The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [92]
After finishing his meal, Martin drifted into a state of semi-consciousness in front of the television and found himself confronted with alternating shots of the day’s video footage, first the improbable melding of an airplane with a skyscraper and then the tidal wave of rubble at street level. As disturbing as it was, he could not tear himself away from this waking dream; to hover over this unprecedented destruction was to appreciate its power, and even in his less than fully conscious state, he recognized the tug of addiction. This footage—more than nicotine, heroin, anonymous sex, alcohol, ibuprofen, processed sugar, Godard films such as Contempt and Masculin-Féminin, and the shrouded woman in Infinite Jest, but more beautiful and terrifying—had more damning allure than anything he had ever encountered. Were he to copy and edit it into a taped loop lasting an hour or more, he knew he would be doomed.
The ringing phone interrupted this chimera; he checked the caller identification and saw that it was his sister. “Oh, shit, Suze—I’m sorry,” he apologized, explaining that he had walked the entire way home with no cell phone service and had just finished eating. “I also may or may not be adopting a cat,” he added before briefly describing how this had come about. “Which means I could need your advice.”
“Any time, big brother,” she offered reflexively, and in the next second mentioned that their uncle and aunt—i.e., Jane’s brother and his wife, with whom Suzie had lived during her high school years—had also been trying to reach him.
“Okay, thanks—I’ll call them,” Martin said.
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, as though they didn’t want to acknowledge the real reason they were talking on a Tuesday afternoon, and Martin could imagine her running her hand through her short blond hair, the way she had always done when she was nervous. Unlike him, she was thin and waifish, with a button nose and impish brown eyes. Nobody ever believed they were related until it was explained—as if it weren’t obvious—that they were both adopted, and from different biological parents.
“So …,” she finally said, “are you feeling okay?”
“Honestly? I’m a bit scattered,” he admitted, and resisted the urge—for both of their sakes—to tell her about watching the towers, and how he had been delivered into an omniscient state in which he could almost feel the hissing pavement of the Ohio Turnpike under his knees and palms. “I’m having a hard time reconciling what happened with sort of—well, I guess—functioning,” he explained. “Like one second I’m slicing bread and the next I’m thinking about … not good things.”
“I know what you mean,” she said, and he did not have to ask to know that she was also thinking about their parents, and the grief-stricken period after their deaths—in some ways, it had never really ended—when life went on in the most mundane ways until for no apparent reason you found yourself thinking about what had been lost.
“What about you—what’s it like up there?” he managed and felt more focused as he listened to her describe the details of her day (she was home working on her dissertation), and how her girlfriend, Caroline—a junior high school math teacher—had been confronted with a small legion of parents coming to rescue their children, which—as Martin wryly pointed out—sounded at least ten thousand times more stressful than anything he had endured.
As his sister quietly laughed—although it was closer to an exhalation of relief—he was reminded of another life that seemed very far away, when he was in college and would visit her at their aunt and uncle’s house in Connecticut, and how they used to stay up late listening to records. He knew this was a sanitized and nostalgic version of the past, but he also knew that at this point he would gladly take whatever solace he could find.
AFTER HANGING UP with his sister and checking in as promised with his aunt and uncle, Martin retrieved a pint of ice cream (vanilla truffle) from the freezer. He returned to the couch and resumed