25 :: antimonument ::
[posted 1/15/01]
Fletcher has collected their money and gone up to pay the tab. Jakob and Freya don their coats, with a familiar semidrunken struggle. Freya fishes a crumpled pack of American Spirits out of her pocket, examines it, and flings it onto the table.
Freya: Empty.
Jakob: Kicked.
Freya: Cashed. [pause] Do you realize I’ve been smoking for fourteen years? That’s half my life.
Jakob: You know. I heard them saying on the radio. The fifteenth anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is coming up in, like, a month.
Freya: Jesus, only fifteen years ago? That seems like forvever ago.
Jakob: Fifteen years is half your life.
Freya: Over half my life.
Jakob: You just said so.
Freya: I just— I remember myself then —I was such a kid.
Jakob: We all were. For those of us too young to remember Watergate, it was the first time we realized that the structures of order could fuck up.
Freya: Oh, um, no. I realized that a lot earlier.
Jakob: Oh? How?
Freya: Um. My dad.
Jakob: Oh.
[Fletcher returns, pulling his hat on.]
Fletcher: What are you guys talking about?
Freya: Space Shuttle Challenger.
Jakob: Fifteen years ago now.
Fletcher: Oh.
Jakob: Man, I’ll always remember that shape — you know what I’m talking about? That shape of the explosion?
[They all will. That glyph of smoke and fire in the sky is written into each of their brains. It is one of the characters in their shared yet secret alphabet.]
Freya: Antimonument.
Fletcher: You know, I still remember all those Christa MacAuliffe jokes—
Freya: Don’t.
Fletcher: "What were Christa MacAuliffe’s last words?"
Freya: Fletcher, just— don’t.
Fletcher: All right, all right. Who’s ready?
[They thread through the crowd and push through the door out into the street. It has begun to snow.]
Jakob: Hey— it’s snowing.
[He looks up. He has always loved looking upwards into a snowfall. He sees a million gray flecks swirling on the black field of the night sky. A huge and unmappable thing; every piece unique.]
