From time to time here on the blog we’re fortunate enough to get new work from established writers. James P. Othmer’s writing came to me like a fever dream with his blistering first novel ‘The Futurist’ which I reviewed in my column at Ain’t It Cool News. In a way his work reminds me of Kurt Andersen’s writing, in that he has an ability to travel forward or backwards in time a few weeks, years, and bring back completely new information and deliver it to the reading public like a magician. When I read ‘After Smithereens’ a few weeks ago it totally blew my mind. I’m thrilled to share it with you.
After Smithereens
By James P. Othmer
(jamespothmer.com)
“Did you ever think that maybe you may have had, like, something to do with it?”
We are alone in the hardware aisle of a giant, one-stop, all you need to live box store. Me and fucking Hobbs. I consider a plastic-encased collection of flashlights, pen-to-spotlight-sized. The copy on the packaging says Every kind of light for every kind of emergency. I drop it into my basket, make a point of not looking at Hobbs, and say nothing.
“You know, in even the most secondary way, contributed to it?”
I cave and look at Hobbs. Short, fat, formerly loveable Hobbs. “Me? You think me? Secondarily? Remotely? Subliminally? Go away, moron.” I jiggle the cart at the handle bar, trying to unlock the right-leaning front wheels. Blame the asshole who designed the wheels of the common shopping cart. Blame the guy who writes trademark- stamped lies on flashlight packaging. But me? As I move forward, Hobbs, of course, follows.
“Not solely but…”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“But sort of cumulatively. As one of many, each as responsible as the other.”
Hobbs stops in Automotive Parts. Automotive Parts is a place that we absolutely do not need to visit, but here we are anyway. We’re experts at considering and often reaching for what we don’t need. Floor mats stamped with the insignia of our favorite NFL teams. Windshield-tinting kits. Stay-hot coffee mugs that plug into our cigarette lighters.
I watch with curiosity and then disgust as Hobbs tosses a pair of large, fuzzy mirror dice into his basket. Just thinking about the moment when the auto parts aisle manager stopped the novelty auto parts salesman before he left and said, “Oh, yeah. Out of the giant fuzzy dice again. Let’s do a dozen this time,” makes me want to smack someone. When Hobbs winks at me it occurs to me that my disgust has become something that Hobbs has begun to crave, to shamelessly solicit. Which is why I quickly decide to deny him of the satisfaction of thinking he’s disgusted me again. “Cool,” I say. “Really neat.” This works so well he not only stops smiling, he puts the fuzzy goddamn dice back on the shelf hanger.
“So, then it’s…our fault?”
“Absolutely,” he just about shouts.
Then, because he’s so pleased with the way things are developing, our dialogue, he reaches back to reclaim the dice and doesn’t even look to see how I feel about it. I move. Hobbs follows. At the end of the Sporting Goods aisle we stop. Rather than heading right into the allegedly fun stuff, as you’d expect of two 23-year old, immature sexually-stunted jackasses, we stop and stare at the daunting row of balls and bats, clubs and sticks, Frisbees and Lawn Jarts. We consider the aisle as if it is a wonder, as if it is a dream, as if it is a graveyard. I do, anyway, because to me it is all of these things. At the same time, we lean into the handles of our poorly maintained carts and move on, towards a more practical place.
“You’re an asshole.
Hobbs feigns hurt feelings. But I know he likes this, too. The supposedly good-natured bickering. “I’m an asshole?”
“We agreed not to dwell, that the topic’s off limits. But you, you won’t give up.”
“Sorry,” he says, smiling. Always smiling. “I must have lost the minutes to that meeting.” On TV, this would have been a good laugh track moment. And if there was some kind of audience in the store to hear us, to appreciate the banter of the two opposites who down deep like each other, the exchange might have come off as kind of cute. But no one is around to hear us, and to me the whole thing comes off as kind of sad, kind of pathetic.
One of the other topics we had discussed is when it would be okay to laugh again. At first we had been in agreement: never. There were things that we would never discuss again, and it would never be okay to laugh again. And not just about the things we’d agreed never to discuss, but anything. But then one day while we were walking along a frontage road near the Thruway Hobbs called my name and when I turned around the emaciated face and caramelized eyes of a long-dead raccoon was resting on my shoulder. I screamed and cursed at Hobbs and when I began to run he began to chase me with the lifeless rotting fucking animal and while we were running, probably because we weren’t thinking, just running, we started to laugh for the first time.
So the answer to the laughter question turned out to be sixteen days. After sixteen days it is okay to laugh. But Hobbs. Now all he wants to do is laugh.
Standing in the wagon wheel racks and overstuffed shelves of the Women’s Wear section, I watch Hobbs unwrap a three-pak of black faux satin panties that are the signature brand of some former sexpot TV actress turned hag. Of course he pulls a pair over his pasty fat head. Out of habit I look around, even now still worried what others might think. Even now, I still blush. I begin to say something, but what can I say? I’ve known Hobbs since he was a chronic nose-picker in kindergarten; it’s not as if he just started acting this way, like his panty-head behavior is anything new to me. Hobbs hasn’t changed at all. The problem is that everything else has. Which is why the panties on the head routine gets no laughter from me. I shake my head, turn my cart around and head back to Hardware.
“This is different than dwelling,” he says, still following me, still, in effect, dwelling. He raises the panties over his eyebrows to more convincingly express his talking point. “This is speculating, which is considerably healthier.”
“Speculate. Wonder. Daydream. Fret. It’s all dwelling over something I’m done with.” I weigh a hatchet in my hands, convince myself that I absolutely need a hatchet, and drop it into the cart. Then I begin to collect the only other things that I can consider essential: half-inch rope, duck tape, a propane torch. Assorted batteries. Not long ago everything had seemed essential. Not long ago I would have filled six carts if someone had told me to take, on the house, anything I considered essential. But now I am hard-pressed to find anything remotely essential, and the very definition of the word makes my fucking skull throb.
Heading towards checkout I see Hobbs at the magazine racks, thumbing through a copy of Penthouse.
“Jesus. Come on.”
He holds up the magazine, centerfold beaver shot facing me. “Is ironic the right word to use regarding the fact that now that I have access to unlimi
ted porn it creeps me out? Why does watching porn now seem more like an act of necrophilia?”
I shrug. “The dead fantasizing about the dead. Is that still necrophilia or do you get off on some kind of technicality?” While Hobbs stares at me, wheels trying to churn, I pick up a six-pack of Juicy Fruit, a couple of Snickers. Then I almost begin to put my stuff on the conveyor belt, but catch myself. There will be no conveying of items, no scanning of bar codes, swiping of credit cards, no price checks, no choice between paper and plastic. Not even an IOU.
Outside in the silent parking lot I see that, in addition to the fuzzy dice, a carton of Twinkies and a Mets hat, Hobbs has dropped the Penthouse and some other smut into his basket. At least the panties are nowhere in sight. As we make our way to our cars I see peripheral movement about a hundred yards away, to the right of a dumpster in back of the Jiffy Lube. I’m fairly certain it’s her. My heart surges and the adrenalin of hope floods my soul. I glance back at Hobbs but he isn’t looking. For a moment I think about finally telling him. Sharing. Last time I saw her I pledged to myself to tell him if I saw her again. He deserves that much.
I’d first noticed her shadowing us thirteen days ago when we were coming out of the microbrewery. We were angry that all the beer inside had gone bad and after foolishly trying for two hours to make our own IPA, we started blasting the place with our double-barrel ten gauges. The vats, the sacks of hops, the plate glass front windows. It had everything to do with beer. It had nothing to do with beer. We still traveled with an arsenal close at hand then – shotguns, Glocks, sniper rifles — because we thought we had to. The shooting continued when we went back outside. I blew a hole in the microbrewery’s plywood sign near the road and Hobbs shot at a tanker at the Shell station next door that must have hit a hose or some kind of weak spot in the steel because it briefly sparked before the whole tanker and two rows of pumps blew to fucking smithereens. That’s when I saw her. While flames stabbed fifty-feet in the air, and debris fanned across the bluest sky. Right before I heard Hobbs say, “Whoopsie.” Right in the middle of smithereens.
She must have been spying on us from the strip mall on the far side of the gas station when the blast briefly spooked her out into the open. She looked about 25, but who knows. She wore jeans and a light blue t-shirt and was short and thin with short brown hair. I’d like to say she is beautiful and I certainly thought she was but at that point anything not named Hobbs would have been beautiful. As she ran away from the blast, from the corner of the strip mall toward the cover of a parked car, our eyes met and in her expression I could see fear and hurt and hope and a level of emotional intelligence that was light years beyond ours. Or maybe I saw none of that. Just a girl who, like us, was wondering what the fuck happened.
Regardless, I know that she knows I saw her and for a moment it even looked like she might stop and approach us. But her survival instincts took over. Even under the circumstances, why would she want anything to do with the likes of us – especially Hobbs – two horny, immature assholes with guns, looting, shooting and destroying?
I spotted her a bunch of times after that. Looking out from behind a Hummer in the driveway of a home that had burned to the ground. From behind the town gazebo while we drank a quart of Patron and pissed off the ramparts of a playground castle. I saw her eating alone on the business side of the counter of a pizza joint. Walking along a ridge in an apple orchard. I began to look for her everywhere and I never stopped thinking about her. I guess I never told Hobbs about her, or motioned for her to join us because I thought Hobbs would just fuck it up and then she’d go away for good. And who could blame her? Who knows what else she’d seen us do, besides the incident with the raccoon, the urinating off the kiddie castle, the visits to “adult” bookstores, the shooting up of the microbrewery. The destruction of the gas station. Sometimes I think I didn’t call out because I didn’t want to spook here. Others I know it’s because I don’t want to share. My sister used to say that we humans weren’t particularly good at sharing and I guess she was right.
After I saw the girl for the first time I vowed to change. To act more maturely. To impress her. To show her that I was responsible. To show her that I was the most worthy one with whom to start it all over again. So I stopped randomly shooting things. And getting violently drunk. And harvesting porn. I began to bath and shave regularly and only laughed at things that I thought a woman would laugh at, too. A correlation could also be made between the moment I first saw her and the moment I became dramatically less tolerant of Hobbs. I criticized the cars he selected to drive, the clothes he chose to loot. I mocked his disregard for hygiene and his insistence upon trying to make me laugh, trying to find humor in everything, including, all too frequently, the topic that I had tabled for eternity.
Before I saw her I would criticize Hobbs because I truly wanted him to change. But after, I did it only to make him look bad, to show her that he was not worthy, a lost cause. I want to point out the movement by the dumpster, to tell him about her, and all about what’s wrong with me, but still, I can’t. Instead I point to the car that I have chosen, an amazingly preserved 1966 Corvette, to take me back to our four-star business hotel. Hobbs sticks with his Prius.
After bringing our loot to our suites on opposite sides of the hotel we meet downstairs for dinner. I find Hobbs at the gas grill in the massive hotel kitchen cooking some rib-eyes that hadn’t yet spoiled with wild rice and onions. When Hobbs cooks, which is often, he never jokes but he seems happier than ever. This may be because he is a hell of a cook. At first it was easy to prepare a great meal but even though it is getting increasingly difficult to find fresh ingredients, his meals continue dazzle. I had never known this about him, that he was such a gifted chef, and that he enjoyed it so, and watching him, I wonder if he’d known this about himself, that he had this talent.
When the food is ready we go out to the lounge and sit at a table we had yet to clutter. I light three candles and we make a toast with the most expensive bottle of Bordeaux left in their cellar.
“To my oldest friend,” Hobbs says.
“To my only one,” I reply, and Hobbs raises an eyebrow.
For dessert Hobbs pours a 20-year-old Tawny Port and I have a neat glass of small batch Kentucky bourbon. The alcohol fills me with warmth, guilt and for a moment, tolerance. “You know,” I say. “You’re right. What you were talking about today. I do feel like, you know, I am responsible.” Hobbs finishes his port and stares into the empty glass rather than my eyes. After a long pause he answers. “Let’s drop it. Like you said. It’s off limits.” In my room after dinner I once again conclude that it isn’t fair that I have this knowledge of something else, of anything else, especially when the something is a someone, without sharing it. I tell myself once again that I will tell him about the girl in the morning.
This morning it takes a while before I notice that Hobbs’s Prius is gone. Several days ago I had challenged him to come up with one good reason for driving an electric car under the current circumstances. Staring out my bedroom window at his empty parking space, I come up with my own: stealth.
I make my own breakfast, dry Cheerios and black coffee, and spend the morning reading a small novel about a man and a woman on their honeymoon in a small English resort town. It occurs to me when I am done that what had once passed as realism now reads like the most imaginative science fiction. And, of course, the opposite.
In the afternoon I
get in my Corvette and drive through downtown, around the lake, back to the mall parking lot where I’d thought I’d seen her yesterday.
He’s never gone off like this alone before. It’s not like him. In fact, it’s more like me. At one point on the highway I top out at 130 miles per hour and on a straightaway I kept my eyes closed for a new record, a ten count.
The sun is almost down when I get back to the hotel parking lot. Hobbs’s spot is still empty and I am sure now that he won’t be back. The door to his room is open. The bed is perfectly made, the room is spotless and his belongings, except for the stack of department store porn and black panties, are gone. Hobbs is gone. And I’m sure that the smithereens girl is gone, too.
During smithereens it is entirely possible to be transfixed by the spectacle of destruction and for desire to blind you to the most abject of horrors. After smithereens there is only carnage.
I lay on his bed and watch the room grow dark, unable to think of anything except the one topic I had forbidden us to discuss, and waiting for permission to laugh.
Copyright c 2008
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