EVAPORTORIUM

Escape from the windy storm and tempest.

Jim is pacing in haste. He doesn’t realize he is frantic because he cannot see himself from above as others do, the arcing and circling vultures surgically erasing the cooing doves. But he does feel small. Especially in his thoughts tonight, and he's on display in the big room. Jim recently published Evaportorium, the new great American novel.

Jim is all the rave, the talk of the town, the cat’s meow, and so much more.

He is a contemporary and soulful Kerouac, a Salinger heir apparent, more Hemingway than Hemingway, and earthier, headier, and more pastoral than Faulkner.

He is a prophet for a lost generation.

He is a southern scoundrel, tobacco-eyed, and grand and sweet as Georgia tea.

The literary critics, the hangers and wannabe, the swooning porcelain-faced high-class lip-smackers, and greasy Village creepy crawlies chase their shoulder-to-shoulder moment. If only he would imprint his scent on them. Oh, to dream of a narcotic orgasm of that magnitude and magnificence. It would all make sense then.

He was all that rolled into one. Jim was.

And then. Poof.

The past month was a blizzard of radio interviews, double-page spreads in the Times and New Yorker, glad-handing, backslapping, Hollywood high-fives, late-night green rooms, and cocktail party banter and hijinks ending at dawn. He even bedded a B-level actress, the curvy babe from one of the chainsaw flicks. Or it could be Fast and Furious 5. Jim is hazy on the details, a hangover his loyal companion. He never buys a drink and almost meets Taylor Swift.

Tonight, another in a never-ending series of unveilings, is his first public reading, and the humming is low electric, snapping and cracking. He hates to read, but Jim does. Hates to write, actually. But here he is, and his notes for this blood bath are incomplete. He has a thread. But not a complete thought. With no time left to fret, he begins and walks to a small podium. The room settles as if Zeus, strung out and wearing mismatched socks, has stumbled down the mountain. He begins.

Iniquity is easy.

I look at you. That’s what I see.

I see me, too. We are planted in the same rocky soil.

My heart is wrecked. I am afraid to die.

Fear and trembling visit me, and horror overwhelms me.

I dream of wings. I am a dove.

I would fly away and be at rest if it were so.

I would wander far off and remain in the wilderness.

With that, Jim closes the small leather-bound folio and exits the stage, momentarily pausing to offer a sorrowful wave, sweeping his hand in a pitiable arc. He vanishes behind the billowing curtain. The audience fidgets, extends, retracts its steel claws, and shifts about, some murmuring, others swinging their bug-eyed faces side to side, searching. The assembly becomes a small sea agitating itself against an eroding shore.

Eventually, they conclude that Jim is not returning, and they carry that emptiness home.

How could they not have seen it coming?