by Chris Belden
After dinner, Simone drove him to the hotel.
“I think I’m going to sell this damn car,” she said. “My ex bought it, and I’ve always hated it. Time to start a new chapter.”
“I know what you mean,” Shriver said as he went to twist his wedding ring around his finger. “Oh my God!”
“What is it?”
“My ring. It’s gone!” His finger was bare.
“It fell off?” Simone asked. “Just like that?”
Shriver shrugged. “I never even noticed.” It must have been all that oil the cheerleader had applied. He held up his left hand, surprised by the sense of freedom he felt. He waved his hand around. It seemed . . . lighter.
“It must be a sign,” Simone said.
Shriver wondered when it had fallen off. It could have been anywhere—the hotel, Edsel’s tub, the parking lot where T. ambushed him. Wherever it was, he didn’t care.
At the hotel, he asked her if she’d like to come in for a drink.
“It’s so late,” she said. “And it’s been a long, weird day.”
He was sure she could sense his disappointment.
“Besides,” she said, “how else am I to lure you here for that job?”
They both blushed.
“I want to thank you,” Shriver said after a moment.
“For what?”
“I feel like you saved my life.”
“Aw, no. I just gave you a reason to leave the house.”
“You say that as if it’s a small thing.”
She leaned across the wide armrest and kissed him. Again, a jolt of electricity sparked up and down his vertebrae. Then she pulled back.
“I’ll pick you up at nine,” she said.
He climbed down from the vehicle amid a swirl of mosquitoes. He stood there unbothered while they attacked him, and waved as Simone drove off.
In the lobby he heard raucous laughter coming from the Prairie Dog Saloon. Gonquin Smithee, Basil Rather, and Zebra Amphetamine called to him from their stools.
“Shriver!” the playwright yelled. “Where’ve you been?”
“We missed you at the party,” Gonquin said.
“Join us for a nightcap,” Basil demanded.
“It’s very late,” Shriver said.
“C’mon!” Zebra said. “Just one!”
“Please,” Gonquin said. “One last snort before we all head off in different directions.”
“Well, okay. But I’m going to have a ginger ale.”
He stayed up for another hour, laughing with the three writers as they recounted various events at the conference.
“Here’s to Shriver!” Basil Rather said, hoisting a glass of wine.
“To Shriver!” the others chimed in.
He was surprised to find that he would miss them. How long had it been since he’d missed anyone? Twenty years, at least.
“Where is Ms. Labio?” he asked Gonquin.
“Oh, she left town. Said she couldn’t bear to see me betray ‘the cause.’ ”
“Which cause is that?”
“I dunno. The full-scale demolition of the patriarchal construct?”
“Hey,” Basil said. “You know what I’m going to do when I get home? I’m going to reread Goat Time. And this time I’m going to read the whole thing!”
When the bar closed they headed to their rooms, all four of them crowding onto the elevator, where they suddenly became quiet. Shriver, the only one staying on the second floor, said good-bye when the doors slid open, and wished them all well. Gonquin Smithee gave him a hug. Zebra Amphetamine did also. Basil Rather extended his narrow, long-fingered hand.
“See you at the next conference,” Gonquin said as the doors started to close. “There’s always another one right around the corner!”
When he got to his room, Shriver remembered he did not have his key. He laughed, and went back down to the lobby, where Charlevoix—he was pretty sure it was Charlevoix—had a new one waiting for him.
“We were able to change the lock,” she told him. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“No problem. It was an adventure.”
When he finally got back into his room, he found a copy of Goat Time on the desk, perhaps left by Gonquin, or one of the others who had partied there the other night. He carried it to the bed and lay down. He opened the book to chapter one. He read the first page, then read it again. The words, which had scrambled and melted when he tried to read it two days ago, cohered into decipherable symbols, but still he could make no sense of them. It seemed to be about an angry young man on an airplane, but he wasn’t sure about that. There were a lot of big words and fancy metaphors. Half the page was italicized. And yes, it was written in the second person. Maybe I’m just not smart enough, he thought. Well, he’d have to smarten up if he was going to continue pretending to be the real Shriver. He made one more stab at it, but his eyelids soon grew heavy, and he fell asleep.
/
By the time the telephone rang, Shriver was up, bathed, and dressed.
“Good morning,” Simone said on the phone. “I’m downstairs.”
“On my way.”
He slipped into his dry but wrinkled jacket and grabbed his bag. At the door he turned back. He took in the paintings, the old TV, the raggedy carpet. Through the window he could see a train bisect the prairie. On the bedside table sat Goat Time. He was about to retrieve it but then thought better. Maybe twenty years ago it would have meant something to him, but now it failed to move him. He opened the door.
In the hall, just outside the door, he found a small jar labeled “Sunflower Oil.” Attached was a note:
Dear Mr. Shriver [the “i” was dotted with a heart],
I hope this will keep you relaxed.
xo
P.S. We lost the finals, but that’s OK. We made it to the end—that’s what counts!
/
Shriver found Simone in the lobby talking to the clerk. In a pair of faded jeans and a white blouse, she looked like a country girl, ready for anything.
“Hi,” he said, hoping for another kiss.
“What is this all about?” she asked, her face stern. She handed over a copy of his bill.
“What?”
“Look at it.”
He saw the room charges, the tax, and there, at the bottom, the miscellaneous items. They included two movies: Glad He Ate Her and On Golden Blonde.
“I d-d-don’t understand,” he said. “I didn’t even turn the TV on.”
Simone laughed. “It was Gonquin!” she said. “While she was hiding out in your room.” She grabbed the bill from his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll clear this up. Thank you, Sue St. Marie,” she said to the clerk.
“Anytime.” Sue St. Marie produced a copy of Goat Time. “Could you sign it for me and my sister, Mr. Shriver?”
“Of course.”
To Sue St. Marie and Charlevoix, he wrote. Love your hair.
“We better get crackin’,” Simone said, grabbing his suitcase.
“Please, Simone. Let me carry that.”
“You don’t want to miss your flight,” she said, dragging the suitcase across the lobby floor.
Before he could stop her, she was out the door and tossing his bag into the backseat of her car.
“Climb aboard!”
Shriver opened the car door and pulled himself up into the behemoth one last time.
As Simone shifted into gear, the clip-clop sound of horse hooves heralded the arrival of T. Wätzczesnam.
“Whoa!” the cowboy cried, pulling Walter up alongside the passenger window. “Well, well,” he said, “if it isn’t our local power couple.”
“Mr. Shriver has a plane to catch,” Simone told him.
“I understand you may be joining our disreputable faculty, Shriver,” T. said. “ ‘Slumming’ is the word that comes to mind.”
“I haven’t quite decided, T.”
“Well, I’d be most honored to share our ramshackle faculty lounge with you.”
“Oh—here,” T. said, producing a thin volume from his denim pocket. “In case you need something to read on the airplane.”
He handed the book over: At Home on the Range, by T. Wätzczesnam.
“I’m much obliged.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“We have to get going,” Simone announced.
“She’s a slave driver, Shriver,” T. said. “You’ve been warned.”
With that, the cowboy tipped his hat, shouted, “Giddyup!” and rode off toward the campus.
Shriver opened the book. On the title page, in childlike block letters, T. had written:
To Shriver, Please accept this dull product of a scoffer’s pen, from one writer to another. Yours in kindly inebriation,
T.W.
/
They drove with the windows down, the crisp morning air cool on Shriver’s face.
“Did they spray this morning?” he asked. He hadn’t seen or felt one mosquito.
“No need. It’s over. At least until next year.”
Shriver watched the little town recede in the side-view mirror. Ahead was endless prairie and sky. Huge, fluffy clouds hung motionless in the blue air.
“It is beautiful here,” he said.
“I think you’ll like it.”
He turned to her. “Who said I’m taking the job?”
She looked over at him and grinned.
Was it only three days ago that Simone had driven him in the opposite direction, toward the hotel and the campus—toward his future?
As they drove silently along, Shriver glanced down and saw a copy of Goat Time on the floor. “Oh, is this your copy?” he asked. “I’ll sign it for you.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Simone said, reaching to grab the book from him.
“Don’t be silly.” Shriver opened the book to the title page.
“No—” Simone said as Shriver took in the inscription there:
To Simone, Best wishes, and the signature.
“Sorry,” she said. “I really did think he was—”
“ ‘Best wishes’? That’s the best that weasel could come up with? For you?”
Simone laughed. “I know. Lame, right?”
Shriver tore the page from the book and wrote, above the epigraph, My dearest Simone. Then, from the epigraph he scratched out I’m as miserable as ever and wrote, I’m as happy as ever, thanks to you, and signed his name.
“Here we are,” Simone announced as she pulled into the airport’s short-term parking lot.
“I’ll wait in the car,” came a familiar voice from the backseat.
Shriver turned to see Edsel Nixon. “Mr. Nixon, you continue to amaze me.”
Nixon’s eyes started to shine with water. “I just wanted to say, before you go, it’s been an honor to be your handler, Mr. Shriver.”
Shriver extended his hand into the backseat, where Edsel took hold of it firmly. “The honor has been all mine, young man.”
Simone opened her door, and before Shriver could negotiate the steep climb down to the pavement, she had his bag out and was hauling it toward the terminal.
“Do you promise to call me when you get back home?” she asked as he scrambled to catch up with her.
“I don’t have a telephone, remember?”
“Call from a pay phone. Collect.”
“I promise.”
“And then buy yourself a telephone.”
“Okay.”
“The semester starts on September fifth,” Simone told him, “but you need to be here at least a week before that so we can sort everything out.”
They joined the check-in line, not saying anything.
“You don’t have to wait here with me,” Shriver said.
“I want to.”
“Good.”
He checked his bag and received his boarding pass. They walked together toward the security area.
“They won’t let me through,” Simone said. “Not without a boarding pass.”
“Then I’ll wait right here.”
Simone stood close to Shriver. Neither of them said anything. She put her arm around his waist and leaned her head against him. He ran his fingers through her yellow hair.
After a while, the boarding announcement came over the loudspeaker.
“You’d better go,” she said, but he couldn’t move. He wondered if he had to leave at all. Why couldn’t he just stay here? He had nothing back home; none of his furniture or possessions meant anything to him. Then he remembered Mr. Bojangles. He needed to retrieve his little friend. His heart thumped at the thought of Mr. B.’s furry face. Won’t he be happy when I walk in the door?
“Good-bye, Simone.”
“Good-bye.”
He leaned over and kissed her firmly on the lips. It was like falling into a warm pool. He kept kissing her, not wanting to get out of the water for fear the air would be too cold.
“G’bye,” she mumbled, laughing.
He finally pulled away. “So long.”
He entered the security lane and made his way through the metal detector. No beep.
At the gate, he turned back, but Simone was gone. He felt a stab of panic go through him. Where was she?
“Your ticket, sir?”
He handed a uniformed woman his boarding pass. After glancing back once more—still no Simone—he walked out onto the tarmac toward the metal stairway.
He didn’t know why such a small thing—that one last look—was so important, but it was. He felt like he’d been abandoned at the last, most crucial moment.
“Caleb!”
She stood behind a fence separating the tarmac from the parking lot. She waved. He waved back. She was shouting to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the noise of the airplane engine. He squinted, trying to read her lips.
I love you?
He wasn’t sure, but he waved back at her and shouted, “I love you too!”
Then, with Delta Malarkey-Jones’s memoir tucked under one arm, and T.’s novel and Vlad’s story under the other, he boarded the plane and headed home.
THE END
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism for the generous artist fellowship grant that helped support the writing of this book.
Thanks also to Matthew Carnicelli for being the first to believe in Shriver.
Extra thanks to Stephanie Dickinson and Rob Cook at Rain Mountain Press for first ushering Shriver into the world.
Huge thanks to John Gosslee for taking Shriver to the big party, where the great Sally Kim waited with open arms. Thank you, Sally, and thanks to your team at Touchstone, especially Elaine Wilson.
Special thanks to Michael Maren for seeing how Shriver could bust off these pages.
Finally, thanks to all my colleagues who lie awake at night wondering if they are really writers. Rest assured, you are.
TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE
* * *
SHRIVER
When lonely Shriver receives a letter inviting him to attend a prestigious literary conference, he doesn’t realize he’s been confused for a famous, reclusive, Salinger-like author of the same name. He decides to attend and, once there, he is feted, fawned over, and featured at stuffy literary panels and readings by admirers who believe he is the famed novelist. Tensions begin to mount when one of the authors in attendance mysteriously goes missing, and the “real” Shriver (or so he claims to be) suddenly appears to stake his claim among the literati. The ensuing calamity forces Shriver to question everything he thought he knew, come face-to-face with his past, and fight for his future.
For Discussion
1. Shriver pokes fun at the pretensions of contemporary writing culture by satirizing the superficiality of literary conferences—however, do you think there can be value to conferences of this sort? Do you think the academic culture around writing, such as an MFA program or a conference like the one Shriver attends, is impor
tant, unnecessary, or somewhere in between?
2. Much of Shriver’s past is obscured, whether purposefully left out by the author or blurred in Shriver’s own mind. If you had to guess, how would you fill in the gaps of Shriver’s past life? Why do you think the author intentionally made Shriver’s history mostly a mystery?
3. So many of the characters in Shriver are heightened versions of real people, almost cartoonish in their buffoonery, right down to their very names (Professors Wätzczesnam and Cleverly, Delta Malarkey-Jones). Would you classify Shriver as satire in the classical sense, akin to Jonathan Swift’s work? How do you think exaggeration and hyperbole of character is projected by Shriver’s perspective, and how does it set him apart from those who surround him?
4. Shriver begins with the following H. L. Mencken quote: “A writer is always admired most, not by those who have read him, but by those who have merely heard of him.” Do you agree with this? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve pretended to have read a book that you actually haven’t? If so, why?
5. Discuss the impetus behind Shriver going to the conference, despite considering the invitation a mistake. Have you ever been mistaken for someone else, and gone along with it? Would you have done so in Shriver’s situation?
6. When Delta presents Shriver with an old photograph supposedly of himself, he struggles to see a resemblance. How much of one’s identity do you feel is self-made versus informed by one’s surroundings? How does Shriver struggle with his own identity as he is confronted with others’ opinions about him?
7. At a bar, Shriver sees the phrase, “Now that I’m enlightened, I’m just as miserable as ever” scratched into the wood of a seatback in a booth. Why do you think the author chose this phrase, and why does Shriver encounter it at this particular moment? How do you relate to this phrase—does it ring true?
8. The protagonist of Goat Time is also named Shriver. Think about the three Shrivers that exist within the book—our protagonist, Goat Time’s protagonist, and the real Shriver—how do they coexist, in both reality and fiction?