Mick McGrath

Total Eclipse

We sat on the rooftop at The Safe Space, where there are small round tables and a bar. Kip looked very cute in his Saint Laurent jeans and his scribble sweater, hand-drawn lines, colorful, a part of the 2015 Dior collection, sort of childish, the sleeves rolled up at the forearms – big muscular (not childish) forearms. I wondered how he was managing in this heat, in that sweater. I asked Kip how he was managing, and he said, “You’ll be sorry you didn’t wear a sweater, Brock. When the eclipse starts happening.”

I was wearing a white Ralph Lauren polo, and shorts.

“All white?” Kip said, when we met in the Square. “You look like you’re in a cult.”

But I wasn’t wearing all white; my shorts were more of a beige color, the color of sand – though I’ll concede they were very light.

On the rooftop, Kip complained about the publishing industry, saying no one was interested in emerging writers and the big shots in New York were only interested in established writers because they were the ones who made money. I reminded him that he’d been published in Third Coast and that was a big deal. I told him not to lose hope. He said the urge to give up was getting bigger every year, and I identified with this. Still, I told him the best he could do – the best we could do – is concentrate on the work. “If the writing is reeeeeally good,” I said, “someone will notice.” And I smiled warmly, as though I were his mother. “No great book goes unpublished.”

I let him go on for a few minutes about beautiful fiction, how everything these days was Carveresque and no one was interested anymore in beautiful Nabokovian prose, though there was this wonder boy, Bennett Sims, and his collection of short stories, White Dialogues, was making a bit of noise and his prose was sort of Nabokovian. We talked about Salinger, Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters! and Seymour: An Introduction. We talked about Nicholson Baker. We talked about Hemingway. Kip said again that all the contemporary fiction was too prosaic.

We smoked cigarettes near the ledge overlooking the Square.

The Square was always bustling, a kind of town center, with weeping-mortared buildings all around and a grand Baroque fountain in the middle, like something out of Barry Lyndon. It’s the kind of place where holding your toddler’s hand is a necessity, lest he or she be lost among the throngs of people and maybe kidnapped, though Friedrich always felt safe to me, full of good-natured people, not the kind of place where kids get snatched and raped and killed only to be disposed of in the river. People walked their dogs here, in the Square. Kids played in the splash pad. A homeless man played the violin, the same song always – something by Mozart, “Cosi fan tutte,” I think – his violin case open at his feet, like a clam, a receptacle for the quarters people tossed him. On Friday nights, adorable couples strolled along, holding hands, and occasionally – like, on Sundays – the Square filled up with costermongers – polish sausages with sauerkraut, Philadelphia cheesesteak, shish kebabs, street meat. Once, a troupe of actors from Wilbury College put on a double feature here: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Flamenco came here. Rock bands busked, writing their names on sandwich boards and putting them out front where everyone could see them. I came here often, and two of my favorite bands were The Virtue Signals and The Impeachment Hopefuls. (Full disclosure: I do not remember any of the names I saw on those sandwich boards, but the bands I saw in the Square might as well have had the above-mentioned names, since their animosity toward Trump, which was quite evident to me when I heard their music, was so white-hot, so Kathy Griffin-level, and yet the truth is I kind of liked the way a lot of the music sounded, and I remember thinking these bands were going somewhere, that they were really going somewhere, that they were going to be successful, imminently, if not purely for their melodies then because their lyrics were so zeitgeisty.)

It was 1:15 or so, and the eclipse would begin soon – the media said it would start getting dark at around 1:30. I’d thought the Square would be busier because of the eclipse, but everyone, it turned out, had congregated at Laurence Hall, one of the older prettier parts of Wilbury College. At Laurence, university personnel were handing out free glasses, so the Human Beings could stare at the Sun, and the waiter at The Safe Space told Kip and me there were vendors there, pizza and hamburgers and brats and cotton candy and popcorn – it was like a carnival – and the waiter told us he’d heard there were five thousand people up there, at Laurence Hall, which sounded like a lot to me, especially since the new semester hadn’t actually started yet and Friedrich was a small town apart from the university and it had not yet been inundated with students returning for the new academic year. Kip asked the waiter for a glass of Gattinara and I said that sounded good to me and I wanted a glass of Gattinara also, though I was wearing white and worried I’d spill red wine all over my outfit, and the waiter smiled, and he vanished, and Kip looked at me and said, “I hear the best place to see the eclipse is Eden.”

“My brother lives in Eden,” I said. “That’s where I spent the summer, by the way. At his house. In Eden.”

Kip hadn’t asked about my summer vacation. He didn’t seem to care.

“Eden is in the path of totality,” Kip said. “My older brother is on his way to Eden right now. With his wife.”

“The viper?” I said, smiling.

“That’s right,” Kip said, smiling.

“Why are you talking with your brother?” I asked. “I mean, I thought you hated him.”

“Hated him?” Kip said.

“Well maybe not hated him,” I said.

“I tend to not stay mad at people,” Kip said, a tad self-righteously.

“You guys patched things up?”

“I don’t know,” Kip said, and then he sighed.

I could see he didn’t want to talk about this, that he was uncomfortable. It was clear, however, that he and his brother had reached some sort of détente.

I thought it was weak and sort of pathetic that Kip wasn’t standing his ground, that he’d let his brother wiggle back into his life. And so soon after he’d banished him to Mantua.

“It’s my sister-in-law,” Kip explained, running his hands through his gorgeous blonde hair, his Alexander locks. “My brother’s wife, the viper. She’s the one I’m really mad at.” And then he said, “Anyway, my brother texted me, saying the traffic going into Eden is awful.”

“Your brother is stuck in traffic?” I said.

“That’s what he said in his last text,” Kip said.

“Will he even make it?” I asked. “I mean, won’t he miss the eclipse?”

“I don’t think so,” Kip said. “He texted me an hour ago saying he was stuck in traffic but was almost there. I’m sure he’s there by now.”

“That sounds excruciating,” I said, and I laughed.

“Eh?”

“That’s so dumb,” I said, laughing. “Putting up with bumper-to-bumper traffic? Just to see the eclipse?”

“It’ll be worth it,” Kip said.

“You think so?” I said.

“Absolutely,” Kip said. “Why wouldn’t you sit in traffic in order to get a better look at the eclipse? Seems like a fair trade. I mean, the eclipse is so beautiful, Brock.”

The waiter appeared at the edge of our table. He gave us our wine. Then he disappeared again.

All the Friedrichtons, if that’s what we’re called, were either here, in the Square, or on campus, at Laurence Hall. Concentrated in two places. But, surprisingly, Kip and I were the only ones sitting on this rooftop.

“The eclipse is beautiful?” I said.

“Sure,” Kip said. “The eclipse is amazing. It makes me think about…the solar system.”

“No surprise there,” I said, mockingly.

“It makes me think about things that go around,” Kip said, sitting at the table with his legs crossed.

“Nothing beautiful about things that go around,” I said.

“It makes me think about gears, the inside of a watch,” Kip said. “It’s like synchronized swimming or something, the Earth and the Moon and the Sun… It’s beautiful.”

I laughed. I guess I came off as a tad condescending, because as soon as I laughed, Kip said, “What the fuck is so funny about that?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“No really,” Kip said, angrily. “What’s so funny about that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling peaceably.

Kip took a drink of his Gattinara.

“You’re not a very deep thinker. Are you, Brock?”

“Oh, please,” I said. “Like your observation about the solar system is so deep.”

“Are you a robot?” Kip said, and then he took another drink from his wine.

I wanted to ask him about his story, the one about the autonomous vehicle, how it was coming along, but then the eclipse started happening.

Kip and I put on our glasses, and I could no longer see Kip’s beautiful blue/green eyes – though wasn’t I supposed to be looking at the eclipse, anyway?

Things got dark, and we could hear all the people below us, in the garth, saying, “Ooooo” and “Ahhhhh,” like spectators at the circus, people watching a group of acrobats, and the terrified little dogs were saying, “Arf, Arf, Arf. Arf, Arf, Arf. Arf, Arf, Arf,” and the crowd was murmurous, and the moon moved slowly, like an enormous dark dirigible, until finally it covered the Sun. Kip and I approached the ledge and looked down at the people, like Mussolini giving his balcony speech, the one where he declared war on Great Britain and France, doing that weird hand gesture he always did. The people were saying, “Whoa!” like people watching a magic trick, and of course they were all wearing their glasses, and of course they were all looking up, at the Sun and the Moon, and they all seemed hypnotized, an army of lobotomized zombies. I thought about the early hominids, how they would have reacted, how frightened they would have been, thinking it was the end of the world. I thought about the Maya, imagined them hurriedly chopping people’s heads off at the top of the pyramid in a last-ditch effort to appease their god, who’d gotten pissed.

Kip and I sat down at our table again, and then Kip took a drink of his wine.

“This is so cool,” he said, giddily.

Kip was highly intelligent, brilliant, and I knew he was going to be wildly successful, yet today he was so giggly and giddy and cute, childlike, silly, not the brooding complicated artist but a small excited puppy.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking around, at the darkness. “I don’t see what the fuss is about.”

“You don’t appreciate beauty,” Kip said. “That time we went to the gallery and looked up at those paintings… You were unenthused then, too.”

We’d gone to a local gallery about a year earlier, when our relationship was still in its infancy.

“Those paintings weren’t exactly Turner,” I said.

“They were exquisite,” Kip said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Oh please,” I said, smiling. “Exquisite?”

Kip started wincing painfully and grabbing at his crotch. He said he needed to use the bathroom.

“Now?” I said.

“Yes. Now.”

He got up from the table. I looked up at him.

“But you’ll miss your beloved eclipse,” I said. “You’ll be just like your brother.”

“Fuck off,” Kip said.

“Seriously, though.”

“I know,” Kip said, sort of whining. “But I need to go. I’ll just be a minute.”

He took off his glasses and put them on the table. Then he dashed into the building.

I sat there drinking my Gattinara in the darkness, and the bartender and the servers were standing by the bar, and they’d turned on a few lights, multicolored Christmas lights wrapped around the bar, and the bartenders and servers had stopped working, and they, too, were staring at the Moon and the Sun, wearing their protective glasses, and they were smiling happily, and I sort of toyed with the idea of murdering Kip, right there at The Safe Space.

How would I execute such a thing?

I think I got the idea then, sitting on that rooftop, because, a.) I was fuming after what Kip had said to me, the thing about me not being a very deep thinker, not that my whole identity or self-worth was wrapped up in my intellect or that I worshipped the intellect or anything like that, and b.) it occurred to me that now would be the perfect time to get him, the perfect time, since everyone was transfixed by the Sun and the Moon, and I thought about Kip’s writing, his story about the autonomous vehicle, and I imagined Kip being published in The New Yorker, then getting a book deal, then publishing his debut novel, then winning the National Book Award, then getting a teaching position at Brown or UC Berkeley, and of course Kip and I had fucked once, and I’d assumed he and I would ride off into the sunset together, but in the weeks and months subsequent to our affair Kip had made it abundantly clear that he was no longer interested, and it was official: Kip had rejected me, likely because I’d said “Fuck the immigrants” at The Art House that one night, though Kip had told me just moments ago here at The Safe Space that he tended to not stay mad at people, and now Kip would achieve escape velocity, leaving me in the dust (in the cold), and I was going to end up on welfare, like J.K. Rowling, toiling away in my attic apartment writing a children’s book, and it wasn’t fair, and I found myself grinding my teeth, right there at The Safe Space, getting angrier and angrier.

The total eclipse happens for Friedrichtons once every gazillion years, I thought. What kind of asshole would find himself in the bathroom now? And then I thought: But that’s just it! No one would dare to be in the bathroom now. It’ll just be me and Kip in there. No one will disturb us. It’s perfect! My heart starting thumping inside my chest. I was going to kill Kip. I thought about The Godfather, that scene in The Godfather, Part II, when De Niro shoots Don Fanucci in the tenement while thousands of immigrants are outside enjoying the fiesta. It’s the middle of the day, and there are people everywhere, and yet it’s the perfect time to shoot Don Fanucci, since everyone is preoccupied with the fiesta, and there’s loud music, so no one will hear the gunshots. A similar thing was happening here, a century later: The Sun was gone for the moment, and it was dark, and everyone had their head up their ass, and no one would see me slip into the building, where I would assassinate Kip.

But Kip would only be thirty seconds or so. A minute, at most. If I was going to do it, it had to be now, this second. I watched my watch, a Michael Kors with a tan face and a leather croc-embossed strap, something I’d chosen before leaving my apartment in the Frederik Building because I thought it went well with my white outfit, not that my outfit (a polo and shorts) was wholly white. I felt something kicking my chair.

“Kill him,” a voice said.

“But how?”

“Your wine glass. Smash it over his head. Then slice his face open.”

“With one of the shards.”

“Stab him repeatedly. Until he stops moving.”

“But this makes negative sense.”

“Why does this make negative sense?”

“Because. Later someone will discover Kip’s body and call the police, and the servers and the bartender will work with a sketch artist, describing my physical appearance (at least this is what happens in movies), and undoubtedly they’ll pin this on me, since I’ll be the one to have last seen Kip alive; and the other writers – Baronessa, Alexandria, Tyson, Goodrin – know Kip and I are spending the eclipse together, because I invited them out via Facebook, saying, ‘Join me and Kip for the big event!’ but, naturally, they declined, saying they’re out of town or they have other plans, though I do wonder if that was all bullshit (just an excuse) and they’re still mad about the political spat we got into back in February, the one about Trump’s Travel Ban, the one where I said ‘Fuck the immigrants,’ and they have no desire to see me again… The point is it won’t take them long to suspect me. The police will find me. They’ll interrogate me for hours. They’ll whipsaw me, and I’ll break, confess to the murder…”

“Who the fuck are you talking to?” Kip said, emerging from the building.

“Huh? Oh. I was just mumbling to myself,” I said, laughing, looking up at Kip. “I do that sometimes. Talk to myself.”

Kip laughed. “They say highly intelligent people talk to themselves. I read that in The Atlantic. People who talk to themselves aren’t creepy the way we all think, Brock. They’re geniuses. According to the article, anyway.”

Kip smiled warmly. He was just standing there, at the edge of the table. He put on his glasses again.

I looked at that scribble sweater he was wearing, the Christian Dior, so colorful, like an artist’s palette, and there was something childish about it, and I could still hear the people below us, in the agora or whatever, and they were ooing and ahhhing, and they were looking up at the eclipse as though it were the Sistine Chapel, and they were even clapping, like people watching Cirque du Soleil, and one of the servers nearby was even crying, saying the eclipse was affecting him, making him emotional somehow.

“You really do like this sweater. Don’t you?” Kip said, smiling, sitting down at the table.

He’d noticed me looking at it.

“I’m a little cold,” I admitted.

“Told you it would get cold,” Kip said, triumphantly.

“I was thinking of killing you and taking your sweater,” I said.

“You’d have to use cyanide,” Kip said, and then he took a quick gulp of his Gattinara. “A gun or a knife would get the sweater bloody.”

“Or maybe your head,” I muttered. “Maybe take your pretty golden head.”

“That won’t keep you warm,” Kip said.

I thought about that statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa.

“Oh, but it will,” I said. “It’s like the Sun. With your hair and everything. So beautiful.”

“Stop, Brock.”

“Stop what?” I said.

“We’ve been over this,” Kip said.

I smiled.

“Actually, we haven’t,” I said. “We’ve never actually talked about it.”

“I think I’ve made it clear, though. It was one time, Brock. It’s not going to happen again. I’m not going to be with you.”

I wanted to kill him.

“I understand,” I said, and I took a drink of wine.

“Sorry,” Kip said.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Let’s keep things upbeat,” Kip said. “Isn’t this incredible, Brock? Isn’t it? It’s…like…surreal. Now do you see? Now do you see what all the fuss is about?”

“Yes,” I said, looking at him.

Kip was looking at the eclipse. I looked at it, too. From here, it looked as though the Moon were on top of the Sun, making love to it.

I looked back at Kip. I looked at his yellow hair and his red lips – purple now, from the wine, bruised looking – and we sat there together, at the round table, and Kip stared at the eclipse, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was like a Hockney painting. So colorful. So beautiful. Everyone was looking the wrong way.

They were missing it.

• • •