theMystery.doc

by Matt McIntosh

  “It’s true, I promise.”

  “What-evs,” she said, bitterly. “I know how much your promises are worth. You promised we’d always be together. And then you didn’t call for weeks. You knew I was leaving for school but you didn’t even try to see me. I’ve driven by your house every fucking day hoping you’ll be outside so I can at least see you—because I thought maybe somehow there was a chance that whatever was happening was all beyond your control—maybe you weren’t avoiding me—maybe you weren’t dumping me—maybe something happened to you, maybe you got hurt—I even rang the doorbell, I looked in windows—Jesus, I broke into your house! But you were never there. Apparently you’ve been on vacation.”

  “I haven’t been on vacation! I’ve been scraping my house!”

  “You haven’t been scraping anything! That paint hasn’t looked any different in months.”

  “Look, I—”

  “It’d be one thing if you were just using me for my body! Fine! That’s what boys do! It’s practically a compliment!” She was getting red again. “But how humiliating! You weren’t even using me for me! The whole charade had nothing to do with me! All the kissing, all the I love yous, all the promises, all the fucking, all the bullshit! It was never about me at all! You were just doing it all to get to him!”

  “Wait—what? To get to who?”

  “Well, you got me! I believed you! You win! Congratulations!”

  “Candice, wait, I was doing it all to get to who?”

  “What?”

  “I was doing it all,” I said slowly, “to get to who?”

  “Who do you think, you fucking asshole! To Pop!”

  At the sound of his name my blood ran cold. I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, or who any of these people were, I didn’t know what crimes against man or nature they had committed or were planning on committing. But with that “Pop” snapping like a gunshot from her lips I knew exactly how serious my situation had become.

  “Oh, god, they’re gonna kill me, aren’t they?”

  “Unfortunately for you…” Candice said, taking a long, cool drag from her cigarette, uncrossing and then recrossing her legs. She blew out. “Unfortunately for you, I may have mentioned to MOM that nobody knows you’re here. And that I heard you tell your wife—or whoever the bitch you’re living with is—that you were taking a bus ride around town.”

  Without meaning to, I started grinding my face into the mattress.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, you shouldn’t have said that. No, no, no, Candice, no, that doesn’t work.”

  “Il est fait.”

  I raised my head as high as I could.

  “Girl, you’ve got to save me.”

  “I don’t have to save nobody.” She dropped her cigarette and watched it smolder on the cement floor.

  “This is just one of those big misunderstandings!”

  “If only you would have just kissed me back.”

  “You’ve gotta tell them I’m not an agent!”

  “What should I tell them you are then?”

  “I’m just a writer!”

  “OK, writer,” she said coolly. “So what’s your book about?”

  “It’s a mystery!”

  “So I’ve heard. And what’s the mystery?”

  “The mystery is…”

  I started to yawn.

  “Yes?”

  Up, up, up I went…

  “…It’s about…”

  …like a train chugging to the top of a mount…

  “The mystery is about?”

  …my lungs expanding, reaching toward their

  fullest amount…

  “…how…”

  …about to reach the peak but

  then—

  “How?”

  Like every time before, the structure collapses before it’s reached and I come crashing down.

  “I’m fucked.”

  “I’ll say you are.” Candice rose from her chair and put the cigarette out beneath her rainbow flip-flop. “Eleven years and you can’t even come up with a synopsis? Sorry, Charlie,” she said. “You’re an agent all right.”

  THE ULTIMATE GOAL

  (8_11_07 4_17 pm.wav)

  So the ultimate goal, ultimate goal, dude… I’m gonna get my first elk this year, in the early season, I’m gonna be gone for four days. That would be so rad. I would buy a freezer, have a freezer full of elk, two weeks later I go to Alaska, and catch my limit every day for four days. Bring back like thirty pounds of fresh salmon, dude. That’d be so nice. It’s really—they got a good setup. Alaska has got cold storage. So you bring one bag and you can check a second bag, that weighs like, you know, fifty pounds or something, and they put it in the cold storage hold. And there’s processing at the lodge, so you can get out there and bring home, dude, a freezer full. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

  M: Yeah.

  Then I can just watch football all fall and just like chow down on everything in my freezer.

  M: Yeah.

  …We’ll see. I’ll have to learn to like fish, but… Hopefully I’ll have to learn to like elk………………… So do you feel like—my wife said you told her that you feel your book is almost done.

  M: No.

  Not at all.

  M: I have no idea. Um, I’m coming down, I’m like uh, I’m over the hill and I’m using inertia and gravity to take me down but I don’t know how long that’s gonna be……

  Do you have any plans to—now maybe I’m crazy, but—kind of like JRR Tolkien-style, like maybe like serve it up in like fifteen-‌hundred-‌page bites? Like turn it into a series? Like, dude, is it possible that you could be like, just like: Buy this one and then later I’ll release the second one and someday I’ll give you the third one or whatever?

  M: I don’t know. Possibly. I mean, I’ve thought about that.

  Because you know it would be kind of like crazy, to try to get someone to read like four thousand pages at once, right?

  M: I’m not trying to get anybody to read it.

  DAMN YOU! BUT WHY? BUT BUT BUT—OK. But, how about this? Wouldn’t you like it if like they made it into a book—or books—and then like it was at the library and somebody who was interested could check it out from the library and read it? Like a regular book?

  M: I think they would need to go through a process of purification before they could even open the book.

  They wouldn’t be allowed to read it? So is the book going to be like on a mountaintop in Nepal? And then like if you can like carry a flower intact to the top of the mountain like in Batman Returns or whatever—no, that was Batman Forever—in Batman Forever it was like: You’re worthy of our training. Welcome…

  M: It’s odd that you say that because I was just about to ask you to bury one portion of it in Alaska when you’re up there. I’m planning on burying a part of it at each of the four corners of the earth.

  So people will find it and they will be like: Hey, we have found the wisdom of the ancients. And then they’re like: Hey, wait a minute! This guy mentions a cell phone in here! Yeah, this is new.

  M: It’s gonna be a record of America before the Great Fall.

  IS THAT TRUE? DOES IT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH AMERICA? WHY ARE YOU BEING SO SECRETIVE? DUDE, I DON’T WORK FOR, LIKE, THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS! I’M NOT GONNA LIKE—I DON’T HAVE A LIKE—

  M: Yes. It has to do with America.

  OK. America specifically.

  M: Yeah. It’s about America. It’s a big book about America.

  And this is, would you say, a commentary?

  M: It has commentary in it.

  OK. Then let me ask you this. Does it have a fictional person who’s used as a device to tell a story to be l
ike an allegory or a moral? Or is it like not like there’s a person who is used to like represent ideas.

  M: Well, we’ve talked about it a bit. Do you have any ideas about what you think it is?

  We haven’t really talked about it. You’ve told me that you felt— This is what I know about it: You… were going to… take… themes which you felt were protected by unfair copyright laws… and reproduce them in some measure—I got the impression it was in order to… lampoon them or something? I didn’t really understand. I mean I figured you felt that you needed to have like a certain amount of the content reproduced so that you could like… criticize it… or something? So, or to be, like, to explode the myth that it perpetuates or something? I don’t know, something like that?

  M: I like that. That sounds good.

  BUT I DON’T UNDERSTAND! BUT I DON’T UNDERSTAND, LIKE, WHAT IT’S ABOUT! I understand you want to make like a statement—like you’re trying to make like a moral commentary about something, right? Like you’re like writing a book that’s like: I’m going to give like perspective… on like… social progress or social decline or something. Like: I’m going to give like a commentary on like social—like the decline of social norms, dude. Something like that. Like, or like on the decline of like our culture. Or whatever, basically. But you’re going to use… copyright protected material—which I’m assuming means something that somebody already put in a book that was famous… Because, I mean, if it wasn’t famous you would not get sued over it… So… Am I warm at all? Is that what it’s like? Because in many stages I was thinking, like—I mean it must be like—I mean like honestly dude it must be like completely like insanely ambitious in scope. I mean, to to to put like four thousand—getting on to four thousand pages—I mean it must be like… you’re planning on like dying trying, like, on this thing. You’re gonna die trying.

  M: Absolutely.

  It sounds like a really, really, really, huge scope.

  M: Absolutely. I have almost a near-infinite scope. It is scope itself, you know what I mean?

  It’s big.

  M: It is a very difficult challenge.

  Yes.

  M: And uh…

  So you feel—OK, so it’s safe to say that—let’s say that I work for LexisNexis. And your book is published. And—

  M: What’s LexisNexis?

  Oh. Sorry. Um. It’s a research, um, it’s an internet-based research engine. Um, there’s two really big ones for, um, the legal field. There’s Westlaw and then there’s LexisNexis. Westlaw is better, but LexisNexis is the one that does like all the regular—like all the regular like university reports. You could go to—Hey, this is UW’s library, I wanna do some research on anything—like you’re not a lawyer, you’re just, I’m a scientist or whatever, or a historian—there’s this thing called like LexisNexis. That you basically are like: Sea Captain, 1700. And then you say something like: Non-fiction, and then you say like the search parameters and then it says, like: Here’s the eight thousand books that people have written in which sea captain is a word, right? And the way that it works is that there’s keywords. Because they make an abstract. So somebody has to like read—well, I’m sure they don’t read the book, but—they read the first chapter and the last chapter and they read the marketing material from like the publisher or something, and they say, like: This book, blah blah blah blah blah—they give an abstract which gives the parameters of the subject matter, and it’s like usually like about two paragraphs or something, that says like, So there’s this giant, like, nine-hundred-page book, but this is the abstract.

  So like pretend that I work for like LexisNexis and I’m gonna write an abstract for the search engine. So somebody’s like: I seek wisdom or—OK, somebody’s like gonna want to find like your book or they’re interested in the subject matter of your book. So, the book, like the abstract would say something like: …It is a… commentary? Or, is it like, uh… a moral?… It’s a—is it like an allegory or something? Something that teaches a moral? Except it’s a commentary about Americans… Like American society… It’s about, like, the decline of like… um… I don’t know—standards or whatever, or values—we’ll say values—that’s a way better word—the decline of values… in America… over—is it over a certain time period? Like are you starting with like, with like, Jamestown? Or are you just like—are you gonna like start it like maybe like 1800s like and take it from there? OK, more like that. OK, but. OK, so, but the book—I don’t understand like the device that you use, like— Does the book have a, like, character that you made up as a device to, to teach something? Will you tell me that?

  M: Do you want some more water?

  No, I’m fine.

  M: The book has characters, and the book has devices, and the book… teaches something? I don’t know, it’s hard to put it into language like that.

  FICTIONAL CHARACTERS!

  M: Does it have fictional characters. That’s a difficult question to answer. Because, reality is an issue in the book, so… It’s a very, very different sort of…… book.

  Um…… Do you think that someone reading the book would identify—would be able to identify… the time in which you wrote it? Do you think somebody would read the book not knowing the ages and then say: Oh! This book has certain markers in it that I would be able to say: The author who wrote this book lived in a certain age. Like does it mention an automobile or a telephone or anything that would like give a clue to that.

  M: Yes, there are automobiles and telephones.

  OK, so this is a book that acknowledges… modern times.

  M: It acknowledges time.

  OK.

  M: It exists in time. It is composed of words. And there are characters. So it’s just like any other book you’ll ever read, really. But it’s good to hear, uh, a new take on it.

  I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE CON—I DON’T I DON’T HAVE A TAKE BECAUSE YOU’VE NOT TOLD ME ANYTHING ABOUT IT! I HAVE TO PRY THESE THINGS OUT! But, I mean I do feel like, it’s so interesting because like, I just think it’s like so crazy dude that you’re like holed up in a room for like coming nigh on like five, six years, dude. Like, and, like, nobody knows what you’re doing… NOBODY KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE DOING, MATT! I don’t understand, like—everyone’s like—everybody’s like—everybody that knows you in the past is like: That asshole, he can’t write anymore, he’s got writer’s block, he’s not writing anything! You know what I mean? And then other people are like: Oh, he’s just taking his time with his second book.

  M: Nobody knows about the four thousand pages. Nobody knows anything about it.

  That’s my point, dude!

  M: Well, I’m saying that you—

  You’re saying that I actually have a lot of information about it.

  M: You know its length. That’s more than my agent knows. That’s more than my publishers know. Nobody knows anything about it. Nobody knows anything.

  You can’t tell your agent or your publisher that, because they’ll fire your ass.

  ‌

  ‌

  M: I’m not sure I’m gonna give them anything.

  So OK, now to recap, for my abstract. My precious, precious abstract. This is a, uh, uh……… oh… well, I can’t—is this like a—can we call it a fictionalized… account? I mean—when people do a fictionalized account they’re like: Here’s something that really happened. I’ll fill in some drama and like make some interesting characters to go with it. Like, I’ll be like: So you know about how that ship sunk? I’ll make like a crazy sea captain or whatever and then I’ll make a love story and I’ll put it in there. But it’s not, it’s not, like, close enough focused on any single event that it’s like you’re… you’re commenting on… or doing like a evaluation of a specific thing—it’s like you’re like hovering way above the earth… like, you know, This is what it looks like from the perspective o
f madness. Or whatever. Like something like that maybe?

  M: Maybe.

  COME ON! WHAT DO YOU MEAN MAYBE! The thing is, I’m just trying to… Do you… OK. But you do think it’s fair to say that a lot of this book is a comment about the decline of our nation……

  M: I can say… looking at it… it forms a comment on the United States. And if I interpret that as meaning—if I’m a reader and I’m interpreting the picture that I’m seeing as being a picture of a nation on fire… then that’s what it’s going to be. You know what I mean?

  OK. So. I know you won’t talk about it, but so you think that if somebody’s paying attention, the portrait of the characters that you’re gonna make up, are going to represent like problems that are like universal—like large-trend problems… of our society or something. So like a person’s personal trouble—you’re gonna pick something and make a portrait that’s like emblematic of like a large-scale problem?

  M: I didn’t say that.

  Do you see what I’m saying? I’m just trying to reverse engineer… OK. Would the characters have a first and last name? Let’s start with that.

  M: It depends on the character.

  OK, I have a really awesome question. OK, I have a really awesome question… Is there anybody in the book… that’s real. Like will the fictional character live in a world—in a reality that’s being signaled as like: This did occur in this nation in this year—like will anyone ever hear the speech given by the certain president or something—will there be anything that will say: This is—it’s fiction—but it could be anybody. I’m telling you that it’s true. Because it happened to a friend of mine, or because I saw it with my own eyes. And I made up the characters so that it would be easier for you to understand, or because that’s just the way to write a book. But is somebody gonna be like: Such and such made a speech—and that’s a real person? Maybe, like, in the background? Are there gonna be clues that—