Chronicles of Ara: Perdition

by Joel Eisenberg

  “Okay, okay. Maybe not now—”

  “The word was used only once,” Clance continues, “and in the New Testament. Luke 10:31 in The Parable of the Good Samaritan. ‘And by coincidence,’ Jesus said, ‘a certain priest was going down in that way, and having seen him, he passed over on the opposite side.’ Goes on that there is no such thing as coincidence, that God plans for it all.”

  “There is reason for everything.”

  “That there is, my friend.”

  “Then what is his plan for me?”

  Clance considers the question, as Levin cocks an ear toward the next table.

  “I’m just a writer,” Thomas says.

  “There’s nothing just about you, believe m—” Denise attempts to answer.

  “He could’ve asked anyone.”

  “I don’t know this?”

  “And?”

  “I don’t care. Maybe something more could come of it, no?”

  “Such as?”

  “Time will tell.”

  “Profound. Are you telling me everything?”

  Denise ignores him. “So, this entire affair is, of course, purely confidential. Bradley is known as a bit of an eccentric. Be sure you read your dossier before you meet with him.”

  “Who said I’m going?”

  “Can you really walk away?” Denise asks.

  Peter laughs to himself. The irony, he thinks. Maybe the enlightened have it right. Maybe we really are all the same until the end.

  “Peter? Can . . . you hear me? Peter?”

  “Clance,” Peter answers, “about five percent claim they found religion in the hole while I was there, to my best guestimate. Of those who’ll eventually be released, how many do you think will raise a candle for the deceased, skin their baby’s penises, or drown their babies in the name of—”

  “That a little extreme?”

  “What am I saying that’s not truthful? You know what the Indians say—”

  “The Indians?” Billie laughs. “What tribe?”

  “In the thirties, John Neihardt wrote a book on Black Elk from the Oglala Lakota. Bet you’re impressed—”

  “Don’t know. Tell me the damn quote.”

  “Hey . . . hypocrite.” Billie smiles. “Tell me, what do you think” ‘If you take a copy of the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and rain, soon the paper upon which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our Bible is the wind and the rain.’ ”

  “Profound,” answers Billie. “Unimpressed. A person can be absolved of their sins without finding religion. That’s their cross to bear.”

  “You know, Mother,” Peter continues following the briefest contem-plation, “if you didn’t forgive me for my sins, I would have stopped by anyway.” Clance does not respond. “Forget it. Let’s change the subject, fellow old comic book fan. You hear the news this morning?”

  “Haven’t been near a TV or radio in days.”

  “You don’t know what happened in Aurora?”

  “No, what happened?”

  “Another shooting. This one during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Have you seen it?”

  “I barely have time to breathe, much less go to the movies.”

  “The shooter had red hair, and they’re saying he was emulating the Joker.”

  “The Joker has green hair.”

  “I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere,” Peter responds with some admonishment. “Once again our pop culture will come under attack, gun laws will be revisited, and the NRA will have a field day in response.” He takes his time and carefully considers his next words. “Where was your god when I needed him, huh?”

  “Agenda, much? Maybe I’m not as understanding as I used to be, but that’s a hell of a thing to say. Remember those Hail Marys? Make them ten, every night before shluffie pie.”

  “You couldn’t just say ‘or go to church every Sunday from here forward?’ Your holy godfather wouldn’t get the message?”

  “Around here we call him The Great Equalizer. Doesn’t matter much what you refer to him as.”

  They both glean that the conversation is becoming forced, and he realizes his last words in particular have offended her. In small doses they had always been good company, though they both knew the difference and were reminded why they could never be more than “just friends,” which they insisted to everyone, though no one ever believed them.

  Peter again looks at his watch. “I forgot,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Never mind, you.” He wipes his mouth, tosses the napkin on the table, and stands to go.

  “Already?”

  “I never overstay my welcome.”

  “You know we’ll be in touch sooner than later.”

  “I know.”

  “So once again, I’m here for you when you need me. That’s a door you opened.”

  He walks to her side of the table and kisses the top of her head. “On the off-chance of that happening, I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Now what is that supposed to mean?”

  Peter smiles in response, and leaves the shop without answering.

  ~~~

  One week later.

  The 405 Freeway is one of the West Coast’s largest and most frequently congested thoroughfares, a recently expanded six lanes north and six lanes south for a combined twelve lanes of purgatory. These days, Peter Levin typically avoids this route from his beachside office on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica back to his home in Studio City; however, yet another “suspicious package” found on the faster Sepulveda pass rerouted all traffic back onto the freeway, and then a five-car northbound pileup shot its debris over the guardrail onto the south side, subsequently shutting down the thoroughfare for minimally—per the radio—three hours.

  So two people died from the impact so far, Peter Levin thinks as he lowers the volume, and the others are not conscious. They may have had families . . . and that’s really not my problem.

  He’s hardened considerably since his coffee with Clancy. Nearly ten years for extortion, because he knew no one of any political clout who would help him. He was tempted once to reach out to his trump card, Tolkien, but this former (decorated) college professor was, simply, embarrassed.

  Disgraced.

  And he had no idea Tolkien had long since passed away.

  Makes sense, though, when I think about it.

  Peter moved cross-country upon his release, by then no longer giving a damn about anyone or anything. He had made a small fortune gambling the few dollars he had on his person when he was captured, $600, on a slot machine in Atlantic City. He had lost his wife and his job. She took his two kids.

  Three decades later he won close to a half-million dollars on a quarter machine, then parlayed it all on a lucky hand of Blackjack. He was asked the expected questions when he opened his new bank account and then invested in a small apartment complex near the beach—as far from the horrific memories of New York as he could go while retaining a sense of major-city-U.S.

  Peter regretted most everything until the day he was released; by the time he stepped outside and the gates closed behind him, he was resentful above all else. He loved his family once. He hasn’t spoken to any of them since his incarceration. As he stepped into the fresh air, his first experience as a free man was standing, alone, handling both his bags and the indignity of waiting for a cab delayed by thirty minutes.

  ~~~

  He ponders his lost years as he sits, at a dead stop, on the infernal 405. Night has fallen an hour ago. Drivers have long since turned off their ignitions and exited their vehicles, taking shots on their cells, gabbing with each other about their own unimportant, short lives. For now, though, Peter stays in his vehicle and watches Casablanca on his iPad while occasionally checking his phone’s radio for updates.

  He checks his watch, pauses the video. Peter removes a neatly typed manuscript from his briefcase, pulls off a pen cap with his teeth, and jots notes in the marg
ins.

  As he works, he looks up to what he thinks is sudden screaming in the immediate vicinity. Indeed, drivers rush back into their vehicles and lock their doors and windows.

  Peter Levin doesn’t have a moment to respond as his window shatters and his papers scatter outside in response to a moderate breeze. He only gathers what has just happened when he looks down for his case, which is now gone. He watches in a daze as his papers continue to fly out the window. Seconds after he places his hand to his neck and goes into shock upon noticing the inordinate amount of blood pouring from a sure gunshot wound, he loses consciousness.

  ~~~

  The three surviving drivers in the pileup will survive, barely. The third freeway death that evening will not be noticed until minutes following the resumption of moving traffic, an assumption of a car simply having run out of gas.

  The police arrives first.

  Peter is found dead in his vehicle. His doors and windows are locked and undamaged, and by the time the cops arrive there is no sign of blood or entry.

  Under his back passenger tire, pages of a magazine stutter in response to the breeze of slowly passing cars. The pages are in Italian, and appear to be geared toward younger readers. As an officer bends to check, his thumb flips the cover. He sees the date inside—1881. He then looks at the cover:

  Il Giornale per i Bambini

  The officer cannot pull the magazine from under the wheel. The wind blows the magazine to a particular section, a story:

  Storia di un burattino

  Having worked six years in Bay Ridge, the officer understands his Italian. Translated: The Story of a Marionette.

  Under the title is a subtitle:

  Le avventure di Pinocchio

  Translation: The adventure of Pinocchio.

  Officer Palatnek approaches. He carries a torn brown manila envelope in his hand.

  “Officer,” he says.

  The other officer turns. “Yes?”

  Officer Palatnek hands him the manila envelope. “I found this a few yards ahead.” The officer peeks inside and removes a pair of antique eyeglasses. Good shape, brownish-copper frames, lenses intact. “Eighteen-hundreds, looks like.” He puts them back inside. “A miracle the lenses are undamaged.”

  “Does the name on the envelope ring a bell?”

  The officer looks. The name is etched in black marker on the front: Selu Hobbins.

  “No,” he says.

  “Officers!” Officer Palatnek and the officer holding the envelope approach one of the squad cars. Neil Franks sits behind the wheel, checking the decedent’s driver’s license.

  “You find something?” Officer Palatnek asks.

  “Take a look,” Officer Franks says. The other two peek through the window to the car’s computer.

  “Thirty years ago?” Officer Palatnek asks incredulously as he pulls away. “You’re checking another record by mis—”

  “No, sir,” Officer Franks responds. Unless the updated system hit a bug it looks like our victim, the former Professor Peter Levin . . . woke up this morning as the most well-preserved 110 year old there’s ever been.”

  PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

  When Thomas McFee completed his London adventure and set to lay low for two years, he promised himself that he would not so much as whisper, to anyone, the slightest clue of his upcoming plans. He will write another book, but will not tell a soul; more accurately, he will take the time to research a growing obsession and go for it if or when he is ready. But he is not yet certain of the nature of that obsession; he is certain only of a recent, disquieting shift in outlook, which threatens his strict discipline and general rigidity. And so on the plane ride home he prepares himself for a fight. He figures he will take notes, and he will save files as usual. He may even outline, but he will not write as if intended for publication. He will write only for himself. If he deems the words worthy upon completion, he will expect his usual deal as if his publisher was in on the idea all along. When he’s ready, when he eventually returns to New York, he will surprise Denise with the new work.

  X leaked him a letter recently discussing the concept of connections. No one knows connections more than a writer knows connections.

  If I see Denise again, Thomas thinks, I’ll completely deny any knowledge of anything new regarding X. No interference from Denise, Sam, or anyone, promise of the day.

  Thomas sets to write a fiction. While his most recently completed Tolkien work was fictional in an effort to discover larger truths, this new book will be entirely make-believe.

  He will write a fiction, a real fiction this time, not based or featuring any entity living or dead. He will do exactly what X has written about—he will write something made up, something from the gut. No idea what yet or even the subject, but he does know this: The writing will be from his soul. His most “inner human nature,” as X would say. Something new that Denise will likely reject or, at the least, entitle her to convince him of his colossal waste of time. And she will be unsuccessful.

  He’ll publish it himself if he needs to.

  The question arises: Where do I go from here? Thomas considers his recent past. With connections in mind, he begins organically by contemplating the life-changing experiences that began with his sojourn in London.

  To the process:

  Bradley brought out his dark, but Thomas will not allow his life to skew to the older man’s eccentricities.

  Toss that aside.

  Or his manipulation.

  Ditto.

  Thomas is convinced that his daughter, Samantha, is also involved in something far deeper than appearances. Something potentially lethal, perhaps even paradigm-changing judging on the secrecy and the hints like pieces of a puzzle that are alarmingly interconnected. Further, logic has enlightened him that there is more to Daniel’s skepticism of ol’ Thomas than his son-in-law has let on.

  Donovan Bradley is an antiquarian whose soul is as old as the work he displays, while Samantha is an enigma who remains as elusive as ever. Thomas is the logical one with no skeletons. What you see is what you get, which makes him, he believes, rather boring behind the scenes. He still has no clue what his daughter does for a living, only that it is government-related and awfully shadowy.

  As he sat on the return plane ride home, he realized how much he missed New York and how he couldn’t wait to return to a sense of normalcy. His idea of normalcy, anyway.

  He remembered an old adage: Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.

  Bradley’s son, though, is another story.

  Thomas understood he was gay, a “devout homosexual,” as his father described him; about this much he was clear. What still perplexes him, however, are the circumstances surrounding Bradley, Jr.’s apparent untimely death in the fire. Apparent as Thomas did not believe a word of it then, nor does he now.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still alive.

  Thomas takes a few minutes to research Bradley’s son; first of all, Bradley, Jr. was not high-profile like his father, and Thomas correctly suspects there is not much more publicly available than what he already knows, so he changes course quickly and cross-checks associations, an effort undertaken with a nagging suspicion and no small degree of dread.

  He was correct, as expected, the result of his search uncovering the name he had feared:

  Matthius Alexi.

  Though she has been a thorn in his side from their first meeting, Thomas has always trusted Denise. Though in his private moments he continually acknowledges both her self-centered ways and her ongoing efforts to physically realize their mutual attraction, he never really believed she would backstab him or use him as a pawn in any questionable plot.

  Despite evidence to the contrary.

  It was Denise who sent him to London. It was Denise who handed him the dossier on Donovan Bradley, as if she was M to his James Bond. The thought came to him as he dozed off at his desk, staring at a blank screen from his as-yet-begun new
book:

  What if? She’s always loved a good game of “What If?” What if I’m wrong and she’s been using me all along? What is it that she really wants?

  He thought of the package of documents delivered to him in London, a combination of writing from X and Matthius Alexi that triggered his inner Sherlock.

  ~~~

  Connection. Connections?

  On the circumstance, he proceeds as usual. Thomas is in his head and not in a good, productive sense, his tiresome, typical state whenever he begins a new tome. He read somewhere that creativity, neurologically, was akin to mental illness. He considered that he could only begin a work when stressed and, once initiated, could not stop until completion. This is both his curse and his process. Together, the angst, to this degree, validates his efforts, as he could only ever begin writing upon wrestling with his demons.

  Demons. All writers, all artists have their share of demons. Working with them is called process.

  He skips a page and scrolls immediately to Page 2, where he begins to type his underlined bookmarks:

  Copyright. Two more pages skipped, and then: Introduction. He alternates skipping two or three pages at a time from there, and headlines in both the beginning and the end of his impending work-in-progress: Acknowledgements, Dedication, Table of Contents . . . Afterword, About the Author.

  He then goes back to the beginning, and marks the word Blank between skipped sections.

  To Thomas’ mind, he has just justified nearly ten pages of his book.

  “And the adventure begins,” he mumbles.

  He sits back and goes all the way back to the title page. He stares at the page for a few seconds, pondering. The decision, though, comes easily this morning: Untitled.

  Must be ten for sure now.

  It’s the same thing every time.

  “Okay,” he says, “back to biz.” He looks at some notes from a datebook on his desk, takes his customary deep breath upon starting, and gets to work in proper:

  He saw a sign earlier in the day: Jesus is blood. Balance away your sins. And he writes, in the margins, “She bathes her hair in the blood of spirit,” followed by scribbles of the random and alliterative “red clouds” and “red hair” and “redcoats” and “rise” proceeded by “Idea: She bathes her hair in the blood of Jesus’ spirit.”