Empire of Light (9 page)

“You can have it.”

“Thanks!”

“In fact…”

I give him one of my new pencils and a few sheets of my paper. The kid snatches the supplies, lies on the floor and eagerly begins to draw. His parents inherit my bench as I leave. They sit and watch their kid create his first museum sketch.

Makig my way through the lobby, I suddenly hear a knock on a nearby window. Andy is standing outside the museum, his face pressed against the glass staring at me, smiling from ear to ear. He gives me a thumbs up, having converted my first soul to the art world. Before I can raise my hand to wave, he’s already turned his back to me and is walking away.

He slaps
The Thinker
on the ass just before leaping down the stairs and running out of sight as if he stole something.

Welcome to Cleveland.

7 

Trying Not to Kill French People

IT’S JANUARY, SIX LONG 
months since I decided to make the trek to Europe. Mom and Pop played into the parental stereotype and actually made me work to earn my spending money before allowing me to jet.

The audacity.

But here I am, finally, strapped into a jet that’s burning ninety thousand pounds of jet fuel to jump over the Atlantic Seaboard. I should be stoked, but instead I’m about thirty seconds away from a full-blown anxiety attack. I’m claustrophobic, and I’ve got to figure out how to survive a nine-hour flight stuffed in the middle seat.

Seated in front of me is a little French brat who feels it necessary to recline his goddamn chair all the way back into my lap. The punk can’t weigh more than a buck fifty soaking wet, so why he has to get his gangsta-lean on, looking like Huggy Bear chillin’ in the VIP section of the club is beyond me.

To my right, the window seat is occupied by this Missing Link of a man, a massive slab of primate meat whose hairy arm is making the armrest absolutely unusable. I tried to share the damned thing with him, but I kept flinching like a crack addict because it feels like spiders are running up my arm.

Sitting on my left is the 1997 runner-up for Bellevue Hospital’s Jeffery Daumer look-a-like contest. How nice. If there’s a disaster, and I need to escape, it’s good to know that my exit is blocked by this Steven King lookin’ character. His calm defiance of my freedom makes me angry, and I daydream of stuffing his skinny ass in the overhead compartment.

My anxiety attack slowly swells to a boil within my skull. My eyes frantically dart around the plane, as if I’ll spot an antidote for crazy before I start screaming like an asshole. I become as hot as a furnace as I begin to rock back and forth in my seat.

I’ve got to get the hell out of here!

“Are you okay?” the Missing Link asks me cautiously
.

“I’M FINE!” I say just a bit too loudly.

Let me try that response again, cooler.

“I’m fine. I’m just a bit claustrophobic,” I try to say evenly, but my voice cracks.

“Okay,” he says calmly. “How can I help you? Would you like to switch seats with me? Some people who suffer from this phobia find it relaxing to look out into the open sky.”

Even in my panicked state I still manage to marvel at how this very scary and abhorrently large man is talking to me in such a calm and rational manner. It’s like watching Big Foot tune a Stradivarius.

“Thanks, but that’s actually worse for me. I’d feel trapped between the fuselage and two seats instead of just the one. It’s the aisle seat that would really calm me down.”

We gaze at the Daumer doppelganger who is staring directly ahead, focused on his TV monitor. This would be normal if it weren’t for the fact the goddamn monitor is turned off. Is this man actually going to stare at his own reflection all the way to Paris? Fine! He can do that in the middle seat! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SEAT YOU CRAZY SON OF A BITCH!

Calm down, Jason.

Screaming in your own head does nobody no good.

I look at the Missing Link, who continues to eye me with concern.

“You know what? I’m going to be fine,” I say to him as evenly as I can. “I’m just going to pop an Ambien, slide my seat back a little, read my magazine and I should be good to go.”

I don’t want to be like the little punk in front of me. There’s no need to ruin the trip for the guy behind me, so I make a point to recline the seat back merely one single, clean notch.

Click!

Perfect. Just enough space to allow me a bit of—

“Too Close! Too Close!” the old Frenchman behind me screams in my ear as he violently shakes my headrest. For three seconds, my skull quakes with the fervor of a six-year-old extracting quarters from his piggy bank before the ice cream truck disappears.

Please, God, don’t let me go ghetto-negro on an international flight. The Lord gives me calm, and I opt for revenge. I slowly recline my seat all the way back, as if I’m expecting a dentist to stop by and check my molar at cruising altitude. The old Frenchman and his wife start talking shit about me in French, which I think is pretty cool.

Of course the silver lining to all of this is that I’m so distracted that my anxiety attack has left the building like Elvis, and I actually feel kind of normal. I reach underneath the seat in front of me for my messenger bag and dig around in search of my latest issue of
American Cinematographer
. It contains articles on three of my favorite cinematographers, Caleb Deschenel, Wally Pfister and Matthew Libatique.

I’ve been drooling over this issue the way a ten year-old covets that tattered issue of
Barely Legal
he found on the way home from school. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I left the damn thing stuck under my mattress at home.

I rummage around some more, but come up empty. Okay, this isn’t funny anymore because I really can’t find my magazine. The one thing I specifically set aside to read on the plane is not here! I sure as hell can find everything else, including that stupid list of haberdashers from Edgerton, but my precious
American Cinematographer
is nowhere.

“Damn!” I whisper loudly to myself.

What the hell else could go wrong?

Ding!

A flight attendant call button in the row behind me suddenly pops on, burning so bright that I could tan under it. A very dreamy and tall woman answers the call, marching down the aisle like she’s modeling a killer new dress from the House of Dior. She wears a smile so serene and classic that I’m convinced God ordered Da Vinci himself to design it before sending her soul down to Earth.

“
Oui, Monsieur?
” she asks the old fart behind me.

The beauty of her voice is quickly cancelled out by the bitching of the evil French couple that sit behind me. Only these two idiots could take a language as gorgeous as French and make it sound like two jackals vomiting in an echo chamber. Of course, I can’t understand a damn word of what they’re saying, but I can tell by the attendant’s glance down at me that the subject of the discussion is
moi
, and it’s not good.

She finally settles the couple down and then gracefully leans across Daumer to talk to me. Daumer doesn’t even glance at her smokin’ rocket-shaped titties, mind you. Of course I can’t help but look, playing it off by pretending to read her nametag.

“Yes…MaryAnne?”

“Sir, would you mind moving your seat up a little?” she politely asks.

“I have absolutely no intention of doing any such thing,” I calmly respond before telling her my side of the story. She listens intently and seems to be genuinely shocked to hear how the guy shook my seat. To my relief, even the kindly man-ape in the window seat backs up my story.

“That’s exactly what happened. It was one of the rudest things I’ve ever seen,” he says as if he were sporting a monocle and top hat.

“I understand,” she says, standing straight and pulling her jacket down taught. After giving the French couple a nice version of the French stink-eye, she looks down at me and speaks loudly so they can hear.

“
Monsieur
Tisse, how would you like to move to a more comfortable seat? Business Class.”

“Business Class! Why I’d be honored. Thank you.”

I stand and look down at the surly French bastard, making sure I left my seat fully reclined even though the damn thing is empty. I follow MaryAnne down the aisle with my messenger bag and Brownie camera in tow. We seem to walk the length of the plane until she finally turns and offers me my new seat. I look in awe at the roomy space. Without thinking, I kiss her on the cheek.

“
Je t'aime!
”

“
Merci, Monsieur,
” she responds shyly as she pushes me away. I stow my gear in the overhead compartment and flop down into the chair and stretch my legs out in front of me in bliss. I notice the nice man sitting next to me is sipping on some champagne.

“Say, can I get a mug of that, too?”

“Certainly, is there anything else I can do for you?” she asks.

“You wouldn’t happen to have the latest issue of
American Cinematographer
?” I ask jokingly.

“Of course,” she responds without blinking. “I’ll be right back.”

“Wait!” I try to stop her, but before I know it she disappears behind the curtain of unknown opulence of the first class cabin.

I immediately feel guilty for sending her on such a snipe hunt. Everybody knows that commercial planes only carry the basic mags,
Time
,
US News
and maybe an issue of
Playboy
for the first class Hip-Hop ballers. They’re the only ones who could read porn on an Airplane and make that shit look cool.

Anyway, I’m over the idea of reading, and I just want to sleep now. So I pop a double dosage of Ambien down my throat and hope that I won’t wake up until the plane touches down.

The drug works fast and my lids are heavy, but before I can fall asleep, I’ll be damned if the flight attendant doesn’t return with a flute of champagne and a copy of
American Cinematographer
.

“Holy Shit,” I exclaim as if the woman just tied a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue. “Where the hell did you find this?”

“A passenger left it on the flight months ago. We usually throw these things away, but for some reason this one has hung around.”

It isn’t a current issue; in fact it’s from all the way back to 1971. However, to paraphrase NBC, if I ain’t seen it then it’s new to me.

“This is awesome! Thank you!”

“My pleasure,” she replies with a smile.

I love looking through magazines from the seventies. It’s like everybody in that decade had a collective fashion brain fart and came to the conclusion that clown clothes were not just for Bozo anymore. Suddenly an interesting article catches my eye; even more interesting is the name of its writer.

The Cinematographer, The Box of Light, and Magic Hour

Written by Howard Edgerton, ASC.

“Are you kidding me?” I say to myself.

Edgerton wrote an article for
American Cinematographer
? And what are the odds I would find this exact vintage magazine on this flight? Crazy, right?

After I cover my outstretched legs with a cozy blanket, I settle into my seat ready to read my mag.

Bring it on, Edge.

8 

The Cinematographer, 
the Box of Light, & Magic Hour

Written by Howard Edgerton

THERE ONCE WAS A CINEMATOGRAPHER 
who had never felt the warmth of a family.

It was in the Philippines, during the gruesome Balangiga Massacre of 1901. At six-thirty in the morning, a band of revolutionaries launched a surprise attack upon Company C of the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment. The guerrillas entered the mess area at breakfast—the Americans unarmed except for kitchen utensils—and unleashed hell. A young soldier from California defended himself against the onslaught as best he could before he was finally overwhelmed and hacked to death, never having met his son, who was born that very day.

Four years later, the soldier’s wife and son had boarded a Hollywood street car, Coach 44, headed home after a fine day of shopping. Carrying more than sixty passengers, the defective brakes failed catastrophically. A massive construct of Detroit steel, the car plummeted down Bellevue Avenue at an insane rate of speed. It jumped the tracks, took flight, and slammed into the brick corner of the Berea Packing Co. The soldier’s wife was annihilated. Her baby boy survived and became a ward of the state.

After a few years at the orphanage, he could barely remember the sound of his mom’s voice, and his father was nothing more than some stranger who had earned the Purple Heart medallion, which the boy kept in a shoebox underneath his bed.