She could lose an entire afternoon to patterns. First Dash. Then Joseph. She could trace circles with her foot in the dirt, until one circle perfectly matched another. She could count up the coincidences that had shaped her years and echoed each death, until they formed a perfect sequence. She could gaze directly at the sun until its outline scorched her eyes and everything she looked at carried that faint red impression. But she preferred to stare out at the stretch of sea, where somewhere, thousands of miles beyond the curve, New York must still exist, and so must the people living in it. She didn’t miss it, not more than some jittery, lightning-fast memory of youth.
One day, maybe, she would tell her son about it. Although nothing was decided. On that point, she was convinced.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK WOULD never have been attempted had it not been for a hundred different people, but it surely would never have been completed without the support of a select few. I’d like to thank my agent Bill Clegg for his supreme trust and belief in the book through the wilderness of the middle to the end and back again (and again with expert understanding of characters even at their most irrational); for him, this novel would survive as a flurry of word files on a computer and nothing more. I’d like to thank Denise Oswald for braving lengths and seeing something possible in its lines. Without the support, creative endurance, and perfect ear of my editor Dan Smetanka, this story might have had bite but drawn no believable blood. The entire team at Counterpoint including Charlie Winton has been wonderful at giving a first-time author a first-rate chance. I’d also like to thank particular friends who doubled as tireless champions: Fabiola Beracasa, when introductions were due, Michael Martin for his diligent reading and honest responses, T. Cole Rachel for listening to me whine, Joseph Logan and Kelley Walker for turning their Orient Village home into an erstwhile writer’s retreat, Danko & Ana Steiner, George Miscamble, Brian DeGraw for first alerting me through his art to the strange phenomenon of post-9 /11 lightning-strike deaths, the Bronx Zoo for allowing me to tour its herpetology department and being undeserving of the fictional world I set therein, Interview Magazine and V Magazine for keeping me employed, Brooke Geehan, and Heather Bollen. I am grateful for the research provided when research was required by the Economist, Assassination in America by James McKinley (Harper & Row Publishers), Rattlesnake: Portrait of a Predator by Manny Rubio (Smithsonian Institution Press), and a fleet of conspiracy-theory websites that half-convinced me they might be on to something.
I’d also like to specially thank all of my friends in New York City, some still with us, others lost, who stayed up with me well past midnight on so many nights and made me believe I could one day wake up and put the words down on paper. This work is partly dedicated to them.
Copyright © 2011 Christopher Bollen. All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bollen, Christopher, 1975–
Lightning people : a novel / Christopher Bollen.
p. cm.
Summary: “Joseph Guiteau is a working actor who moved to New York to escape a tragic family history in the Midwest. Wandering through a city transformed by the attacks of September 2001, he frequents gatherings of conspiracy groups, trying to make sense of world events and his own personal history. Looming over his life is a secret that threatens to undermine his new marriage to Del, a snake expert at a city park, whose work visa is the only thread keeping her from deportation back to her native Greece. The new marriage influences the lives of those around them: William, a dark and troubled actor whose sanity is fading as quickly as his career, leading him to perform increasingly desperate acts; Madi, a young entrepreneur who will have to face the moral complications of a business made successful by the outsourcing of American jobs to India; and her brother Raj, Del‘s former lover, a promising photographer whose work details the empty rooms of an increasingly alienated city. Christopher Bollen‘s first novel captures the atmosphere of anxiety and loss that exists in Manhattan. It is a story of the city itself, and the interconnected lives of those attempting to navigate both Manhattan and their own mortality.”—Provided by publisher.
eISBN : 978-1-593-76463-0
1. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 2. September 11 Terrorist Attacks,
2001—Influence—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.O6545L54 2011
813’.6—dc22
2011025049
Soft Skull Press
An imprint of COUNTERPOINT
1919 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.softskull.com
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Lightning People Page 43