This Book Does Not Exist

by Schneider, Mike

  “Why are you so paranoid? Why are you so paranoid? /

  “You worry ‘bout the wrong things, the wrong things”

  I jab the button to seek past Kanye. I rebuke Marvin because he’s singing that song, the pilot’s song, and I settle on Elvis Perkins because it's the only record of the four that isn't about the destruction of a relationship.

  Then I remember Ash Wednesday is about death.

  I hit the dial to shut off the radio completely, but music keeps coming out of the speakers.

  I picture the Door, leaning open, inviting the other world into my own.

  It’s bleeding again. The two worlds are combining like a chemical reaction.

  If Naomi walked out of the Door she didn’t close it – or if she did Geppetto reopened it.

  Downtown Cleveland and West 6th Street are ten minutes away.

  I have to hope the real her is waiting for me there.

  SPY BAR

  Curling around the exit ramp and onto East 9th Street, it becomes immediately apparent that Downtown Cleveland is dead. Progressive Field, where the Indians play baseball, is dark. The Quicken Loans Arena sign at the top of “The Q” has been shut off or never turned on. Traffic lights aren’t working. My car is the lone vehicle on the street. If there are people here, they are ghosts.

  Heading in the direction of West 6th Street and the Warehouse District, half-watching the road and half-watching my phone, I recall the last time I was here. Naomi and I spent New Year’s Eve at a club called Spy Bar. We drank. We danced. A drunk girl spilled champagne on us. Naomi’s temper flared. She lashed out. I overreacted. We broke up. That night, I locked myself in the bathroom of our hotel room and cried while she sat on the bed and smoked cigarettes. In the morning, I took her straight from the hotel to the airport. We were still dating long distance then. She flew back to New York, and I left for Los Angeles later that day. She wanted us to be over. I didn’t. We both thought we were.

  After a flurry of heated phone conversations, I took a red-eye flight from LA to NYC, three days after I flew from Ohio to California. She told me not to come. I was stubborn. The fight we had on New Year’s occurred hours before we were set to be separated. That was always how it happened. The looming return of distance antagonized us. But I viewed distance as an aspect of logistics. That was where the problem lied. Romantically we were fine. I thought we had to remember that. If we did, I felt we could save our relationship.

  It was shortly before 7 AM on a Saturday morning when I got to Naomi’s apartment. She buzzed me inside. I made the long walk up six flights of stairs, slowly, thinking of everything and therefore of nothing. She was waiting for me at the top. The moment our eyes reconnected I knew we were safe. Lying in her bed afterwards, with her warm body cradled against mine and her head in the crook of my arm, I tried to sleep. I failed. It was no longer a necessity. Her touch revitalized me.

  Miraculously, we had survived.

  Now I’m beginning to wonder whether or not it was for the best.

  Without that red-eye flight, my life would have been different. I don’t think any of this would be happening.

  I turn on to West 6th Street.

  The city is alive.

  WEST 6TH STREET

  West 6th is as active as it would be on any normal Saturday night. Bachelorette party limos, passenger cars and trucks, cabs and policemen idle near clubs with fake velvet ropes and uncovered, fenced-in parking lots. Twenty to forty-something men wearing untucked button-down shirts and brown dress shoes with loose-fitting boot cut jeans travel in tribes. The women, much like the men, look as if they were all dressed by a single stylist: jeans and boots or heels underneath flashy blouses, dazzled more often than not with fabric that sparkles. Males outnumber females at least three to one. This may sound strange, but it isn’t. This is the Warehouse District in Cleveland.

  I pull into the first parking lot on my side of the road and give the attendant a five-dollar bill. Once the money leaves my hand, I wonder where it goes in a setting manufactured by the other world. It’s only five dollars, but I’m running out of cash.

  I walk briskly through the lot and merge with the revelers. Even though it’s early they already smell like alcohol. My phone says 7:41 PM, which doesn’t track. It’s darker and busier than it should be. It looks like, and people are acting like, the night is approaching its crescendo. Everyone is here to drink, and some of them are here to dance. A lot of them are trying to find the love of their life like me, but different, while others just want to find someone to take home for the night.

  My shoulder hits someone hard enough to make me spin in a half-circle. I look, and there he is. There’s Geppetto, dressed in the same clothes as always, holding a red piece of chalk. He points to the sidewalk, where “Geppetto WAS HERE” has been scrawled on the concrete.

  “Hey,” he says. “Something to keep me occupied while I was waiting.”

  Irritated, I ask if this is the other world.

  “Not even going to say hello back. Okay…” As he leads me into an alleyway, presumably to get away from all the foot traffic, he continues.

  “It’s more like the ‘other world,’ as you call it – my world – is in your world. Since you chose to leave the Door open it can take over parts of your life when it sees fit. The obvious tell is me being here. I can only go wherever my world is.”

  “But you’re on the Internet.”

  “The Internet isn’t a place. Where does it exist? Can you go there? No, it’s a network of information and misinformation that both of our worlds can access and manipulate. Sometimes it helps fill the gap between what’s real and what’s imagined. Sometimes it drives a wedge further between them. Other times it can be used to craft narratives, to shape reality through perception. It all depends. But what does any of this really matter? You’re here because of Naomi.”

  “So she is here.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said that’s why you’re here.”

  His casualness infuriates me. He refuses to be definitive. I berate him. His demeanor doesn’t change. I blame him for being the man behind the curtain, a magician divining an elaborate stage show around and against me. I’m making a scene, but I don’t care and apparently no one else does either. Not a single person on the street stops or even looks my way.

  Geppetto waits to make sure I’m finished and then he talks.

  “This is not a magic show. I promise you that. If I knew exactly where Naomi was, I’d tell you. I’m providing all the help I can…”

  I don’t believe him anymore.

  “Did she really text me or not? Is she outside the Door? If she is I can close it and be done with this.”

  “You can do whatever you want.”

  I scream. I honestly scream, and then I breathe and tell Geppetto, “I’m going. I’m going to find her.”

  I turn my back on him, and he speaks.

  “Finally. You’re angry. It’s good. You should be upset. You’ve been acting like this is all your fault. It isn’t.”

  “It’s your fault, too,” I retort.

  “No, not me. Naomi. She never called you. She ran. A conversation telling you she didn’t want to get on the plane that day would’ve been difficult, borderline harrowing.”

  I reel towards him. “You’re saying she didn’t want to come to LA.”

  He nods.

  “How long have you known this for?”

  “A little birdie told me.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Why should I believe you?”

  “It’s your choice to trust me or not. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve done anything to make you distrust me.”

  “I think she got lost inside the Door somehow on the way to the airport. And then when I left it open she escaped. I got a text from her right after that. Why else would I suddenly hear from her?”

  “If she wants to see you, where is she now?”

  “Not in this alley.”

  “Were you planning on staying her
e?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can,” counters Geppetto.

  “Then I’d be hiding. Avoiding the issue.”

  “You’re learning. Good. You can’t retreat from conflict. But as they say, ‘It takes two to tango.’ Here…”

  He removes a folded up piece of paper from his back pocket.

  THE FOLDED UP PIECE OF PAPER

  Geppetto asks if I want to know the identity of the person Virginia told me about, the “guy” she thought might be able to locate Naomi. Before I can answer, he unfolds the piece of paper and holds it out in front of me.

  It’s a printout of a digital photograph, a picture of a guy and a girl.

  The man is the pilot from The Plane Crash Incident.

  He is framed from the chest up, standing against a sun-drenched horizon, smiling. The source of his joy appears to be the girl next to him. A girl wearing traditional Ray Bans that looks very much like Naomi.

  She is leaning in towards the pilot’s face with her lips pursed, ready to touch them to the side of his cheek. And the kiss happened – I can envision it – moments after the image was captured.

  I lose my composure. In an attempt to stabilize, I focus on the chance this is just a girl that resembles Naomi – the sunglasses are hiding her eyes – or that the picture is fabricated, maybe Photoshopped.

  “You know that’s her?”

  “I wasn’t there,” says Geppetto. “A colleague sent the file to me, and I printed it out.”

  “Was it manipulated?”

  He shrugs. “How can I know?”

  “When was it taken? It could have been from before we met.”

  “I assume it went like this: Naomi walked through the Door and met the pilot and then some time after that he tried to kill you, and you killed him instead. Obviously, her experiences in my world have been more pleasant than yours – or at least they had been.”

  This hurts. Every word hurts.

  “Who knows if she knows what you did, but I’m guessing she reached out to you because she’s lonely and depressed now that Dave – that was his name by the way – is gone. People are prone to regress in those types of situations.”

  I’m rattled. Geppetto is willing to be brutally honest. But he isn’t telling me what he knows. He’s telling me what he suspects. And even that is only meaningful if I trust him.

  “You don’t know any of this for sure. It’s all guesswork.”

  “That’s accurate. I’m asking around. But really it’s up to you to discover the truth.”

  I had a feeling he’d say something like that.

  “Resolution is key. Of course, there are many ways for resolution to occur.”

  “The Door keeps getting in the way,” I tell him.

  “Think of it as a conduit.”

  Until the confusion ends, my thoughts are daggers, inflicting wounds infected with emotion. I need clarity. I need Naomi. I close my eyes and visualize the word “hope,” but the war inside my grey matter escalates. I can no longer be rational. I’m plunging into the middle of the battle with faltering instincts.

  Somehow I still hear my phone ring.

  HER VOICE

  I look at the screen to see who’s calling.

  Shaking, I slide my finger across the green answer button and put the phone to my ear. After hearing enough background noise to know the call is connected, I say, “Naomi.”

  “Hey,” she says back.

  The sound of her voice brings everything into focus for me. She is all I want.

  “Hey. Naomi. Hey… Where are you?”

  “I couldn’t find you so I set the club on fire.”

  Click.

  She hung up.

  She’s gone.

  Geppetto walks out of the alley. Going after him and approaching the sidewalk, I see flames raging out of the top of Spy Bar.

  The catalyst for Naomi and I nearly breaking up forever is burning to the ground. The flames are lilting and billowing, leaping onto the roofs of adjacent clubs and bars.

  “Destructive way for her to let you know where she is,” says Geppetto, before noting, “I understand the need to search for something, but you should know it’s okay to search for something else.”

  He leaves me after that.

  I am on my own, Spy is on fire, and all of the Warehouse District is next.

  THE FOURTH INCIDENT

  I sprint towards the club, barging through group after group of people. Heat confronts me at a frightening number of angles, from inside Spy, from the top of the roof, from the facades of the neighboring structures… The temperature rises as I get closer to the club, and the flames grow more monstrous by the moment.

  Nearing the entrance, I pull up and reassess the environment. What I see reminds me of the movie Backdraft – minus the firefighters because there aren’t any. There are no trucks. There are no sirens. In the blaze, I cannot detect a single person trying to escape. They are either content with the devastation, ignorant of it, or apathetic, as if their behavior is predicated on the normalcy of chaos.

  The doorman at the bar next to Spy stands still, as if nothing is wrong, chewing gum while the fire and the heat bear down on him. That he isn’t moving is an almost more amazing display of fortitude than if he were running in and out of the bar, saving person after person, and I can’t understand what he’s doing at all.

  I yell at him to get out of the way, to run, to do something, anything, when a tall flame whooshes across the gap between buildings and bathes over his flesh. The doorman doesn’t flinch. His hair and his clothes ignite. The historic photo of the Buddhist monk self-immolating on a street in Saigon to protest the Vietnam War spears into my mind. The flames lick onto the doorman’s flesh. I swear I see his skin melt, and I don’t have time to be in shock but I am.

  Naomi should be like me, not like these people in the other world who still aren’t evacuating and probably never will. She should be running. I should see her.

  Unless she’s trapped inside.

  Around the entrance to the club, there is a tiny, desperate opening in the flames.

  I think I can make it.

  INSIDE THE BURNING CLUB

  I hit the pocket of open air running and burst inside the club.

  I discover a typically crowded Saturday night club scene – adults talking, dancing, drinking, laughing, shouting to be heard over the music – with one devastating exception: they are encased in fire.

  “Everything is Broken” by Mr. Hudson plays over the sound system:

  “I was just your token, token, token /

  “Everything is broken, broken, broken”

  Dancers dance alongside flames. Fireballs boom out of the ceiling in rhythm with the drum claps. Drinkers sip alcohol at a rate appropriate for a picnic in July. Everyone burns. It is so hot, so terrifying, and so horrific to me, but to them it just is. I am the outsider wailing at the border to hell as all the people on the other side embrace the catastrophe that is their world.

  I can’t see Naomi from here.

  Evading flames, I push past a pack of people that isn’t yet on fire and doesn’t seem to care that it will be at any moment. On the dance floor in front of me, brown hair the color of Naomi’s shows, but the sight breaks when the ceiling ruptures, releasing cement, plaster, and wood coated in flames down into the center of the club.

  I turn and run.

  I’m forty feet away from the shower of fire and debris when it hits like an exploding bomb. Burning shrapnel impales flesh and bone and crashes to a stop on the hard black flooring. The entire building quakes. I am knocked to the ground. I roll up, struggling to reposition myself amidst so many oblivious bodies, when a dragon-sized fireball shoots across the club and blows out the entrance, careening all the way across the width of the street and eradicating a stretch of parked cars. Like the impact of an exit wound, the front of the club is now engulfed in flames. Even the people who are burning continue to drink and sway to the sound of Ben Hudson’s v
oice. The speakers don’t liquefy. The intensifying crackle of the fire adds a new dimension to the song, an evil layer of light percussion that does not, unfortunately, signal a method to escape.

  There is no way out.

  We are all going to die.

  “Everything is broken, broken, broken”

  The floor acts as kindling. Flames crawl in every direction. The vacant space in the club is being compacted. I try to pivot around the obstacles but can’t. Everyone boils into each other, the people who are burning and those who aren’t. The men and women on fire spread the flames to others, and amidst this anthill of people and vice grip of heat, I either recklessly or idiotically fight to find Naomi. I touch people hoping that maybe, if nothing else, I can feel her one last time. I pay for this when my arm catches on fire. I swing it, trying to shake off the flames, and all I do is hit more people who aren’t Naomi and catch myself on fire in more places – my other arm, my leg, my torso – and oh my god the hair on my head is on fire and my skull is cooking, and I haven’t seen or touched Naomi, and there is no way I am not going to die and the pain is somehow worse than I ever imagined it would be.

  It feels like

  HELL

  I am burning to death.

  I can feel my parts turning to ash, but my mind is still processing, and worst of all, my heart is still beating. It beats for Naomi, and my longing counteracts my wish to succumb to the pain, which is all consuming, like I’m swimming in it, and it is the Pacific Ocean, and I am somewhere in the middle with only one arm and one leg, trying to flail my way to the surface. But I am sinking, deeper and deeper, until the hurt almost, but not quite, feels normal. I am becoming calm. I am nearly numb. I hear one sound – my beating, yearning heart.