by Simon Archer
“Perhaps you don’t know what you don’t remember?” Vila suggested delicately. “Maybe there’s a piece or two that are just slipping by with the other, more prominent information?”
“I don’t know what I don’t know, type of thing? Is that what you mean?” I was beginning to get their point.
“Exactly!” Andi wiggled in place. I had to know why she was so overly excited.
“It feels as though there is something specific you think you may find that has you squirming with anticipation,” I mentioned to her. She smiled from ear-to-ear at me.
“Nothing specific, really. I’m just looking forward to finding out that the book doesn’t have anything to do with me!” Her naïveté made me chuckle. Only Andi would be excited to find a lack of information after being saddened by just that.
“Alright, let’s do it. What do you need from me?” I asked. “And, is it really a good idea to do this now? Here? It is a little crowded in here, don’t you think?” My worry was creeping up stronger by the second.
“Oh, it’s perfect right now!” Vila said, quickly standing up. “The best place to be, other than alone, is in a crowd of distracted people who don’t take notice of their surroundings. Besides, this room locks, and there is no reason for anyone to get in, in the first place.”
“Can’t argue there,” I replied. People did tend to worry about themselves when scurrying around like they were downstairs.
“Perfect!” Andi stood up, and she and Vila laid on the bed, side by side.
“Do I need to do anything?” I asked, feeling a little as though they had forgotten I was part of the equation.
“Oh, no, not at all. Nothing other than sitting there and staying relaxed that is,” Vila answered casually. The girls closed their eyes, so I settled back in my chair and did the same. Instantly, the three of us were back in the alley where I had been when I’d seen the book's history for the first time. We were like visitors, though, watching what had already transpired. I watched myself touch the book, then almost immediately, I took my hand away from it. Then the memory jumped to Vila, Andi, Jack, and I sitting in the living room at our old house, talking about what I had seen. Watching and listening to the conversation spurred a realization. I opened my eyes and was sitting in the guest suite.
“What are you doing?” Vila sat up on the bed, obviously irritated. “Why did you stop the spell?”
“Because it won’t tell us anything we don’t already know,” I told her. By that time, Andi had sat up as well.
“We just talked about what you may not realize you don’t know,” she whined.
“It won’t tell us anything because I didn’t see the entire history of the book. I just now realized that,” I told them. “I touched the book so fast and then went to work, stopping Dave from his bullshit. It did not occur to me that I stopped receiving the history of the book as soon as I saw something I could use to stop Dave.”
The girls looked at each other, then back to me.
“You can do that?” Andi asked quizzically. None of us had thought of that before.
“I believe I can. When I recall the book’s history, it stops at the point where I saw the spell I needed to cast Dave into the book,” I replied.
“How did we overlook that?” Vila asked, sounding offended at her own oversight.
“I really don’t know other than being wrapped up in having won the battle, and being free from danger,” I answered.
“So, what now?” Vila asked, looking around like she was lost.
“I have to touch the book again and get its entire history this time,” I told her.
“I’ll go get the book!” Vila bounced up off the bed.
“Not now.” I stopped her. “I don’t want to do it and then have to go downstairs to the party, especially since we have no idea what I will see.” Both the girls’ shoulders slumped a little, and their gazes landed on each other. Then they looked at me and shrugged.
“Okay, we’ll wait,” they replied in unison, sounding disappointed.
“Cheer up already. This will give us all something to look forward to tomorrow!” I tried to be as upbeat as possible. It had been an emotional roller coaster of a day, especially for Andi. It took a moment, but eventually, the excitement of the party set in again, and both girls perked up.
“Promise us we’ll do it first thing!” Andi chimed, bouncing off the bed.
“You’ve got it,” I replied, chuckling. “We’ll have to fill Lottie in, but don’t say anything until she gets a chance to relax.”
“So, not until it is clear that the party is functioning without a hitch?” Vila joked. Lottie was a perfectionist, and we all knew it.
“Deal,” the girls confirmed.
“Let’s head down and see if she has come up with anything we can help with yet,” Vila directed, strolling over and unlocking the suite door. The three of us exited and went to search for Lottie. The first guests would be arriving in approximately a half an hour, so I crossed my fingers that everything was still running smoothly so that my fiancé could enjoy the party she put so much work into.
8
The turnout for the event was larger than any of us expected, especially for being the new kids on the block. We’d invited forty local business owners and their spouses so we could introduce ourselves and make beneficial connections. Only six didn’t show. I’d never introduced myself, welcomed, and shook hands with so many people in one night.
Lottie was at her best and had obviously done her research. She knew the name of nearly everyone who walked through the door without ever having met them before. Andi and Vila were working defense, which is to say that if anyone, or a couple, was trying to monopolize my time or Lottie’s, they would swoop in and steer them away with promises of something fantastic about the house to show them. I was quickly learning just how tight-knit a community of business owners we’d just moved into. Just as I was going to steal away and grab us some drinks, Andi and Vila walked up with a nice-looking middle-aged couple in tow.
“Bennett, Lottie, we’d like you to meet the Genhills, Katie and Red,” Vila said politely, stepping aside to make the introduction. A neatly kept woman with medium brown hair, glasses, and overly bright lipstick stood beside a man with fire-red hair who was three inches shorter than she was. The man stuck his hand out.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, shaking the man’s hand. We took turns with greetings amongst the four of us as Andi and Vila slipped away.
“Mrs. Genhill,” Lottie started. “You run the local sandwich shop in town, is that right?” The woman smiled easily and nodded.
“Yes, and please call me Katie,” she replied. “Red and I opened the shop twenty-two years ago.”
“We had our hand at a beauty shop before that, but I found people to be much less picky about their sandwiches than their hair,” Red added, laughing.
“I just got back from a spa this morning, so I would have to agree with you! Some of the complaints just seem ludicrous!” Lottie agreed.
“You’ve put on quite a fantastic soiree, here.” Katie changed the subject, waving her hand in the air. “It’s very polite of you to invite us.”
“We are excited that you came,” Lottie said. “To be honest, I was afraid we were going to end up with an entire buffet to ourselves!”
“Nah, never, not in this town!” Katie replied. “So, have you two met everyone so far?” I noticed that Red stepped back and stood quietly while his wife dominated the conversation. He seemed perfectly comfortable to do so.
“We’ve met most, I think. There, for a little while, people were coming in faster than we could say ‘hello’!” Lottie answered.
“Well, let’s make sure you know who you’ll be dealing with!” Katie chuckled and stepped between Lottie and me. She turned, and the three of us stood looking out across the courtyard foyer at our crowd. Red excused himself, claiming that the buffet was calling to him. I admired the way he seemed to enjoy his wife’s outgoing personality and was completely
comfortable, leaving her to it.
“So, you have the Grumbergs over there in the red dress,” Katie started out, nodding discreetly across the room to a stern-looking couple, the wife wearing a long red gown. “They are nice enough, but she has a strange habit of chewing on her nails.” I almost laughed out loud. Suddenly, I wondered if perhaps a beauty shop wasn’t where she did actually belong.
“The Grumbergs, yes,” Lottie acknowledged. “We did get to say hello, briefly.” Katie immediately turned our attention to the right.
“Those two,” she said, looking up at both Lottie, and I, to make sure we were following her nod. “They are the town ‘travelers,’ as we call them. They never live in the same house for longer than two years at a time.”
“Why do they move so much?” I asked out of sheer curiosity.
“Oh, only one of them moves,” Katie answered nonchalantly. “I should have been more clear! They never live under the same roof together for longer than two years at a time. Then one or the other will move out for a good six months or so, then move back.”
“Oh!” Lottie piped up. She hadn’t been expecting such a personal account of her guests’ lives.
“And there are the Strapels.” Katie just kept right ongoing. “She is the sweetest little sugar cube you will ever meet, and he is an over-pompous asshole. They do the best job with interior design that you will ever see, though!”
Lottie glanced up at me and swallowed a laugh. We had landed ourselves the town gossip, and it was wildly entertaining. At some point, Katie even started walking us slowly through our house while whispering personal details about our guests. She knew everything about everyone, down to where they were born. If I wasn’t so fascinated with how she could know that much about everybody, I would have been equally fascinated as to how she could remember it all!
When we reached the kitchen, Katie set to bringing us up to speed on the guests in that room.
“Cherry and Jax Soho, over there, are who you’ll call if you need any sort of housework done. Plumbing, electrical, cleaning, you name it,” Katie prattled on. “And Mr. Boat Pants by the table, he is Aiden Summers, our grocery delivery man. He’s only wearing pants that short because he lost a bet with his wife just this morning. They were play-fighting over how hot it was going to get today, and she won.”
“Yikes, that is hilarious!” Lottie burst out, louder than she intended. She clapped her hands to her mouth and stifled a laugh. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing about the bet between the man and his wife, or the fact that Katie knew all about it when it had just happened this morning.
“Oh, honey, the things that go on in this town will have you falling off your hammock laughing if you just pay attention,” Katie laughed loudly. She obviously did not care what people thought about her at all. Surprisingly, everyone we passed smiled at her and said ‘hello’ like they were old friends, which most turned out to be. In the city where we’d moved from, people would stay miles away from somebody that gossiped as much as Katie did, but here, she seemed quite respected.
“Did you grow up here, Katie,” I asked her when she paused for a brief moment.
“No, I’m from Ohio,” she answered. “Bet ya wouldn’t have guessed that, would ya?” A big smile crossed her face.
“I can say that I would certainly never have guessed Ohio,” I agreed with her. “How did you come about living on the island?”
“Sick of everything back home. Nothing interesting ever happened there. So, I tore out of there when I turned eighteen and ended up here. I was married a year later to my Red. He’s the local out of us,” she explained.
“Wow! Fleeing the country and finding love all wrapped up in a nice, neat little story!” Lottie gushed. She was a sucker for romance. “Do the two of you have any kids?”
“Us? Oh, no. I’m not one to wipe noses, especially somebody else’s! There are plenty of people in this world who would make great parents. It simply wouldn’t make sense for a kid to end up with me as its mother! I’m not big on being responsible for keeping miniature humans alive. Hell, my house is where plants go to die! Can’t grow a single thing!” Katie had the two of us laughing so hard it made her laugh.
“I’m so happy to have met you here tonight, Katie,” Lottie told her when she caught her breath. “You are quite the cool breeze.” I agreed with Lottie. I liked the woman, even though I knew I’d have to warn the girls about her ability to know everything about everybody all the time.
“Awe, you are just a Q-Tip dipped in honey, aren’t you? Thank you! I’m happy to have met you two as well!” Katie seemed truly touched. While I was trying to figure out who in the world would dip a Q-Tip in honey, Katie started moving us through the room again.
We were almost to the door leading out to the beach yard when a voice in the crowd called out rather loudly, “Turn that up, would ya?” An older gentleman was standing in front of the flatscreen TV mounted on the kitchen wall, and somebody had obviously found the remote because the volume was already being turned up. A man in his young thirties was on the screen, holding a microphone to his mouth and everyone in the room turned to listen as the volume got louder.
“We cannot stand by as someone uses that kind of untested, unsanctioned technology in a community based on family principals, and the bounty of living in harmony with nature,” the man was saying. “Just because someone has the cash to garble up the largest beach houses, rent luxury offices, and throw lavish, wasteful parties, doesn’t mean that we should support him in his efforts to turn our home into a technological dumping-ground. We should run Bennett Anders with all his ‘understated’ dealings off the island before he and his company, 14Tech, turn it into a box-store jungle by inviting big-commerce to come join him!”
I stared at the television in disbelief. Before I even had a chance to let it sink in that a local news station in my new hometown had just slammed me, phones all over the room started dinging. My guests pulled up their notifications one-by-one. Beside me, Katie’s phone dinged as well. She swiped on the screen, pulled up a weather advisory notification, and held her phone up for me to see.
“He’s a squirrelly one, that Tobin,” Katie said disgustedly. “He’s just sent out an alert of his report over the weather center warning system.” She looked at me with sympathetic eyes.
“Who is he?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“He’s our local newscaster. He moved here when he was a boy but acts like his family built the island or something,” Katie explained. “Everyone thought he was the nicest kid in town until he got into a fight a few years back and almost beat a guy to death. Even then, he has passed it off as a grievous mistake and kept his nose clean ever since. I and several others have never really trusted him since then, but he is very well known, regardless.”
I got the definite feeling that she was on my side, and it was strangely comforting. When I looked up from her, I had an entire room full of eyes on me. Andi and Vila ran in from the beach yard and looked at me, not knowing what to do. I could hear replays of the report echoing around me from peoples’ phones. There was no way I was getting out of addressing the issue to my guests, so that is what I decided to do.
“Andi, Vila, get everyone outside,” I called across the room to them. They immediately went to work, shoveling our guests outback. Katie decided the process was moving too slowly, so she stepped forward and clapped her hands twice. She clapped so loudly that it hurt my ears.
“Y’all can thank Mr. Keene for interrupting the best party we’ve been to this season and get your tails out there. Move it!” Katie yelled in a booming voice. She turned and winked at Lottie and me as the crowd started moving quickly to get to the yard.
“Thank you for that,” I told her as the three of us stood aside, waiting for the house to empty.
“No problem,” she replied. She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Look, we’re two hours in. That means half these people are sauced, and the other half are preoccupied with taking care
of them. Just make whatever you say funny, and not one of them will remember a thing Tobin was talking about.”
I waited until the last of the guests were out and turned to Lottie, Katie, and the girls, who had made it over to us by then.
“I want all of you to go out with the rest of the party. When you get there, tell anyone you can get to listen, that you just saw a sex tape released of Tobin Keene that someone posted online,” I told them. I had four sets of eyes staring back at me, silent.
“If they want to see it?” Vila asked slowly, doubting my instructions.
“Pretend you are looking for it on your phone and are having issues finding it. Tell them you’ll text them and move on. I want as many people as possible to hear about the sex tape,” I answered.
“Bennett, I’m not—”
“I promise, I know what I’m doing. I’m taking all these people back to kindergarten,” I replied, gaining confidence in my plan.
“I’m in!” Katie piped up cheerily. “Let’s go, ladies!” I watched as the four of them left the kitchen and headed to the beach yard. I stood in the kitchen, hoping my plan would work. Five minutes later, I walked out of the house to greet the seventy-four people staring at me as I entered the yard. The guitar quartet set up just to the left of the entrance, so I asked the guitarist nearest me for his microphone. He handed it over and took a seat on his stool. I took a deep breath and put the microphone to my lips.
“Hello, everyone!” I yelled into the mic as boisterously as I could muster. I waited for the crowd murmur to fade. When I felt I was receiving proper attention, I continued.
“I want to thank every one of you for coming this evening. It has been a fantastic night of meeting interesting people, whom we are proud to know.” I looked out at the faces staring at me, and the others staring at their phones. When the silence got significantly awkward, I stepped forward, threw an arm up in the air, and yelled, “So, who here wants to see Tobin’s sex tape?”
The people immediately started hollering and whooping.
