Mr. Lightman’s office was sparsely appointed with junky screw-on shelves and lightly bashed file cabinets that had promotional calendar magnets all over them. There was just a single picture framed on the wall, which was a line-drawing of a man in a tennis outfit bent over, looking through his legs at a tennis ball that was flying away behind him. It was supposed to be funny.
"How can I help you, sir?" Mr. Lightman said, not even in the tone of a question, not looking up from a sheaf of papers in his hands.
"Okay," Fingers said, maneuvering into one of the leatherette chairs that faced Mr. Lightman’s desk. "I just need you to clear something up for me. I am making this movie."
"A movie."
"A stop-motion movie, feature-length, about Vietnam. A war film along the lines of Apocalypse Now, only without the boring parts."
Mr. Lightman looked up momentarily. "Stop-motion. You mean like the show with the dog and the."
"Davey and Goliath. Yes. But no. But this is serious. A serious film about a serious subject."
"And you need me."
"I need you because someone else is trying to use the title of my film, claiming it and promoting it as their own."
Mr. Lightman snorted. "What is the title?"
"Full Metal Jacket."
He went back to examining the document. He was a big man with a rubbery, unpleasant lower lip. "What’s that supposed to mean?"
"It’s a bullet with a hard metal shell. For piercing armor."
"And who is the other filmmaker? A friend of yours?"
"Hardly. He’s a big hairy jerkoff as far as I can tell."
Mr. Lightman snapped the document down onto his desk blotter. "I don’t have time for this. Good day to you."
"I’m sorry," Fingers said, rising slightly out of his chair. "I meant no disrespect. For real. Please. Hear me out on this one. This other person, he’s using the title of the film even though I came up with it first. So can I sue?"
"Sue." Mr. Lightman chuckled. "That’s probably not a good idea and not, I’m guessing, even possible, since your film isn’t even finished. Why don’t you just talk to this person and sort it out?"
"That’s the problem. I have tried to reason with this person but I can’t get through to him on account of Warner Brothers Pictures won’t give me access to his contact info."
Mr. Lightman frowned. "Warner Brothers. Who exactly are we talking about here?"
"Stanley Kubrick, sir."
Mr. Lightman jerked back in his chair. He looked disoriented. Then he emitted a single, protracted laugh. "Get out of here," he said. "This is a waste of my time. Who is your father again?"
Fingers started to answer.
"Forget it. I don’t even want to know. Get out of my face, kid."
Fingers sat back. "That’s going to be a tough job, sir, since your face is so fucking fat, you fat fucking whale."
"Get out," Mr. Lightman shouted, rising from his desk to point at the fake door.
Fingers jumped up, swiped a brass pear from the stack of papers it held down, and chucked it full force at the picture of the tennis player, which shattered and fell in pieces into the wire mesh trash bin on the floor below.
"Get–" Mr. Lightman shouted again, cutting himself off as he struggled to circle the desk. His forehead was slick with sweat, and his neck was bright red down the front, like someone had splashed Hawaiian Punch there.
Fingers and Apple got up and ran. The receptionist uttered a short, high-pitched shriek as they burst through the door and out of the building.
"Let’s split up," Fingers shouted, half out of breath already. "Meet me at the studio later." He peeled off down toward the Physical Plant building, which had a swampy woods behind it and a Star Market on the other side. Fingers sometimes worked there as the guy who collected shopping carts and chained them together in long rows.
Apple ran toward his house until he could only jog, and when he couldn’t jog any more he walked slowly, gulping at the chunky spring air.
* * *
Apple’s family ate dinner fast, like someone in the next room was waiting to rush in and take it all away from them at any moment. They hooked their arms around their plates to try to protect their portions from each other. Meals were spastic marathons, each member speedily devouring, staking a claim on the dishes served.
Bradley tried to swipe a fish stick from Apple’s plate. Apple blocked with his elbow and stabbed Bradley in the ear hole with his free hand. Bradley reeled, clapping his hand over his ear. He yelped and a bunch of chewed up corn sprayed from his mouth onto the Easter egg centerpiece their mother had made with felt and pipe cleaners.
"Enough," their father called out, smacking his open palm to the table. Bradley righted himself and started to wipe off the centerpiece with the napkin their mother handed to him.
"We’ve invited the Truongs over for Easter dinner," Apple’s mother said when Bradley was finished. "Your rooms are so filthy I can’t even see the floor. So you’ll go clean them up after dinner." She cleared her throat, which meant that the issue was not up for discussion.
Apple stared at the crushed fish-stick husks moored to his plate by a listing dollop of tartar sauce. He started breathing fast. He couldn’t remember what the girls looked like. He had thought so hard and long on the glimpse he’d gotten of the oldest girl’s face that it had disintegrated. All that was left was the swatch of her hair, how it lay across her shoulder. He remembered, too, how lost the Truongs seemed inside their donated clothes. He tried to think about their mysterious journey across the sea in the makeshift boat. How long would it take to get across an ocean? It had killed their mother. The closest he’d ever come to that kind of danger was when Hugh and Chris Hamilton put him in a refrigerator box and started whaling on it with sledgehammers. That was nothing in comparison because he could just stand in the absolute middle of the box and not get hurt really bad, but the girls on the makeshift boat, there was no middle they could stand in. The ocean was all edge.
