Secret Lives (11 page)

A coin with a tiny, rough image of a boat on it. My first thought was outrage—that he had wasted the time of my fellow employees on building something that wouldn’t even work. Later, I realized that this thought meant Shane had gotten to me in a way. I thought about the ramifications of this while in my apartment enjoying a glass of cheap brandy and some jazz music and looking over the heirlooms my father had left me (if any of you are ever in the market for antiques for around the house, you might consider checking with me first). For a time, I even thought about going to the manager and handing in my resignation. Shane had compromised my integrity as a corporate employee. He had tried to substitute his vision for the corporate vision in my mind. He had almost succeeded.

At the time he tossed me the coin, I didn’t let him know the extent of his almost-victory. I flipped the coin right back to him and said, “If you’re not going to be serious, why should I listen to you?” He replied, “Because if you don’t, you’ll be left out.” I didn’t realize at the time what he was talking about. Left out of what? His talk of graveyards and kisses? His grotesque utterances about Sarajevo? His frequent lunches with some of the other employees, to which I was never invited? It didn’t phase me.

You must understand—I was never angry at Shane. Never. I merely understood better than anyone that we had a job to perform in the bookstore and Shane was making it more difficult to do that job.

After nine months, the entire outline of the galley lay before anyone who cared to step around the back of our bookstore. For this reason, Shane had bought a huge tarp and thrown it across the entire frame. Somehow he managed to get the help of most of the other employees in pulling the tarp off when he wanted to work on the ship and then again in pulling it back on afterwards. It was probably easier to help than have to listen to Shane’s messages disguised as small talk. However, I must report that the manager of our bookstore cannot be forgiven for his actions. Time and time again, even during busy periods, he would allow Shane to take breaks to work on the galley. At night, when Shane worked by flashlight and the headlights of his beat-up old car, it was even worse. Shane would be gone for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, with our manager pretending not to notice. Shane would give any number of excuses to engage in his lazy and demoralizing behavior; our manager never saw them as excuses, though, even when I pointed it out to him. This, then, I cannot forgive, since we looked to our manager for guidance and for the strength to follow the corporate rules. Even more importantly, to keep track of the corporate rules, which were so many. (I can, in some sense, forgive Shane simply because I came to believe that it was in Shane’s nature to be lazy; however, my observations of the manager had previously yielded the notion that he cared about his duties.)

A year had passed when Shane announced at an employee function at the local tavern that the initial phase of work had ended on his precious galley. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “Thank you for your good wishes. Thank you for not firing me,” he said, and gave a nod to the manager, who grinned ear-to-ear, looking for all the world like one of those hideous chimps on the covers of books in our Nature section.

To which Shane Statements (as I’d taken to calling them behind his back), to their credit, his fellow employees gave only a tepid smattering of applause, even, might I say, to the trained ear, a mocking amount of applause. This did not depress him. It did not affect him at all. He acted as if they loved him, and loved his “sacred task” as he had taken to calling it whenever I was around. Nothing, I can see now, would have stopped him, short of death. For whatever reason, the boat was locked into his thoughts in a way that I would never understand. I am not by nature obsessive.

When I saw that Shane’s Folly would not soon end, I began to accept the world he had created for us—but accept it only so I could shatter it and return us to the state in which we had existed Before Shane (or B.S., as I called it when talking to my fellow employees). I began to think of the bookstore as a ship and all of us as its sailors, guiding it from safe port to safe port. In that light, it was clear that Shane had called for a mutiny, a term I was familiar with from my work shelving books in the History and Sports sections. Not only had Shane called for a mutiny, but our manager had joined the mutiny! I began to sort my employees by those who appeared to be listening to the teachings of the Shane and those on whom his siren song seemed to have no effect. It was a difficult process I had undertaken, and one that I eventually hoped would be documented in a company report. Unfortunately, one of those Leaning Shane crumpled up my notes on a particularly difficult evening in the bookstore, some 17 months into the period of Shane’s Folly, and tossed them in a waste basket. I have only my memories, as a result, although I am happy, at some future time, to reconstruct who I suspected of mutiny, even though it may no longer matter.

The only effect of my change in worldview, I see now, was to distance myself from the loyal employees who still remained, and for this I take full responsibility. My interrogations and probings were taken in the gracious spirit with which I offered them by most. However, some did not see my work for what it was. If I had to do it over again, I might have stayed more within the powers of my assistant managership, for twice the manager of the store reprimanded me for what he said was “intrusive and inappropriate behavior.”

I couldn’t take him seriously, of course. How could I? He had gone in with Shane and the rest of them. Now it was not just Shane saying things about Sarajevo, it was other employees, although, as is the way with statements handed down, they became changed by the time I heard them from the other employees. One employee, a girl I rather liked until that moment, said, as we stood at the cash register, “I wonder if it’s snowing where Sara is.” “Sara?” I said. “Who is Sara?” “No one,” she said, gazing with a strange, strange look on her face out the window. It wasn’t until later that I caught the odd similarity.

By this point, 17 months and 2 weeks into Shane’s Folly, the galley was finished. He had painted it, added caulking, furnished the galley, and even—of all the audacious things!—let some of the employees “ride” in the boat and practice pulling on the oars. They all, including the manager, seemed in awe of this oddity Shane had created; Shane himself seemed awed by it. Now all Shane was doing, it seemed, was waiting. As was I. I had by then decided all I could do was watch and wait and record, so that if a report was required by corporate HQ, I could provide one, as I am now doing. I am not violent by nature, nor persuasive; I am a simple assistant manager, devoted to the company, and to the idea of our bookstore. What else could I do? I could not stop Shane, although I was fairly sure Shane would stop himself.

So Shane waited. One day, 17 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days since he had started, I overcame my mental objections long enough to stand in front of the galley with Shane. It glistened in the morning sun and the sail whipped in the wind. The sail had a huge “S” in red on it. What it stood for was not immediately clear to me. It could have stood for Shane, or it could have been a mocking “Sarajevo,” intended to get to me. The whole thing looked like a hideous monster made of wood, and no doubt un-seaworthy to boot. We were, after all, in the middle of Iowa. What could any of possibly know about building boats like this one? Especially using an old coin to design it?

“What are you waiting for?” I asked Shane.

Shane stood there with his hands in his pockets, smiling up at his folly.

Then he stared at me, with what I can only call ill intent, and he said, “I’m waiting for the girl I kissed in the graveyard. Once she gets here, I’m gone. Because you know”—and as he said it I could hear the laughter in his voice, and the echo, as if he had been waiting for this moment for a long time—“Because you know, I’ll bet it isn’t snowing in Sarajevo now.”

I’m afraid I broke down. I’m afraid almost eighteen months of this nonsense had gotten to me. I turned red. I stood there, trying to control myself, but could not.

“You bastard!” I said. “You complete and utter bastard! What the hell are you talking about?! What can you possibly mean?! Why did you build this ridiculous ship? Why does the manager like you so much? You bastard! Bastard!”

After a while, I could not stop saying bastard, although after a time I could not look Shane in the eyes any more, and my “bastard” became a groan and then a mumble and then a whisper. By the time I had stopped, Shane had gone inside, no doubt to spread more mutiny and to tell the employees who reported to me about my little episode.

I admit, it was a clear violation of corporate policy for assistant managers—but it was in direct response to Shane’s own violation of hundreds and hundreds of corporate policies, repeatedly flaunted day after day, minute after minute, for months and months and months. What else could I do? My own mouth knew it had to mutiny against this mutiny.

But when I went back inside, no one would talk to me, not even the manager, not even to reprimand me. And that is when I knew beyond any doubt how far things had gone.

Exactly eighteen months after Shane started his little project, his folly, his insanity, he disappeared along with the Roman galley built using an image on a coin as his guide. It is believed that he took all of our bookstore employees with him, including the manager. When I got into work that dreary Monday morning, I had to open the bookstore myself. At first, I thought there must have been some emergency, someone from the bookstore in the hospital. But no: when I unlocked the back door to prepare for the daily delivery of books via truck, I saw the truth. The ship was gone. They must have gone with it. The first thought that went through my head was actually a series of images: of a girl, of a graveyard, of Shane, of Sarajevo, a place I’d never been. The second thought was a n actual thought, a treacherous one: A sudden pang in my heart, a sudden pain there—that I had been left behind, that they all had left me here, in Iowa, in our bookstore, while they left for . . . for what? As you know, it is still unclear, which is why you have asked for this report. To stop it from happening again? To explain what happened at our store? To track down Shane wherever he might be? This is unclear to me, too.

But I know my thought, my pain, was just the last poison Shane brought to us making its way to the surface—my body, my brain, betraying me to Shane’s mutiny, just for a second. Just for that second when part of me wanted to join them. I know that now, and I have consulted the corporate policy book many times for guidance on how to stop it from ever happening again to me. I know it is not behavior appropriate in an assistant manager, even if it a betrayal of thought not deed.

I suppose what bothers me the most, though, is the simple mystery behind what Shane said and the way in which Shane’s encounter in a graveyard will not leave me, and the way in which I still, now, six months after the disappearance, see that huge sail in my dreams, flapping in a sudden breeze. I wish I could stop thinking about it.

If you need any more information, please do not hesitate to ask. I am happy to provide it.

MATT CHENEY

aka

The Secret Life of The “Secret Admirer” of Jeff VanderMeer: a “Scrivener Who Is IMPATIENT with the SUN”

This secret admirer, a scrivener familiar with the famous yet tragically underrated author Jeff VanderMeer, is IMPATIENT WITH THE SUN. The sun, it seems to the scrivener (who we will call “he” until otherwise informed . . .), is at best overrated, at worst a glorified light fixture. Why, he thinks, should anyone depend on so distant a source of illumination? One that disappears every night. The scrivener, being a scrivener, has more time to waste on pointless thinking than those who fulfill the demands of many another profession. This drives him to obsession — he does not want to rely on the sun unless he absolutely has to. He is sick of the darkness the sun leaves behind. He’s sick of the glare of sunrise and sunset, when it’s difficult to even discern a stoplight turning green. One day, he decides he has had enough. He’s not just IMPATIENT WITH THE SUN — he’s
furious
with the sun. So he buys three thousand candles for the yard and a hundred lamps for the inside of his house, and at dusk of one particularly annoying day, he lights the candles and turns on the lamps. In an hour, his lawn turns into a slick wash of wax. Not only do his lights short out, but the lights for the entire neighborhood go out. Undeterred, he plots his vengeance against the sun. He uses torches outside instead of candles. He uses batteries for huge outdoor flashlights, buys a generator. Something always goes wrong. Finally, he has no choice but to burn his house down at dusk. And this he does, cackling as the night is placed in temporary abeyance due to his grandiose obsession. When he is done, his house is a cinder, and the sun seems to appear the next morning just to mock him. The scrivener becomes a wanderer. He wanders here and there, hither and thither, preaching hatred of the sun. One day, he happens upon a bookstore where Jeff VanderMeer is doing a reading. Jeff is giving a secret life to anyone who buys his short story collection. The scrivener is dirty and thirsty and hungry, and by now he has so succumbed to his obsession that he babbles uncontrollably to Jeff about his impatience with the sun, while the huge line behind the scrivener, waiting to receive Jeff’s benediction, grows impatient. Finally, the scrivener finishes his tirade. He says to Jeff, “Can you give me a secret life? If I scrape together the money to buy your book? And I will tell you my name then, the name of your most secret admirer.” Jeff scratches his left ear, the pre-arranged signal for dealing with insane people. His bodyguards take the scrivener, kicking and screaming — “I’m still IMPATIENT WITH THE SUN!” — out into the cold light of day to his not-so-secret fate . . .

Everyone has a secret life. It may seem trite to re-state this, but sometimes it needs restating. Even the most banal individual has some sort of secret life, often a profoundly rich secret life. Can it be said that the more boring the public face of the person, the more fecund their clandestine existence? Not necessarily, but I’m sure it is true for some people. (Not that we’d ever know about it.) “The Important” often seem to lead lives so busy and so full that we cannot imagine they have the time to pursue secret lives. For make no mistake—one must
pursue
a secret life. Although some have secret lives thrust upon them, in most cases, the individual runs toward the secret life willingly, almost as a kind of release. At least, I find this is true in my case.