muffled but otherwise it’s a lot like listening to your voice after having been recorded on a cheap microphone.

Sarah giggles, “I still like to call him James.”

“I was James, once,” he nods, winking at Sarah.

“That’s me? That doesn’t look like me!”

SILENCE

“Dad says that it does.” 

“Where is he?”

“Dad says he’s standing right next to you.”

I rub my eyes but nothing changes the fact that I can’t see him.  So what happens next? What turns James into me?

“Don’t you remember?”

What do I say to that?

What does she even mean?

A rumble comes from deeper in the house. The basement.

Sarah gasps, “He let another one go.”

“Spencer?”

She nods, “Dad is mad at you.”

“Tell him I’m mad at him!”

Sarah frowns, “I don’t think you and Dad should fight so much.”

DO I HAVE A CHOICE?

Does anyone have a choice?

I feel like the values around me change more often than I can create meaning. What am I?

List them here:

______________

______________

______________

Because lately, due to the last fight and what I’ve done to create a fence around the spotlight, everyone has been wanting to create their own definition of who I am. Who is Willem Floures?

It’s not an easy question to answer.

Not something easily defined.

Then again, can any identity be clearly defined?

Sarah says, “Dad thinks you are too self-absorbed.”

“Really?”

Nodding, “And Dad says that you could have been a better fighter if you did more for yourself instead of…” she stops, as if waiting for the rest of it to be whispered into her ear, “having him speak for you.”

“Tell him that’s absolute bullshit. He wanted as much of the spotlight as he could manage!”

Sarah replies, “Dad says he can hear you fine. Dad also says that you should have started writing your story if you wanted to be the biggest part of it.”

I shrug, “What does that even mean?”

James chimes in, “Own every decision you make. Nothing just ‘happens’ without there being a sequence of actions and reactions.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“If you aren’t talking to me then you’re clearly in denial. You need to start listening to what you’re saying.”

Sarah tells me, “Dad says that you need to stop hiding from what’s happened.”

“What? What does he mean by that? I think I’ve seen too much as it is. I feel like I might forget how to breathe, that’s how confused and blurred everything has become!”

Sarah lets go of my hand.

Everything goes silent.

SILENCE

And within the silence, something climbs out of a far-off cavern of my mind. My eyes cross, vision blurring, until I blink in rapid succession.

Eyes uncrossed, I see in the mirror an entire memory on replay where I am seemingly the only one that hasn’t seen it before.

SILENCE

The memory plays out like a silent film.

The faces I make are extremely exaggerated. I am not fighting myself. I am fighting everyone else. The ring is more of a stage dressed up to look like a ring. There must be a number of cameras because the angle switches often enough to account for at least five distinct, separate sources.

I see a number of shots, all of them haymakers from one young man.

Not me.

I am not young.

The camera cuts to where Spencer would be standing, but he is not there. The silent film cuts to the word MISSING and back to the memory.

Memory has a runtime of a couple of minutes.

Memory is a scene in a film everyone watched but me.

The young man hits me with a haymaker that must have hurt him more than it hurt me, but like a nice guy (really?) I seem to fake a KO.

I fall to the floor and a woman dressed as a referee, who appears to be the host of this memory, this talk show of some sort, begins the ten count, stops at five, lifts me up, sees that I’m totally “KOed” and waves her arms.

No contest.

The young man in pain is treated a prize.

Cut to the words:

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Next frame:

YOU KO’ED THE TOP CONTENDER!

Next frame:

WHAT IS HENRY’S LAST WISH?

Cut back to the memory.

Cut back to film: The cameras zoom in close on the young man. He appears malnourished, barely anything but skin and bones. He doesn’t have any hair. The host hugs him; Henry grips his hand, in pain, but is too excited by the win, the ultimate prize (anything he wants).

Cuts away before I can get a look at what he wanted.

SILENCE

In that moment of silence the mirror fades to black and the house mutes itself as I reflect on what I just saw.

It rushes at me, the details.

“Make a Wish Foundation: Day of Fisticuffs: Sponsored by ______: Live on The Day Show. All proceeds go to terminal cancer research.”

SILENCE

The mirror holds more.

I try to look away but can’t: I want to remember.

I want to see.

This one has sound.

No color. I seem to remember things in a debilitated, limited manner.

There is only sound and the still image of my face.

That’s me?

I look tired, dark bags under the eyes, my eyes barely open. I have my hand raised, as if swatting away some sort of unpleasantness.

There is static.

SILENCE

And then the audio begins and the moment it begins I want it to stop.

How do I forget?

Hear: “…yeah. Yeah. No, that’s not it at all. Like, I know that I’ve had a great career but fuck them if they think I’m nearing the end. I’m like fine wine, with age comes an onslaught, you know?”

Static over everyone else’s voice but mine.

“Yeah! Exactly.”

Static.

“This? It’s just a little confidence. Sipping confidence. Sipping confidence like it’s nothing really. No. I don’t remember anything about that.”

Static.

“So what? Maybe I dabbled in the charities. It looks good when you’re in with the charities. Huh? I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time. Sipping confidence and slinging punches. That’s what it’s all about.”

Static.

“You’re talking to me. Nothing but ‘Sugar.’ Willem’s the name and Floures is the game.”

I cringe; grind my teeth the more I listen.

SILENCE

Thankfully it ends but not before the fade to black, the surge of residual remembrance. It was some kind of provocative morning radio show.

The word “uncensored” comes to mind.

I sound like an asshole and maybe that’s what I was aiming for at the time. I remember bits and pieces about how the media was baffled by the performance, summing it up as “tell-all” and “inebriated and grilled by XXXX” the radio DJ who I can’t seem to remember by name.

I can see him though, what he looks like.

He passes through the mirror; I see him walking by

Yeah, that’s him.

I mean, my appearance is unbearable and really humiliating but maybe that was the point?

I don’t know…

I don’t feel good about it.

It makes me look like…

SILENCE

The memories are mine.

They begin to speak to me in a voice that’s familiar but I can’t yet place where I’ve heard it before.

The colors bleed into each other as I watch two faces form—mine and…another familiar face.

Cut to a frame, made entirely for reference:

HE IS A CELEBRITY, OKAY?

Okay.

Bleed more until I see the surrounding, the context, the nature of this promotional media event.

CELEBRITY FIGHT NIGHT

I am fighting someone that’s never fought before. Not in this context. The memory trickles out like yet another fragment of film.

Perspective is a set of eyes is a single camera is a handy-cam, somewhat grainy quality. At one point the camera is flipped around so that I can see into myself. At that moment I see a flicker of myself, ‘James,’ Sarah, and someone else. A reflection of selves haunting anomalous spaces.

That someone else is Spencer. But I don’t know that until after everything falls back to silence.

The celebrity and I trade punches but it’s clear that I’m not having it.

I focus on the jab, taking it easy for a few rounds, until the celebrity hits me with a hook that pushes through my somewhat shoddy defense and stuns me. Off center, the celebrity actually scores a knockdown.