This Book Does Not Exist (26 page)

My heart drops.

I won’t go through with the wedding. I’m about to devastate her.

But why has her mood reversed from what it was earlier, seemingly without cause? What could have changed? Nothing I can fathom…
Unless the other world is having its way with us.

I head straight for
Geppetto
since I brought him here. Leaning in to his ear, I snap in a hushed tone, “Is this really Naomi?”

Typical of him, he responds with another question. “Was the girl outside really Naomi?”

I stare at the woman next to
Geppetto
. Undeniably, she looks like Naomi. Yet, beyond her mutated demeanor something isn’t right. Her posture is stiff. Her gaze is unattached. Her presence is one-dimensional… Like the other people I’ve encountered inside the other world.

I
begin to ask, “Can you...” but I stop, knowing I have to be forceful in order to manipulate the other world, if that’s what she is, a construct of the other world. “You can wait outside,” I tell her. “Please. Just for a second.”

Tears form within her hazel eyes. She steps back, shuddering, as her eyelids fail to dam the swell. The tears fall, dragging mascara with them, staining her cheeks with black flakes that look like ash. She pleads, “What are you doing?”
Perhaps sensing there may not be a suitable answer, she turns away and goes, walking out of the church.

Briskly, the music stops. It is replaced with a collective gasp from the crowd.
Geppetto
talks only to me. “You’ve obviously made the discovery I told you about when we were at St. Michael’s.”

I was right. I can manipulate the other world.

Geppetto
, I now see for the first time, is
holding a purple velvet jewelry box.
I ask what’s inside.

“What do you think?”

“Rings. Wedding rings.”

“This incident,” he says, “
an incident within an incident – I know you’ve been thinking of it like that – is a combination of your memories and Naomi’s memories, distorted by my world, of course, with the guidance of your imaginations.”

“I already knew that.”

“More or less you did. But what you have to ask yourself is if you can manipulate my world with your thoughts, then why not just make it all go away? Have you considered that?”

I have. But the other world is powerful, authoritative, and my mind is byzantine. Its philosophies shift without warning. Paranoia pulls me in innumerable directions. Something as silly as turning on a faucet in a public restroom can spark a distant memory. I’m starting to be able to compete by taking hold of moments, single events within the larger environment the other world has created. At this stage, I seem to be capable of doing that. But I don’t think I’m capable of wiping the whole thing away.

I explain this to Geppetto.

First, he implies I’m right. Then he asks me again, “What do you think is inside the box?”

There is one thing I want above everything else.

A bomb.

I want a bomb so I can blow up
the Door
and eliminate the other world.

I tell Geppetto, “There’s a bomb inside the box.”

“My world can be stubborn,” he says. “
Manipulating it can be like predicting the weather – you won’t always get it right. All you can do is try your best
.”

I think back
to the times I’ve been successful… Finding Naomi at St. Theodosius, getting Geppetto to show up here… They involved writing. I texted her, I messaged him. To write, you have to focus on a single idea for a period of time. When you put a concept or an event into words it becomes more concrete. It can spread to other people. They can believe in it. The more people that believe in something, the more real it becomes.

I open Twitter and write:

“There’s a bomb inside the box and I’m going to use it to blow up
the Door
.”

On
Facebook
, I change my status to:

“I am in possession of an explosive device.”

I imagine taking the box from Geppetto, opening it, and discovering a bomb inside. I let the sequence re-play in my mind.

I take the box from him.

“I’m going to wait to check it. I’ll let the process run its course.”

“Everything is a process.”

“Goodbye,
Geppetto
,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Goodbye, Geppetto,” he repeats. “I
respect your confidence. I hope all of this…” He pauses, waving his arm from one side of his body to the other, a gesture meant to suggest not only this church and this moment, the likelihood of a failed wedding against the backdrop of World War 3, but also the entirety of my experience within the other world. “…I hope all of this has taught you something. Just in case it happens again.”

I think I know what he means. I smile. He doesn’t. He never smiles. He never frowns. He stays the same no matter what, and I finally get it, which is why I know it’s time for me to go.

I put my hand on
Geppetto’s
shoulder and then leave St. Theodosius with the bomb.

Upon stepping outside, I regain my old clothes. I keep the box with the bomb.

Naomi is waiting. Her wedding dress is gone. She’s back in dark jeans, pink flats, and a black wife beater, all dirtied from the war, the same as when I found her.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she says. “I heard so many ugly things. I couldn’t tell if they were real or in my head. I almost ran away.” She eyes the box. “What’s that?”

“It’s a bomb we can use to blow up
the Door
.”

She doesn’t look like she believes me.

“Trust me,” I tell her. “I got it from Geppetto.”

As I place my hand on the small of her back and lead her away from the church, I ask, “Did you end up coming inside?”

She turns to me, confused. “I stood against the wall and waited for the war to come back.”

“Did you think it would?”

“Yeah.”

I hesitate.

“What?” she asks.

“Don’t think about the war anymore. Let’s go.”

Naomi and I are walking east. The air is warm, but snowflakes have begun to fall. We are both uneasy, re-calibrating where we stand with one another amidst these unimaginable circumstances. For now, all I can hope is that we make it to East Cleveland. The rest of everything will come after that.

Near the outer edge of Tremont, over the course of a single two-lane road, the terrain instantly transitions from flattened and obliterated to standing and intact.

The sound of an engine flies overhead.

I look up, squinting to keep the snowflakes out of my eyes.

Something is falling from the sky
.

I yell at Naomi to run.

She takes off. I sprint after her, across the blacktop and into the untouched portion of the neighborhood.

A second and a third plane fly overhead.

They each let something go.

I race to Naomi’s side. Up above, three growing ovals plummet through the canvas of black sky speckled with white snowflakes.

Our feet stamp down dirt in a freshly toiled backyard.

The first bomb hits.

The blast drives me into the ground. The noise from the explosion sucks away my hearing. My ears ring. The sound pierces. I crawl back up, s
cramble,
look
for Naomi.

There she is.

“Get up! Keep going!” I shout.

The second pair of bombs hits.

I lose my center of gravity. I feel as if I am no longer attached to my surroundings, like a spirit descending to Hell. I see Naomi. She’s still standing and the sight of her unharmed gives me back my bearings. I check myself. I’m okay. So is the box with the bomb inside. I press towards her.

“Keep thinking we’re going to survive. Keep thinking we’re going to make it to
the Door
.”

“I don’t know, Mike…”

“Don’t give up. If we were going to give up, we should have done that a long time ago.”

A ghoulish cloud of debris forms in front of us. It appears the enemy is bombing outward from Tremont in a concentric circle. If we stayed in the middle of the circle we would be safe. But to get to East Cleveland and
the Door
, we need to get outside of the drop zone.

Four more planes fly overhead.

There is nothing left to say. We run from the backyard into
a school playground. As I chase Naomi behind a collection of concrete play pipes,
a flurry of explosions rock
the earth, closer to us than before. The concrete pipes act as barricades, sheltering us from shrapnel. I start running again. Naomi is slowing down. I can read the look on her face. She’s losing faith in our ability to outrun the bombs. I think about trying to manipulate the other world to make the bomber jets malfunction or to move the location of
the Door
to Tremont, but just thinking through these options raises my fear that I will lose the bomb inside the box. I have to pick and choose.

Running as fast as I can, I hear Naomi say, “I don’t know how I’m going to survive
…”

Nine additional planes pass overhead.

I stare up at the sky.

It looks like twenty more bombs have been dropped.

I contemplate settling into a meditative state and watching the cluster of bombs fall on top of me. In a flash, I would be eradicated, painlessly.
Earlier, I might have curried this fate
. Not now. I’m no longer convinced my life will play out like I imagined it would when I finished watching
The Royal
Tenenbaums
or after I observed the lonely old man in St. Michael’s church.
The Door
has taught me the value of the fight.

I grab Naomi and I run.

The bombs nosedive into the neighborhood.

The gigantic blast throws us into the backside of a house. From the ground, I tilt, seeing so many more explosions, so many more falling bombs. Cleveland is being steamrolled. Why don’t they just drop a nuke and get it over with? Is that what’s next?

Naomi screams. The bombs in the sky resemble a flock of dying birds.
Near us
, two doors are set in the ground, presumably protecting the entrance to a fruit cellar. They are red like
the Door
. I grab a hold of them anyway. Naomi wails. I yank open the doors and drag her inside. She stumbles down the stairs but maintains her balance, reaching the cement floor. I wrap my arms around the box with the bomb, a gesture that looks like love, and drop down after her, pulling the doors closed behind me. My foot slips. I miss the next step. I fall straight down. My foot jabs into the cement sideways, and I topple into darkness. Outside, it sounds like
Call of Duty
or
Saving Private Ryan
. I try to get up, but my leg is crooked. My arm is scraped open. I brush my face. My fingers come away with blood. My heart is beating way too fast. Naomi is looking at me. I wonder if she can hear it. I sense I’m dropping out.

I let go of my mind and it falls.

My eyes peel open.

The haze is like a hangover. My body is recalcitrant. When I finally pull through the cobwebs, I see Naomi lying awake beside me.
Not with me, but next to me
.

“Your ankle is swollen,” she says. “I think it’s sprained.”

“How much… How long have I been out for?”

“Forever. I’ve just been lying here, shaking. I’m so cold.”

“Thanks for staying with me…”

“Well, you’re the one with the bomb
.”

She isn’t wrong.
I’m still clutching the jewelry box. The joints in my fingers ache from gripping it so tightly
. I set it
down on the concrete. Outside, it sounds like the bombing has stopped, but it’s difficult for me to think straight. I’m playing catch up with the demands of being conscious.