INCOGNOLIO Read online

  Now Dr. Miranda seems miffed, for which I can hardly blame her, given that up to this point my representation of myself has been a total sham. I apologize for having wasted her time and start to leave, but she says, “Perhaps it hasn’t been wasted after all. Maybe you’re just frightened of opening up and needed all this time to begin trusting me.”

  This strikes me as true, so I sit back down. “Why do you think I’d go to such lengths to avoid introspection?” I ask.

  “Perhaps something happened to you in the past that was so traumatic you’re afraid to explore it.”

  I go silent for a spell, reluctant to talk about the thing I’ve kept inside all these years and wondering whether doing so would help or simply make things worse. Rather than prompting me to say anything, Dr. Miranda sits patiently, her eyes kind and compassionate.

  I decide to take the leap and open up. “You know how I talk about going every week to the Revolving Cemetery to visit the grave of my Nana Nellie? Well, I was twisting the truth. In fact, I don’t have a Nana Nellie.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I never even called my grandmother Nana. But I do go every week to the Revolving Cemetery. It’s to visit the grave of my twin sister, whom I call Micaela, although she was never actually given a name because she was stillborn.” At this point my eyes well up and my voice thickens. “Stillborn has always seemed to me a strange word, since you can’t really be born if you’re still. If the baby is still then it’s dead, and you wouldn’t say deadborn—that makes no sense. Only living creatures can be born. But that’s what happened, she was deadborn.” And then the tears start to flow because I’ve never told anyone about Micaela.

  Dr. Miranda hands me a box of Kleenex. I hold the box like it’s something precious, although I don’t actually remove any tissues, I just keep bawling, wishing Dr. Miranda would give me a hug, even though I know therapists aren’t supposed to hug their clients.

  Now I wish that the phone would ring and find me at my desk, happily typing away, the therapist scene just another stupid subplot I’ve blundered into. But the phone doesn’t ring. I’m stuck in Dr. Miranda’s office, and I know that this is real, no story, and that sucks. But by the end of the session I’m feeling a little better, and since it’s Wednesday, I take the #33 bus to the Revolving Cemetery.

  It used to be an ordinary cemetery, but decades ago they ran out of space for new graves. Some genius had the bright idea of building what looks like an enormous Ferris wheel that slowly rotates twelve numbered platforms, each with its own expanse of plots.

  I wait nearly ten minutes until Platform Seven comes around, hop onto the carefully manicured sod, and head to Micaela’s grave.

  It’s a tiny affair that lies there all alone, since my parents are buried overseas. The miniature headstone simply reads Beloved Daughter and notes the year of her stillbirth. I place some white lilies in front of the stone and stand there, feeling the dull momentum of the slowly rising platform, taking in the ever-expanding view of the city, wondering how my life might have been different if I’d had a sister to play and fight with, to confide in as I grew older. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so lonely. Perhaps I might have understood females better. Perhaps I wouldn’t be wracked with a guilt that I don’t even comprehend.

  Why should I feel guilty? There was nothing I could have done to save her. But I can’t help wondering whether Micaela might have survived had she not been forced to share my mother’s womb with me, an interloper consuming limited nutrients. Maybe I even mauled the poor girl to death, my mother having frequently reminisced about what a vigorous kicker I was.

  Maybe on some level I feel responsible, a murderer before I drew my first breath and then confused by how my parents, bereft of their daughter, seemed to give my arrival a subdued reception. My mother was too depressed to adequately nurture an infant, which left me feeling unwanted and unloved, unable to trust another human to meet my needs. All of this makes me feel so overwhelmingly distraught that I wish I’d never opened up to Dr. Miranda and released such a can of worms.

  But what’s done is done, so I turn my back on the grave and walk away, years of practice enabling me to have timed the length of my visit so that Platform Seven is just reaching the ground. I step off and leave the cemetery. As I’m walking toward the bus stop, a young man in a purple hoodie pokes his head out of an alley and says, “Wanna buy some Ink?”

  At first I wonder why there would be a black market for ink. Then—on a hunch—I ask him what he means, and he snickers and says, “Incognolio, of course. Everyone knows that.” He sneaks glances up and down the street. “You interested?”

  “How much?”

  “Eighty bucks a hit.”

  I buy one, a round black pill with a gold dot in the center. I ask the guy what it’s supposed to do, but he pockets the bills and scampers down the alley.

  I continue to the bus stop, but I’m feeling pretty depressed after visiting Micaela, so just as I board the #33 bus, I pop the pill in my mouth.

  I take a window seat halfway down the otherwise empty bus. As I ride along I’m feeling no effects whatsoever, but then I produce an enormous belch and feel as if I’ve been turned inside out and immersed in an inky nothingness, my own personal black hole, where I remain immobilized for an indeterminate amount of time, thinking, What a huge waste of eighty bucks.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TITLE WAVE

  Still stuck in this lightless singularity, I wonder how I could have been so stupid as to have ingested street drugs obtained from some guy in an alley, a pill containing who the hell knows what manner of compounds. This is evidence that I am backsliding yet again into self-destructive ways, fiddling around with my brain chemistry when my psyche is already fragile.

  As my self-castigation nears the point of pleasure, there’s a sudden explosion of light and I pop out of the singularity like a Jack-in-the-box, only to find myself back on the bus. In fact, we’re on the same block as when I burped, which suggests the entire episode lasted only a few seconds.

  But then I hear laughter coming from somewhere behind me, and when I look over my shoulder I see several teenagers at the back of the bus, which is odd because the bus contained no other passengers when I entered the singularity. As I puzzle over this discrepancy, we pass a bookstore called Title Wave, a business I’ve never seen before in all the years I’ve been riding the #33.

  I yank the cord and the driver pulls over at the next stop. I thank her, get off the bus, and walk back to the bookstore, whose window is, to my amazement, chock full of copies of Incognolio, each book bearing a gold Pulitzer Prize sticker on the front of the jacket.

  Wondering what the hell’s going on, I enter the store and a young woman by the cash register greets me. I nod my head and, afraid she might recognize me and think me vain for being interested in my own book, pretend to browse, eventually making my way over to the display stand for Incognolio and picking up a copy. Sure enough, it’s my novel. Flipping through the pages I see the early chapters: Churn the Weasel, Determinator, Jack Spaniels on the Bricks, The Revolving Cemetery, and so on, and I’m just about to skip ahead to chapters I’ve yet to write when I notice something odd about the display copies.

  Not only is each cover slightly different—color scheme, font size, etc.—but each copy also appears to have a different page count. Some books are as thin as a novella while others are thick as War and Peace. When I examine them more closely I find that no two books have the same table of contents, making me wonder, among other things, how it could have won any sort of prize when each panel member must have read a different text.

  Still, I’m eager to read the thing, so I select three copies—thin, medium, and thick—and bring them to the woman at the cash register, who smiles, rings me up, and says, “Incognolio is selling like chowcakes,” a phrase I’ve never heard before. When I look inside my wallet and find several fifteen and twenty-five dollar bills, I begin to suspect that the Ink has somehow landed me in an alter
nate universe.

  But it’s not until I’m headed home on the bus that I realize that in this universe I no longer experience guilt or self-loathing, and I wonder whether I feel so good about myself because of the Pulitzer. That seems unlikely because in the past when I received any sort of award or public recognition it only made me feel more guilty, more hollow inside, and in general I was far more comfortable dealing with failure and public disgrace.

  When I arrive home, I grab the mail and walk up to the second floor, where I find the door to my apartment unlocked. As soon as I enter, a German Shepherd rushes at me, leaps up and licks my face, and then I hear an unfamiliar woman’s voice call out, “Is that you, Muldoon?” Maybe I’m married in this universe and that’s why I feel good about myself. Now I’m eager to meet my wife, who says, “Down, Yiddle, get down,” and, before I have a chance to get a good look at her, wraps me in a warm hug.

  The stunning woman who stands before me is about my age and looks strangely familiar, although I’m certain I’ve never seen her before.

  “Where have you been?” she asks.

  I tell her I was visiting Micaela’s grave, which prompts her to stare at me incredulously, before laughing and saying, “Very funny.”

  Unsure how to respond, I set down the three copies of Incognolio and nervously sift through the mail, several pieces of which are addressed to Micaela, and I am struck by the shocking realization that the woman standing before me is none other than my twin sister.

  I tell Micaela that I need some whiskey and she replies that there’s none in the house, since neither of us drink alcohol—a statement that obliterates any lingering doubts that I’m in an alternate universe.

  I lead her into the living room and sit her down on a sofa made of cheese, or at least that’s my initial impression, although it turns out to be some weird fabric that looks like cheese. The sofa reminds me that I haven’t eaten all day, so Micaela dials a local restaurant and orders Vernulian—apparently my preferred cuisine in this neck of the woods—then listens to me talk of how a black and gold pill landed me in this universe, and how in my home universe Micaela was stillborn and I have mourned the loss by visiting her grave without fail every Wednesday my entire life, a life so filled with misery that I am an alcoholic who on several occasions has tried to kill himself.

  At first Micaela chuckles, probably thinking this is another one of my pranks, but when she sees from my face that I’m serious, she lovingly strokes my hair and proceeds to grow tearful.

  The food arrives, luscious pampanus and succulent makmaks, and eating puts both of us in a better mood. Later, as Micaela feeds Yiddle the leftovers, she tells me all about the wonderful life I’ve led in this universe, where I’m a wildly successful author and amateur bomb defuser, and how the two of us have remained so close that we recently decided to live together.

  Fascinated by each other, we talk late into the night, as enthralled as new lovers. When we decide it’s time for bed, while she takes a shower, I puzzle over the sleeping arrangements, having found that the second bedroom—Greazly’s room in my home universe—has been turned into a meditation room.

  Thoroughly confused, I go into my bedroom, and I’m sitting on the double bed when Micaela walks in, stark naked, her body in remarkable shape for a woman of forty-two. She leans down and kisses me full on the lips, and then she gently pushes me back onto the mattress and lies next to me, drawing little circles on my chest and gradually moving her caresses southward.

  I snatch her hand just as it dips beneath the waistband of my trousers and ask what the hell she’s doing. Micaela blushes and apologizes. Shocked and disgusted, I pull away from her and hold my head in my hands while she gets up and puts on a nightgown.

  When Micaela returns to the bed, she takes a seat next to me and explains that this has been going on since we were teenagers. Although we’ve both taken other partners, we always seem to gravitate back to each other.

  I describe how incest is viewed back home, and she laughs and says, “That’s silly, what’s wrong with it if we’re careful to use birth control?”

  This is more than I can handle for one day, so Micaela makes up a bed for me on the sofa and kisses me on the forehead. When she looks deep into my eyes, smiles, and says goodnight, I realize that I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FLAWLESS TOOTSIES

  In the morning, I awaken in my own bed. Micaela is nowhere to be seen, the sofa no longer looks like cheese, and Yiddle is a parrot again. The Ink must have worn off.

  Without Micaela there I feel empty, lonelier than I ever did before, and I curse the drug for having given me a glimpse of what might have been.

  In thinking about the sexual relationship that I apparently share with my sister, I am filled with shame and revulsion. Secretly, though, I’m excited when I imagine it, almost wishing I hadn’t turned her away when I had the chance.

  When I’m feeling this low, I recall the writer’s adage that you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. I sit down at my desk and am encouraged to note that I’m already forty-two pages into the manuscript. That’s a good start, though I wish I’d read one of the published copies of the novel so I’d have some idea how to proceed.

  It’s been a while since we checked in on the Khadaar, so I reread the part in Chapter Two where I’m prevented from passing through the purple curtain into the inner sanctum by a burly man who says I must register with the Kajoob, and I pick up the scene at that point, finding my way downstairs and into the basement.

  I am directed to a large waiting area in the back, where I take my seat along with seven or eight other people and wait for the Kajoob, who fails to appear, this for the simple reason that I’ve yet to form any image of him or her. Visualizing people used to come easily to me, but it’s as if the concussion affected my so-called mind’s eye and I have great difficulty forming any sort of internal image, as if I’ve become internally blind.

  Every half hour or so, the Kajoob’s assistant comes in, points to one of the people in the waiting room and escorts that person down the hall. It looks like I’m in for a long haul, without any magazines to kill the time, and I’m on the verge of getting up and going back home when a pretty young woman enters the waiting room and sits down next to me.

  She’s wearing a short skirt and strappy sandals, and I find myself stealing glances at her lovely feet, which are perfectly proportioned and meticulously pedicured, with turquoise nail polish and a tiny pink rose hand-painted on the nail of each big toe. Entranced by the sight of such flawless tootsies, I wonder whether she realizes how excited a man can get at the sight of her feet, as if she were sitting there in the waiting room with her bare breasts exposed.

  “I see you like my feet,” the woman says.

  I look up at her as if I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Oh, I was just admiring your sandals. I used to own a shoe store, you see, and I don’t recognize that brand.”

  I introduce myself, she says her name is Arielle, and when I ask what she is doing here she lowers her voice and tells me that she’s researching an article for the Informer on the Order of Khadaar.

  I’m about to ask her what she knows about the group when the assistant enters and points to me, even though there are others who’ve been waiting longer. Though disappointed that my time with her has been cut short, I tell Arielle it was nice meeting her, steal one last look at her feet, and follow the assistant down the hall and into the office of the Kajoob.

  The Kajoob greets me, and now I’m forced to come up with some sort of description, so I decide—or it simply comes to me—that it’s a he and he’s a mysterious-looking gentleman in his sixties with a bald head, unkempt gray beard, and wandering eyes that are clouded over, milky white.

  The assistant leaves and I take a seat across the desk from the Kajoob, who raises his palms toward me. It feels like he’s scanning me, reading my mind and emotional state, maybe even m
y aura if such a thing exists.

  After a couple of minutes, he lowers his hands and asks why I have attempted to take my own life. Disconcerted, I’m not sure at first how to respond, but finally tell him that I have a self-destructive streak and that a part of me feels everyone would be better off if I checked out.

  “You cannot check out,” the Kajoob replies, “since consciousness never dies. But what if you could heal these self-destructive tendencies and accept yourself as you are? What if you could adopt a new way of viewing yourself and the world, a revolutionary perspective that would put an end to all suffering?”

  “That sounds great,” I say. “But I hope it doesn’t involve putting my faith in some sort of deity, because I find that stuff hard to swallow.”

  The Kajoob chuckles.

  “Believers and nonbelievers alike are welcome. All that is required is a willingness to open yourself to new experiences.”

  This sounds reasonable, and I’m eager to know what Incognolio is, so I agree to join the Khadaar, wondering whether it will involve signing any papers or forking over any money. But the Kajoob merely tells me that I must journey by shuttle bus to the Compound, a rural commune where I will undergo a two-week Intensive and be initiated into the Order of Khadaar.

  “If you hurry,” he says, “you can catch the next shuttle.”

  “I’ll have to go home first and pack some things.”

  “Not necessary. When you arrive at the Compound you will be supplied with clothing and toiletries.”

  I thank him and am headed back upstairs to catch the shuttle to enlightenment when I hear a tremendous crash that sounds like someone has busted through my front door.

  A barrel-chested thug appears in the doorway to my study and comes at me in a threatening manner. I jump up out of my seat and say, “What the hell is going on?” and he sucker punches me in the gut. I stagger, trying to remain on my feet, and then he slugs me in the jaw and I collapse to the floor.