FICTION: TOJ, Chapter 5: The Foreigner

FICTION: Excerpt from Transit of Jupiter, Chapter 5: The Foreigner

Ten minutes later she was leaning back against his balcony rail for the first time.  Jared handed her a coffee.

 “So you write stories,” said Rose. “Un romancier.” 

Jared mused that the French word for novelist implied something illicit, like vagabond lover, but was merely derived from the Latin romanus: a story told in a vulgar tongue (i.e. Roman, not Latin). 

“What do you write?” she asked.

He disappeared into the apartment and returned with a copy of The Trifecta Tango.  He explained how he’d had modest success with his first novel, a half-fictionalized account of his youth growing up near the Belmont race track where his father was a cook. 

“Was it a bestseller?” she asked.  The last word she said in English.

“No, but it had just enough success to justify my not working a regular job for a year or so.”  The characters were based on the guys who’d hung around the track.  Gamers and fast talkers who always had an idea to make millions, especially after three or four drinks.   “It starts like this. First chapter: my main character wakes up at 7:07.  That morning he sees sevens everywhere. He catches the seven bus downtown.  He gets off the bus and sees a bank sign; the temperature reads seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit.  A license plate passes…  more sevens.  So he gets the idea that he’s going to play the number seven horse at the track that day.”

Jared stopped and folded his hands.

“So,” asked Rose.  “Does the horse win?”

He turned his head slowly, his lips quivering with satisfaction.  “No, it finishes seventh.”

She smiled. He offered the book to her.

“My publisher wanted me to write a whole series at the horse track. I’m not convinced.  A wise man once said, ‘Never make your first book an autobiography.  Because then what do you do for an encore?’” 

He was grooving on the silences between each exchange.  Feeling alpha state pure, free and poised in the crisp air.  He inspected his neighbor.  She sipped her coffee without hurry.  Did she have to go to work? Where did she work?  Was she interested in him?  Was she just passing time? 

“I’m working on a second book,” he said.  “Trying to, anyway.”  He pointed inside toward a white board.  “When I’m working on a story, that thing’s full of stick-up notes.”

Rose peered into the apartment.  “But it’s almost empty.”

“I know, that’s the point.”

From the kitchen counter his phone began ringing.  He excused himself and withdrew to the apartment to take the call. The display showed ELAINE CELL.  Jared looked to the balcony. His eyes oscillated between Rose and the TV: sultry body and Belucciesque curves; on the TV: Jean-Paul Belmondo crawling, bang-bang, across a Paris rooftop, just one slip-slide from disaster.  Outside, Rose’s auburn tresses shone beneath a golden aureole, reflecting one billion candlepower radiation of the sun’s photosphere.

He didn’t answer. The phone stopped ringing. He pocketed it and returned to the balcony. 

Rose asked, “So what’s your new novel about?”

Still high on this conversation, he sniffed the air of the spring morning and related the premise: the novel was set in a dystopian future in which everyone used aliases in their everyday life, but for administrative purposes, the government identified everyone by an IP Address. 

She wore a blank look.  “So, what?  People are robots?”

“No, they’re not robots.”  Jared wanted to get his book idea across to someone, anyone.  What was so hard to get?  “Humans are still humans.  But in the future, ethnic minorities are grouped into the same subnets, you know, for easier mind control.  And entire populations can be controlled through commands sent over the net.  Total suppression is made easier by sending out ‘updates’ that can stir people to riot, or quash revolutions.”

She made a face.  “That sounds pretty obscure.”

Jared frowned.  “That’s what people keep telling me.”

“Just because something’s obscure doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Jared started to smile, thinking that was a compliment, then realized it wasn’t.   He appraised Rose more closely. 

She said, “If they can send out updates to everybody, maybe they could just erase the whole population’s memories.  Or just remove the parts of their memories they don’t want people to keep?  Why would they bother with the rest?”

Jared was silenced.  He felt like a novice again. 

An idea popped into his head. 

“Do you have plans for tonight?  I’m going to my editor’s place across the Seine.  A cocktail party.  Would you like to come?”  

“What about your wife?” Rose asked.

Jared’s stomach burned.  He looked up to the sky. “She’s on a work trip.  We could just go as friends.  Acquaintances.”

A long moment passed:  Rose staring off into the short distance and Jared trying to pry into those thoughts.  From his pocket his phone beeped.  Elaine had sent him a message:

You missed my call. Pack your bags.

Saturday you’re meeting me in Italy.

Check your email for details. 

Love you, E.

Rose calculated him.  “You know what I think?”

Jared forced his eyes away from the phone and steeled himself for a withering judgment.

Rose said, “I think maybe you need a new subject.”

“What,” whispered Jared.

She had the elfin grin of a twelve year-old.   “For your book.”

“Oh, really.  And what would my subject be?”

Her expression deepened.  Her eyes relaxed but the smile held, like a pleased child who had just captured a butterfly in a jar.

“You should write a story about me.”