Page 30 - Demo

Win the Game (continued from preceding page)
to him in the parking lot, on the drive home, had splintered like puzzle pieces tossed on the floor. He cleared his throat and saw Arnie watching him.
“There she is.” Arnie pointed; his voice was proud and strong.
“You’re breathing hard,” said his father. “Are you okay?”
A bunch of cables and poles by the back wall. Kelly had assumed it was a weight-lifting apparatus. He moved closer and saw it was something else, unrec- ognizable. Pipes and wires and tubes ran in all direc- tions. There were switches and bulbs and dials. Kelly recognized two old TV screens from his childhood
Kelly answered in a loud voice that was almost a shout. “For God’s sake, just tell me. What the hell do you have out there in the garage?”
at the bottom of the contraption. There were more lights on poles that reached out towards the ceiling, and then speakers, and a long microphone connected to one of the screens. Kelly thought that the entire thing resembled a kind of mechanical squid with upstretched arms, frozen in place.
So many years! While Kelly played ball or moped around waiting for a friend to call, Arnie had been in here. While Kelly and his mother watched eve- ning detective shows, Arnie had been in here. Kelly scanned the room, looking for something worthy, something amazing, something that would explain his father’s choices. Had the man solved the world’s energy problems? Or was it a teleporter?
“Isn’t it something?” said Arnie, talking more to him- self than to his son. He flicked switches and connect- ed wires, then adjusted dials on the screens; these lit up with a deep blue light. Arnie indicated to him to help with the cot, which they placed in front of the screens. “Sit down,” the man said. “You’re really going to see something.”
He would forgive him if it was a teleporter.
“Watch the screens,” said his father.
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“Look,” said Arnie again. It was the other screen; Kelly started. A collage of images was there—im- ages of the family, from a trip that they had taken when Kelly was a child. Boston, Cape Cod, a driving tour of Massachusetts. He jumped again. The images moved—not just the pictures—but the people in
~
The place was neater than he’d imagined. To start, it was drywalled and neatly painted. Plastic bins, large and small, along with innumerable glass jars, lined shelves on two walls: they were filled with nails and screws and other shiny doodads. Behind the wide garage door, which Arnie had bolted to the floor, Kelly examined a variety of expensive tools: saws, drills, air compressors, workbenches. In a corner Kelly ran his hands over a grey army cot. How many nights had his father spent here? He opened a small fridge, half-hid- den under a checkered tablecloth, disappointed that it contained, not the beer he’d been expecting to find, but soda and water.
“This is it,” said his father. “It’s my project.”
“This? It’s...What is it?”
Arnie turned a dial and Kelly heard someone talking, but distant: he could discern no words, just a low sort of hum in the background. He thought it sound- ed like Arnie’s voice; listening more closely he saw he was right, but there were other voices. His own, his mother’s.
The left screen shifted from blue to green to grey to black; a shape appeared that looked like a cloud, but it soon changed, and Kelly thought he saw an animal, then a human figure, then unidentifiable shapes.
His father grasped the long microphone and spoke into it; as he did so, the figures changed, new colors appeared, and distant faces appeared in the midst of the color. They seemed to be talking. Kelly stared and leaned forward on his elbows. Sometimes he thought the voices and the shapes were his, or his mother’s, but he couldn’t be sure.