Collision Theory Read online

  A Genuine Barnacle Book

  A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Adrian Todd Zuniga

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

  A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302,

  Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  Set in Dante

  epub isbn: 9781947856653

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Zuniga, Adrian Todd, author.

  Title: Collision theory : a novel / Adrian Todd Zuniga.

  Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Barnacle Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA:

  Rare Bird Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572821

  Subjects: LCSH Family—Fiction. | Suicide—Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | Humor fiction. | Literary fiction. | Black humor. | BISAC FICTION / Literary | FICTION / Humorous / Black Humor

  Classification: LCC PS3626 .U53 2018 | DDC 813.6—dc23

  To my mother,

  who loved when I was at home reading

  because it meant I was near her,

  which meant I was safe.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  One

  First, I notice her standing on the building’s ledge in low-slung sunlight, looking out over the city. Next, I spy her bare feet.

  It’s the way her shoes are settled at the base of the ledge—high heels kicked over, ankle straps still buckled—that tells me everything.

  I’d come to the rooftop to breathe, but now there she is, seventy-five feet away. Beyond her, the Brooklyn Bridge held together by floss.

  “I’ll take you to dinner,” I say, a prayer, as if my words could reverse gravity. But a whip of May wind catches my speech.

  “We’ll get far away from all of this right off,” I shout. “Fly into Lisbon, then drive to Seville. We’ll share a pitcher of sangria. You’ll drink too much and I’ll hold your hair back.”

  She continues to stare down the city’s throat. I step toward her. The wind’s hum lifts into a momentary whistle. The navy flowers on her dress rustle against her knees. She sways left to right in the C-sharp breeze.

  “What’s happened up until now,” I shout louder, taking two steps, “I’ll make it up to you times five.”

  The wind gusts and lolls. She reaches back to keep her dress down. Modesty, even now.

  I take two more steps, but she’s still so far away.

  Her feet shift. She’s seconds from takeoff.

  “I’ll ask you about your day and listen to every detail,” I say. “We’ll kiss under storm clouds until we’re both soaked.”

  Her right foot inches to the ledge. Nothing I say anymore will matter.

  “Wait!” I plead as I race toward her, then stop short.

  She’s rocking.

  “Just don’t.”

  She’s going to go.

  “I know it’s hard,” I say. “I understand.”

  But I don’t understand anything.

  She turns and faces me. She raises her right hand and pulls a knotted strand of hair from her mouth and tucks it behind her right ear. Her cheeks are blotched red with upset, her mouth bent into an almost frown.

  The wind tears across my eyes and the skyline blurs into watercolor. What I can half see is that she stops rocking. What I can half see are the birds pausing, the clouds braking. What I can see is that she has stopped everything.

  Until.

  Until she collapses like a faint and disappears from the ledge.

  Two

  Fifteen months after the slow-motion encounter on my Brooklyn rooftop, my best friend calls.

  “Thomas!” Ryan shouts to me through the phone. “Just a reminder that I arrive tomorrow into SFO at one.”

  Still in bed at 11:00 a.m., I sit up. “You what?”

  “Did you not get my email?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. I can hear the cramp of London through the phone, flat sifts of rain and the sloshing zip of traffic. Outside my window, a brick wall is limned in bright, California sun.

  “Fucking Vodaphone,” he says. “One sec.”

  Ryan and I had been best friends since our freshman year at University of Missouri, though he’d been in the UK the last two years, writing for a TV show that hadn’t made it stateside. We kept up on email and with texts, but the time change made it feel, most days, like he’d gone to the moon.

  “Fuck!” he shouts into the phone. “It’s still in my drafts folder. From a month ago. Shit! I’ll send it now, but it basically asks if I can crash with you for a few days. But if it’s a problem, I can…”

  “Definitely stay with me,” I say. “However long is fine.”

  “You’re sure?” he asks. I can hear the smile in his voice. I don’t know if he can hear the relief in mine.

  “Positive,” I say. “There’s not a ton of space, but we’ll make it work.”

  “The couch is fine.”

  “You’ll have your own room,” I say.

  “Fancy,” he says, like I’d hit it rich.

  “Correction,” I say, since I was little better than month to month. “You’ll have your own cubby-hole.”

  The space was the exact size of the slim, twin-sized fold-up cot I had in my apartment’s lone closet.

  “Awesome,” he says. “Once I’m there, I’ll take you out for the finest steak in town!”

  “Great,” I say with a laugh, the first in too long. He knew any sort of beef was an assault on my digestive system the way I knew he read the newspaper twice, annually. “Then I’ll make sure my New York Times subscription is up to date.”

  •••

  When Ryan arrives the next afternoon, he says to me, “You gangly motherfucker!” then gives me a bear hug. He pulls back and says, “Serious
ly, gain some weight.”

  Which, after all these months of static life, I’m surprised I haven’t.

  “I guess I’ll take yours?” I say, and point at his belly. “Clearly London’s had an impact.”

  “It’s all pies over there!” he says. “Pies and rain. I don’t work out unless it’s a cloudless day. You get my text?”

  “Don’t think so,” I say, and pull out my phone to check. “Ah, there it is.” When he sees I’m on a Motorola flip phone, he goes on the offensive.

  “You don’t seriously still use that thing?”

  “This one’s new,” I say, proudly holding it up. “Sixteen bucks on eBay, and does everything I need.”

  “Except alert you to incoming texts from this century?” he says.

  “You’re right. I should probably upgrade to an iPhone that doesn’t send emails.”

  “Fucker,” he says.

  I see he’s only got two large bags with him. For an overseas move, I expected way more. “I thought you were leaving London for good?”

  “I am,” he says. “Pared it down to the essentials. This is all I’ve got left.”

  •••

  Once Ryan’s inside, he sees the unpacked boxes, the stripped-down setup.

  “Place is great,” he says as we walk past my bedroom, which is just a bed, folded T-shirts and underwear atop never-opened boxes, and two paintings leaned against the wall. When we pass the living room—a TV, couch, and coffee table; nothing on the walls, not a plant in sight—Ryan asks, “You just move in?”

  “A year ago,” I say, embarrassed to see this place, now, through someone else’s eyes. Any excitement of Ryan’s visit edges quickly toward the dread of being exposed as a shut-in. So I try to cover. “Just kept it spartan in case…”

  “In case of end times?” Ryan cracks, letting me off the hook, which allows me to relax. “I mean, why unpack just so the world can eventually, someday end once you’ve done all that work?”

  At the rear of the apartment where Ryan will sleep, the bed’s so tight to the walls on three sides the comforter is impossible to tuck in. I’d set a chair at the end of the bed, where we’re now standing, to serve as an end table.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “For what? It’s palatial!” he says. “There’s more than enough room. And this will fit perfectly below.” He slides one of his bulging bags beneath the mattress, and it does fit perfectly below. But when he tries to follow with the second, there’s no way.

  “I’ve got room in my closet.”

  My closet showcases a trio of basic suits for work: black, gray, navy; four white shirts; the bespoke blue-white wool blazer Sarah got me for my birthday two years ago; and boxes. Ryan’s second bag fits in the space where, yesterday, the cot was. Once it’s stowed, we plop onto the couch and he asks me, “What have you been up to? Besides, y’know, unpacking? Like, what’s been going on? I feel like you’ve been stingy with details since you left New York.”

  “Still a paralegal,” I say, with a smile intended to mask how directionless my work is. “I’ve been bouncing between a handful of firms doing contract work when they need me. Pays the rent.”

  “So you’re loving every minute of it?” he says with a laugh and sits up. “You dating anyone?”

  I let out a long sigh. He gives me a pitying, Oh no look.

  “Yeah, I haven’t tried at all since Sarah.” I ask, “What about you?”

  “But, wait,” he starts.

  “Sarah’s gone,” I tell him, eager to change the subject. “There’s just nothing to say.”

  “Sorry. But I get it,” he says. “As for me, I never told you about Delphine.”

  “Delphine?”

  “Yeah,” he says, and falls back. He stares at the ceiling. “I never talked about her, because—this is so dumb—but I didn’t want to jinx it. But in the end, it wasn’t up to me. Three months after our first date, she got a job offer in Vienna. I was in bed next to her when she got the call, and she didn’t hesitate. Accepted right away.” He punches out a sigh. “God, that sucked.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “I told her I’d go with her,” he says. “That I’d move to Vienna.” He covers his face with his hands, embarrassed.

  “What’d she say?”

  “She laughed! She said, ‘Verry funny,’” Ryan says, mirroring Delphine’s French accent. “So I laughed, too, and told her I’d miss her.”

  “What’d she say to that?”

  “Her exact words: ‘Zometimes I miz you, too. But this wuz, uhh, not so zarious, ouais?’” Ryan sits up. “And the hard part? While I was thinking she may be my future wife, it wasn’t serious for her, at all. She left a month later. And even though my writing gig with Channel Four was done, I stuck around London, spent my days writing this new TV pilot, all with my fingers crossed that she’d call to say…anything. But she never called. Just sent one email to say how busy the new job was keeping her, and to see if she’d left a pair of gold earrings on my nightstand.”

  “Oof,” I say. “That sucks. But if it’s any consolation, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Here’s to us in SF,” Ryan says, raising his fist. I bump it with my own. “Honored guests in the Home for Wayward Hearts.”

  Three

  Four months later, Ryan tells me he’s too sick to get out of bed. He’s been projectile vomiting all night.

  It’s 6:00 a.m. on pitch day, and we’re supposed to leave for the airport in half an hour.

  “We have to cancel,” he croaks.

  “We can’t cancel.” I tell him how low I’m running on funds, that we booked nonrefundable flights, plus the car rental and hotel were prepaid.

  “But if we blow this…”

  “I won’t blow it,” I say, an unconvincing blurt. Though, I’d largely leaned on Ryan to lead the pitch. Had only done two full run-throughs on my own, both so he could monitor how it sounded in someone else’s voice.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay?” Now, suddenly ripped with panic after an anxious sleep, I want him to overrule me. “You’re sure?”

  “No,” he says with a weak laugh. “But these sorts of things? You just never know.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go.” I stood there, giving him one last chance to let me off the hook.

  “You should,” he says. “You’re right. You got this.”

  •••

  What Ryan thinks I’ve got is our Attack On Graceland movie pitch. Born from me bailing on contract work week after week, and him taking a break after submitting his latest TV pilot to his agent, we’d spend our afternoons and evenings binge-watching the tacky, harebrained entirety of Elvis Presley’s thirty-one film catalogue. Our movie concept was triggered by post-viewing, deep-dive conversations about The King. Would any of these films be made today? Was he a sneaky-good actor? What would a Tarantino-directed Elvis film look like? Or Charlie Kaufman? What if Graceland were a terrorist target?

  “What if aliens came to earth to steal it?” I asked at one point.

  Ryan leaned forward and stared at me.

  I wiped at my face, wondering if there was something on it. “What?”

  He pointed at me. “We should write that.”

  “Write what?”

  “What you just said—the alien thing.”

  Which led to the two of us spending our mornings at a nearby café brainstorming a series of wild plot points and weirdo characters, then slowly crystallizing them into an absurd, feature-length movie concept about aliens poaching Elvis’s Graceland.

  “We could sell this,” Ryan had said.

  “How? It’s so dumb.” Still, a glimmer of possibility fizzed in my head.

  Weeks later, Ryan came into my room and surprised me when he told me that three production companies—all in LA, all with the money to green-lig
ht films—said they’d be willing to hear our Elvis-based movie pitch.

  •••

  So, after my fog-delayed flight from SFO to LAX, followed by a rental car sprint to drop my luggage at the Best Western Plus above the 101 Café on Franklin—contemporary lodging with a retro vibe!—I motor toward West Hollywood, and after a creeping crawl of traffic on Sunset, I can’t believe my luck when I find metered parking across the street from the first pitch meeting. With no idea how long the pitch will take, I go all in and fill the meter for two hours’ worth. As I hustle to the intersection, it hits me that I will, very shortly, try—all alone; oh, god what have I done!—to convince powerful people that Ryan and I have created a story that is an all-around can’t-miss.

  I time the stoplight just right, shoot across the street, and once I enter the lobby of the building, I pull out my phone to see that I am not on time—the car’s GPS lied!—when I bump into someone or someone bumps into me. My phone hurtles floor-ward and clatters into two on contact: the battery and the phone part of the phone.

  A woman with curly brown hair pulled back and tired eyes spins around, reads the look on my face. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “It’s fine,” I say, frantic as I search the floor for the pieces amongst furniture and potted plants. I see the battery, which she snatches up first and holds it out to me with a straight arm.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to find—is it your camera?”

  I tell her it’s my phone.

  “Oh, god. Your phone?”

  “It’s ancient,” I say, as way of explaining why there are two pieces. “It’s like…a flip phone.”

  She doesn’t judge, instead she does what I’m doing: scans the ground for the phone part of the phone—the important part.

  “I’m such a klutz,” she says.

  “No, it’s fine. I’m just late for a really important meeting. Fuck! Where’d it go?”

  “I’ll fix this,” she says. Her eyes light with newfound commitment. “Go. I’ll find your phone and get it back to you. I don’t live too far. You shouldn’t be late.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s the least I can do,” she says. “But I’ll need that.” She points at the battery. I hand it over without a thought.

  I slow walk toward the elevator in a daze of uncertainty.