We Are the Light(39)

As his tears and snot dampened my chest, I told him that we weren’t asking those people in the library for anything. No, we were giving them a chance to be part of an artistic endeavor, which offered the possibility of communion and healing and transcendence.

“They want to be here,” I said with my hands on his shoulders and our eyes locked. “I want to be here. You know what happened to my wife. And I’m still here. I’m here.”

“Why?” he said.

“Well, I’ve just always wanted to star in a monster movie,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “And this might be my only shot.”

The boy broke away from me and started kicking sticks and rocks. “They’re all going to think I’m unprofessional now. No one wants to work with a drama-queen director.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “All the best directors are emotionally unstable.”

He smiled and listed a bunch of film directors who’d had mental breakdowns on movie sets, saying he’d send me YouTube clips later that night, which he did.

We got him cleaned up as best we could in the library bathroom and then were surprised to see that Bobby and two of his colleagues had joined the read-through circle while Eli was having his first official director meltdown in the woods and was, therefore, on his way to becoming an auteur.

“Everyone down at the precinct loves the script,” Bobby said when we walked into the room, “but we can only spare three officers for this read through. You’ll have the full Majestic force when the cameras start rolling. That’s a promise.”

Then Bobby winked at me, which was strange, because I believed he really was going to bring the entire force to the shoot.

Without missing a beat, Mark said that—as the producer—he needed to get this read through started, because babysitters were on the clock and people had real jobs to work in the morning.

And so Eli and I took our places, slipping down into the much safer fictional world of monster movies. There were the expected first-read-through jitters, but everyone really got into their roles and whenever Eli looked up after performing his lines, all the adults in the room nodded and shook triumphant fists in the air, which puffed the boy up in a good way.

The aggregate of all the above made my innards burn hot enough to incinerate all the darker thoughts that had been turning secret internal parts of me black, pretty much ever since you sent back your personally watermarked script and then winged Darcy stopped flying through the bedroom window every night.

I kind of really need consistency these days.

If you actually ever read through the script, which I’ve once again enclosed for your convenience, you’ll see the monster’s father figure is named Louis and—in order to remain sane—he needs to speak with his analyst once a week, and therefore, his sanity deteriorates rapidly when Carl is abducted by the feathered Mourning Man, who forces Carl to listen to all of the monster-boy’s mad radioactive-induced ramblings. But in a surprise second-act twist, Carl helps the Mourning Man to see that he isn’t really the monster he thinks he is. He does this by listening and replying when necessary, saying a kind word here and there, as well as giving the Mourning Man a Jungian lens through which he can view and begin to make sense of his new strangely fractured world. Then the bird boy and Carl rescue Louis from his madness before they all save the day.

Of course, the script isn’t so on the nose. Most of the above is subtext, which you’ll surely get right away when you eventually read it.

It’s going to be a fantastic movie.

A real crowd-pleaser.

And wait until you read the third-act surprise.

There won’t be a dry eye in the house.

You won’t want to miss that.

Your most loyal analysand,

Lucas





13.


Dear Karl,

Even though Darce transformed herself into an angel at the beginning of last December, I purchased and wrapped Christmas presents for her anyway. The bulk of my holiday shopping had already been completed by the time Jacob Hansen opened fire on all of us who were in the Majestic Theater that fateful night. But on one of my many epic post-tragedy December walks, back when I was clocking eighteen or so miles a day between all those funerals, I happened to walk past Majestic Books and right there in the window was the perfect gift for my wife.

I went inside and told Maggie Stevens that I just had to have it for Darce, at which point she put my selection into a paper bag, handed it to me, and said, “No charge.” I, of course, tried to pay for what I was taking, pulling out cash and extending it toward her, but she kept waving both her hands and saying, “I can’t take your money, Lucas,” and “Merry Christmas,” and “Thanks for what you did,” and even “You’re a hero.”

That last one made me feel as though she had sunk the pointy end of a steak knife into my Adam’s apple and so I turned around and exited the store, and—as I made my way home, hoping to wrap winged Darcy’s gift before she might see it—I began swallowing repeatedly in a desperate attempt to make the awful feeling disappear.

Like every night back then, winged Darce visited me on Christmas Eve. I had all of her presents arranged in a little pyramid in the corner of our bedroom where she often stood watching over me as I tried to sleep through the night. Every gift box was wrapped in white paper and tied up with gold bows. When Darce flew in through the window, she looked down at her pyramid of presents and smiled sadly. That’s when she told me angels weren’t allowed to accept gifts from human beings—even if said angel had been married to the gift giver when the winged one was alive.