It’s not so dangerous, his act, especially now that he uses a glass-free brand of glow stick. As a novice, Moses used glow sticks that contained a glass vial of hydrogen peroxide in phthalate ester, floating in a tub of phenyl oxalate ester. He’d crack the tubes until the glass in each one broke and the chemicals mixed, reacting together to radiate. Then he’d clip off the heads and tails of the sticks and methodically work the fresh luminous chemicals into his skin, before concealing himself in a long coat, a ski mask, and gloves, at which point he would surreptitiously make his way to the victim’s location. But after cutting his legs on the glass in preparation for the Bussini attempt this past winter, he decided to switch to a different brand, which contains no glass but does employ the chemical dibutyl phthalate—DBP—the use of which is banned in the European Union for cosmetics and children’s toys.
But so what if DBP can enhance the capacity of other chemicals to produce genetic mutations? So what if it can cause developmental defects, provoke unwelcome changes in the testes and prostate, reduce one’s sperm count, interfere with hormone functions, and impair fertility? So what if it’s toxic to aquatic organisms and young children, capable of causing liver failure in the latter? None of this bothers Moses Robert Blitz. In no material sense is he a child or an aquatic organism. He has no interest in reproducing and is surely mutated beyond repair already. Besides which, he believes the European Union has a tendency to overreact. He has his policies: avoid the eyes and mouth, don’t ingest, keep away from pets, thoroughly wash in hot soapy water and follow with a generous application of baby oil. Eager to brew his own batch of glow, he recently discovered an online recipe: sodium acetate, ethyl acetate, dye, hydrogen peroxide, and a powder called CPPO. He’s waiting to hear back from a CPPO source in Russia. He has never understood the appeal of immortality.
It took no more than a brief google search and three emails to identify the woman who deleted Moses Robert Blitz’s comment on his mother’s obituary. He found her home address without even trying. After his email, she restored his comment, which was surprising. But then she deleted it again! How could he let an offense like that go unpunished, when he’s already punished lesser ones?
He had never heard of Vacca Vale before the obituary affront, but he likes to visit Middle America, likes to investigate and report back to the coasts. Their churches and their supermarket smiles. Their canned corn, which travels thousands of miles before returning to the land that produced it. Their American flags in the yards, their minivans and Christian schools. The roads, the unwalkability, their hard and friendly R’s. Sweet gas station clerks. The faith and anger and geometry. All highways and God. Moses only understands contemporary politics when he’s in the Midwest.
It’s around three in the morning on Wednesday, July seventeenth, and Moses is about to board his red-eye from Los Angeles to Chicago. While he waits, he types an itinerary for himself into a beige app on his phone:
? 7:30 a.m.: Arrive in Chicago. Rent car. Drive.
? 9:30 a.m.: Arrive in Vacca Vale. See sights. Kill time.
? 10:30 a.m.: Check into motel. Nap.
? Afternoon: Walk around. Find nice park. Stroll. Museum? Food. Booze. Olives. Most important = feel good!!!!!
? Evening: Update blog. Read. Martinis. Glow prep.
? 2 a.m.: KAPOW!
? 2:30 p.m.: Return flight, ORD–LAX. Call estate lawyer about the Zorns.
Moses swipes out and smiles, pleased with himself. Crafting schedules makes him feel like a real adult.
At the gate, people sit body-to-body, gazing into their screens, everyone terminally addicted to that blue light. Moses inspects the starless, navy sky through a glass wall. A sleepy toddler tips over his father’s coffee, which the carpet absorbs in disturbing totality. It should be illegal, Moses thinks, to take toddlers on red-eyes. He prefers night flights because they make him feel important, as though his life is stocked with obligations. He’s got insomnia, anyway. Tiny planes meander on the tarmac, and even tinier people in orange vests make decisions. Moses admires people with jobs. He knows he should feel exhausted, but instead, in his seat, he buzzes. Not with a desire to hatch from his flesh, but with a desire to gently punish Joan Kowalski.
A pair of young women sit beside him, cased guitars at their feet. They could be twins or lovers, he’s not sure, but they have clearly spent years in the same home, stepping over each other to get to their lives. “We have all this stuff, and yet we’re still so sad,” says one to the other.
“Why don’t you write a fucking screenplay about it.”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
“Don’t be a cartoon.”
“Of what?”
“Of a millennial.”
“Your dog is at a spa!”
“Your voice is like gasoline.”
“Your voice is like coal!”
Each is silent for some time as they retreat into their screens. One twists her hair moodily, her thick brows furrowed, legs crossed, white sneaker bobbing. The other applies coat after coat of lip balm, then sanitizes her hands with an orange-blossom spray that momentarily reunites Moses with an enchanting cocktail he drank a decade ago in Beirut. Eventually, the first girl giggles. “Watch this,” she says, tilting her phone and resting her head on the other girl’s shoulder. “You ever seen a bat on a treadmill?”
Moses dislikes all generations, dislikes the very concept of them, but this is the generation he dislikes the most. He retrieves his noise-canceling headphones and listens to “Fourteen Ocean Waves to Soothe Your Baby” on high volume. It sounds great. He googles Joan Kowalski again, to prevent his hands from scratching the fibers that burst from his pores.
Joan Kowalski has the kind of sloppy online presence of a person who believes that no one will ever google her. It’s obvious that securing her own privacy—deleting that unflattering image of herself squatting beside a trash can shaped like a whale, for instance—would not only register as an act of vanity, but also of delusion.
A leather bag of glow sticks occupies the seat to Moses’s right, and he feels its presence like that of a crush. The glow sticks puzzled security, but Moses shrugged, said he was organizing a music festival. The airport upholstery is a shade of orange endemic to the seventies, and it makes him nostalgic. He observes a wasteland of factories, construction, and dead grass on Google Maps. Moses scrolls through the search engine results, validating his suspicion that Vacca Vale is yet another American blemish—one of those disposable, expired towns responsible for electing the demagogues who reduce their country to a trash fire. A town that needs a good babysitter. And a lot of education! He comes upon a photo of a lush park whose splendor appears accidental in context, like the only beautiful child in a family of ten. In another image, cows huddle in a snowy field. Moses would like to tip one over.
After skimming Vacca Vale, Indiana’s online encyclopedia page, he stumbles upon a section that makes him gasp. The young women glance at him, concerned. Zorn Automobiles, says the link. Moses had no idea that his mother’s favorite car manufacturer was based in Vacca Vale, and the coincidence makes him itchy, makes him suspect that forces are conspiring to send him a sign that he doesn’t want to receive. Elsie owned several Zorns and loved them more sincerely than she loved the people in her life. When Moses was sixteen, he stole her 1932 Presidential Coupe, drove it down the Pacific Coast Highway at full speed at four in the morning. When she found out, she enrolled him in an intensive Old Norse language program and shipped him off to Reykjavík. She didn’t speak to him for the rest of the summer.
He is missing his mother’s funeral to punish Joan Kowalski, but he is not missing his mother. As he sips an oversweet cappuccino, an emotion that approximates happiness circulates through his body. Once he arrives at the airport in Chicago, he’ll have to take a bus to the rental car agency. He hasn’t ridden a bus in years, and the prospect makes him feel like a man of the people. Like he should run for office. He’ll have a whole day in Vacca Vale to plan his attack. Joan will be so easy to frighten.
He stows the phone in his pocket and scratches his arms, harder and harder until people begin to queue. He removes his headphones. A businessman on the seat across from him with absolutely no neck talks into a phone. “I invite her over for a shower, see where things go.” He chortles. “So what.”
“Now boarding Zone One, now boarding Zone One,” an androgynous voice announces, and Moses stands without checking his ticket. Maybe that’s his problem, he thinks. He’s never had to check his ticket to know that he’s in Zone One.
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