The shared limbic high of so many people, it almost guaranteed a spate of good reviews. The human limbic system needed community to reach its peak highs and lows.
But now home theaters and downloads meant more people, particularly cultural arbiters and people with disposable income, the early adopters, were cocooning alone. Watching alone, and wondering why films weren’t as funny or as scary or sad as they used to be.
Alone with Mitzi in the ladies’ toilet, the industry tub asked, “Can I give it a listen?”
As she cued the file, Mitzi said, “I call it Gypsy Joker, Long Blonde Hair, Twenty-Seven Years Old, Tortured to Death, Heat Gun.” She watched as the industry tub fitted the buds into his hairy ears.
Everyone felt self-conscious expressing emotion alone. They needed a scream that gave them permission to scream. They needed to feel part of a larger limbic system. The way all dogs howled, that was limbic resonance.
Producers were locked into a battle for the best scream.
Mitzi pressed Play.
The industry tub jerked fully upright as if jolted with electricity. His body shook, and his eyes went so wide the whites showed in a bulging, bloodshot margin around each yellow iris.
She left him leaning forward, his hands braced against the edge of the sink, squeezing out anguished tears. She said, “Bidding stands at a million two.”
At the bar the inevitable had taken place. Jimmy stood alone.
“What?” he asked. “Do I stink or something?” It was clear he was hurt. Blush Gentry had escaped, and no one else would go near him. Jimmy just didn’t know how to live on the outside. Shunned by polite society: a feeling Mitzi had adjusted to years before.
It was hard not to love a man who so steadfastly ignored the awful truth about her. But it was even more difficult to respect him.
Mitzi led him into the small auditorium, where the center seats were clearly occupied. These, the best seats, were filled with small parties of people, or couples, with only a few single seats left empty among them. Mitzi left Jimmy on the aisle and edged her way down a center row. She excused her way past people until she arrived at a single seat smack-dab in the middle of everyone.
Jimmy had suggested they stay in and fuck. Thanks to the Ambien, every time felt like her first with him. If he wore a rubber, she had no idea. Probably not. He’d made nothing of his life, so the best he could imagine was to conceive another of himself. A do-over: Jimmy 2.0. As if to give himself a second shot, and doing so would shift the burden to this new him and give the current Jimmy permission to squander what was left of his years.
No doing, Mitzi had told him. No way was she getting knocked up.
As she sat in that centermost seat, the party of four sitting to one side of her rose and silently moved to distant seats. At that, a couple to her other side rose and relocated to less desirable seats. Within a few minutes of her arrival the area around Mitzi was vacant. Several rows ahead and behind her as well as wide margins of seats on either side were empty. She looked over at Jimmy and waved for him to join her.
“Lucky us,” she called loudly. “I found two seats together!” The question of the rubber wouldn’t leave her mind. To make matters worse was her dress, now the waist seemed tight. And the bodice. At that, Mitzi settled into her seat, heavy with the dread that she was no longer alone in her body.
The internet wasn’t any help. She’d gotten remarried. Changed her name. Foster called her old work, and they told him as much. No one there had ever known her, not back then. Staff turnover. The last person he wanted to call was her dad.
Online he pulled up an obituary for her mother. It listed the survivors, and among them was Amber. Amber Jarvis, these days. Lucinda’s mother. Directory assistance had a Jarvis but unlisted.
Finally, Foster caved in and called her father. Lucinda’s grandfather.
“Hello?” Amber’s dad sounded so chipper that Foster almost hung up. Why spoil such a good mood?
Foster pushed on. “Paul?”
Still sounding upbeat, the voice asked, “Is that you, Gates?”
He didn’t ask about Amber, not right off the bat. First he tried to explain the ceremony the group had set up.
The latest trend was to buy an all-white casket, steel or lacquered hardwood. High gloss. All mourners would get a customized Sharpie with which to autograph the sides and lid of the coffin and to write a loving message. Foster tried to explain about the fake funeral. How it would provide closure, according to the parents group.
He tried to make it sound not crazy. More like a real thing done by enlightened people.
Amber’s dad, Paul, stayed quiet. He wasn’t buying it.
Foster said, “I’m sorry about Linda.” He meant Amber’s mother, dead of cancer as of three years ago according to the obituary. “I would’ve come,” he offered.
Paul’s tone wasn’t angry, but he said, “Amber said not to tell you. She didn’t want you there.”
Foster said he understood. He didn’t understand. He asked if Paul would come to the casket ceremony.
The older man waited a swallow and said, “Gates, I don’t think so.”
Foster wanted to explain about catharsis. What the group had drilled into him. About how the music and the flowers would provide a public setting for grief. He could externalize his loss instead of shouldering the burden alone. He wanted to explain about closure.
Instead he waited and held his tongue. More words would just be a way to keep Paul from eventually saying “No.”
Perhaps out of pity, the man on the phone told him, “I’ll tell her.”
Foster said, “Thank you.”
His former father-in-law added, “But, understand, she won’t be there, either.”
Mitzi could anticipate how a stranger would scream. She’d done this work so long and so often. In airports, she’d spy someone. In the supermarket. She
