“Who’s Michael Bay?”
“Who’s Michael Bay!? Did you really just ask me that?”
Billy/George put his hand on his chest to affect surprise. He had an amethyst pinky ring. Joshua should’ve felt disappointment, but he felt instead like having won a contest: Billy/George was more desperate/deluded than him; Joshua’s experience now equipped him to see it clearly. The waiter put the check in front of Billy/George, who pushed it over to Joshua without looking at it.
“He just asked me who Michael Bay was,” he said to the waiter, or to himself, or to anyone willing to be appalled at the ignorance.
“Who’s Michael Bay?” the waiter asked.
“Who’s Michael Bay!?” Billy/George clutched his head in exhibitionist disbelief. “Let’s just say he owns an island.”
I know what I know, Joshua thought. I can do it, whatever it is. He had the weight; he was acquainted with the real people; he had things to say and impart. He was a screenwriter, even if he had nothing to show for it. Fuck Billy and George and the whole lot of them! And more than anyone else, fuck Bega!
There was no way he wasn’t going to the workshop tonight.
* * *
Hence he took up an afternoon residency at the Coffee Shoppe and, fueled by a sequence of galactic-collision-grade cappuccinos, cranked out an entirely new scene, and then another one, and, then, another one. For the first time in a long while, he could perceive the far beacon of a finished script, the end of Zombie Wars, beyond which the lights of his better self shyly flickered.
He advanced to Graham’s straight from the Coffee Shoppe and landed on the futon not even glancing at Bega, who was the only one already in the living room, reading the newspapers spread on the desk. His ensemble today featured a T-shirt reading Sarajevo in the shape of the Coca-Cola logo. He had an orange in his hands, which he, for some reason, kept kissing. The smacking sound annoyed Joshua so much that he kept moving his tongue along his teeth, like a gum-bleeding boxer, which consequently invoked Ana’s lips and all that followed. But he managed to get invested in setting up his computer and be conspicuously busy with appearing to be busy.
“I am very sorry about whole thing,” Bega said, without looking up from the papers.
“What thing is that?” Joshua snapped.
“Cat.”
“Fuck you!”
“What can I tell you? Sorry.”
“It was my girlfriend’s cat. She loved him. He was her best friend.”
Kimmy was no longer his girlfriend, nor would she ever again be one, but the lie gave him no pleasure. Bega kissed the orange once more, then started peeling it with his teeth, spitting the fragments onto the unread page. What was he going to do with the peel? Joshua hoped he’d drop it on the floor for Graham to see and then dress him down for foreign littering.
“How did you explain cat to her? Just curious,” Bega said, dropping the peel into a bin at his feet. There was even a box of tissues on the desk, so that he broke the orange up into wedges and lined them up on the paper. “You can tell her he attacked you and you had to kill him.”
“Go to hell,” Joshua said.
“I’m joking. I’m really sorry about cat.”
“And what about Stagger?”
“Who’s Stagger?”
“Your killer friend broke Stagger’s arm, kicked him in the head. I had to take him to the hospital. He’ll never be the same again.”
It was hard to imagine Stagger’s life being any different than it was — it was somehow unruinable, his insanity its armor. The phone in Joshua’s pocket, pressed serendipitously against his testicles, buzzed and vibrated pleasantly, indicating a text message.
“That Stagger. Well, it was fair fight.”
“Fair? Please don’t talk to me anymore.”
“Okay. No talking.”
Wedge by wedge, Bega devoured the orange, then dropped the peel in the bin. Motherfucker! Joshua thought.
“Hey, listen to what your friend Rumsfeld said,” Bega offered, but Joshua showed no sign he’d heard him. Instead he pulled up the Zombie Wars file and it came up to conceal his screen wallpaper: a shot of the newscaster in Night of the Living Dead failing to explain the cataclysmic developments. He set out to read through one of his freshly written scenes, scanning for wrylies, wondering where Graham was. His cheek hurt, feeling swollen. The room smelled of Bega’s orange as he read from the papers:
“‘There is among the Iraqi people a respect for the care and the precision that went into that bombing campaign. It was not a long air campaign. It didn’t last for weeks. And there was minimal collateral damage — unintended damage.’ That is beautiful! Rumsfeld is genius! You should be thankful too, Joshua. Just one fat cat is minimal collateral damage.”
Bega’s pronouncing words with his Bosnian accent—bombing as “bomBing,” damage as “damach”—made Joshua even more annoyed.
“Fuck you,” Joshua said. “You know nothing. Not about the cat, not about me, not about this fucking country.”
“What I know is that you had sex with Esko’s wife.”
“I thought you were my friend. You brought a killer into my home.”
“It’s Kimmy’s home.”
“We split the rent. And it’s none of your business anyway.”
“Nobody was killed. You must have respect for care and precision.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“I thought that I must be there to protect you if Esko goes real crazy. You don’t know him. He could’ve break your neck just like that.”
“Could’ve broken my neck,” Joshua said gleefully.
“Broken your neck,” Bega said. “You don’t want to be alone with Esko, believe you me.”
“Thanks for saving my life, then!” Joshua said. His phone buzzed, but he ignored it, immersed in a vision of punching Bega’s face in, complete with the sound of his cheekbones cracking. Unleashing a few extra voracious zombies to rip the flesh off his bones could be pretty enjoyable too.
“Are Ana and Alma with Kimmy now?” Bega asked.
“Even if they were, I wouldn’t tell you. And they’re not at my place either.”
“Esko’s taking the whole thing hard. Drinking, a lot, talking to himself. He can get ideas, you know.”
“Why don’t you just leave me alone and take care of your terrorist friend instead?”
“I understand you’re angry. I’m there for you.”
“I’m here for you.”
“What?”
“You say: I’m here for you. Not: I’m there for you.”
“I’m here for you,” Bega said.
“Well, get the fuck out of here,” Joshua said.
Dillon walked in and took the far end of the sofa, inserting his presence between the two of them. “I just saw the craziest thing,” he pronounced.
But neither Joshua nor Bega showed any interest in the craziest thing. Graham entered, threw down his papers, and dropped in his chair. All of the splotches on his forehead stood united in one solidly red front.
“If any of you utter the words weapons of mass destruction,” Graham said, “I am going to projectile vomit directly in your face.”
“I just saw the craziest thing,” Dillon repeated for Graham’s benefit, but he ignored him as well. Joshua’s phone vibrated, yet again. There was a time when the phone was not embedded in you, the time when you could be alone with the people you were with. And when there was no one around, you could be by yourself, with yourself. Now your spiderweb was always being tugged.