Big Giant Floating Head

by Christopher Boucher

  “My father was in stories,” I said. “The rest of it I taught myself.”

  We walked down the hill to Outlaw Pond, and Bon Jovi ran to the edge of the water where he peed and pooped. Which looked very strange, by the way—the pee and poop seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  Molly must have seen me staring at her dog because she said, “What.”

  “What?” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Your face is sort of hard for me to see,” she said. “I can’t tell what that look means.”

  “Was Bon Jovi always invisible?” I asked.

  Molly shook her head. “He was opaque as a puppy, and became translucent at about ten months.”

  I nodded. Then I said, “Don’t some people say invisibility’s contagious?”

  “That’s total bullcrap,” Molly said. “Scientists in Europe have proved that it’s genetic.”

  “I’ve heard that theory, too,” I said.

  “Why—does it worry you?”

  I said no, but the truth was that it did and it didn’t. Part of me was nervous about it (especially when I remembered that invisible dogs were illegal in some states—though not in Massachusetts, obviously). Another part of me was okay with it, though, because I already felt invisible sometimes. I’d felt that way since I was a child. Sometimes it seemed like people had trouble seeing me, reading my face. When I’d heard the theory about the invisibility gene, I wondered if maybe I carried it. It wouldn’t surprise me; I sort of remembered something that my mom told me about an invisible great aunt.

  And something sort of like invisibility had ruined a previous relationship. My girlfriend and I’d only been dating a month when she started complaining that I was talking too quietly. I’d say something to her and she’d say, “What?” I’d say it again. “What?” she’d say.

  It was like my voice became invisible. And as far as I knew, those kinds of distortions sometimes preceded translucency.

  After two more months of that, my girlfriend came over to my apartment one night and broke up with me. I objected weakly but she couldn’t hear me. She said she was sorry and gave me a hug, and then I did that thing that I do—I left. I walked out of our apartment with no keys, no money, and no change of clothes.

  * * *

  And that was the last relationship I’d had. So it was nice to walk around the campus with Molly and her invisible dog. I didn’t mind that we didn’t say much to each other—the fact that she could hear me was a birthday in itself.

  As we walked back toward downtown, I asked Molly about her job and she said that she’d been working for the CDA for about two years. She said that she liked working for the city, but that she hoped to eventually work in federal apologies. “That’s where the real money is,” she said.

  “It seems like a good field,” I said. “More and more people are apologizing these days.”

  “That’s why I got into it,” she said. “We had ten percent more apologies at the CDA last year than we did the year before.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  When we reached the store, I bent down to say goodbye to Bon Jovi, and his invisible tongue licked my hand. Then I stood up and Molly’s face changed channels to a bright smile. “Tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  * * *

  The next morning, about twenty minutes before we opened, the Narrator opened up the locked front door of our store and stood in the center of the carpet. “Morning, ladies and gents,” he said.

  I stood up from my workbench, and so did Boris Sarah. “We’re closed,” said Boris Sarah.

  “Not to me, you’re not,” said the Narrator.

  * * *

  The Narrator had first appeared in my store a few months earlier, during our grand opening—he spent hours browsing through the shelves, and then he approached my worktable and asked to speak to a manager. “We’re both managers,” Boris Sarah told him.

  The Narrator introduced himself—he handed me a business card that said “The Narrator” along with a phone number and a mailing address. The Narrator told us that he lived in Blix, and that he’d narrated more than a hundred books. “I’ve been looking around your store,” he said, “and frankly I’m a little concerned.” I asked him why and he said, “None of these books have narration.” He pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through the pages. “I mean, where are the words?”

  “That one doesn’t have words,” said Boris Sarah.

  “What does it do, then?”

  “It just hums.”

  “The book—hums?”

  “Sure,” Boris Sarah said.

  “Where’s the story?”

  “There is no story,” I said.

  Then another customer came in with a return, and the Narrator waited for a few minutes and then left in a huff. He returned again the following day and confronted me with the same complaints—that my books needed narrators. “Listen,” he said, “we have a real problem here, you and I. Western Mass. is not a big place—there’s only so much business for booksellers like us.”

  “This really isn’t a good time for me to talk,” I said, sitting down at my typewriter. “I’m right in the middle of a project.”

  “What I’m saying is, the more people buy your books, the less people buy mine. You can understand my concern, right?”

  I should have said yes, that I understood. I should have said that there was room enough for both of our books on the shelves. But I didn’t—I was trying to work, and frustrated that I couldn’t, so I said, “Every business that I know of faces competition. Now are you going to buy something or aren’t you?”

  The Narrator crossed his arms. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” I said.

  “Am I going to buy something?” The Narrator looked shocked. Then he smiled tentatively and said, “What I want to know is, how are you going to write books without a typewriter?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Boris Sarah. “Christopher has a typewriter—he’s typing on it right now!”

  “You sure that’s your typewriter?” the Narrator said to me. “Because it looks an awful lot like mine.”

  I looked up at him. “My uncle gave me this typewriter,” I said.

  “But now I think you’re giving it to me.”

  “What?” I said.

  The Narrator closed his eyes. In a voice that sounded like caramel he said, “The next day, the Narrator visited Tomorrow Books to talk some sense into Christopher and Boris Sarah. But they wouldn’t listen.”

  “What are you doing?” said Boris Sarah.

  But I understood what he was doing: he was narrating.

  The Narrator, his eyes still closed, said, “But then Christopher did something strange: he unplugged his typewriter and gave it to the Narrator.”

  As if under a spell, my body began to move. Without wanting to, I unplugged my electric typewriter and handed it over to the Narrator.

  The Narrator opened his eyes and feigned surprise. “Wow—thanks very much,” he said.

  As soon as I put the typewriter in his hands I reached to grab it back, but the Narrator pulled it away. I began to realize who this guy was, what I’d done. “Listen,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that we’re a new business, and—”

  “You know what?” said the Narrator. “You just pissed off the wrong Narrator.” Then he closed his eyes and said, “The door of Tomorrow Books swung open and the Narrator stormed out.”

  The door of the store swung open and the Narrator walked out, carrying my uncle’s typewriter in his arms.

  * * *

  Now the Narrator stood in my store, grinning at me. “I just love my new typewriter,” he said. “But you know what I was thinking? It occurred to me this morning that maybe I need a nice worktable to go with it.”

  “Listen,” I said, holding out my hands, “I think we just got off on the wrong foot.”

  “Bet your ass we did,” said the Narrator. “You wanted competition? You got it.”

>   “Wait a second,” I said. “Did you get my apology?”

  “What apology?” he said.

  “I filed an apology.”

  “Formally?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You paid the fee?”

  I nodded.

  I could tell he was surprised. “You lying to me?” he said incredulously.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “I haven’t received it,” said the Narrator.

  “It must be on its way then,” I said.

  “I’ll check for it when I get home,” said the Narrator. “And you’d better hope it’s there—”

  “It should have gotten to you yesterday,” I said.

  “—because I wouldn’t want to have to come back here and tear your store apart,” the Narrator said.

  “I just have to think that there’s a way to sort this out,” I said.

  * * *

  Molly and I walked Bon Jovi every day at lunch and sometimes after work. We walked all around Coolidge: up to Magazine Street near Joe’s; over to Inquiry Ave; around the corner to Masonic and the Masonic Café; up Route 9 to Demand and Crescent; across the street to Poutine Park; down to Molly’s apartment on Conz Street; down Joy Blvd to the Memory of Bread bakery; past ______’s house and onto Hawley; over to my apartment on South; once, on a weekend, all the way to the Statue of Coolidge.

  * * *

  And over time, Bon Jovi and I became friends.

  After a few weeks of walks, Molly even started leaving Bon Jovi at the store with me. I guess he’d caused some trouble at the CDA when he started barking at co-workers and apologizers, and since we still weren’t getting many customers at Tomorrow Books, I told Molly I could keep an eye on her dog.

  Bon Jovi seemed to really like hanging out at the store—he used to sit on the floor near the word-forge, where it was warm. And sometimes I’d be binding, and I’d hear the bell on Bon Jovi’s collar ring, and then I’d feel him nuzzle at my feet. I’d look down and see the leg of my pants imprinted where Bon Jovi was lying against my shin.

  * * *

  One day, maybe a month after I met Molly, she and I took Bon Jovi for a walk down by the airport and past the Fields of No. We took Bon Jovi off his leash and he ran into the woods. He liked to sneak up on squirrels, and you’ve never seen a squirrel run so fast as one being chased by an invisible dog. Molly and I walked down Last River Road until we came upon the memory of a house. We looked out past the house and toward the water behind it.

  Molly said, “I love the fact of the river.”

  “The fact of the river?” I said.

  “That it’s right here, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I said. The air was delightfully cold. “Maybe we should buy this house, fix it up.”

  Molly looked at me with her blue eyes cloudy and her cloudy face. “With what money?”

  “I have some money,” I said.

  “Who’d live here?” she said. “You or me?”

  “We could both live here,” I said.

  Bon Jovi barked in the distance.

  Molly leaned in. “It’s just the memory of a house,” she said. “Not a real house.”

  “It could be real, though.”

  She took my hand, smiled, and shook her head. “We couldn’t live here,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  Suddenly I was very nervous. When I looked into Molly’s eyes—far back into them, into her eyes behind her eyes—I could tell that she wanted me to kiss her. But I was frozen; I couldn’t move. This was maybe the only moment in my life when I wished for the Narrator—I wished he could have been there to close his eyes and say, “And then Molly and Christopher kissed.”

  Finally Molly said, “I’ve been looking for someone to like, or to love.”

  “You have?”

  “Maybe that could be you.”

  A thought in my mind tripped and fell. “People get tired of me,” I said.

  “I won’t,” said Molly.

  We stared at each other for a moment. Then Molly said, “Wouldn’t this be a good time in the story for a kiss to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Molly leaned in and kissed me. I still try to remember it—how cold and soft her lips were. It wasn’t a French-style kiss, either—it was a good old Coolidge-style kiss: short but nice.

  * * *

  But the very next day, something terrible happened while Boris Sarah and I were trying to move a very large book into the store. The book was called a Superbook, and it was nine feet wide and fifteen feet high, with pages made of Luaun. The damn book got stuck in the doorway while we were trying to move it in—it got lodged there and we couldn’t budge it. Obviously very pissed, Boris Sarah swore and paced up and down the store. “What a waste of time this is,” said Boris Sarah. “And do you really think we’re ever going to sell this thing?”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “These Superbooks are the next big thing! And we’ll be the first store in Coolidge to carry them.”

  Finally we were able to get the book through the door, and we leaned it against a shelf of false calendars. Since Boris Sarah still seemed ticked off, I decided to take Bon Jovi for a walk. “Bon Jovi!” I called. I didn’t hear his bell, so I called him again. When I still couldn’t hear him I said, “Where’s Bon Jovi?”

  “Who?” said Boris Sarah.

  “Molly’s dog,” I said.

  “He’s not here?” Boris Sarah looked around and then pointed to the back door. “Christopher,” Boris Sarah said. “Could he have snuck out while we were moving in the Superbook?”

  I called the dog’s name again, and then I walked out into the alley. “Bon Jovi!” I shouted.

  No Bon Jovi.

  I called Molly at work, and she came right over—five minutes later she was standing in the bookstore, her eyes turnstiles. “Where did you last see him?” she asked.

  “Right here,” I said. “He was at my worktable.”

  “We propped open the door when we moved in that Superbook,” said Boris Sarah.

  “The book got stuck in the door, actually,” I said.

  “The what?” said Molly.

  “The Superbook,” said Boris Sarah, pointing to the giant book.

  Molly turned to me and said, “You didn’t put him on his leash?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Christopher?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  Molly and I walked all over Coolidge—we searched Poutine Park, the Coolidge College campus, everywhere. We walked as far as the Fields of No, then turned back in the hopes that maybe Bon Jovi had returned to the store. Molly wouldn’t speak to me—she just marched along in silence. “The fact that he’s invisible makes this really difficult,” I said, trying to ease the tension.

  Molly glared at me. “That dog is a really good friend of mine,” she said.

  By the time we got back to Tomorrow Books we’d been walking for hours—it was almost six p.m., and completely dark. Molly’s face was wet with tears when we pushed open the door of the bookstore.

  And guess who was standing there. “Oh, great,” I said.

  “You fucking liar,” said the Narrator.

  * * *

  “What will you take from me this time?” I asked.

  “You’re a liar—you never filed any apology,” the Narrator said.

  “I told you, I submitted it to the CDA,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “I swear to God I did,” I said.

  The Narrator’s eyes narrowed. Then he closed his eyes and began to narrate. “Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason,” the Narrator said, “Christopher punched himself in his own face.”

  My hand closed into a fist and I punched myself in my own face.

  “Oh!” I said. “Ah!” My mind growled and my nose bled.

  “How dare you lie to me,” said the Narrator.

  “I swear I did—I got the form online,” I said.


  “On-what?” said the Narrator.

  “Online,” I said. “Through the computer.”

  “What?”

  I looked to Molly for help. Her face was cold.

  The Narrator closed his eyes again and said, “And then, as if punching himself in the face wasn’t bad enough, Christopher reached into his mouth, took hold of his own tooth, and began to pull.”

  And I did.

  “Ah!” I screamed. “Please!” I begged.

  “And slowly,” the Narrator said, “Christopher pulled the tooth out.”

  I tried like hell to unclench my hand, to stop my arm from pulling, but I had no control over my body.

  After a minute or two of pulling, the tooth came out. I almost blacked out from the pain. I shrieked and howled and wept. “I did submit it,” I said through a bloody mouth. “I promise. Ask her,” I said, and I pointed to Molly.

  The Narrator and Molly looked at each other.

  “Molly, tell him!”

  Molly was focused on me. “You know what, Christopher? You deserve this.”

  “We’ll find him, Molly,” I mumbled, spitting blood.

  “Find who?” the Narrator said.

  “Her dog,” I said.

  “You had a responsibility—you were supposed to watch him,” Molly said to me.

  The Narrator pointed at me. “Christopher lost your dog?”

  Molly nodded, and began to cry.

  “He is invisible,” I mumbled.

  The Narrator’s eyes were bright. He studied Molly’s splotchy face; then he said to her, “What’s your dog look like?”

  “He’s invisible,” Molly said.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bon Jovi,” she said.

  The Narrator closed his eyes and said, “And then, much to everyone’s surprise, Bon Jovi walked right up to the front door of Tomorrow Books. Christopher and—I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Molly,” she said.

  “—Christopher and Molly heard the sound of paws at the front door,” said the Narrator.