“Don’t say that.”
“I wanted to spend time with you. You must have figured out that much.”
“You’re stoned.”
“You don’t even realize, you make me—” He hesitates, and she scrambles to say something so he’ll stop, but he gets there first. “You make me want to be better.”
“I don’t believe you.” She’s sure that all the eyes in the room are on them now.
“I swear, whatever kind of guy I am, I never meant for anything to happen, okay?”
The words create a feeling of vertigo in her. “What are you talking about? Have you heard something about my dad?”
“Just remember what I’m telling you. I promise you, I’m going to look after things.” Before she can respond, he steps out the door to the mud room, and she sees there’s a rucksack in his hand.
A few seconds later, a shriek comes from upstairs, followed by peals of laughter. Her first thought is that word is already spreading about his attempted kiss. Then someone calls down, “You’ve got to see this.” The people at the table start out of the room and Maggie finds herself abandoned, her mind still on Wale’s rucksack.
It isn’t long before more partygoers come in from the backyard to investigate the ruckus, and she’s swept along with them toward the second floor, trying to imagine what has happened. Maybe Lydia’s making a scene with Rhea. Or maybe Brid is watching the film and has viewed the dead bird in Pauline’s hand. Maggie’s legs grow heavy, but there are more bodies in motion behind her and she’s compelled upward.
Everyone is ascending the stairs except a lone pair making their way down. It’s Frank Dodd dragging Lydia by the hand. His bald head is beet red, his eyes angry slits, while Lydia’s skin is bloodless. Frank sees Maggie ahead of him and looks as if he might strike her.
“You people,” he seethes. “You people are sick.”
A second later they have passed by her and Lydia turns to flash her a helpless, desperate look.
Whatever has happened, it isn’t over, because upstairs the hallway is packed tightly with people pressing toward the playroom door, straining to look in. Maggie has to push past them to get inside. When she finally enters the room, everyone is staring at the wall and what’s projected there, and with horror she realizes why.
Beyond the backs of heads and wisps of smoke is a shot of her and Fletcher’s bedroom. The camera’s steady, as if mounted on its tripod. Sunlight pools on the floor, revealing a castaway pair of men’s underwear and a single brown sock. The comforter on the bed has been pulled down. Fletcher lies there on his back, not quite centred, his body sprawled across the sheets, naked, the light falling across him such that his ribs are individuated, countable. His legs are straight out, one foot hidden beneath a corner of the comforter, the other cut off by the frame. He faces the camera with a contented demeanour, head propped on a pillow, one arm flopped across the bed as though forgotten. With the other hand, he strokes his penis.
Fingertips run down the shaft, then squeeze and push up over the foreskin. Testicles hang one a little lower than the other, each disturbed by the hand’s motion, the skin that encloses them bright pink in contrast with the baked brown of the torso and the bleached thighs, the genitals so brightly coloured they’re almost not part of the body but an alien thing tugged at in a lazy effort to remove it. The fist works its way up and down. His hips lift from the bed to reveal the cleft of buttocks and a momentary wedge of darkness beneath them that collapses and vanishes as they compress upon the sheets. The camera’s focus is there at the root of him. His face is slightly blurred, subtleties of expression lost to the low resolution of the film stock, which registers only a kind of growing studiousness and flickers of pleasure that come and go with the flash of teeth. Maggie waits for a cutaway shot, a pan, a dissolve. Briefly a bird’s shadow flits through the square of light on the floor. The camera doesn’t flinch.
The soundtrack is whispers and guffaws. She dares not look around. Why does no one act? It’s as if they’re waiting for something. The comments grow louder, the laughter more raucous. Are Rhea and the boys still here? The priest’s sister? Someone says it’s disgusting and they should shut it off already, but Maggie seems to have lost a connection to her limbs. The image of Fletcher on the wall wavers. Squiggles of light dance in front of her. He tugs with more energy now, over and over, as though the film’s being rewound and replayed. She can’t get herself to move.
“Lucky Maggie!” says someone in the crowd. “He’s hung like a horse.”
Somebody else says, “If he doesn’t come soon, I’m going to.”
On the wall, he’s smiling and talking to the camera. What could he be saying? She fears that soon she’s going to see herself step into the frame, her pasty backside moving to straddle him, but they never did such things with the camera there. His expression is awful, so blithe and unaware of his audience. She looks around the room in a panic, wondering where he could be.
“Oh, Maggie, hi,” someone says, noticing her for the first time. Others turn toward her.
“The director!” someone else calls out. “Nice flick.”
Stumbling into the person beside her, she realizes it’s Dimitri. The scene on the wall has been happening forever. Pushing off him, she lurches toward the projector. Before she gets there, though, all sound drops away. It’s no longer her they’re watching. She knows what has happened, and she wants to call out for him to leave. A moment later someone greets him with a friendly, mocking cheer.
He hasn’t even realized what it is. In the doorway, he grins like it’s a surprise party. He’s about to make some remark when he notices what’s on the wall. Maggie watches as his face dies.
He takes a step back as if pushed in the chest. A few people snicker. When Maggie recovers herself enough to start for the projector again, the image on the wall has changed: a group is playing baseball in the backyard. Clouds graze blue sky, and the long grass bristles in the wind.
“When does the next show start?” says Dimitri.
Fletcher seems not to recognize him. “Get out,” he says. No one moves.
“Hey, relax—” Dimitri begins.
“Get out!” Fletcher cries. With arms extended, he rushes at the other man, grabs him by the shirt, and tries to drag him toward the door. Dimitri’s beer bottle flies from his hands, spraying its contents across the carpet. People on all sides step back as the two men clutch each other, the tendons in Fletcher’s neck taut, his jaw clenched in effort. Dimitri is heavier and more powerful; it isn’t long before he has Fletcher pinned to the floor. “Get out!” Fletcher screams. When he finally stops struggling, Dimitri releases his grip, stands, and adjusts his wrenched shirt, while Fletcher remains on the floor, panting and shouting for them all to go.
After Dimitri leaves, others follow, a few nodding at Maggie with the sympathy of downcast eyes.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” she hears one of them whisper to another. “Everybody jerks off.”
Once Fletcher and Maggie are the only people left in the room, he’s the one who speaks.
“I want them gone,” he declares, then shoots her a savage look, as if it’s she who has betrayed him. A moment later he’s in the hall shouting at people, ordering them off the property. Gradually his voice diminishes; she hears automobile engines starting up. From below there’s the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, glass breaking, and more shouted threats. On the projection wall the baseball game comes to an end, and the film of Pauline and the birds begins to play.