I lean back, and she looks away. Her body moves away from mine. The hug disintegrates. I try to understand. I have to let things breathe. Let us both breathe.
“Okay, alright,” I say. “There’s so much I want to talk to you about, that I want to ask…”
“I’m happy you’re here. The war was… It was the first time I really thought I was going to die, so it put things in perspective.” She hasn’t been looking at me, but she does now to say, “Terrible things happened.”
“Did you really not want to move to LA?”
She looks away from me again.
“What? Naomi, what happened?”
“What happened? I found the Door, that’s what happened.”
“How?”
“How did you? It was the same thing for me. I was on my way to the airport and it just kind of happened.”
“Were you at the World Trade Center? I heard you were.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ve been trying so hard to find you.”
“I didn’t always make it easy.” She pauses. “I hurt, Michael. It took you so long to say you’d come with me for med school. You should’ve said it right away. There’s no reason you have to stay in LA. There never was.”
So this is it. The truth.
I tell her I never lied. I’ve always wanted to be wherever she was.
“You could’ve moved to New York so many times,” she counters. “But you didn’t. You left it up to me.”
“You know how complicated my career is. It takes time…”
“We fought so much. Why did you even want to be with me?”
“I love you,” I say.
“You only came after me now because you thought something bad had happened, didn’t you?”
“Of course that was part of it, yeah-”
“I knew you didn’t leave LA because you wanted to. You left because you felt like you had to.”
“Naomi, I don’t know what- Obviously I was going to come when I thought something was wrong. Why would you not want that?”
“You could’ve come sooner.”
“How much sooner? You were supposed to be flying to LA!”
“I wanted you to show me you loved me. You said it all the time. You didn’t show it. Not enough. Not like I needed.”
I can’t tell her she’s wrong. Not here, in this moment. She needs what she needs, but… So much has gone on. Nothing has been resolved. Our minds aren’t clear. We made it to this point. I know we can work though everything. We have before. We just need time. But now… What we need to do now is destroy the Door.
“I could’ve done better,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I wish I had.”
I let these words linger, hoping time and silence will allow them to resonate. When I speak again, it’s in service of lightening the mood.
“What’s not fair,” I say, “is that you can still be beautiful even when you’re pissed off.”
“Yeah, well, you would know.”
I catch her smiling. I should have guessed she would say something like that. As her smile retraces, mine lifts, and I ask her to help me destroy the Door.
She begins to walk away. Watching me, she asks, “How do you know I’m real?”
“Funny,” I say. “Where are you going?”
Still walking, she answers, “I think Geppetto’s inside the church.”
LOST
Naomi and I approach the entrance to St. Theodosius. I can’t stop looking at her, as if I’m afraid she’ll disappear the moment I do.
“Why do you think Geppetto’s here?” I ask. “What about your guide? Was her name Toni?”
“We had a falling out. But really, I never needed her.”
Surprised to hear this, I put my hand on the door and push. I slide through the doorway. Hesitating, I look back. Naomi hasn’t moved. She has gone completely still. The candlelight from inside the vestibule dribbles out through the entrance, mixing with the moon-glazed darkness of the night, making her appear frail and hollow.
“I don’t actually know if Geppetto is in there,” she says. “I don’t even know why I said that.”
All of a sudden, she’s shaking. I go to her. Our bodies clasp together. We give each other warmth. Perversely, in a way, I am thankful for her fear as it allows me to be this close to her again.
“I’m lost here, Mike. More lost than you were. I kept trying to get away. I know what I want, but I couldn’t get away…”
“It’s okay. I know what I want, too. We’re almost there.”
“That’s not really my mom inside. It can’t be.”
She buries her face deeper into my sternum, unwilling to meet my eyes. I whisper, “Geppetto is a good idea. I need to make sure of something with him, something that can help us.”
“But he’s not in there, Mike. He’s not in there.” She’s crying now, and she pushes me.
“I think I can get him to show up.”
She stares at me and cries. She’s losing it. I’m losing her.
I hurry to direct message Geppetto on Twitter:
“Meet me inside St Theodosius. I know you will.”
Once the message goes through, I lean forward and kiss Naomi on the forehead. I ask her, “Please don’t leave me.”
Turning back inside the church, I remember what happened to the last girl I kissed.
THE WEDDING
The door thumps closed. Everyone turns and faces me. Naomi’s mom, who has remained at the center of the aisle, picks up her previously discarded shoe and bashes it into the ground, one strike after another, repeatedly muttering “my stupid daughter.” Her fury is gone. Instead, she spaces out her words with mournful ellipses.
I head down the aisle, searching through the crowd for Geppetto. Not one person says anything to me. They stare. They whisper. The crumbs of chatter seem to be about Naomi, about where she went and when she returned. I don’t know what they’re talking about. She hasn’t returned – she’s outside, invisible to these people.
As my eyes move from one side of the church to the other, I notice my feet are enshrined in black hard bottom shoes. I’m wearing suit pants as well. I’ve acquired a tux…
This is what I’d be wearing if I were getting married.
The incident within the incident has progressed.
The wedding has started. My wedding to Naomi…
I need to find Geppetto. If he’s here, it should be easy. He is here I tell myself, cycling through faces in the pews. People won’t stop staring at me. I become unnerved. My search turns scattershot. I can’t let the incident dictate what I do. I have to dictate what the incident does.
Continuing down the aisle, I near Naomi’s mother, half-expecting her to batter me with the heel of her shoe. Over the din of her refrain, I say, “Your daughter isn’t stupid.”
She stops talking. She places her shoe back on her foot and returns to the pew she came from. Her husband, Naomi’s father, isn’t waiting for her. I approach the base of the altar, where I should have the best possible vantage point on the entire congregation.
While I’m in the midst of pivoting to face the crowd, non-traditional organ music begins to play. The song is not “Here Comes the Bride.” By the fourth bar, I recognize it as “Heartless” by Kanye West, and the organ player – wherever he or she is hiding – is playing it like a dirge. Commiseration is the organ’s sole accompaniment. All those who are against the wedding grovel, and in this case… I agree. Today is not the day for me and Naomi to be married.
Everyone rotates towards the entrance. Suddenly, I realize why Naomi’s father isn’t with her mother – he’s been waiting to walk his daughter down the aisle.
I panic. The other world is taking over. Desperate to get control of the incident, I shout over the loud, echoing organ stabs. “Geppetto! Geppetto! Geppetto!”
Naomi enters the cathedral. She is adorned in an immaculate wedding dress, and the man walking her down the aisle is not her father.
&
nbsp; It’s Geppetto.
C’EST LA VIE
Naomi is beautiful. Her countenance, luminescent. Her joy, potent.
My heart drops.
I won’t go through with the wedding. I’m about to devastate her.
But why has her mood reversed from what it was earlier, seemingly without cause? What could have changed? Nothing I can fathom… Unless the other world is having its way with us.
I head straight for Geppetto since I brought him here. Leaning in to his ear, I snap in a hushed tone, “Is this really Naomi?”
Typical of him, he responds with another question. “Was the girl outside really Naomi?”
I stare at the woman next to Geppetto. Undeniably, she looks like Naomi. Yet, beyond her mutated demeanor something isn’t right. Her posture is stiff. Her gaze is unattached. Her presence is one-dimensional… Like the other people I’ve encountered inside the other world.
I begin to ask, “Can you...” but I stop, knowing I have to be forceful in order to manipulate the other world, if that’s what she is, a construct of the other world. “You can wait outside,” I tell her. “Please. Just for a second.”
Tears form within her hazel eyes. She steps back, shuddering, as her eyelids fail to dam the swell. The tears fall, dragging mascara with them, staining her cheeks with black flakes that look like ash. She pleads, “What are you doing?” Perhaps sensing there may not be a suitable answer, she turns away and goes, walking out of the church.
Briskly, the music stops. It is replaced with a collective gasp from the crowd. Geppetto talks only to me. “You’ve obviously made the discovery I told you about when we were at St. Michael’s.”
I was right. I can manipulate the other world.
Geppetto, I now see for the first time, is holding a purple velvet jewelry box. I ask what’s inside.
“What do you think?”
“Rings. Wedding rings.”
“This incident,” he says, “an incident within an incident – I know you’ve been thinking of it like that – is a combination of your memories and Naomi’s memories, distorted by my world, of course, with the guidance of your imaginations.”
“I already knew that.”
“More or less you did. But what you have to ask yourself is if you can manipulate my world with your thoughts, then why not just make it all go away? Have you considered that?”
I have. But the other world is powerful, authoritative, and my mind is byzantine. Its philosophies shift without warning. Paranoia pulls me in innumerable directions. Something as silly as turning on a faucet in a public restroom can spark a distant memory. I’m starting to be able to compete by taking hold of moments, single events within the larger environment the other world has created. At this stage, I seem to be capable of doing that. But I don’t think I’m capable of wiping the whole thing away.
I explain this to Geppetto.
First, he implies I’m right. Then he asks me again, “What do you think is inside the box?”
THE BOX
There is one thing I want above everything else.
A bomb.
I want a bomb so I can blow up the Door and eliminate the other world.
I tell Geppetto, “There’s a bomb inside the box.”
“My world can be stubborn,” he says. “Manipulating it can be like predicting the weather – you won’t always get it right. All you can do is try your best.”
I think back to the times I’ve been successful… Finding Naomi at St. Theodosius, getting Geppetto to show up here… They involved writing. I texted her, I messaged him. To write, you have to focus on a single idea for a period of time. When you put a concept or an event into words it becomes more concrete. It can spread to other people. They can believe in it. The more people that believe in something, the more real it becomes.
I open Twitter and write:
“There’s a bomb inside the box and I’m going to use it to blow up the Door.”
On Facebook, I change my status to:
“I am in possession of an explosive device.”
I imagine taking the box from Geppetto, opening it, and discovering a bomb inside. I let the sequence re-play in my mind.
I take the box from him.
“I’m going to wait to check it. I’ll let the process run its course.”
“Everything is a process.”
“Goodbye, Geppetto,” I say. “Thank you.”
“Goodbye, Geppetto,” he repeats. “I respect your confidence. I hope all of this…” He pauses, waving his arm from one side of his body to the other, a gesture meant to suggest not only this church and this moment, the likelihood of a failed wedding against the backdrop of World War 3, but also the entirety of my experience within the other world. “…I hope all of this has taught you something. Just in case it happens again.”
I think I know what he means. I smile. He doesn’t. He never smiles. He never frowns. He stays the same no matter what, and I finally get it, which is why I know it’s time for me to go.
I put my hand on Geppetto’s shoulder and then leave St. Theodosius with the bomb.
INSTEAD OF A RECEPTION
Upon stepping outside, I regain my old clothes. I keep the box with the bomb.
Naomi is waiting. Her wedding dress is gone. She’s back in dark jeans, pink flats, and a black wife beater, all dirtied from the war, the same as when I found her.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she says. “I heard so many ugly things. I couldn’t tell if they were real or in my head. I almost ran away.” She eyes the box. “What’s that?”
“It’s a bomb we can use to blow up the Door.”
She doesn’t look like she believes me.
“Trust me,” I tell her. “I got it from Geppetto.”
As I place my hand on the small of her back and lead her away from the church, I ask, “Did you end up coming inside?”
She turns to me, confused. “I stood against the wall and waited for the war to come back.”
“Did you think it would?”
“Yeah.”
I hesitate.
“What?” she asks.
“Don’t think about the war anymore. Let’s go.”
FALLING FROM THE SKY
Naomi and I are walking east. The air is warm, but snowflakes have begun to fall. We are both uneasy, re-calibrating where we stand with one another amidst these unimaginable circumstances. For now, all I can hope is that we make it to East Cleveland. The rest of everything will come after that.
Near the outer edge of Tremont, over the course of a single two-lane road, the terrain instantly transitions from flattened and obliterated to standing and intact.
The sound of an engine flies overhead.
I look up, squinting to keep the snowflakes out of my eyes.
Something is falling from the sky.
I yell at Naomi to run.
She takes off. I sprint after her, across the blacktop and into the untouched portion of the neighborhood.
A second and a third plane fly overhead.
They each let something go.
I race to Naomi’s side. Up above, three growing ovals plummet through the canvas of black sky speckled with white snowflakes.
Our feet stamp down dirt in a freshly toiled backyard.
The first bomb hits.
The blast drives me into the ground. The noise from the explosion sucks away my hearing. My ears ring. The sound pierces. I crawl back up, scramble, look for Naomi.
There she is.
“Get up! Keep going!” I shout.
The second pair of bombs hits.
I lose my center of gravity. I feel as if I am no longer attached to my surroundings, like a spirit descending to Hell. I see Naomi. She’s still standing and the sight of her unharmed gives me back my bearings. I check myself. I’m okay. So is the box with the bomb inside. I press towards her.
“Keep thinking we’re going to survive. Keep thinking we’re going to make it to the Door.”
“I don’t know, Mike…”
“Don’t give up. If we were going to give up, we should have done that a long time ago.”
A ghoulish cloud of debris forms in front of us. It appears the enemy is bombing outward from Tremont in a concentric circle. If we stayed in the middle of the circle we would be safe. But to get to East Cleveland and the Door, we need to get outside of the drop zone.
Four more planes fly overhead.
There is nothing left to say. We run from the backyard into a school playground. As I chase Naomi behind a collection of concrete play pipes, a flurry of explosions rock the earth, closer to us than before. The concrete pipes act as barricades, sheltering us from shrapnel. I start running again. Naomi is slowing down. I can read the look on her face. She’s losing faith in our ability to outrun the bombs. I think about trying to manipulate the other world to make the bomber jets malfunction or to move the location of the Door to Tremont, but just thinking through these options raises my fear that I will lose the bomb inside the box. I have to pick and choose.
Running as fast as I can, I hear Naomi say, “I don’t know how I’m going to survive…”
Nine additional planes pass overhead.
I stare up at the sky.
It looks like twenty more bombs have been dropped.
I contemplate settling into a meditative state and watching the cluster of bombs fall on top of me. In a flash, I would be eradicated, painlessly. Earlier, I might have curried this fate. Not now. I’m no longer convinced my life will play out like I imagined it would when I finished watching The Royal Tenenbaums or after I observed the lonely old man in St. Michael’s church. The Door has taught me the value of the fight.
I grab Naomi and I run.
The bombs nosedive into the neighborhood.
The gigantic blast throws us into the backside of a house. From the ground, I tilt, seeing so many more explosions, so many more falling bombs. Cleveland is being steamrolled. Why don’t they just drop a nuke and get it over with? Is that what’s next?
This Book Does Not Exist Page 17