Literary Adventure by Alex Z. Salinas

Here’s how it went down: S bought another book, placed it on the backburner (which is to say, on top of a stack of books piled on top of another stack of books), and let a week slug and zigzag its way into history before realizing there was another book he’d wanted to buy instead of the latest backburner. S returned to the bookstore and exchanged the backburner for the other book and caroused the bookstore with the exchanged book tucked under his arm (as was his manner with books) before receiving a shocking call that totally monopolized his attention regarding a writer friend whose nearly unrecognizable body had been found washed ashore on the bayfront in Corpus Christi. Whatever had occurred was lost, for now, in the waterlogged anatomy of the deceased. Hey, we’re setting up a tribute in celebration of his life, X said over the phone. We know how much you meant to him. Come out and read some poems, yeah? Something felt disingenuous about the invitation. Cold and clinical. Hellooo? X said. Yeah, go ahead and slot me in, man, was what S answered. When he got home, he realized he’d absentmindedly left his exchanged book at the bookstore, probably in the poetry section or its adjacent neighborhood, the romance section. The phone call had put everything outside the phone call on the backburner. The bookstore, although remodeled to cozy delightfulness with a fully staffed café, was a stressful half-hour drive for S, so he decided to chalk up the neglected exchanged book as a tolerable financial loss and repurchase it, the newly released bestseller, at the grocery store, where newly released bestsellers are also found. He did this after work the next day. The following day, S received a parcel in the mail—the very same book, but a signed edition, gifted by none other than his partner, G, presently making pitstops across Central and South America to drum up clients for her consulting business that had recently taken off like a rocket. She’d attached a postcard that read: There is something here so old that absorbs the entire soul. Thinking of you, drowned & lovestruck. How utterly thoughtful of G, and graceful. Can’t spell graceful without G. And the truth was that S almost never worried about G, a formidable woman with ramrod posture and auburn hair. But “almost never” is incalculably far from “never,” and something about G’s note, its desperate undertone, worried S—worried him gravely. Anything could happen to her out there, down there, outside the picket fence, which is to say: there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. When S snapped out of it (which was for the best), he quickly remembered that he was now the embarrassed owner of two unnecessary copies of the same book—three if you count the abandoned one, whose paid-for status suddenly irritated him on the level of a gnat erratically orbiting your head; it posed no real threat but being alerted to its peskiness made you think of nothing else (which is to say, put everything else on the backburner). Slightly on edge, which imbued him with a reckless sense of nothing to lose, S drove for half an hour back to the bookstore in search of his third copy. Within minutes he spotted it smack-dab in the top-center shelf of the—wait for it—true crime section, sticking out like a hitchhiker’s thumb, receipt and coupon inside. By God, S said, either nobody works here, nobody buys books at a bookstore, or something fishy is going on, boys … something more than meets the eye. For the first and last time in his existence, S had on his person three copies of the same book that had kicked up dust out of nowhere! (The signed edition and copy No. 3 were in his trusty backpack.) S caroused the store again with the rediscovered copy No. 2 tucked under his arm. (He was all too aware of the absurdity that he did [and did not] sign up for, which blocked any sense of déjà vu [if such a phenomenon can be prevented] being back at the bookstore for the same book.) S being S, he soon found another alternative book and promptly transacted another successful exchange, then decided to save the other pending exchange for a rainy day. (Best to play it conservative so that the bookstore clerks wouldn’t think him an obsessive freak.) Speaking of rainy day, it did rain on his journey home; he struck a pothole filled with rainwater and for a few stupefying seconds his vehicle hydroplaned beyond control. Luckily for S, it was in his cards to arrive home, inside the picket fence, in one piece, albeit slightly rattled. (Nothing to lose is an idiom for idiots, he concluded.) Luckily for S, his escapade was just what the doctor ordered to snap his spell of writer’s block. He pulled from his recent experience and wrote the story exactly as it transpired, or how he remembered it transpiring, leaving out the names of characters and the title of the mischief-making beach read that caused (him) a certifiably dangerous literary adventure lacking rhyme, reason or morals. Or so it seemed. It was the final piece he needed to complete his manuscript of stories, brought out the following year by a university press, hallelujah. (A book-shaped object, S liked to kid.) R, a longtime scholar and prolific literary critic with a predilection for high praise and backhanded compliments, reviewed (without being asked) his acquaintance’s new collection, deeming it an impressive and occasionally mesmerizing work—but with one significant misfire: “Literary Adventure,” the story about the thrice-purchased, twice-exchanged book, a runaround which R dismissed as “a frivolously audacious and far-fetched tale about the perils of too much privilege and safety by an author who writes beguilingly like an unhinged Cyclops from X-Men.” An insult wrapped in a compliment wrapped in a compliment still tastes like an insult burrito, S thought. He would never learn that the university press that published his book had turned down R’s manuscript of stories, calling it “frivolous and far-fetched.” G was the first person, naturally, to text S about R’s otherwise stellar book review. She was traveling abroad for business yet again. You’re dazzling, she said, and you’re my unhinged X-Man. All mine. S had the urge, selfish and insane, to tell G the truth, a year later, about his murdered friend, about X’s off-putting invite to read poetry in celebration of a writing life that ended up a corpse bloated with sinister secrets (a celebration for which S did not turn up, ultimately), and about his recurring nightmare—a figure wearing a headdress, sometimes a top hat, face concealed, traversing down the steps of Chichén Itzá, slow and assured, coming for G, coming to take her away from his dreams, forever—but he knew if he did that, and if something happened to G, something bad, an earthquake, the earth opening up and swallowing her whole, wherever she was, he’d never forgive himself. Never. Hell, I can hardly forgive myself now, he thought. He had his reasons for concealing from her certain facts, but he was starting to get the notion that something was being concealed from him. Something far worse. Then something weird happened: Days following the publication of R’s book review, S was alone in a ramen shop, swirling chicken broth with a fork, when suddenly he recalled a joyous but outlandish news headline from a handful of years back: Put a Fork in It: Rune Killer Caught, in reference to a bona fide serial killer with a predilection for using married-female flesh to carve with his fork terrible work in the otherwise docile—inconspicuous—suburb in which S and others slumbered. He dreamt he visited K, dropping at his prison doorstep a pressing problem which required a swift solution. What should I do? S asked K, the desperation palpable. And there was only one answer: Use a fork. And like that the fork was in his grip, and he was alerted to K’s pale hands and blackened nails, and like that the slasher dissolved into thin air in his own candlelit holding cell. It wasn’t long after the dream when S shot R a generous email inviting him to dinner, his treat, for the fantastic book review. R chose the spot, and at the restaurant, where the waitstaff were garbed in all-white (not by choice), S allowed R to give him his flowers. It was an act he knew he’d rehearsed time after time. Time after time. How’s it feel, asked R (his lips stretched wolfishly), to be a rockstar? S turned over the word R had deployed in his review so cavalierly: unhinged. Clenched his fork hinged on one job, and one job only: stabbing. Pretty cool, he said. Now I want you to enjoy your meal, my friend—really savor it.

Alex Z. Salinas is the author of four poetry collections, a book of stories and a novel, The Dream Life of Larry Rios. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.