Message in a 300 Page Bottle

Half the people I meet are like them and want to talk trash about me. The other half want something from me.

A chill runs through me as Doug is telling me about a hilarious tennis match his friend Claire had won a long time ago. What will happen when he at last reads the book? Maybe nothing. He does not know it is mine. Maybe.

But a part of me strongly suspects. That once he has read it, he will see it on me like a coating of ash. I will not be able to hide it from him any longer.

Then I really will be all by myself.

**********

Doug

Did I ever tell you that my mom's mother ran the New York City Marathon last year in 5:10? At 70 years old? I did not get those genes.

One thing she could not do is outrun her gall bladder when it went south on her. For that she needed surgery, and since she and grandfather live in Flatbush she chose to have the thing removed at Mt. Sinai.

When I got the news from mom and dad, I immediately volunteered to go stay with them over the term break and help out with her care. I had planned to hole up and write my project booklet over the January break anyway, I would just do it from New York while Grams rehabbed the way she always did when she was under any kind of weather - by baking. Pies, cakes, cookies, brownies, bread, biscotti, rugelach. Yes, I am a freaking selfless martyr.

I loaded up my car and drove down to visit her after the operation and shift my necessaries into their townhouse. I parked in a garage on a side street in between Fifth and Madison, took Grams in some flowers, argued Woods vs Mickelson with Gramps for an hour at the patient's bedside, got a key to the house, and started to walk back to the car.

The day was dark, with low boiling clouds, but too warm to hope that a white Christmas could be possible in two days. I was proceeding along the east side of Fifth dodging in and out of a steady stream of seriously Orthodox Jews. I was fascinated by their long black coats and bleached-white white shirts. With no tie, they made me think of Matthew McConaughey on a date topped with a shtreimel - that big round fur hat that looks like a giant friendly hockey puck.

I heard a cry from a distance. Street noises in the City are the background of life. One does not look around sharply when hearing one if one does not want to be marked as a tourist or god forbid, a visitor from western Mass.

Still, I could ignore this sound only the first five or six times. Then I realized the sound was "Doug!".

I gave in and stood on my tiptoes and triangulated.

Sherman was running across from Central Park, calling my name over and over.

**********

Mary Kay

I dashed through traffic. Got honked at, got my mother's honor questioned, got the finger.

It was Doug. Just tripping down the sidewalk seemingly without a care in the world, looking like he owned the place.

I could never do that. I always feel like an intruder.

We came together like a couple reuniting at a sprint on a sandy beach in a feminine hygiene commercial. Except that I didn't leap into his arms. I just skidded to a halt and looked at him in surprise.

He looked at me in separate but equal surprise.

"What are you doing here?" We said in unison.

Then we laughed the same laugh. Same timbre, timing, pitch, rhythm.

That made us laugh even harder.

"My grandma is having her gall bladder out," he said at last, jerking one thumb over his shoulder. "I came down to give them a hand."

I had a flash vision of Doug in scrubs and mask holding a scalpel. Probably not what he meant.

"Is she okay?"

He nodded. "Just routine stuff.... How about you?"

I hesitated.

I had come down to get my ass chewed by Muriel for not turning in an outline of my next novel so the publishing machine could get to warming up in preparation for bombarding the eager throngs with tantalizing hints of C. Sherman's next stunning work. Later I was flying to London to speak at a bookseller's convention. Then on to Paris, Helsinki, Copenhagen - the list continued like I was a rock band humping my latest album. Which was a fair comparison. Minus, fortunately or just maybe unfortunately, the groupies, drugs, and screaming audiences. Audiences at book readings were too often discouraged from screaming. It would do my sagging ego some good, though, if just that one time they let loose.

"Yeah.... My cousin is going to have a baby, so I came down to see her. Tonight I'm flying out to spend the holidays with my parents."

I was getting too good at lying. Someday Doug might find out about all the lies, and then he might also never trust me again.

I am at the bottom of the hole and I just keep digging.

He opened his mouth, probably to ask me where she lives, what she does, what her significant other does, sex of the issue, how old is she. I was not prepared to back up the fiction I just invented on the fly, so I tossed a grenade.

"I'm starved."

Doug closed his mouth and put out his hand.

I took it.

**********

Doug

My turn to buy, my turn to pick. I drove Sherman to Sylvia's in Harlem, where she got to taste the best collard greens on this earth. She had never had anything like it, she said, in California or in college.

I was laying into a piece of smothered chicken when she said that. I stopped. I just realized she had never told me where she went to school. Another area of her past that was carefully only shown to me through frosted glass.

"So where did you go to college?" I had stuffed potato salad into my mouth to try and absorb the accusatory notes contained in that sentence.

She glanced up, then gave her fork loaded with catfish a careful examination.

"Smith."

She had been less than ten miles away from me for at least one overlapping year. I would have expected some shared experience would have surfaced. Some local place we both liked, some coffee shop, some band, something.

I considered us close enough to have that. Even accidentally, two normal persons would have made those connections.

I began to seriously consider the possibility that she was in the federal witness protection program.

They weren't doing a very good job if that was it. Sherman was one of those women that make both men and women doubletake. On the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, standing in line to get into Sylvia's, at our table - people kept looking at her. I was getting jealous and possessive.

Jesus, was she in hiding from an abusive husband? I had an instant of panic and loss.

Then our eyes met and she smiled that smile which, if it could be weaponized, would have the male race subjugated in a helpless instant.

My heart said, Damn it, Doug. This woman is not hiding anything to try and hurt you.

I said to my heart, You are no doubt in the right. But then what the hell is going on?

My heart did not answer.

After we had finished, we stood next to the parking meter watching the traffic go by on Malcolm X Boulevard and ignoring the car we soon had to get into so I could drive her to JFK so she could put two and a half thousand miles between us.

"What were the odds of this?" she said quietly, like it was a real math question she was trying to solve in her head. "Meeting in the City."

"What were the odds of us meeting on this planet?" I retorted.

"What were the odds of us meeting in a remote wet muddy sliver of the universe?" She looked at me triumphant. Checkmate.

"You are such a nerd," I said.

"I know you are, but what am I—"

This time we kissed with intent. The electric bicycles delivering food swerved around us. We ignored the ambulance sirens. We ignored the catcalls, hoots, and encouraging off-color and often anatomically-impossible suggestions from passersby.

We ignored the rest of the huge bustling ramrodding drunken metropolis and just kissed.

**********

Mary Kay

What a stinking disaster; topped by sweet glory; drenched in pustuled slime.

See why I am a famous writer?

Disaster: I saw my agent. The first time I met Muriel I had been so excited. I was overwhelmed by the very idea that someone not only would read what I had written but would actually like it. Like it enough to make it into a book. An actual book I could carry around. That would get piled on tables near the door of bookstores. It would have its own website. I had the vapors.

This time? Well, she was still happy to see me. Now I know I could never be an agent. I just can't fake that level of insincere enthusiasm, and it was killing me that she had to even try. Why the hell wasn't I writing a book a month? The first time we had met she had told me I had the energy for this work. Now I don't think she believes in me.

She hangs headshots of her clients in her waiting room and office. Her stars grin down from the wall over her big oak desk in the office. My face was in the waiting room. I had on my first visit determined that I was going to get promoted to one of the overdesk spots. This time I would be happy not to have my unsmiling unrecognizable face relocated to the loo.

Sweet glory: I found Doug! I was walking aimlessly out of Central Park after determining that the water in the Jackie Kennedy was too cold for me to comfortably drown myself in. Standing on the sidewalk, my eyes probably glassy. It was definitely a low point in my day. And since the day was a low point in my week, and... well, you can complete the thought to its conclusion.

My attention was drawn across Fifth Avenue to some guys wearing those round hats and walking aggressively in streaming clusters.

And Doug was the rock the stream was flowing around.

I shouted. I couldn't stop myself. I felt like a little girl at a pony ride. I ran in between cars. I held his hand.

He took me to dinner and kissed me on the curb and kissed me at the airport.

When I get back to the apartment complex, I am going to have a longer and more serious talk with him.

And that glow did last quite a while. It stayed with me across the capitals of Europe, until—

Pustulated slime: Ten stops in three weeks across seven countries. That's some brutal travel math, and if I had another book almost done, or halfway done, or in fevered development I would have balked at the demands on my time and walked off this made-up job to devote my precious time to my real job. But I didn't, and the guilt just made me say thank you sir may I have another to the world. Stand here and smile. Sit here and answer the same damn question again and again and again.

Seventh stop on endurance tour. Paris. Civilization. Sexy accents on both men and women. A cup at a café, lingering over a croissant. Chocolat? Merci, mon ami.

You have by now seen the video. Check YouTube. Search for insane man attacks bestselling American author in Paris.

I am pretty sure he was insane. I don't know how the libel laws work in France, but I guess the media is going to be okay tagging the guy.

I had no opinion on the fellow's mental diagnosis until I looked up from the page to see a tall thin blonde dude rushing toward me.

My brain did a quick and unasked for approximation and concluded that the low stage was not going to be sufficient barrier between me and that big ass knife he was waving.

Ever been this close to a stabbing? Time did not stand still. Time never existed. My eyes tracked the blade and I wondered dumbly why the thing was dull and kind of dirty looking. Aren't the kind of knives that killers use razor sharp... and shiny as a mirror?

I sat without moving as the guy ran closer, his trench coat flowing behind him. I wanted to laugh. I was going to be killed by a demented cosplaying Inspector Clouseau.

I remembered the unbearable pain of just the smallest splinter in my fingertip. I remembered each and every splinter that had ever sliced into my skin. I remembered scratching idly at a wood floor when I was in elementary school and screaming as a sliver of oak found its way under my fingernail.

I imagined the steel going into me.

I could not close my eyes. He was near enough that I could have reached out and tickled him.

Then a short wide man sitting in the front row threw himself at my attacker. I found out later that my savior was a recently retired National Gendarmerie major present at the reading with his two daughters. Huge fans.

The knife was the wild card. An amateur with a knife is a mortal danger to even an experienced defender, and I watched in fascinated disbelief as the crazy guy freed his weapon hand and sank the knife into the major's shoulder.

Here's something Hollywood doesn't portray very well. If they did, the blond asshole might have been forewarned not to stick his victim in certain anatomically important spots, like over a big thick bone.

The major grunted as the blade stabbed into him, but when the crazy dude tried to draw it back to have another go, he found that it was stuck irretrievably into the major's arm. The humerus - I googled it later. It was like a scene from The Sword in the Stone and I don't know why imminent death makes the world so goddamn funny.

The knife no longer an equalizer, the enraged retiree proceeded to cold cock his rapidly-deflating attacker. I got another lesson on errors in Hollywood action scenes. The major didn't make one fist. He used the side of his hand, his elbows, his knees, and most effective of all, his large black leather shoe. It was only about fifteen seconds since I had raised my head at the first shout, and the blonde guy was on the floor, bleeding and still.

And I had been splattered with blood, from the major's arm and the dipshit's nose.

I started to cry. I was trembling so hard the teardrops flew from my head sideways like a dog shedding pond water. You can catch it on any one of the five cell phone videos of it. How are people so fast?

None of them got a clear shot of my face. I was wearing my wig, but you can see only a blur of me anyway. The cinematographers were concentrating on the knifing and the beating, and then audience members rushed to help and store staff rushed me offstage.

The cops came and took me to an ER, where they determined tres bien! I was untouched and kicked me loose. Two nice policemen drove me to my hotel and set up shop in the lobby café with coffee and croissant. They remained there, destined to be replaced by other identical cops the next day, when they would give me a ride to de Gaulle.

I sat on my bed, exhausted but not a bit tired. Thinking astonishingly deep thoughts about being dead and how that would suck big time. Hungry but with no appetite. Nauseous but could not puke. Thirsty, perhaps. I made my feet move and went to the minibar, opened the fridge. Nuts, candy, nips, bottles of wine and... beer.

I stared at the beer, the cold beer, and realized what I wanted.

I wanted my friend. I wanted the only person in the world who knew me as me.

I wanted to tell him all about my day so far and have him help me process it and then give me a nice gentle kiss.

I wanted Doug.

**********

Doug

"Look what I found!" Grams said in triumph, holding up a Molasses Books bag.

Two weeks post-surgery, she was back pretty much to full speed. The baked goods were streaming out of her kitchen like chocolates on a conveyor belt in that I Love Lucy episode. The avalanche was to continue for the next two weeks, as her surgeon had forbidden her from running until then.

Now, with time heavy on her hands in between closing and opening the oven door, she had determined that the three of us would bookclub. That's right, I just made it a verb. I had told her about the Amherst College communal reading debacle.

"Ta da!" she said with maniacal glee, whipping out three copies of The Empty Friend. She handed me one. I read the author's name. C. Sherman.

Gramps regarded his copy with the same detached distain I am sure he exhibits when watching his tee shot hook into a pond.

With the patient no longer needing any nursing other than positive feedback about the deliciousness of her brioche loaves, I was barricaded in the guest room writing and editing 22 hours a day trying to finish up my project flyers, only taking time out to listen to my grandparents' stories, watch The Golf Channel with Gramps, and scribble down recipes as Grams mixed, kneaded, shaped, and narrated. But I could find time to read the book. It seemed to be my personal destiny to read this book.

I put The Empty Friend on my desk, where in ten minutes it was covered with other books and papers.

I had texted Sherman a couple of times a week, just hello how are things, how are your parents. Friendly noncommittal reminders that I was thinking of her. On Christmas Day I texted her a long description of our celebration. The little tree that was only a minor upgrade from Charlie Brown's, the boxes of Grams' cookies we delivered to friends and family up and down Remarque Street, the visit to Rockefeller Center. I attached several pictures and queried her about her family, as was polite.

Nothing. Maybe she was busy. That happens when you are absorbed back into the parental holiday craze.

No, not nothing. One time she texted back: Good. (In answer to my question about how her family was.)

Another time: Fine. (In answer to how the weather in California was holding up against the wildfires.)

Alright, I gave up. I put my guy thing in neutral. I would let it coast until I could talk to her. IRL and all that.

One morning a beautiful pristine snow covered Brooklyn. That was the day Gram declared the book reading should commence. Gramps actually turned off ESPN and slid his copy out from under the sofa cushion. I saw that his bookmark was already about halfway in. He saw me notice.

"It's got pigs in it," he said defensively, put on his readers, and opened to the mark.

I rushed through ten pages or so before I noticed that my reading speed had slowed on its own accord. These characters were... good. Fleshed out. Human. I could not wait to see what befell them next, but I determined to savor every phrase.

I paused my iron neutral determination and messaged Sherman:

Grams started book club of three. Bribed me with sugar cookies. Reading that book. Am finding it kind of disturbing actually. Would love to discuss it with you.

My guy thing kicked the inside of my skull because I used the word love. Fuck you guy thing. I can use love to describe something other than your erotic fantasies. I really did just want to get Sherman's insight. She must have read it by now.

**********

Mary Kay

January is dark in Massachusetts. It is even darker when you are afraid to turn your lights on.

All my doors and windows are locked. The security car drives by on the half hour. The panic button ring is firmly on my finger.

When my brother found out about the attack, he went apeshit. I told him I was fine, I did not need an armed guard on my doorstep 24/7, and I was not going to carry a 9 mm.

Carrying a 9 mm does sound kind of irresponsibly cool, though.

Doug is still in New York. I got a text from him yesterday that he had started to read my book. He does not know it is my book. But he will when he reads it. He is smart as a whip. Where that analogy comes from I have no idea.

He will hear my voice in the pages. He will smell my scent in the words. He will know.

Then I will have lost that last person.

In the text he said that he was finding it disturbing and needed to discuss it with me.

It's code for I know what you did.

**********

Doug

My project pamphlets were done enough that I could take my foot off the pedal. New York was still socked in. Blowing wind, icy and biting. Drifts of bone white snow as brittle and hard as the day it dropped from the sky.

So I finished the book.

I have to confess. I have never read anything more disturbing and uplifting. And gory and gross and believable. Fantastical. If you have any ounce of empathy for your fellow humans and fellow living creatures you will want to cry and puke at the same time. The hog clings to life even with his organs having just been stripped out in the slaughterhouse. Has just enough blood left in his brain to—