Up in the Air

I lay down my fork. What’s eerie about Dwight’s hunch is just how close it might be to the truth given what I’ve been learning about my brain. If I didn’t know otherwise, I might share his doubts, but in fact I remember clearly how, when, and where the idea first arose. His name was Paul Ricks and I’d just helped fire him from Crownmark Greeting Cards in Minneapolis. When I showed him his master self-inventory, which rated high for artistic talent and enterprise, he tore the thing into strips and said “You’re kidding, right? You really believe I can leave two decades of copywriting, roll up my sleeves, hide out in my garage, and hatch a whole new existence?” To which I said: “If I didn’t, I couldn’t do this.” And Paul said: “Prove it.” And I said, “Tell me how.”

“You’re innocent, but you’re guilty, too,” Dwight says. “I’m deeply sorry, Ryan.” He salts his pork.

“Suspicion is not conviction. You’re way off base. My book seemed too good for a novice and so you dreamed this.”

“I had a tip,” Dwight says. “You mentioned one of my authors yesterday. Soren Morse, the aviator.”

“Aviator?”

“I’m doing his sophomore book. We talk quite frequently.”

I’m dumbfounded. There are layers to this thing . . .

“So I mention your book to him, because I’m proud of it, and Morse said that’s like The Basement, isn’t it? I searched the Net and came up with a synopsis, the best I could do since the book is out of print. Coincidence after shocking coincidence. I called the publisher, hunted down the editor, and got a fuller description. One example: the protagonist of the basement is unnamed.”

“Two characters without names is not the same name.”

“Over my head, that. Try this: a phrase from your book that appears nineteen times and also occurs in the subtitle to The Basement. ‘Perpetual innovation.’ ”

“No one owns ‘perpetual innovation.’ That’s like saying someone owns, I don’t know, ‘Get well.’ Morse put you onto this scavenger hunt?”

“Someone would have.”

“He’s my someone. Every single time.”

“How exactly do you know each other?”

“Distantly but intimately,” I say. “I’m tired of explaining how well I know people—no one respects my answers. I just know people. Hundreds. Thousands. From sea to shining sea. And no, I don’t think I coined that. See this napkin?”

“In detail.”

“I’m seeing the same napkin. You and me, both sane. The here and now.”

“Let me finish,” Dwight says. “I hadn’t quite lost faith yet. There’s a collective mind, it’s very real. I can’t name one, but I’m aware of major inventions that appeared only days apart on different continents. This was like that, I hoped. I knew you traveled, so you’re exposed to the ether more than most of us, the cultural cyclotron, the particles. Bombarded by particles. Then I called the author. At nine. This morning.”

“Pause, pause, pause. Cheap drama. Spit it out.”

“He knows you. You had a run-in once, he claims. He also distinctly recalls the conversation in which he announced his intention to write The Basement. Name of Ricks? A Minnesotan? You’re all midwesterners.”

I push back my plate and look over at a wall of injection-molded coats of arms. Made-up legacies, random heraldry. My father bought one once off the TV, the genuine Bingham family crest, authenticated. Stags and lions and eagles and battle-axes; we were dragon slayers from way, way back, and my father bought it all, poor man. He was living alone by then, stalked by private Rockefellers, but the crest put a bounce in his step, aligned his spine. He stowed his TV tray and started eating downtown. He detailed his Monte Carlo. All the crest. Two weeks of nobility that I’m glad he had, but then he went for a haircut with old Ike Schmidt and there it was, over the comb jar of blue Barbicide. A gentle being—he let Schmidt go on dreaming of Round Table banquets, ale from hollow horns. He kept his peace and let himself be shaved.

I’m not up to his level. I have to fuss and struggle. “The concept was both of ours. It was simultaneous.”

“Weak. Two objects can’t occupy one space.”

“Ideas aren’t objects. He went out and really wrote it? He left the strong impression that was my job.”

“What are they, then?”

“Ideas? Do we have to play these games right now? I just spent a year investing in my future, dictating notes from here to Amarillo and all points in between, and now you tell me this Ricks, this jobless loser, who scored in the lousy twentieth percentile for follow-through and reliability—facts I concealed from him because I’m decent—strolled back to his sad little house and scooped me blind. When was this rip-off published, anyway?”

“Four years ago.”

“He worked fast. Did this thing sell?”

“Hardly at all, but it wasn’t pushed correctly. Scattershot marketing. Hangdog author’s photo. A golf publisher that went out on a cute limb.”

“That’s good news, at least.”

“I’ll do much better. This is Advanta’s sweet spot. We’ll swat this ball.”

“Incredible. You’re one nervy little fatso. Is that a weave or plugs? Dyed beaver? Orlon?”