November 2

            The distant sound of scratching, of a muffled bark, of a collar clinging away in movement toward me. Then gone. 

 The distant sound of scratching, of a muffled bark, of a collar clinging away in movement toward me. Then gone. 

            I wake to hear a shout and laughter and rumbling feet and then open my eyes to see nothing. 

            I feel more tired today than yesterday. But as I go through morning motions before heading out to work, I notice a few things more clearly. I see a framed photograph on the table by my bed. I’m young and standing with my arm wrapped around a young woman. I don’t examine the picture nor think about who’s next to me. I don’t need to know that now. I don’t want to know that now. Obviously she’s someone and obviously she means something to me. Or at least she used to. 

            On the kitchen counter by my keys is another note, written with the same handwriting as the Edgar Allan Poe quote from yesterday. 

            Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. ― Franz Kafka

            I can’t help laughing. 

            First Poe now Kafka? 

            Whoever’s giving me these notes sure has a dark streak going on inside of them. 

            But how am I getting them? Did I see this last night? Did someone sneak into my apartment last night to leave me a quote from Kafka? 

            I slip the quote on the index card in my pocket and then head out. 

**

            The day is pretty much boring except for the fact that everybody’s thinking about and talking about the Cubs. Which is cool even though I’m not the biggest fan. Actually, I never watch them and never watch baseball, but I’m excited. I’ll be going to a bar tonight to watch the last game in the series. I’m thinking they’re going to win. I have this hunch. 

            During the day, I get a phone call from someone muffling on the other line. I ask him what he’s talking about and he just mumbles some kind of number and then hangs up. I think it might be a prank and maybe it has something to do with the Cubs game tonight or maybe he’s just been at the bar too long holding down a precious seat in Wrigley field while getting schnockered. 

            I’ll admit it—I don’t have much time to watch baseball. Or sports in general. When you’re deep in debt and trying to do everything possible to get out of it, spending hours rooting for a team doesn’t do it. At least for me. 

            Casey reminds me of my current woes when she shows up to work around noon. 

            “We sold one book yesterday,” Casey says. 

            She’s twenty-four and vibrant and pretty and not deep in debt and has no clue how a flighty and flippant comment like this might feel to someone like me. But she can’t know and honestly, I hope she never knows. 

            “Well, at least we sold one, right?” I say, trying to give an appearance of optimism. 

            “It was Fifty Shades of Grey.”

            I wince. Casey knows I would. 

            “We don’t carry any of those books,” I tell her. 

            The good thing about running an indie store that belongs to you is that you get to determine what goes on the shelves and what doesn’t. People have asked me about those books and I refer them to good ole’ Amazon. 

            “I sold her my copy. For the store, of course.”

            I shake my head at Casey. “Keep the money. You deserve it.”

            Sometimes I get to HH and think it’s gotta be made up. This isn’t the era of You’ve Got Mail where you have competing bookstores being part of a plot. I occasionally go into Barnes & Noble to browse and it’s nothing like the B&N I used to know and love. A quarter of their store is now full of toys and products for kids, ones that aren’t books. Their CD & DVD collections are just plain sad. They still carry the same old same old but I see a lot of people browsing and sipping coffee and killing time and checking out things they’ll eventually order on Amazon. 

            Why in God’s green earth did I open a bookstore? 

            And how the hell did I just come up with that corny cliche? 

            I never say God’s green earth so where’d that come from? 

            “Oh, and hey—Mark—that editor—he came in yesterday looking for you,” Casey tells me before I head back into the office. 

            “Oh, yeah? Any reason why?”

            “Said he had a good story to tell you,” she says with a grin. “He said he’ll stop by today.”

            “Hope he does,” I tell her. 

            I need a little levity today. 

 **

            Mark arrives right when the rain begins to start coming down outside. He proceeds to start telling me the story even before I’ve said hello. I catch bits and pieces

            “—went beserk—craziest thing I’ve ever seen—ranting about spies and sorcery—“

            “Woah,” I tell him. “Slow down.”

            “Sorry.” Mark wipes the raindrops off his half-balding head. “It was messed up. All about this book he was reading.”

            “What was it?” 

            Mark looks around. Again, this sort of secret agent thing going on. I don’t get it. Nobody is in the bookstore anyway. 

            “The book is terrible,” he says. “Some attempt at horror. But really lame.”

            “It was so bad it drove your boss to lunacy.”

            Thunder cracks outside. Seriously. Right on cue like a vampire movie. 

            “Jack told me it was the manuscript,” Mark says in a grave voice and look. “But he said it was because the story was too similar to his own life. Like the writer knew him. Or worse—and this is the wacky bit he told me right before he started to yell and get loopy—Jack said the book was like reading a novel that had been written by himself. Sloppy and messy but completely and thoroughly auto-biographical.” 

            I laugh just to try to get rid of the sudden spooky vibe in the store. “Maybe the writer did his or her homework, you know? They wanted to appeal to Jack—who he is and what he’s like.”

            Mark’s face appears to darken even in the bright lights of the store. 

            “Jack looked me in the eye and said this—just like this—just like I’m saying it now—‘he knows the darkest things I’ve done—the things I’ve never told anybody’. Then he proceeded to go One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. “

            Now I’m really curious about the manuscript. “What happens in the story? Weird stuff?”

            Mark nods but doesn’t say anything. 

            “That weird?” 

            Again, he nods. 

            “I might have to check that out. Have any spare copies?” 

            “Again, it’s another bizarre thing,” Mark says. “The manuscript—all 450 printed pages—it’s gone. And Jack sure didn’t take it with him. He couldn’t have concealed a stick of gum.”

            In my mind, I hear Mark’s voice repeat Jack’s words in an epic sort of warning. 

            “He knows the darkest things I’ve done—the things I’ve never told anybody.”

            Maybe Jack had been reading Kafka and had embraced the whole “follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly” sort of thing. And his obsession included streaking. 

            The street outside looked as if someone had turned off the afternoon light switch. 

            “So, how ‘bout them Cubs?” I ask, trying to light a little candle of optimism. 

            “I hate baseball,” Mark said. 

**

            I have this dream later that night. After I’m standing for too long in a bar that’s too crowded drinking beer that’s too expensive and cheering on the game a little too much. Later, after I don’t remember being driven home or walking into my apartment or passing out on my bed, I dream a dream for me and the rest of Chicago. Really not for me but for Chicago and the rest of the world. 

            I imagine the fourth pitch being thrown to a Cubs player and being nailed. Popped and going and going and gone over the center field wall. Hit as if it’s a normal thing we do. Struck as if there’s no way I’m striking out. 

            Barely able to sit down and catch our breath and boom—it’s 1 to 0. 

            Then I picture a Cool Hand Luke at the plate, but this one not being the sure thing with the Indians but being our guy. 

            The dream scorches and burns as the Cubs suddenly get two more runs. Then one more. It’s 4-1. It’s 5-3 with the Cubs up but the momentum switching after the elder statesman catcher of the Cubs (which means at 39 he’s ancient) makes an error and gets punched in his mask with a wonky pitch that allows two runs to score. 

            Then the elder statesman David Ross steps up to hit his first home run in a World Series. 

            What a dream. 

            I don’t want to wake up. 

            If I could pick any player who resembled me and my life, it would be David Ross.  He’s someone who’s played on 21 different professional teams at varying levels. 

            6-3. It’s meant to be. 

            I know it’s a dream because these games don’t work out this way. This is the Cubs we’re talking about. And I must’ve gotten really drunk to be thinking this way. 

            It’s all going well and then the bottom of the 8^th. The 8^th. They’re talking about the controversy about this pitcher and that pitcher and yada yada yada and all you can see is the giant of a pitcher suddenly not doing so well. First a double allowing one run. Then a two-run homer. 

            The Cubs have their chance in the 9^th and so do the Indians but this is a fever dream brought on by IPA beer and shots. 

            Then there’s a rain delay. And I think that’s when I realize it’s not a dream. A lot of people will reveal that’s when they fold in the towel because it’s too late and they have to work the next day. The truth I think is they just don’t believe. The rain—that same rain falling down on the store earlier this afternoon—has arrived. The clouds have covered the hope the Cubs faithful carried. 

            It’s been an 108-year drought. The Cubs are cursed. 

            I’m in my apartment watching the flatscreen TV when it happens. The 10^th inning. The one everybody’s going to remember. The one where they go up by 2 and then narrowly win by 1. 

            I’m woozy and tired and already feel hungover even though the day isn’t finished. I wonder how I got here and when I did and who took me.         

            The last pitch and popup and out and then the celebration begins and the fireworks go off outside and the world seems like it’s about to end and then the door behind me opens and someone’s asking me if they won but it’s obvious. Except it’s not obvious because I’m dreaming again now, picturing a pretty face approaching, watching with eyes that just woke up. 

            I don’t think I picked her up in the bar. 

            The pictures you recognize her she haunts you she comes out on nights like this. 

            Redrum and Holy Cow. 

            Jack Torrance and Harey Carey. 

            I blink and this vision is gone. 

            I blink again and see the old-timer being interviewed. David Ross. This sage. The Ben Kenobi on the team. 

            He’s a mirror, at least in my vain, idiotic mind. I want to believe that I can try, too, even if I’m 45. I want to believe a bank account doesn’t define me. I want to believe that despite all the errors that have happened to me—even ones I’ve done this morning and afternoon and night—I will still have the grace and the gumption to step up to the plate and try. 

            My bookstore. Good Lord. Every single hour there is trying. Day after day of trying. 

            Somewhere under a waterfall of spraying champagne, I fall asleep. 

            Surely the Cubs didn’t win the World Series. That would look ridiculous in a novel. Nobody would believe it. 

            I don’t.