This Book Does Not Exist (28 page)

I press play. I clasp Naomi’s hand.

“The sky might fall /

“But I’m not worried at all”

And I say to her, “I’ll always love you.” I hope she hears me over the music and the war, and my next thought is of the future, and before she can say she loves me back or anything at all, the bomb explodes
.

I hold her hand while
Geppetto’s
crumbles, and we are consumed by-

In an instant the world around me is rebuilt. Piles of scrap become homes. Shredded metal reconstitutes into mailboxes and streetlights. Broken trees forge back together and grow. The carbon-poisoned air becomes blue sky I can breathe again.

There is no guarantee there will never be another war here, but for now it is over. The world has been born anew, as if World War 3 did not take place.

But for
me and Naomi
it did.

Except I realize there is a gap of empty space between my fingers and my palm. I can no longer feel her hand in mine. When I look to my right, she isn’t at my side. The ear bud I gave her is swinging in the humidity, dangling millimeters away from the blacktop
.

Naomi has vanished.

I swirl around in a full circle. I’m not in East Cleveland anymore. I’m standing alone in the motel parking lot, back in the general vicinity of where I was before the war began.

I call her, but it rings through to voice mail. I hang up without leaving a message. She’ll see the missed call. I can text her in a little bit to make sure she’s okay. I can only assume she’s been taken back to wherever she was when World War 3 started, as well. Her phone still works. That counts for something.

Previously, I
would have been more worried than I am. A wide range of possibilities for why Naomi didn’t answer would have amassed. Paranoia would have set in. Now, I simply look towards the empty spot in the parking lot where my car once was, think about where I left it and decide to allow whatever is going to happen next happen.

There has to be a bus stop I can walk to.

Testing my damaged ankle, I type out a text.

I’m on a deserted county bus to Cleveland Heights. Looking at my reflection in the window, I notice an abrasion on my right cheek and a gash in my forehead, right below where the brim from a baseball cap would fall. My beard has thickened since the last time I saw my face, which makes me wish I had a razor because I’d rather not be a minor cliché.

I texted Naomi to see if she wanted to meet me for a 9:30 PM showing of
Milk
.
After a long delay, she
replied
“Ok.” That happened a few seconds ago. I’m thinking through how to respond to her while nervousness burrows into my heart. We aren’t right. I
pull my hand down across my face and close my eyelids. Once I open them, I write back that I’ll wait for her
outside the theater.

The frame of the bus bobs as its tires roll along the bumpy road. Another text comes in from Naomi – a second “Ok” – and I tap the Plexiglas window, knowing I will do so until I reach my destination.

I walk through the entrance to the Cedar Lee Theatre. The movie starts in sixteen minutes.
A husband and wife in their mid-50’s, about the same age as my parents, stand in front of me in the line to get tickets.
Their daughter is with them. She’s my age probably, and effortlessly stylish, wearing high-heeled boots, a crisp fitting pair of pink jeans, and a bright yellow summer jacket, left open, that ends slightly higher than her waist. Her brunette hair is neatly pulled back, accenting her unassuming yet angelic face.

Her dad takes forever at the ticket booth, going through membership plans and advance screening purchases with the clerk. Amused instead of frustrated, he turns around and jokes with me about how complicated it is to buy tickets at this theater. His daughter smiles either to be cordial or to silently apologize for her father in the way adult children sometimes do. I smile back, self-conscious of the wounds on my face and the crooked way I’m standing as a result of my bad ankle. If she asks how I got hurt I’ll have to invent some kind of story, I think, as the father finally finishes buying the tickets, and he and his family move aside.

I step up to the booth and ask for one ticket to
Milk
. The ticket seller, who is holding onto a copy of HP Lovecraft’s
At the Mountains of Madness
, ogles me while the ticket prints. I make a mental note to visit my parents tomorrow.

Ticket in hand, I veer towards the ticket taker, who proceeds to rip my ticket in half. I limp into the concession area, where mostly middle-aged, professorial, white and black men and women mill about, buying snacks and drinks and disappearing into the restrooms. Four wooden benches with slats rest up against the walls. I choose the closest one and wait to see if Naomi will show up.

It’s 9:20 PM. I said I’d give her ten more minutes.

For several of these minutes, I switch between pretending to occupy myself with my phone and staring out the doors of the theater, watching for Naomi. But the first familiar face I see is the high-heeled boot girl,
walking by on her way to the concession stand. I notice she has a tiny nose
piercing,
a small diamond stud that reminds me of the first year Naomi and I were together.

The clock turns to 9:28 PM.

I head towards the theater where
Milk
is screening. In passing, I almost lament the fact I’m not inside
the Door
. If this were the other world I could will Naomi to appear. I would see her right now, hurrying to buy her ticket and make the show. But my thoughts, I suppose… I can still alter my thoughts even if I can’t change the world.

On a different bench, underneath a poster for
Milk
, I stop to rest, barely glancing at the people entering the oil-colored theater doors to the room where the movie is showing. Naomi isn’t always prompt, but she’s never late to the movies because she hates missing the previews. As someone props open the doors, I catch the dimming of the lights in my peripheral vision. A commercial runs on screen. I stand, knowing that what I thought would happen
has
happened.

Naomi didn’t come.

I walk into the theater believing I’m the only person who is here alone. I remember my time at NYU, where I frequently entered the darkness of a movie theater by myself, shrouding my loneliness in a communal experience with strangers. I find two empty seats just in case. After sitting, I lower my head into my hands.
Raising
back up, the chronology of my life begins to lay itself out in front of me, one large map I can see in totality, filled with a multitude of elevations, a series of places I want to go and a batch of places I don’t. They are all connected and intertwined along the same route. I can’t skip the treacherous areas. I have to traverse them to reach the oases, the parks,
the
cities that never sleep. On this map of my life, there are numerous zones like the one I’m in at this very moment, but I can also see plenty of areas beyond it that have more in common with when Naomi and I were inseparable.

The movie begins.

In
Milk
, Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk, the first gay man elected to public office in the United States. Before Harvey wins the election, he meets, falls in love with, and is inspired by a young man named Scott. After losing several elections, Harvey decides to make one final go at public office despite the terrible strain another run will put on his relationship with Scott. Scott leaves him as a result, and it ends up being this campaign that Harvey finally wins.

For much of
Milk
, Harvey and Scott aren’t together – they’re dating other people and doing other things – but periodically they cross paths. Once, Harvey calls Scott out of the blue as if their love has never faded. We can see in all these moments that they wish they were still together, but they aren’t, and this does not change. There is no specific reason why. The moment where their lives could have been joined forever just seems to have passed them by.

The film ends with title cards. Before the credits roll, I get out of my seat and leave the theater, not wanting anyone to see that I am crying.

I walk through the lobby and out the front doors. I haven’t thought about how to get home, wherever that is for me now. I don’t know how late the buses run. I sit down on the curb and begin writing a text to Naomi, but I have no idea what to say. When I said I’d always love her before the bomb went off, those words were true, and they remain so now. I can think of dozens of possible reasons why she didn’t show up, and I could ask her about every one but that wouldn’t be constructive. If she’s moved on like it seems she has… I’ll have to live with that.

And I can, I think. It has been an arduous search, a dark return to Ohio I could not have anticipated and never would have desired. But it has moved me somewhere new, to a place I could not have imagined from my bedroom in LA.

I thumb away tears and discard the text message. It is best to say nothing at all.

When I look up eventually, I see the girl in the high-heeled boots getting something out of the back of a Lexus parked on the street in front of me. It’s a Kindle. She slides it into her purse. In the process of locking the car back up, she makes eye contact with me. She smiles first.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi.” She turns towards me.

“You grabbed a Kindle. What’re you reading?”

“Can’t say. Too embarrassing.”

“Come on…”

“Nope. Can’t tell you.”

“Then which movie did you see? Was it any good?”

“Why are you sitting on the curb?”

“Bum ankle.” I can’t blame her for asking.

“How’d that happen?”

“I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Later?”

“When you tell me about your book.”

“Night out with my parents. Dinner.”

“That can’t take the whole night, can it?”

She shrugs.

“I’m going to La Cave Du Vin on Coventry,” I say. “If you want to meet me there, just to talk…”

“I could maybe, possibly, potentially do that. Perhaps.”

She offers me her number. I stand to enter it into my contacts and say, “You can either tell me your name or I can be creative.”

“Creativity is good, right?”

“For the most part, yeah.”

“What are you going to write?”

“I’ll come up with something while I’m walking to the bar.”

She looks down at my ankle. “Good luck.”

“I’ll make it,” I say. “Midnight?”

She tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “I guess I’ll see you then,” she says, before gently turning away.

I watch her go. My ankle hurts like hell. I don’t care. I put all of my weight on it and take my first step. As I do, a thought comes to me. I fill the girl’s name in my address book as “
ThisTimeItWillBeBetter
.”

I save it and continue walking, believing I can walk forever.

Thank you to my brother, my mom, and my dad. I love all of you. You have put endless faith in me even during those times it was uncalled for. Tim, your feedback on early drafts was the difference between this being a terrible book and whatever it has become now. You are in part responsible for the success of the first edition, and I would not be the writer I am today without you in my life. Mom, your late edit of the text was deeply appreciated and very helpful. Dad, thank you for indulging my insanities.

Finally, I send my gratitude to L, wherever she is, for without her, this book would not exist.

Mike Schneider wrote this, his first novel, in bursts between
November
 
2008
and May 2010 in Los Angeles, California and Amherst, Ohio. A newly revised and edited second edition was produced in the summer and fall of 2012 in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland.