Heaven Has No Fluorescents
Every kind of Philip Seymour Hoffman is alive. The blooming loser and the mustache. The addict and the bitter lion. I’ve seen them at the mall, and I am stoking up the courage to ask them how they made it to the other side.
I work mall security, watch for riffraff. Toilet sleepers. Fountain pissers. Anyone whose bag or coat is too heavy. Let me get a look inside. We call the ones who aren’t here to shop strays, and they need eyes on them. Mine. But I can’t even carry pepper spray. I only have my countenance. My weather.
The first time I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman on screen, he kissed someone who didn’t give a shit about him. His clothes didn’t give a shit about him. I did, and I hadn’t had the gall to kiss anyone.
I wrote letters, framed the autograph that came back. I bought plane tickets, waited in line for two premieres. His weather spread. The moment he entered the theater. When he hooded his eyes to see from the stage. I took some of it with me, kept the power close, but it was not the kind of gale I needed for work.
I have to be more eyes than hands. More words than weapons. The best versions of me glower and sway.
My boss reminds me to document, document, document. I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman trying the latest in lotions. I saw him afraid of the escalator.
I made it to one stage show. He saddled the addict, flashed the loser. The mustache didn’t have a chance. Of course I cried. I didn’t care about consumption or Catholicism. In any role he had only himself to muster.
The uniform can be a punchline. Even when my hair is trim. Even when my boots are heavy. Strays don’t cower. Strays don’t quit—running, shrieking, belling the glass windows and railings. From below, I have no angle, no bully. The strays see another chance to measure their power.
The first Hoffman I saw in the mall was a stubbled cherub. Some loser, some lion. I nursed a healthy tail, through the food court, outside of the salon and the gallery. My eyes did not lie. There he was, dead a year, hands and coat folded, circling like he was waiting for someone. No one ever showed. The second bought a lawnmower, clacked the wheels across the tile and out to the parking garage, left a black mark on the floor I rubbed off with my hand.
I took pictures of the third and fourth. I pissed next to the fifth. The voice confirmed. The gait. Broken like chalk, like dough, so each can have a piece. Death was not meant for us—days, songs, engines. We were meant to build and name and rule.
The cherub returns. The same rucked raincoat. The same empty walk. I had spent the day in paperwork. Two strays had to fight. They scritched the cafe chairs and tried their hands, missing more than hitting, tripping more than feinting. I had to smile, and I had to thunder hey and you and stop.
Phil, his friends called him—Phil admires the windows of the bookshop and the sneaker store.
“How’s your day going?” I ask.
“Not too shabby.”
“Waiting for somebody?”
He looks around. “Window shopping a crime?” he asks. It’s definitely him.
“No, sir. Neither is making conversation.”
I make Philip Seymour Hoffman smile.
“You want to see something?” I ask him.
“Maybe.”
I could never make a beard smart. I could never make a belly regal. He isn’t mouth breathing. He isn’t chin to chest. Our footsteps echo down the stairs.
“Are these new windows?” he asks.
“They’re solar panels.” The politics or the bid, some dumb reason meant they never got installed. Pallets wait in the concrete basement. Every day an employee—of the mall or of a store or of my boss—wanders down here to arrange them. The textured glass. Less blue in dim fluorescents. They’ve dragged the panels into words, FUCK and ASS and CHAD. They’ve made a maze, no exit, walls of panels spiraling in. Eight are a dance floor. You take off your boots and slide on your socks. Phil watches me. He still has his raincoat in his hands.
“Such a waste,” he says.
“I think it’s beautiful. Touch them.”
He does, runs his hand across a few, tests the weight of one. He enters and exits the maze. He starts to spell a word. Is that a P? I bring him more. He rolls up his sleeves.
Our slide won’t work. We need something stronger to support the panels. They are too heavy to treat like swords. Phil makes panel angels, lying on the dance floor, flapping his arms and legs. I lie down next to him. The kiss is quick and dry and briny.
He looks frightened. He knows I know. “Let me out of here,” Phil tells me three times. Of course. I don’t care. “Go on.” I’ll see him again, eating a pretzel or tossing pennies into the fountain, on my television, bringing every part of himself to bear. Whatever you hold back doesn’t carry. Doesn’t cross over. Phil knew. Now we all do. My panel angels are slow and zesty. I make each one count.
TJ Fuller writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon. His first book, a short story collection called Some Stupid Glow, is forthcoming from featherproof books.