“And I still do,” said the sofa. “That’s what this whole thing’s about.”
“But we were happy,” I said to the sofa. “Weren’t we happy?”
“I haven’t been happy for years, Chris,” said my street.
I ran out to the curb. “Years?” I said.
A bus pulled up. “Two years at least,” said the bus. I stepped onto it.
“Remember the Brandels’ party?” said a woman sitting toward the front.
“No,” I said.
“How you asked me what was wrong and I began to cry?” said an old man in the back.
I walked back to where he was sitting. “I know things haven’t been perfect,” I told him.
“Not perfect?” said a field out the window. “I’m a shell of myself, Chris.”
I pressed the yellow strip behind the seat and the bus stopped; I got off and walked out into the field. “Every marriage has ebbs and flows,” I said to the field.
“Please—you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be,” said a river through the trees.
I ran out to the river. “Honey, I’ll change,” I told the water.
“I’m not asking you to change,” said the sun. “I’m asking you to let me go.” Then it fell behind the water.
“But you’re my whole life,” I said to the sunset.
“You’ll start a new life,” said some new stars.
“Look me in the face and tell me you don’t love me anymore,” I said.
“I don’t,” said the moon, and it leaned down so that its face was an inch from mine. “I’m so sorry. But I don’t love you anymore.” Then the moon kissed me on the cheek, turned away from me, and left me alone in the dark.
One afternoon, not long after my divorce, I came back to my room at the Baystate rooming house and found my door flung open. I’d been robbed! When I searched my room to see what was missing, though, I found my banjo where I’d left it and next month’s rent still hidden in the bureau.
Then I looked in my desk drawers. I found my extra pair of glasses, my passport, my—wait, where was my manuscript?
My novel was gone!
I ran downstairs and knocked on the Knee’s door. He answered. “Ey!” he said. A big cigar stuck out from between his teeth.
“Did you go into my room?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“Someone came in and took the novel,” I said.
“The one you read me? Big floating whatever?”
“Big Giant Floating Head,” I said. “It’s gone.”
“Maybe the writing escaped,” he said. “Did you consider that?”
“No way,” I said. “Someone came in and stole it.” It was true that my writing would sometimes cry, or stamp its feet in anger, or kick against the wood when I locked it in the drawer. The chapter “Success Story” had once staged a hunger strike, and another time “Beautiful Outlaw” purposefully knocked over my cup of chai from Coffee or Else. But escape? The writing wasn’t smart enough. “That novel is worth everything to me,” I said.
The Knee puffed on his cigar. “I’ll ask Crab. If someone jacked it, Crabby will know about it.”
But I never heard back from the Knee or Crab, nor did I see those pages again. Eventually, I chalked their loss up to my terrible Boucher luck—the same luck that sank my bookstore, put this wall in my mind, got me fired from the Department of Fiction, and almost killed me as a prayor.
But then, a few years later, I was working at Coolidge Heating and Air when we were called to Punch-Out Books in nearby Success to repair their ventilation system. We got reports that anger was flooding into their store. Early that Saturday, my boss Linda, her stepson What, and I drove over to the bookstore to see what the problem was. We climbed up onto the roof, found the AC, and took off the service panel. Linda spotted the problem immediately. “Ah, see?” she said. “Moodilator.”
“What?” said What.
“Right here,” she said.
We went down into the bookstore. Punch-Out Books sold all kinds of books, but they were best known for their extensive catalog of physical books: novels that patted you on the shoulder, essays that hugged you, poems that high-fived you, and a few rare editions of story collections that would literally punch you right in the face.
It had been years since I’d worked in books, but my thoughts still swooned a little in bookstores. Soon my thoughts were telling stories to each other about working in the Department of Fiction, and storycatching at AquaBooks, and building stories from the ground up. “Remember Boris Sarah?” said one. “And Bellis?” said another.
In the stacks, meanwhile, all the customers were furious. They rifled through the books angrily and complained to each other about the prices. “Where is Rolltop Desk?” I heard one customer ask an employee.
“I don’t fucking know what that is,” said the bookseller.
“It’s a poetry collection by Dalton Day,” said the customer.
“Good for Dalton Day,” said the bookseller.
Linda, What, and I approached the front desk and asked for Royale, the owner. Soon she came floating across the floor. I knew Royale well—she was infamous in the Coolidge book scene. Still, after all these years, she was stunningly beautiful: her dark skin was covered with tattoos of words, and her hair had books braided right into it. Once, I’d asked Royale out for dinner, and she said, “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”
“Bowcher,” she said, “that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in months.”
“Hey Bowcher,” she said to me now. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “Working for Coolidge Heating now.”
“Good for you.” She smirked and looked down at her shoes, as if trying not to openly laugh. Then she looked back up at Linda. “So what’s the story?”
“Bad moodilator,” said Linda.
Royale winced. “Again?” she said. “That one’s less than two years old!”
“What?” said What.
Just then, a man no thicker than a sheet of paper approached the counter with a bunch of books. I glanced over at them and read their titles: Where is the Closest Outlet?, The Palindrome Murders, Big Giant Floating Head, Prairie Justice—
“Wait a second,” said a thought in my mind.
“Big Giant Floating Head?” said another thought.
“It’s completely fried,” Linda was saying. “That’s why you’re venting so much anger.”
As Royale started ringing up the books, I picked up Big Giant Floating Head and studied its cover.
BIG GIANT FLOATING HEAD
A Novel
by
____________ _________
“Excuse me but I just bought that,” said the paper man.
I turned the book over and read the back cover. A stunning lar forcefield, Big Giant Floating Head chronicles the author’s sharp descent in a world too strange and lonely for him to navigate. Just when he thinks he can’t lose any more, language itself breaks down on him. In the stunning finale, _______ can’t even utter his ex-wife’s name.
“What?” I said out loud.
“What,” said What.
I thumbed through the pages. There was my story about dropping out of school; here was the story about the Lipolian—
“Sir,” said the paper man.
—and here was “DivorceLand” and “The Unloveables.” And all of them attributed to ________!
Then the paper man snatched the book out of my hand. “Thank you very much,” he sang, and he spun on his heels and strode away from the counter.
“Wait,” I said, and I followed him out the door, where he stopped by a paper-thin scooter. “Excuse me?” I said.
He turned to face me.
“I—,” I said. “I need that book.”
“Which one?”
“The floating head one.”
“Well you can’t have it,” said the paper man. “We’re reading this in my
book club.”
“No no,” I said. “What I mean is, that book is mine.”
“It most certainly is not,” he said, mounting the scooter. “You just saw me pay for it! Go check with the owner, maybe she has another copy.”
“I need that copy too, though,” I said. “I need every copy.”
The paper man started up the scooter. “Buddy, I don’t know what it is today? But I’m in a fucking shitty mood—I have zero tolerance for this right now.”
“Those are my failures,” I said. “My walls.”
“Well, I look forward to reading about them,” he said. Then he drove away, taking my life—years of my life!—with him.
The hotel held everyone I’d ever known: my father, my mother, my brother, ex-girlfriends, friends from way back, near-strangers I’d met briefly and never seen again, even enemies. It was called the Tetherly Inn, and I chose it at random for a sales trip that would take us—my co-worker Mal and me—to Pittsburgh for two nights. At my boss Cheryl’s suggestion I’d lined up the hotel on one of those aggregate websites where you don’t see the name of the place until after you book the room. The Tetherly was close to the factory we were visiting, though, and it was within our price range, and the ratings were good. “I like to think of the Tetherly as my home away from home,” said one review. “They treated us like family!” said another.
We landed in Pittsburgh in the early evening and took a cab to the Tetherly. As soon as we walked in, though, I froze by the fountain in the lobby and Mal almost crashed into me. “Whoa,” she said. “You OK?”
“Yeah. Just, this place looks so much like—”
“Like what?”
“Like—my basement,” I said.
Mal scrunched up her face. “Does your basement smell this bad?”
“In the home where I grew up, I mean,” I said. “Back in Massachusetts.” Save for the fountain, this place was my basement: I recognized my old posters of Pink Floyd and Rush stapled to the drop ceiling, a 386Mhz computer hooving away on a rolltop desk like my dad’s, a signed Marty Barrett Frisbee on the wall, an easel and a record player in the corner. It had the same dim lighting and that same air of mildew.
“Let’s check in, hah?” Mal said. “I’m starving.”
We approached the desk and a woman who was the spit and image of my grandmother looked up from her computer and said, “Good evening. Checking in or checking out?”
I was so surprised I couldn’t speak. Not only was it my grand-mère—who I hadn’t seen in twenty years—but she spoke perfect English.
“Arriving,” you said.
“Well, welcome to the Tetherly,” my grandmother said. “Let’s get you squared away. Can I see a driver’s license?”
I handed her my license, thinking that she’d recognize me, but she scanned it and handed it back to me. Then she checked the screen and said, “I’ll just get your keycards, OK?”
“What is this place?” I whispered to Mal.
“Relax, alright?” she said. “It’s only a crappy motel.”
“Excuse me,” said another man behind the counter. “Are you being helped?” I’d met this guy only once before in my life, but I’d never forget him. Ten years earlier, maybe, we got into an altercation at a traffic circle after I cut him off in my pickup. He got out of his Jeep and started shouting at me, his chest puffed out and his face absolutely purple. I said something snide—“It’s called a blinker, you should try it sometime”—and his fist came down and smashed me to the ground.
“We’re all set,” Mal told him now.
“Great,” he said.
Then my grandmother whirred back into the room with two cards. “Here we are,” she said. “Missus Roy is in room five seven seven—”
An alarm went off in my mind. I said, “Could I—”
“—and Mr. Bowcher is in five sixteen B.”
“No no no,” said a thought in my mind—I already knew from the numbers what we’d find in those rooms. My grandmother placed the keycards on the counter. I said, “Would it be possible for us to switch?”
“What?” said Mal. “Why?”
My grandmother furrowed her brow. “Switch rooms?”
“That she could have five sixteen and—”
“What’s the difference?” Mal said, looking perturbed.
“Whatever you prefer,” said my grandmother. “It’ll just take me a minute to—”
“That’s OK—these rooms are fine,” said Mal, and she took the keycard for 577. I didn’t want to cause trouble—especially not for my poor grandmother—so I took the other keycard and picked up my luggage.
We rode the elevator—the same elevator I had in my dorm at Carnegie Mellon, which always smelled a little like vomit—up to the third floor, and I walked the hallway of my high school (blue chalky wall tile) down to my room. Just as I’d thought, I opened the door to find a dimly lit hospital room—the room my father was in for weeks following emergency surgery. Before I even pulled back the curtain I recognized the smell—a mix of lotion, latex, and blood. Then I saw my father circa 1985—the year before he disappeared on us—strapped to the bed, struggling mildly against his wrist restraints, the monitor next to him beeping softly every now and again.
Just being back there made me want to cry. I stood at the foot of the bed, feeling that same panicky dread—Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP.—and then I calmed down and remembered where—when—I was.
The adjacent bed was empty so I lay down in it. My dad stirred. I found my cellphone and called my wife ██. I didn’t know if she would answer, but she did. “What,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I know I’m—”
“You’re not supposed to be calling me.”
“I know,” I said. “I know I’m not.”
“That’s the whole point of a separation—to live separate lives.”
“Can I just tell you what’s going on here?”
“Oh, sure,” ██ said sarcastically. “What’s going on there, Chris?”
“I’m in Pittsburgh tonight? At some sort of strange—hotel of my past,” I said. “My grandmother’s here, and my brother, and multiple versions of my father, I think, and I’m sure you’re probably here somewhere, too.”
“Uh huh,” said ██. “Wow. Wild.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I said.
“It sounds like one of your stories.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s happening right now!”
“You always do this, Chris,” ██ said. “You let your imagination get the best of you, confuse what could happen with what’s really happening.”
“██? I swear to God I’m lying next to—”
“Hold on,” said ██. Then she covered up the receiver and I heard two muffled voices.
“Is someone there?” I said.
“OK—I’m back,” she said.
“Who’s there?”
“No one. Finish what you were saying.”
“Just tell me,” I said.
“Am I not allowed to have people over, Chris?” she said. “You can go on a trip with another woman—”
“What? Who, Mal?”
“—who I’m sure you’re telling all your stories in great detail—”
“That’s not true at all!” I said.
“—and I can’t host a few friends for dinner? Jesus!” Then she hung up the phone.
My mind swung its fists. I called her back, but she didn’t pick up—the phone went right to message. “Mal is not another woman,” I told the beep. “This is a business trip. You know Cheryl likes to pair a writer and a reader—the client gets a kick out of it.
“Listen—we’re supposed to be working on things, aren’t we? Maybe when I get home we could get together. For fun, I mean. Like a date. Would you like to go on a date with me? Call me back.”
I hung up the phone, lay back in the hospital bed, waited a minute, and then called again. When the call went to voicemail I said, “It’s really frust
rating when I can’t reach you. What if it were an emergency? It is an emergency, sort of! Please call me back. Please! Call me back.”
I hung up. A minute or two later, ██ texted me. Can’t talk right now. No thanks to the date. Sorry.
My heart flipped over in its cage. A wave of heat ran over me. I picked up the hotel phone and called Mal’s room. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you mind if I come over? My room—”
“I was just about to take a shower,” she said.
My mind stammered. “I thought we could go over the presentation,” I said.
“We’ve gone over it and over it.”
“Cheryl will freak if we don’t have our shit together,” I said.
Mal exhaled. “Give me an hour, OK?”
I found a laminated menu on the table between the hospital beds, and, inside, a list of all the foods from my childhood: grilled water rolls, potato chips, soda, pizza, spaghetti, pizza rolls, and what my dad used to call “American Chop Suey”—elbow macaroni with ground beef and sauce. I ordered up some of that and a half an hour later there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see my dad circa 1983 standing there with two plastic microwave bowls. “Hey bud,” he said, and he stepped past me into the room. “Hothothot!” He rushed past himself in the hospital bed and put the bowls down on the table. “Zapped it too long,” he said. He didn’t ask if he could eat with me—he just found a chair and pushed a plate at me. “Mange, mange!” he said, and we dove at the food just like we used to, wolfing down the cheap ground chuck and the discount noodles. We heard the crack of a bat on the TV screen, saw the ball go over the Green Monster and Bob Stanley hang his head in despair. “He crushed that thing,” I said.
“They’re bums!” my dad said, ripping open a bag of Lay’s. We polished off the bag in about ten minutes.
Then the phone rang—it was Mal. “Coming over?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
My dad licked the salt off his fingers. “I’ll let you go,” he said. He hopped off the bed, looked at his unconscious self, and then disappeared into the hall. I tried to follow him, but he stepped into the stairwell—I heard the fire door slam behind him.
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