Amy had instructed James to wear a warm sweater underneath his coat. It was a cold spring day and the advice was sound as they rode the metro into the city. But, sitting in front of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, he felt the sting of perspiration, like tacks against his back, and a general hunger. Air conditioning kept the gallery a reliable temperature, if slightly warmer than comfortable. Harold had assured him this was for the good of the artwork. Altogether, his body was increasingly exhausted.
Harold and Amy were alright by his calculation. He knew it was kind to have taken him in and they were good parents. Still, he questioned the thought behind taking him to an art gallery on a Saturday morning, when he could instead be watching TV. A chilly spring day, with light misting, was a sign of prime TV watching conditions. He’d hoped to catch a few reruns he’d missed. He had been taping each episode, and slowly dissecting them into snippets of individual words, to add to his growing video dictionary. He reconfigured them into nightly dream journals, but a few key words like night and stranger were missing.
James’ feet ached. The walking to the train, standing, and trudging between exhibits were now felt in sore, infrequently used calves. He lifted one heel then the next as he sat on the bench. This did not shake the setting sleep, but did unset his sole from his shoe, giving some relief. He wished to leave.
add more here as a description of the throneAmy rested against the wall, her navy down jacket folded like a curtain over her crossed arms. She had found one of the few walls in the museum not set with a trip-wire and embraced it. This room generally seemed reserved for rest. It was effectively a long hallway, with one side a large energetic eddy that held The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. In front of it sat a row of padded benches, they were black leather with button studs dimpling its flesh. People passed through without noticing there was anything to notice. The trio had not meant to stop initially anyways, but the tinfoil exterior of the throne threw a far-reaching glint, glancing Harold’s peripheral vision. He had encouraged them to take a break. Silently, Amy clocked this decision as the tipping point, but said nothing, because doing so would only cause the descent to happen even faster. She would mention this that evening to Harold, while they prepared dinner for James in silence, and he would not respond to her.
Amy had planned a day in the city, the kind her and Harold would enjoy before they had James. At that time, they lived in Dupont Circle. This morning, they had driven from Chevy Chase to Bethesda to take the red line into the city. It was the same line they had taken in the past, but Metro Transit had replaced the cars. Rumor was that the new ones derailed more frequently. There was an exhibit at the American Art Smithsonian she thought James might enjoy: Sculpture Down to Scale: Models for Public Art at Federal Buildings, 1974 – 1985. James had once shown her a drawing, a faithful if juvenile rendering of the interior of a storage unit. She prophesied his soon-matured hand drafting large public works projects, or altering plans for elaborate office parks. She believed that perhaps she could produce such a future, with saccharine and succor. This dream suffocated within her, gasping with fury, as she watched James float between each model in the exhibit, a bat then a mobile then a set of stairs reminiscent of her late adolescent trip to Machu Picchu, his eyes growing further glazed in the kiln of stupidity. He had dallied not a moment longer than required under her watchful gaze, maybe absorbing the faint outline of each figure. In her hot anger, she found herself paused only by a series of white cubes that presented the physical product of two mirrors facing each other. Cubes bloomed with each turn of perspective. The similarity to the now repeating altars of The Throne which cluttered her vision and gave her the feeling that time had folded on itself, pushing her directly from then to now. Lunch reservations were not for another two hours, and something in her wished to be pushed directly to that time again.
A single man stood in this side room with them. He had been there before their entrance, rocking from one narrow foot to the other. Between narrow fingers he held a short pencil that alternated between adding a line to his sketchbook and returning a fraying hair to their place above his narrow forehead.
Harold and James sat a few inches apart in the center of the side-room. James leaned back and propped himself on his narrow elbows. Amy watched his spine curl, she could see the boney end poke from the back of his neck as he nodded forward. James’ vision blurred and doubled; he saw the throne, its many pieces organized in perfection and the shine it cast on one plane, and he saw his memories of TV on another pane, cast overtop. A cartoon rabbit, carrot in hand, jump-cut from one winged figure to the next. The rabbit pulled a two-dimensional screen over the chancel, a flash illuminated the room, and he could see with x-ray vision. Small pieces of lumber held together with paste and rusted screws. They displayed reclaimed china. A golden beam, like plastic garland, slowly flowed from James’ convex chest into the central pulpit, where it appeared to be processed, and then rerouted to Amy.
James heard a growl, his stomach brought him back to the world. His vision disappeared.
Harold sat upright. He was not religious, nor had he tried raising James in a religious style. Sitting in front of the throne, he wondered if he had made a mistake he could not undo. His vision moved from each intricate altar to the next. When he initially approached, they appeared to be copies of another, pieces of furniture wrapped with silver and gold foil, cast with recycled light-bulbs and stripped cigarette cartons. With closer inspection, he could make out each unique angel. They seemed familiar, like a forgotten imaginary friend. James stirred next to him, yet Haroled was unmoored, arrested as he was.
James twisted to release the stiffness in his spine, then rolled backwards, using the end of the bench to pop any loose air between his discs. His head lolled inches above the floor, his hair brushed grit back and forth. His eyes glazed over. He imagined editing together Bugs Bunny into a soliloquy:, I show up in this kid’s vision, just for him to sit there all stupid, like he wasn’t waiting for me to begin with. His vision refocused to Amy watching him.
Amy knew that dead fish look. He got that look when he clutched his iPad so hard it nearly snapped in his fingers. She would wake sometimes to AirDropped videos from James, replaying their conversations through the mouth of Daffy Duck. They chilled her and she wished deeply he would stop.
“Are you bored?” She asked in neutral.
“I’m hungry.” James was honest. He hadn’t been hungry, french toast and eggs and banana still processed in his stomach, but he could now feel the altar sapping him of any energy he could offer. Amy, unaware of the flow of energy in this room, tickled with irritation. What was breakfast for, at a certain point, if it couldn’t hold him off until lunch. She had packed snacks, but they sat in a locker by the bathrooms, after a brief discussion with revamped security revealed a censor on food by the art.
“You will have to wait. I still want to see the presidents, you will like them.” They locked eyes again as she finished her words. James attempted to stir, but felt groggy, and instead laid his head in Harold’s lap, who adjusted James’ part with autonomous hands, still looking on The Throne. The imperative phrasing only made James less able to like the presidents, or see them.
James struggled to explain how he felt his bones going soft. He provided what he could, “That’s boring.”
Amy sighed, “Maybe boring is good.” As their words exchanged, she felt lighter, the weight being levered onto her son. “Anyways, the more you see the faster time will pass and we can eat lunch.”
James heard this, and understood what she said. But more fuel spilled out of him, and he could feel sleep arriving. If he had his iPad, he could craft her a thoughtful video about how hollow he felt, but his voice was part of his body. All he could say was, “I am hungry now.”
James meant to speak plainly, but his voice whined for hoarseness. A clatter of heels called from a middle-aged couple walking arm-in-arm, side-eyes toward the three-part family. They knew from experience this kind of day and passed an apologetic look towards Amy, then quickened their pace, brushing the narrow man who remained posted in the center of the hallway.
“I have no food for you and you will like lunch. Now, let’s keep going.” She approached, hand out to scoop James’ shoulder from aside Harold’s thigh, and, having found him lighter than expected, jerked him suddenly upwards. James’ body nearly toppled the opposite direction through the force. The narrow man added a few strokes to his sketch. Amy shot him an evil eye. James rose and faltered. He staggered towards the wall and found a foundation there.
“Harold? Are you ready?” Exasperation was no longer subtext in her tone. Harold was impervious. He had found he was able to read the foreign script inlaid in the cardboard scrolls. A front-row altar read: It's easy to imagine his hands/When looking at their hands/Of leather. Harold recalled the callouses that formed craggy mountains across his father’s palms. He had always wondered when he would grow those callouses.
Amy leaned in and rested her chin on his shoulder, her breath on his ear. The air formed a small crown around his cropped hair. For a brief moment, they were intimate. The narrow man scratched a long note across his notepad. Amy quietly intoned, “Babe, I need a hand.”
Harold shook, with a bolt, from his stupor. He was unable to read the words he just found. He scanned the room at waist level, catching James’ creamy white palms in his gaze. Stabs of irritation pierced his temples. He looked up at Amy.
“Can’t we feed the kid? Look at him, he’s a rail.”
“He just ate." Then she whined too, "We never make it into the city.” Fluorescent light cast a halo across her blonde hair, Harold couldn’t see her face as the light also cast a shadow. He rose, and from this angle, she looked like the girl he first met on the side of the river. She was grabbing coffee with her cousin. He thought she was like a child then, but now he wondered if she wasn’t dumb like James.
James could read The Throne’s didactic from his perch of the wall. The sculptor, Saint James, shared his name. Each biographic sentence provided an intimate deja vu, like watching home movies from a time before consciousness. The sleepless nights stretched from tarmac to tarmac across the West coast. The sparkling rattle of linoleum floors, swept clean with ammonia. The weathered hands embracing, from one golden refuse and from the other a few cents. Each trickling syllable gave way to a flood of memory and senses. His brain could not digitize each new image fast enough, they sat atop each other. Every moment of labor etched into the The Throne was seen through one set of eyes; hands, foil, hands, wood, hands, sketchbook, hands, paste. The fluttering wings, magisterial and full of light, pushing from the blurred bodies, sounds like a scraping metal. The sound overtook him and he had become empty.
Amy and Harold could only hear him hit the ground, caught as they were in a matched gaze. James coiled. His back flexed to a taught arc, he rocked back and forth as each foot pushed into the floor. His arms bent sharply at the elbow, and his fingers jutted crudely into the air. His eyes were open, he did not register sight explicitly, just the gold tones of the foil from the altar ahead of him. Harold rushed in a four-footed crawl to James’ curl on the floor, pulling him forcefully away from the foot of the altar and the wall, then rolling him onto a side. He stroked James’ side, leaving a hand to feel the hard breaths come and leave in shots. He had nothing else to offer.
Amy stood over the pair. Her stomach knotted so tightly she could only exhale when James did. Security guards ran in, emergency services on a line somewhere. A motion was made to move Amy and Harold by one of these guards. Amy seethed a poison without language, and they were provided a trim perimeter. The narrow man sketched a rounded pyramid. When she cooled, her vision returned to James, stock-still.
Amy lifted James, Harold’s comforting hands melted away. Small chin propped on her shoulder, James’ weight was a comforting proof of existence. A stretcher appeared. She shouldered on without it, chased by EMTs and security. She let herself into the trunk of the ambulance, finally laying him on the corrugated floor. She scanned him. His eyes were open, immobile. Under her watch, his fists unclenched. His palms had aged thirty years. New creases folded across his lifeline.