There Is No Year - Blake Butler [45]
The son’s photo was the first of many photos stacked together in a pile.
The son shuffled through the pictures in the pile one after another, placing each thereafter on the bottom of the stack.
In the pile there were photos of
Antonin Artaud,1
Sharon Tate,2
Andy Kaufman3
&
Heather O’Rourke.4
The son recognized these first four from a film he’d seen somewhere, though he could not remember where or when.
In the pile there were photos of
Chris Farley,5
Heath Ledger,6
Krissy Taylor,7
River Phoenix,8
Bill Hicks,9
Cliff Burton,10
Christa McAuliffe,11
DJ Screw,12
Timmy Taylor,13
Flannery O’Connor,14
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,15
Wesley Willis,16
Marc Bolan,17
Bobby Darin,18
Charlie Parker,19
Tupac Shakur,20
Ol’ Dirty Bastard,21
Simone Weil,22
William Burroughs Jr.,23
Srinivasa Ramanujan,24
Ian Curtis,25
Aubrey Beardsley,26
Bas Jan Ader,27
Joan of Arc,28
Kaspar Hauser,29
Egon Schiele,30
Bruce Lee,31
Brandon Lee,32
Tim Buckley,33
Jeff Buckley,34
Malcolm X,35
Pier Paolo Pasolini,36
Ann Quin,37
John Belushi,38
Jean-Michel Basquiat,39
Jonathan Brandis,40
Keith Moon,41
Rainer Werner Fassbinder42
&
David Foster Wallace.43
Photos near the bottom of the pile contained people the son had never heard of. Some were named with names that didn’t even sound like normal human names. Some were dressed in obscure clothing and yet still wore tasteful makeup and a photogenic expression. Some of the photographs appeared to have been ripped or shredded and then taped back together or laminated. The son’s fingers did not leave prints along the gloss.
The son held the pictures looking at them. The son felt his arms make paste.
The son felt nauseated trying to move past certain pictures. Some pictures caused sores to open on the son’s head.
The son could not stop looking yet.
The people in the pictures did not blink.
The son felt a tone sound through his sternum.
The son’s belly button sealed over.
The son shifted the pile again so that his photo sat on top.
The son looked at the son again.
The son put the photos down.
The son was buzzing in his knees a little.
The son’s top and bottom teeth had singed together.
The son was mostly on the ground.
Also from the box there with the photos the son pulled out a small black coil.
The coil had an outer layer, with a thread clasp.
The coil unfurled to become a long black bag—a black bag made of leather and about the size of an XXXL nightgown, or a balloon.
The bag held its mouth closed with a metal zipper.
The son unzipped the zip.
He held his face up to the bag and looked in.
There was nothing in the bag.
No smell, no light, no hour.
The son emphatically inhaled.
The son touched the bag against his forehead.
The son kissed the bag.
PART THREE
I never told a joke in my life.
ANDY KAUFMAN
RENEGE
Within the duration of one hour on the nose in the long corralled light of afternoon, the mother received a phone call from every agent and buyer who’d submitted offers on the house. Each retracted in soft formal English as if their words had been lifted from a manual. Each hung up the phone before the mother spoke. One man said, I am exhausted and can no longer feel my hands, though he sounded rather chipper. At the end of that one hour, the couple’s agent also called—a man who sounded most exactly like the man himself, except for the manner by which he chewed. The couple weren’t retracting their offer, the agent assured the mother, as she began to weep into the phone. There was the sound of something plastic closing or coming open. The agent stated their new claim: the couple was now offering a sum of $19,000 for the real estate—almost a 90 percent drop from the original offer—which was to be paid directly from buyer to seller in a series of biannual installments