Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

He aimed the pistol at Charlotte, though his finger wasn’t on the trigger. “You’ve had your time. High school. You think we’ve all forgotten, but we remember.”

Then the barrel was pointed at Leo. “You too. Your time was college. You probably look back on those kegger days every night in bed, but they’re gone forever.”

“And I suppose you’re going to talk about how I’ve had my time, too,” said Jonesy. His hand rested on his desk, firmly holding down the silent alarm it concealed.

“It’s been your time ever since. But no more. From now on, it’s my time. It’s poor stupid John Ianisto’s time at last.”

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“The Fifth Street Fruit Market! Take it all in. Apples to zucchini.”

“Zucchini isn’t a fruit.”

“Oh, must you spoil everything with your pedantry? Culinarily it’s a vegetable, but botanically it’s a fruit. Like a tomato.”

“If you say so.”

“Come on, walk around. Just drink in those smells, those sights, the firm click of cleaver through fresh produce! Do you know what the most striking thing about this cornucopia is?

“The high prices?”

“It’s all ephemeral. It won’t last. In a week, all this fruit will be in rotting heaps or in the sewers.”

“We’ve…well, we’ve all become a bit concerned about you. All this talk of going out with Jeremy, of doing stuff with Jeremy…it’s not healthy.”

“I know you don’t like him,” Marybeth hissed. “You’ve never liked him. But that’s no reason not to let me make my own decisions!”

The people gathered in the living room exchanged uneasy glances, and Marybeth thought she could hear a furtive whispering. “Well, you’re right that maybe, perhaps, we weren’t as welcoming of Jeremy as we could have been, at the beginning,” Aunt Roberta coughed. “But I hardly think that’s the point now.”

“Then what is the point?” countered Marybeth. “I’m meeting him later tonight, and unless you want to lock me in my room, I’m going.”

“That’s enough,” barked Uncle Richard. “I’ve had it with all this pussyfooting around. It’s time to cut through the bullshit.”

“No, Rich,” Dad said. “We discussed this, we need to break things carefully-”

His brother cut him off. “Marybeth, Jeremy is dead. He’s been dead for six months, and you talking about him like he’s alive is creeping all of us right out.”

“I’m proud to say that the design process had full investment in the sociocultural impact of modern university construction,” said SMU professor of engineering and urban planning Veronica Chatham. “Earthmother Hall is fully conscious of the implications of its layout in social justice terms, as well–something that less progressive engineers often overlook entirely. For instance, it’s oriented with windows facing south-southeast–toward the poorest section of town–and north-northeast–toward the campus wetlands endangered by new stadium construction.”

“My students and I were less interested in the engineering details of the building’s and construction than their implications for the wider planet,” Chatham continued. “I’m proud to say that all our construction personnel earned a living wage, and that all components were sustainably sourced even though it tripled the cost of certain aspects of fabrication. Earthmother Hall is designed to biodegrade naturally over the course of its useful lifespan and leave ruins that will be useful a a habitat for endangered local animals.”

Earthmother Hall, formerly Wildermann Hall, was constructed by Dr. Chatham and a team of her students with a bequest from the late Gloria Wildermann, widow of engineering professor George Wildermann. The ribbon cutting, attended by many Southern Michigan University luminaries, was held early last year. “We had the land blessed by a representative of the Ojibwone nation, who are the rightful owners of the land, and a geomancer from Chungking who is among the rightful owners of the land on the opposite side of the planet,” said Chatham of the ceremony.

When asked about the various allegations that had been raised about the structure before its collapse last week–student and faculty complains of subsidence, leaks, blinding light at sunrise and sunset, and an internal layout with no bathrooms above the second floor–Dr. Chatham was dismissive. “Unfortunately, reactionary thinkers are always an impediment to progressive design,” she remarked. “After all, we created conditions of fear and uncertainty that most of our privileged white students and instructors have never felt but which afflicts fully two-thirds of the world’s population.”

“We have reports that the rebels have converted captured Swedish-made Ordssun air-defense guns and missiles into siege weaponry,” Malianne said. The ground shook and the picture was distorted by digital artifacts for a moment.

“Malianne, are you still there?” Kenneth said. He broke his stare at the newsroom camera and glanced over his shoulder at the producer, concerned.

“…fine…ust another missile strike.” Malianne’s voice came through in patches as the picture resolved itself. “Another missile has landed nearby, near the market. Out government handler is telling us that we cannot go and see the area until rescuers have done their jobs.”

“What’s the mood like in the city right now?” Kenneth asked. “Do the people you’re seen think the government can hold the area?”

There was a pause as his comments traveled thousands of miles via satellite. “I’ve spoken to a lot of people both on and off the record, Kenneth,” she said. “No one seems to think that the government troops can hold off this latest attack for long.”

The Grand Duke turned inward after 1802, becoming more and more reclusive and eccentric. With 99% of his holdings swept away by the Napoleonic Wars, and the remaining tiny rump territory under French “protection,” Edjard IV began to obsess over those few things he could still control.

He instituted decrees to demolish any buildings that interfered with the strict line of sight and straight boulevards near his hold. His people were required first to count steps they took by twos, and then to always begin a journey with their right foot. Double locks were to be installed on all doors and checked five times daily.

Eventually, the Edjard IV’s obsessions found even stranger outlets. He began hoarding items in the ducal hold, chiefly hunks of quartz or granite. Citizens who turned in suitable stones were rewarded from the treasury, while those found to be in possession otherwise were executed–even if the stones were loadbearing members of a house.

The Ducal Guard were most directly affected, as by 1806 their livery had changed 19 times and their drill 103. Edjard was preoccupied with finding a uniform style and marching pattern that would, as he wrote, “cover every corner of the courtyard with every color.” Surviving depictions of the last, 1806, livery show a rainbow of brightly clashing diagonal stripes and saltires, and accounts from former Ducal Guards indicate that the garment took nearly an hour to don (with assistance) and was so bulky as to inhibit the very precision Edjard’s complex marches demanded.

It’s not surprising, then, that the Guard “found” the Grand Duke crushed beneath a pile of his own stones in December 1806. The local French commander, unsurprisingly, quietly arranged for the last ducal holdings to be annexed while pensioning off the remainder of the Guard.

The islanders, due to their isolation, had developed a pantheon quite distinct from their nearest neighbors and quite unlike anything else in Polynesia. Unfortunately, the last full-blooded islander had died in 1937 and social pressures had prevented the handing down of the traditional tales by any of his kinfolk.

An anthropologist had interviewed the islander, known as Georges, the year before he died and recorded the exchange on acetates. For better or worse, though, Georges was an inveterate prankster and Dr. Hewes was utterly credulous. So, while scholars agree that the resulting cosmology is a mixture of real stories passed down through generations and Georges having fun at the expense of his guest, no one is sure which is which.

Roakoanton, the god of fire embers raked in a counterclockwise direction, is probably made up. Likewise Koantuatuana, who Georges claimed was a powerful goddess that only aided women who had lost great-uncles to shark attacks. But what of Rotpota, said to be the essential god of outrigger canoe lashings? Or Koatpotaea, a spirit Georges said carefully controlled the islanders’ shellfish harvest in line with her own inscrutable motives?

No wonder, then, that relatives say that when Georges died–shortly after the first copies of Hewes’ book reached him–he died laughing.

This post is part of the February 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “second chances.”

I had prepared very carefully, from packing everything days in advance to dropping the dog off at the kennel early to renting a car to get me to the airport as well as run those last few crucial errands. I even bought an extra waterproof camera the night before I left, remembering that I’d used up all my shots early last year.

Yet as I got up at 4am to be at the airport bright and early for my 7am flight, I had a vague feeling that I was forgetting something. It wasn’t until I was at the airport, staring at the electronic ticket kiosk, that the circuit finally closed.

My passport was sitting in a drawer at home, 90 minutes away.

I was trying to board an international flight.

People who work the ticket counters must get a lot of sob stories (even if most probably come from people trying to avoid paying a $25 baggage charge). I think the fact that I was trembling uncontrollably from sheer overwhelming stress did a lot to lend credence to my tale of woe. As my house was a 120-minute round trip away, and I had an hour until boarding, you can probably see where I was coming from there.

I hoped that the Dominican Republic might be like Mexico at El Paso in 2000, when all I needed was a driver’s license–but no, not in this age of international shoe and underwear bombs. The lady at the counter instead booked me for the second and final flight from the USA to Punta Cana, which left from Philadelphia at 10pm.

“I’m shocked that there’s another flight,” I said, with no small measure of relief.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” she said. “You have three and a half hours to get back here with your passport.”

Lucky for me I’d chosen to rent a car instead of taking a taxi–I really would have been out of luck then. Even if I’d been able to hire another ride, I doubt that any taxi driver would have been willing to violate the speed limit as flagrantly as I did on my way home. The trip usually takes 90 minutes one way; I did a round trip in nearly the same amount of time. I actually only missed my original flight by about a half-hour.

I introduced myself to the baggage handler as “the unfortunate with a tale of woe” as she reflected how quick my passage had been. The gate agent had changed shifts, with the matronly and helpful agent who rebooked my flight replaced with a male agent more or less my own age.

“You’re lucky she did that for you,” he sneered as my itinerary printed. “Normally, ‘I forgot my passport’ isn’t an excuse for waiving a rebooking fee.” I was able to make it to the gate without injuring him, an action which I believe qualifies me for a Nobel.

That aside, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Bizarrely, my path took me further away from the Dominican Republic–first to Charlotte and then to Philly. Each connection was super-tight, less than 45 minutes from arrival to boarding. A delay of any kind would have stranded me overnight.

Amazingly, both flights were not only on time, they were early. 30 minutes early, both of them, a feat probably never equaled before or since in this age of delays and just-in-time arrivals. I had enough time to buy lunch and dinner and keep my family up to date on my progress via text.

Whoever scheduled the USA-Punta Cana flights clearly did so under the influence of powerful narcotics. There were two a day: one from Charlotte arriving around 5, and one from Philly rolling in around 10pm, long after the airport had basically shut down. When my flight landed (also 30 minutes early!) my tour company had long packed it in. The only fluent English speaker I could find (other than my fellow passengers) was a German expat working for another tour company who confirmed that a $70 taxi ride to my resort was the only option.

I split the ride part of the way with a couple from Connecticut (interestingly both academics, like me) but once they were dropped off at their rented Punta Cana townhouse it was just me and the driver with only my high school Spanish and his handful of phrases between us. I was, understandably, a bit nervous.

It didn’t help that he clearly had no idea where the resort was. We stopped three times for directions–a gas station, the Connecticut townhouse, and a police post–and most of the route looked to be raw, howling wilderness. I felt like I was being driven to the ends of the earth, and it was all I could do to maintain a cheery facade by tapping my bag along with the Caribbean beat in the van’s speakers.

Needless to say, I was so relieved when my resort appeared that I paid the asking fare, $80, without even haggling. The driver attempted to negotiate an airport return in a week, but I left him at the front desk while I went to my room, where my brother was already checked in, and basically collapsed.

But you know what? Aside from my slip, which I attribute to lack of sleep more so than anything, I was extraordinarily lucky. I got a second chance at my long-awaited tropical paradise vacation with my family, and I seized it. The rest of the week seemed like a beautiful waking dream, made all the sweeter by the fact that I almost missed it.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Turndog-Millionaire
Ralph Pines
magicmint
Tomspy77
MamaStrong
in_one
LilGreenBookworm
Literateparakeet
Diana Rajchel
sambgood
Bogna
writingismypassion
kiwiviktor81
AFord
randi.lee
Areteus
Domoviye
pyrosama

“You remember crazy old Mrs. Smiley?”

“Oh, how could I forget her? Total name-personality mismatch. She used to scream at us if we ever got near those shrubs of hers. Remember how we used to see her out there trimming them with scissors?”

“Well, she came up in my docket today. Her family is trying to get her committed so they can seize her assets.”

“That’s…that’s kind of terrible actually. She was a mean old coot but she never hurt anybody. What’s their reasoning?”

“According to the affadavit, she swears that her hedgerow is the above-ground portion of a sentient and dangerous plant being she calls Bramblebraid, and by grooming it and keeping others away she is protecting the entire street from its depredations.”