This Book Does Not Exist (18 page)

“What happened in the end was I blew up the building.

“And my ex… I’ll just say… I’m over him.

“But now I’m wondering if bringing this shit up, bringing it all back, is good for me – or if it’s going to make the other world return.”

She finishes.

We look at one another for a while. Our uneaten food gets colder. She swallows some wine. Her hand is a little shaky as she sets the glass back down.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sure that had to be difficult. But it helps me to know you survived.”

“Well, now that it’s affecting you, and it seems to have brought us together, I don’t know that I did.”

I ask if she wants me to leave. She doesn’t respond right away, but then says, “No… No. I’m good. I’m okay.”

I tell her to think about it while I use the restroom.

The Door
takes your memories and uses your imagination to warp them. That’s what Kirsten’s theory is. Thinking back over everything that’s happened to me so far, it’s almost obvious – the incidents were all based on stolen pieces of my mind. They were distortions of things I experienced or thought about at some point in my life.

Kirsten’s belief that the other world was using her imagination, too, also fits. Before The Plane Crash Incident, for example, I had been worrying about the fighter jet crashing in Phoenix and killing Naomi’s brother and sister-in-law…

What I don’t get is why
the Door
chose those memories and those facets of my imagination. I can guess it’s as simple as proximity. I saw the
JFK
DVD right before I went inside
the Door
, hence The
JFK
Incident. I’ll assume I’m right about that.

This would seem to suggest that I
can
dictate which memories the other world uses against me if I focus on specific things before I enter
the Door
. But would that be to my advantage or not? It might just be a way for me to pick my poison. Right now, since
the Door
is open and the other world is bleeding, it doesn’t matter anyway. I never know when it’s going to get me. Every thought I have at every moment is in play.

I push open the door to the men’s room.

An old man is at the sink about to wash his hands. I head to the urinal, and he turns on the faucet. For some reason, when the water coats the basin I remember that Naomi and I actually did talk about something when we ate dinner here. We talked about the World Trade Center. I have no idea why. The subject was the
towers
before they were destroyed. Naomi had never been inside. I had. My friend talked me into taking a tour while he was visiting during my freshman year at NYU. Having just moved to New York and wanting to fit in, I thought it was too touristy. But to appease him, I went anyway. After the attack happened, I was glad I did. As for how my friend feels, I can’t say. He and I no longer speak.

I flush the urinal, turn to the sink and wash my hands. The old man is gone. I wonder how many times he’s washed his hands over the course of his life, what he’s experienced along the way, and how that makes him washing his hands at this sink a different event for him than it is for me. Done rinsing, I punch the button on the blow dryer. I attempt to balance the disparate thoughts in my mind. I’m afraid to think too much about anything now because of what the other world might do with it. I start to leave. I grab hold of the knob on the bathroom door, but I stop because I don’t think the door had a handle on it when I came in.

The door has changed all of a sudden. It’s different. I’m almost positive. It’s red. It’s skinnier. It has a red knob, a coarser grain…

It looks almost exactly like
the Door
.

My anxiety doesn’t need to re-emerge – I live with it now – it only has to intensify. With a quick spin, I scan the bathroom.

Nothing else has changed.

I fixate on the door that looks like
the Door
, working up the resolve to open it. I know it’s a fraud. I know it’s not actually separating me from the other world. It’s not really keeping me safe. The other world can find me wherever it wants because I left
the Door
open. That feels like an obvious, catastrophic mistake now. I should have closed it when I had the chance. Even if I were to stand in one place forever, the other world could claim my territory whenever it wanted. This altered door is a signal that very thing is occurring at this very moment.

Opening it won’t make a difference.

The other world is here.

I begin to open the door.

Peering through the widening crack, I
don’t know what to expect. I hope for something manageable, more like
The Deer Hunter
Incident than The Burning Club Incident. I push the door open all the way…

There is nothing.

By this I mean I the hallway on the other side of the door is as it was before. Normal. No one with a knife tries to stab me. The walls aren’t on fire, and a younger version of my dad isn’t waiting for me with an infant reproduction of myself.

Everything appears to be in order.

I proceed into the hallway, which is actually more of a gathering area for people waiting to be seated. How everyone is situated, what they’re drinking (martinis, mixed drinks, wine), and how they’re dressed (Polo shirts and khakis, skirts and knit tops), reminds me of a business casual cocktail party. When I walked through this area before on my way to the restroom I wasn’t paying much attention, but I’m not sure it was this populated. A pinball launches in my head. It instigates a wordless, mental refrain: “Please don’t let me be in the other world, please don’t let this be another incident…”

I turn into the dining room and towards our table. I get caught up, however, when I don’t immediately see Kirsten. Did I somehow end up in the wrong place? The refrain repeats in my mind. I do a complete pan of the room.

Where is she?

Several feet over from where I’m standing is a cluttered place setting at an unoccupied table, deserted, it seems, in the middle stages of the meal. It’s my table, I realize, feeling dumb for misremembering the location – but then again no one is sitting at it.

Kirsten is gone.

My first thought is that she decided it was safest for her to separate from me... But there are bags lying at the feet of her chair. It’s odd that she would have left without taking her things. The same note applies if she got up to use the restroom. People from big cities don’t leave valuables lying around unattended.

I sit down. I pick at the baked ziti I ordered, the same thing I had when I was here with Naomi, and I glance around the circular dining room while holding my breath that Kirsten will return. The volume of the refrain in my mind cranks up a notch with every passing second she doesn’t appear.

Please don’t le me be in the other world, please don’t let this be another incident…

I check Twitter. Amidst the minutiae of everyday life being chronicled and expounded on by people I mostly only semi-know or have never met is a scribble from @
kidcudi
that says, “once upon a time, in my mind, everything was oh so, oh so fine. – Scott
Mescudi
”

I’m thirsty, and we’re running out of wine. I look for our waiter. I raise my hand as a sign I need help.

The longer I’m alone the more nervous I become. I think about leaving cash on the table and getting out of here. Kirsten isn’t coming back. The servers aren’t helping me. They’re all occupied at other tables with other customers.

As my eyes move from one table to the next, I feel as if I recognize many of the people seated at them. There’s a man that looks almost like my Uncle Fuzz. A woman at another table resembles my Aunt Kathy, but she’s not with my Uncle Don like she should be – she’s with another man who I’m sure I haven’t seen before, and there’s a firecracker between them, figuratively speaking, where you can tell it’s only a matter of time and space until they have sex.

The refrain escapes my mind and slips out of my throat.
 

I notice additional diners that either
are
, or look similar to, people I know. My friends Adam and Mike, Mike’s friend Dan, all of them accompanied by women and enmeshed in a palpable sexual energy. In fact, now that I’m really looking, every table in the room has at least one couple at it, and I think I recognize nearly everyone from somewhere. I try to kill my fear that I’m in the other world by reminding myself that this happens to me fairly often, where I see someone I think I recognize but can’t place. I’ve seen so many faces in my life by now – in New York City, in Los Angeles, in Ohio, in
Facebook
photo albums, on dating websites, on Twitter, on personal blogs – that almost anyone can seem familiar even if they aren’t. But it never happens on this large of a scale. I’m lying to myself to make me feel better.

I see a young woman who could be Naomi.

She is sitting across from a man who may or may not be Dave, the pilot from The Plane Crash Incident.

I stand up. I angle towards the girl who looks like Naomi. She puts her fingers on the back of the hand of the guy who looks like Dave. My face turns to stone. My gut sinks. I tell myself to turn around, to walk away, to retreat into my usual shell, but my legs keep going. I end up in front of the table, and Naomi and Dave sense my presence. They stare at me.

But it isn’t them.

It’s not Naomi and Dave. It’s merely two people who look eerily similar. Naomi’s eyes are greener. Her nose is slimmer. And the man’s face doesn’t quite match what I remember from the photo
Geppetto
showed me.

Without saying anything, I retreat from the “Naomi-Dave” table. I walk around the edge of the dining room to get a closer look at the other people. Sure enough, they too are not who I believed they were. Like “Naomi” and “Dave,” everyone else is only a slight variant of someone I actually do know, as if I’m trapped inside a grotesquely personal wax museum.

When I make it to the man who looks like my Uncle Fuzz, he stops me and says, “Mike!”

It truly is my Uncle Fuzz.

He acts normal. He appears real. What does this tell me about the rest of the environment? Maybe everything is fine. Maybe the problem is of my own creation. Maybe my encounters with
the Door
are making me paranoid to the point of hallucination. Maybe the other world is twisting my mind and pushing me to the brink of insanity.

I chat
with Fuzz and his wife, my grandpa’s sister, Aunt Jeanie. He makes a few jokes and talks about betting on horses. The conversation leads nowhere important. I welcome the reprieve.

Afterwards, I stroll back to my table. I don’t think I’m in the other world. I was imagining things. I sit back down.

Kirsten still isn’t here.

I pick up the wine list to occupy myself until she returns or our waiter shows up.

They’ll come. They will.
 

As I repeat this to myself, someone traces their hand across my shoulder and sweeps around to the empty seat at the table.

I assume
it’s
Kirsten.

I’m wrong.

It’s a woman, dressed like the hostess who seated us earlier, but not the same person. This new hostess is tall, with an impeccable facial structure, tousled blonde hair, and features that are seductive without being overtly so. She’s beautiful – Sharon Tate as the girl next door – and frankly, I’m stunned she settled for a hostess job at an Olive Garden by the airport.

“Hi.”

Her lips move and her eyes soften.
Her face is remarkable. She is the type of woman men who have reached the pinnacle of success seek out for marriage. Time and circumstance wear most everyone else out, as they settle for the perception that women who look like this
are destined to be held by musicians, actors, or multimillionaires and
hopelessly lusted after by everyone else.
 
The rest of the world takes
who
they can get and that, they tell themselves, is okay. It is how it is supposed to be. And maybe it is. But maybe it isn’t
.