INCOGNOLIO Read online

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CRAGAHOOCHIE, STRAIGHT UP

  The fade out—which unfortunately won’t show up on the eBook—was a stroke of genius, allowing me to wrap up the novel without having to write an actual ending. In my mind, I liken it to the final line of Finnegans Wake, cut off mid-sentence to form an ouroboric loop with the opening word.

  After making some minor revisions—the manuscript seemed nearly perfect—I did my research, cherry-picked ten so-called dream agents, and queried them, attaching the opening chapters. It was several weeks before I had received responses from all ten—brief form letters which I pinned to my dart board—but I wasn’t fazed in the least, and with each rejection I simply dispatched two new queries. When this second round of queries bombed, I grew impatient and began contacting agents indiscriminately.

  Eight months of mounting rage ensued. By then I’d pitched Incognolio to upwards of two hundred literary agents, and not one of those cowardly cunts dared represent it. Several of them praised the writing, using such terms as tremendous, blue-ribbon, exciting, innovative, and extremely creative. But they considered the novel far too quirky and edgy for mainstream publishers.

  Looking back on it, even allowing for the elation one experiences on completing a creative project, the mystery is how I ever imagined that I might succeed in the first place.

  Me, whose life had amounted to little more than an endless parade of defeats, humiliations, and failures. Somehow I’d convinced myself that by writing without censoring or forethought, by flinging open the gates to my subconscious, I could not only create a brilliant novel, but free myself of my demons in the process.

  Yeah, right.

  So here I sit in my study, faced with a worthless manuscript and an aborted metamorphosis that has left me even more alienated and disturbed than before I started the project. Disgusted with myself, I forsake my couch and throw on a jacket, aiming to head over to Banister’s and get plastered.

  The phone rings just as I reach the front door, but by the time I pick up the receiver, I hear Gemma talking about me to a woman whose voice I can’t quite place. I hang up and, after stewing over it for a while, storm into my sister’s bedroom to confront her.

  “Who the hell was that?”

  “Oh, just a telemarketer.” Gemma rises from bed and, without so much as glancing at me, enters the walk-in closet.

  “I’ve heard her voice before, Gemma. You mentioned my goddamn name.”

  “I see,” says Gemma from inside the closet. “So, you’ve been eavesdropping.”

  “No!” I try to calm myself. “Jesus, Gem. What the hell are you hiding?”

  Gemma sighs, and even though I’m pissed, I can’t help but savor the sweet sound. She emerges from the closet clutching a floral caftan and fleece leggings, her face a study in sheepish contrition, which I don’t buy for a second.

  “Sit down,” she says.

  I squint at her and remain standing.

  “Have it your way.” She slips out of her kimono, sits on the bed fully naked, and pulls on the leggings. “I’ve been in touch with Lamia.”

  Our cousin Lamia was the only child of Fallopia, my maternal aunt. I’d heard from Gemma that Lamia had recently established herself as a freelance editor, having been laid off from MacGuffin Press during the recession.

  “In touch?” I ask.

  “About Incognolio.”

  “What? How the hell do you even know—”

  “I used to read the manuscript while you napped.” I glare at Gemma as she finishes dressing. As twins and housemates, Gemma and I have almost no secrets, and the manuscript was the one place I could express myself freely, without concern for my sister’s feelings or judgments. “I’m sorry, Mick, but I’ve watched you deteriorate lately, and I thought it might have to do with your writing.”

  “You had no right. That’s a violation of privacy.”

  “If you want privacy, you’re free to move out.”

  I fume silently as Gemma fetches a pair of espadrille heels, returns to the bed, and slips them on, making damn sure I get a good long look at her soft soles and long perfect toes. My sister is nothing if not consistent in how she seduces, manipulates, and ultimately rejects me.

  “What’s Lamia got to do with it?” I finally ask.

  “I’ve hired her to evaluate your manuscript.”

  “You what? It’s my novel, damn it. You’re not my goddamn mother!”

  “Maybe Lamia can figure out why you can’t find an agent.”

  “I know why, Gem. They think the story’s too bizarre. Too unconventional.”

  “Yes, but what if Lamia can help you make it so compelling, so sublime, that none of that matters?”

  As my fury subsides, the sense underlying Gemma’s idea begins to sink in. Perhaps what I needed all along was a fresh pair of eyes, someone to point out the novel’s weaknesses and suggest revisions.

  “How far along is she?” I ask.

  “She’s done. She called to see if you can get together with her today. I said you’ll meet her in half an hour at Banister’s.”

  “Then why did you lie when I asked you who called?”

  “Just having some fun. You should try it some time.”

  I curse Gemma up and down, but I’m secretly excited to meet with my cousin, who has edited fiction for nearly two decades.

  In no time, I find myself sitting across from her in a booth at Bannister’s Tavern. She looks eerily like photographs of my late aunt when she was younger, with the same mischievous blue eyes and crooked grin.

  Banister limps over and awaits our orders.

  “A mimosa for me,” says Lamia. “And a Jack Daniels on the rocks, I presume, for my cousin.”

  “Tennessee whiskey for Mr. Sussman?” Banister cackles. “Cragahoochie, straight up, no doubt.”

  I nod to Banister and explain to Lamia that Incognolio is only minimally autobiographical. “Neither Muldoon nor the character named Michael Sussman are anything like me.”

  “No kidding,” says Lamia. Her expression makes it all too obvious that she thinks I’m full of it.

  Banister delivers our drinks and we clink glasses.

  “So, give it to me straight,” I say. “Is it rubbish?”

  “I so love this book, Michael. It’s engaging and haunting, interesting and clever, subtly layered. I feel honored to work with you on it.”

  “Isn’t that laying it on a bit thick?” I say.

  “I’m being entirely honest. I know that you’re feeling discouraged because you haven’t had any luck querying it, but this manuscript is already strong, and I have some ideas for improving it.”

  “Go on.”

  She drones on for several minutes, presenting several suggestions that would be tedious to implement, and their dubious value makes it highly unlikely that I will attempt any of them. It’s no wonder MacGuffin fired her.

  Her last point, however, does bear consideration. “Finally, Michael, I’m guessing that you’ve been pitching Incognolio as a comic novel.”

  “You don’t think it’s funny?”

  “It’s hilarious,” says Lamia. “But despite its playfulness, your story’s a tragedy.”

  I sip my drink and gesture for her to continue.

  “I believe the Author’s true design starts to become clear in Paige’s narrative about her mystical and sexual union with her twin sister. The Author seeks union with himself.

  “To achieve this integration, to cross that threshold into the dark and uncharted recesses of his subconscious, the Author would need to be willing to embrace his monsters, including the source of his self-loathing. It would require him to be his whole, true self without shame or fear.”

  “Tall order,” I say. Lamia’s smile looks forced.

  “The tragedy is that he can’t face his monsters, can’t find a strategy for confronting the things he’s most afraid of. Unable to successfully complete the novel, he self-destructs.”

  I sit quietly for severa
l minutes, mulling over Lamia’s take on the book and wondering why I feel so annoyed with her.

  “Your reading of the story makes sense,” I admit. “But you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “I stripped myself naked in those pages! Exposed my most deviant thoughts, my most depraved impulses. And I resisted every damn urge to gloss over the vile shit that gurgled up from the depths of my psyche. So don’t sit there on your high fucking horse and tell me that I choked.”

  “This is good.” Another phony smile. “We need to be open and honest if we’re going to work together.”

  “Did Gemma hire you as an editor or as my damn therapist?” I grumble, and grow sullen. Lamia signals Banister for another round.

  “It took courage and grit to write your manuscript,” she says. “That’s undeniable. But what I’m suggesting, Michael, is that at the last moment you pull back, just as Muldoon and Misha both shrink from merging with the Goddess Incognolio.”

  I don’t know what to say. I’d just allowed the story to flow out of me and had never really tried to analyze it before.

  “For instance, you portray Muldoon as self-loathing and highly self-destructive, a man awash in shame, guilt, and remorse. Yet we never really learn the source of all this self-hatred.”

  “Well he does admit to killing Micaela.”

  “Ah, the Ferris wheel.” Lamia searches my eyes. “Now, I understand that you consider Incognolio to be purely fictional, Michael. But that incident was from your actual childhood, although in real life you managed to save your sister just before she fell.”

  “I’m aware of that. It’s called poetic license, Lamia. Killing her off was more dramatic.”

  “Exactly. And Micaela’s death at the hands of Muldoon provides a rationale for his lifelong emotional turmoil. But he’s just a boy at the time, and he certainly didn’t intend to kill her. Perhaps you could elevate the tension by having Muldoon repeatedly try to knock off his sister as they grow older. You know”—Lamia winks—“like you and Gemma?”

  I scrutinize her. Just how much did Lamia know? She and Gemma were somewhat close, but I’d always assumed that Gemma kept certain things between the two of us.

  “Sure, there might have been an incident or two.” I knead the back of my neck. “But I wouldn’t call it repeatedly.”

  “No? Okay, let’s enumerate.” Lamia presents her fist and sticks up her thumb. “About a year after the Ferris wheel incident, you nearly pushed Gemma down a wishing well.”

  “There was plenty of water at the bottom of that well.” I try not to sound too defensive. “Hell, I measured it myself with a brick tied to a rope. There was a chance she’d drown, I suppose, but the fall was unlikely to kill her.”

  “Right.” Lamia nods, straight-faced, and continues, extending her index finger. “And how about when you injected nightshade into Gemma’s toothpaste? Was that just to help her overcome insomnia?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Numbers three and four: a black mamba that mysteriously appeared under her bed sheets one evening, and a Cassoulet that you prepared using monkey brains and puffer fish. Then there was Giuliani, the rabid Chihuahua you adopted…”

  I tune out, satisfied that I have learned the real reason Gemma chose Lamia to edit my manuscript. Not to help me, but so that she could confront me with past transgressions. Not to protect my fragile psyche from further deterioration, but to push me over the edge into the abyss!

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  THE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO SUICIDE

  We’re on our third round of drinks, and despite my mounting mistrust of Lamia, I find myself lowering my guard as her questions become more personal.

  “As an editor, I try to get inside my author’s head,” she remarks. “One question that I always like to ask is: What did you learn from writing your novel?”

  “Let me think…” I reply. “Oh, right: That the sort of novel I like to write is impossible to sell?”

  Lamia cracks a smile.

  “I also learned that the creative process must be its own reward, since it doesn’t bring external validation, and it sure as hell doesn’t make you a better or happier person.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Well…I suppose that whatever it is I’m searching for, either it doesn’t exist or it’s unobtainable. My pursuit of transcendence is pointless and can end only in frustration and despair.”

  She is silent for a moment, which gives me time to realize that our conversation has left me feeling morose and dejected, without giving me any good notions of how to revise the novel. Ready to be done with it, I signal Banister for the check.

  But then Lamia says, “What struck me about your ending, Michael, is that despite the Author’s realization that he has ultimately come up empty, he blames this failure entirely on external factors.”

  “How so?” I ask, taken aback.

  “It’s all Gemma’s fault for treating the Author like an invalid and either rebuffing his advances or publicly denying what may or may not be an incestuous relationship. The fault lies with cowardly literary agents—no, the entire publishing industry—for snubbing the Author and refusing to take a risk on his cutting-edge, wildly-popular-in-an-alternate-universe novel. Finally, the Author blames his therapist, Dr. Dick, for his own inability to come up with a satisfying ending. But a satisfying ending can only happen if there is transformation, and the power to transform lies with the Author, not with his therapist.”

  Banister limps over with the check and I pay, waving away Lamia’s outstretched bills. I’ve pretty much decided to fire my cousin and tell her to go to hell—she clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about—but I can’t resist one last attempt at defending myself.

  “You’ll note,” I say, “that the Author doesn’t just murder Dr. Dick. He proceeds to blow his own brains out.”

  “Yes, but then you tack on a light-hearted postscript that undoes his suicide. The Author, we learn, is alive and kicking, up to all sorts of hijinks in another dimension. Whoopee.”

  “I never cared for you, Lamia. But at this moment I detest you.”

  Lamia flashes her crooked grin, and I could punch her stinking face in.

  “Fine, so the ending sucks,” I say. “Instead of just tearing me down, how about telling me how to fix it?”

  “Simple.” Lamia locks eyes with me. “First, have the Author realize that what stands between him and what he wants is himself. He sees that he’s unwilling or incapable of doing what it takes to achieve transformation. Because of this, the storytelling act is doomed to failure, and this simple fact drives him to insanity and death. And for crying out loud, come up with a more creative way to kill yourself—I mean…to kill the Author.”

  “There’s a reason I chose a gun, smartass.” I hesitate to reveal my rationale, since it sounds so irrational. Nevertheless, I proceed. “You’ll probably think I’m nuts, but sometimes things I write in my novels come true. I used a gun to kill myself in the story because in real life, thanks to a history of mental illness, I can’t acquire one.”

  “I see.” Lamia mulls this over for a minute or two and then abruptly stands up. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s go.”

  Lamia leads the way to a bus stop where we board the #33 bus. As we pass the cemetery, she laughs. “Where’d you come up with that image of the revolving graveyard?” she asks. “Seemed like something straight out of a Terry Gilliam film.”

  “I dreamed it. When I’m immersed in a story, my dreams and waking life can intertwine.”

  We approach the Seppuku Bridge, named for the famous Japanese architect who designed it, and Lamia pulls the overhead cord to signal the bus driver.

  “Why are we getting out here?” I ask.

  “This is where your novel’s final scene takes place.”

  “Hey, are you editing the damn thing or writing it?”

  “Reply hazy,” she deadpans. “Try again later.”

  We emerge from the bus, cr
oss the street, head out onto the bridge, and begin walking directly into a stiff wind. I take several paces along the raised sidewalk and then stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Lamia inquires.

  “Dread of heights. I avoid bridges at all costs.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Lamia chuckles, and in the semi-darkness I can’t determine whether or not the malicious gleam in her eyes is a product of my imagination. “That’s why it’s the perfect mode of suicide for the Author. In real life, you’d never jump off a bridge.”

  This makes sense. I resume walking.

  “So what’s with this superstition of yours? Do you really believe that your writing can influence future events?”

  “It’s more like my subconscious attunes itself to a realm beyond linear time.”

  “Huh.” Lamia is clearly unimpressed. “And what evidence do you have for this…notion?”

  “In my YA novel, Crashing Eden, the protagonist’s twelve-year-old brother, Elijah, is taunted and bullied so ruthlessly that he offs himself. I never managed to publish it, but a couple of months after I gave up trying, I came across an article about a boy in a nearby town who was persecuted to the point of suicide.”

  “But that happens all the time. It hardly—”

  “His name was Elijah. He was twelve, Lamia, and like my character, he hung himself with a belt.”

  At this point we’re about a quarter of the way across the bridge. I keep my eyes trained on the sidewalk ahead of me.

  “Then, while writing the first draft of Incognolio, I needed Laszlo Skuntch—Misha’s evil twin brother—to realize that he’d entered an alternate universe. As you know, I had him discover a portrait of Donald Dork hanging on the wall of a post office. This was about three years before Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States, so the idea of that fuck-face becoming president seemed absurd and outlandish at the time.”