The Ayatollah's Money
Page 25
Chapter 26 – Shimmey’s in Love
Shim sat in his condo near Waterfront Park and stared at the computer screen. What he saw was the end of Chapter 18 of his novel, which reads as follows:
Nev didn’t move. He debated moving, raising his gun and shooting, but he decided against it. Not worth it, not just to assuage his boss’s sense of cultural sacrilege. He stayed motionless, not looking at Peter and Pater pointing guns at him, but looking at Roger sitting next to him. Roger cocked his head sideways just a bit, indicating a sense of irony, and slowly reached across the space between them and took hold of Nev’s gun. He stood up and moved behind Nev’s chair, stepped away from him and looked at Peter and Pater, smiling, said, “Ok, all over. Ease down.” They lowered their guns, Pater’s hands shaking noticeably. Peter took Pater’s gun away from him, and led him over to the chairs.
Then they heard the door at the rear of The Hall open, and voices. Gwen, Selgey, Bart, and the Woman all entered, and began walking down the aisle. Gwen looked ahead, stopped the others, pulled her Glock, and pointed it at the stage. Roger said, “It’s ok, babe. Peter and Pater got the draw on him.” And he smiled at Nev, knowing this was not going to put him in good with his boss.
Below this he saw the words, Chapter 19, and after that a lot of white space, which he wanted to fill with cyclonic romance and action about the June’s ballet production. The problem was that his mind, such as it is, was filled with thoughts of the girl he'd fallen in love with, and we know who that is: the black haired bombshell from Iran. Tehran, Iran, of all places. How did a nice Christian boy from Charleston get involved with her?
Shim’s problem was that he was rotten at compartmentalization. That’s where you have more than one pressing thing going on in your life, and you set one aside and concentrate on another. Some people are really good at this, and some aren’t. The person who is best at this is Bill Clinton. Remember what he had going on simultaneously? He'd been discovered having sex in the Oval Office with a not very bright young female intern, and was up before Congress which was hell bent on excommunicating him. Make that impeach his ass. At the same time he was having face to face meetings with Vladimir Putin, dictator of all the Russias, and one very tough cookie. Vlady told Bill he was going to set up some intercontinental ballistic missiles somewhere sensitive, and Bill told him, Vlady, no fucking way. Now, that is compartmentalization.
Shim couldn’t do that. He wanted to write Chapter 19, needed to write Chapter 19, get on with the fun and funny story of the ballet, but couldn’t get Laleh’s image out of his mind. This is what he should have written after the words, Chapter 19:
There weren’t any fireworks on stage later that morning. Nev didn’t put on an action performance, engaging Roger and the others in hand-to-hand commando combat. He didn’t have any weapons in his shoes or strapped to his arms. After Gwen, Selgey, the Woman, and Bart arrived, so did Helstof and Gale. So there was Nev, surrounded by eight of his implacable enemies, all of whom wondered what they had gotten themselves into. Helstof had been part of the June’s invasion of Stirg’s home several months previously, and she had come to The Hall today, armed. She sat down in a chair, said, “How ya doin’, Nev?” The last time Nev had seen her, she was standing in Stirg’s kitchen, wearing a bikini and holding a gun. He didn’t answer her greeting.
Gwen said, “We have a visitor this morning. Mr. Nev. Works for Mr. Stirg.” She looked at her husband.
Roger said, “He wants the Stravinsky score. Or rather, his boss wants the Stravinsky score. Says Stirg wants to take it back to Saint Petersburg; Stirg says that’s where it belongs; says he’s going to do the ballet there. Nev came early and asked Peter and Pater for it. Then I showed up. The three of us talked it over and decided we didn’t want to give it to him. Decided this should be an American deal, here in Charleston. Didn’t we, boys?” Peter and Pater nodded vigorously. “Nev started waving his gun around.” Roger took Nev’s gun out from his belt at his back, and handed it to Gwen. “So they took it away from him. Asked him to sit in the chair, and be polite. Right, Nev?”
But he didn’t write these words. They patiently awaited their creative birthing, longing to become corporeal on the page of Shim’s novel, needing to become part of the story and this nascent work of art. They floated in artistic space, ready and willing to be pulled into human space and take their rightful place among Shim’s books. Several of them could be heard pleading with Shim, “Take us, make us real, give us birth into your wonderful world. We want to live in many Barnes and Noble stores (temporarily), and on the bookshelves of millions of enlightened and entertained people around the world. We want to be translated into thirty different languages, and be passed down from generation to generation, along with the other family heirlooms.”
He didn’t hear them. He didn’t sense them. He couldn’t enter the compartment in which they dwelled, on whose door was stenciled, 'The writer’s world, the place of imagination, home of the rich and the brave.' He was stuck in the compartment of love, wondering if Laleh was in a similar one, a mirror universe which suddenly would merge with his into a conflagration of passion and intimate caring, the way matter and anti-matter merge in the far reaches of the universe to create new worlds.