The teacher nose-sighs again, knocks on the table, says, “So,” and looks up, directly at the camera. He blinks three times, pursing his lips.
The Best
Home Video
August 23, 1989, USA
[6 minutes, 29 seconds]
Just past a bedroom doorway, looking down at his socks, a preadolescent, potbellied boy in a sky-blue turtleneck and wire-rimmed spectacles cradles a Siamese cat against his chest.
“Here we are,” the little girl, who’s filming, whispers, “in my big brother’s bedroom while our dad and our sister—who’s my twin—have strep, and are fast asleep in their respectable bedrooms. Our mom is resistant to this terrible disease, or so it seems, but she’s getting a throat culture, just in case. All we really know for sure is Dad and Paula either got strep from me or from Adam and today—”
“Rachel, stop wasting tape,” the boy says. “Say, ‘Action.’ ”
“We need an introduction.”
“I’m getting the tripod.”
“No! Please! I’ll be helpful. Please? Adam, please? I’m the helper. I’m helping. Action, okay? Action. Action!”
Adam leaps forward, into the doorway. As he lands, the cat looses a rumbly meow. Adam speaks to the camera: “What I’m about to show you how to do is the best.” He points at an ear-high mark on the doorjamb. “This dot here, made in number-two pencil, is as high as our cat can reach when she jumps. We measured it this morning. See? Watch this.”
He drops the cat and, from the pocket of his sweatpants, pulls out a roll of black electrical tape. He tears off an inch, loops it sticky-side-out, and presses the loop to the mark on the jamb. He tears another couple inches off the roll of black tape, balls the tape up compact as a molar, and affixes the ball of tape to the loop. Nodding, satisfied, he makes rapid kissing sounds. “Franky,” he says. He makes more rapid kissing sounds. “Frankenstein,” he says.
The cat, ignoring him, traipses a figure eight through his ankles.
Adam takes the cat by the scruff of the neck and holds it up, in the middle of the doorway, so its eyes are level with the tape ball.
The cat ferociously bats at the air.
Adam drops the cat, points at the tape ball.
The cat leaps and swats, scratches the jamb, missing the bottom of the tape ball by a hair. On landing, it backsteps, tries again. Same result.
“So that’s the maximum height,” Adam says, as the cat keeps jumping, swatting, missing. “And now…” He pulls back his shirtsleeve, exposing his CureSleeve, reaches for the zipper, drops his hand, and says, “Actually, no…first I should…um…Well, you should take Frankie and…” He removes the roll of electrical tape from his pocket again.
CUT.
Six minutes later. Adam blows aloft the hair on his forehead. Above the tape-ball, a cure is taped across the middle to the doorjamb, gazing fondly at Adam while bobbing its head and bicycling its legs as it repeatedly whistles the first five notes of “Yellow Submarine.”
Rachel accompanies the whistling with lyrics: “We all live in a/We all live in a/We all live in a…”
“Stop, Rach,” says Adam.
Rachel stops singing.
“Stop, Percy,” says Adam.
The cure stops whistling.
“Get limp,” Adam says.
Percy shrugs.
“Limp,” Adam says.
Percy shrugs and whistles.
Adam slouches, demonstrating limp.
Percy mimics him.
“Good Perce!” Adam says. “You did it! Good Perce.” Adam touches Percy’s head and turns back to the camera. “Now, as you can see, the very bottoms of Percy’s feet, which are the very lowest points on Percy, begin just above the very lowest point on the ball of black tape that as you were able to see by our demonstration only just a few minutes ago is just right above the maximum height of what Frankenstein is able to reach with her longest, most extended claw when she jumps.”
He removes the ball of tape from the doorjamb.
“Should I get her, now?” Rachel says.
Adam nods affirmatively. “Don’t wake Dad.”
The camera swings around.
Across a narrow hallway is a closed, white door. Rachel’s hand turns the knob, and the door opens inward. A shirtless, exceedingly hairy man is sleeping on his back on a king-size bed with a pillow on his face, an arm over the pillow. At the man’s feet, Frankenstein is licking her paws.
Rachel whispers, “Frankie, Frankie. Come here.”
The cat quits licking, but remains on the bed.
“Frankenstein, come here,” Rachel whispers louder.
The cat scratches at her flank, freezes—her ears perk. The faint sound of Percy whistling “Yellow Submarine” can be heard in the background. With a yowl, Frankenstein jumps off the bed, bolting toward, then past, the camera.
The sleeping father stirs. Rachel’s hand pulls the door shut. The camera swings around.
Frankenstein is hissing, jumping at Percy, missing, spitting, hissing, jumping. Percy, gazing wide-eyed at Adam, and making imploring gestures with its arms while alternately bicycling its legs and going limp, is no longer whistling, but whimpering as if it’s about to painsing. “The best!” Adam says. “See? It’s the best.”
“The best!” says Rachel.
“There’s perfect tension. Frankie wants to break Percy. Percy wants to escape. Neither of them can have what they want unless I alter the conditions, but neither of them knows they can’t have what they want because the conditions make it seem like they could have what they want if only they just try just a little bit harder. So they both just keep trying to get what they want! And then there’s what I want, and Rach wants, and what you want, too, I bet, whoever you are. We want to see something happen. Something has to happen! But except if something happens, then what? Then it’s over. So is it true that we really want to see something happen?”
“Whoah!” Rachel says.
“Isn’t wanting to see something happen what we really want? Aren’t we getting what it is we really want?”
“Maybe!” Rach says. “I don’t know, though!” Rach says. “I think that I really want something to happen.”