Eleven Twenty-Three Read online

  Eleven Twenty-Three

  Eleven Twenty-Three

  Midpoint

  Eleven Twenty-Three

  Jason S. Hornsby

  Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

  Copyright 2010 Jason S. Hornsby

  www.PermutedPress.com

  Ruminations and Acknowledgements

  The List seems to have gotten longer this time around.

  First, I would like to thank Jacob Kier, my publisher that never sleeps; and also, my brilliant fellow undead junkie and editor, Travis Adkins. I’m honored to be a member of the Permuted family, though if we ever shared a surname it would probably be Manson.

  Again, I’m hugely indebted to those artists and humanitarians that came before me and who I will now feebly attempt to properly credit. Charles Bukowski, Bret Ellis, Koushun Takami, Sion Sono, Shinya Tsukamoto, Eric Steel, Charlie Kaufman, Chris Carter, Darin Morgan, Marc Etkind, James Shelby Downard, Charles Fort, Robert Anton Wilson, Sylvester Stallone (I’m being serious), Yumi Akashima, Akiko Noma, Richard D. James, Richard McKenna, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—your contributions to literature, film, music, and especially the human condition are immeasurable, and the world owes all of you a happy ending.

  From the Academy, I want to thank my fellow staff for everything they have done, and for playing the role of my second family for two years. Without your unwavering support, professionalism, and shoulders to lean on, I may not have been able to keep up with the gargantuan responsibilities of teaching all day and writing all night. Nor would I have wanted to. I’d also like to show appreciation to my partner in academic crime, Jessica Stone. If not for Jessica, I would never have taken this novel in the direction I did. I’m not sure if I adore or loathe her for that. Time will tell. From the same building, I’d like to thank my co-teacher and expatriate friend Joseph Haley for the surreptitious hallway chats, slurred late-night conversations, shoptalk, and Mortal Kombat tournaments. I hope you found happiness in Malaysia. Our next rendezvous will be somewhere in the smog.

  To my summer China friends, you may not ever read this, but you certainly helped provoke it. Our short time together in the Orient was among the most invaluable experiences of my life, and you have all made a permanent impact on me. Michael, Tony, Dennis, Andre and Mary, Susan, Frank, Xiaoyue—I dream of another overnight train and lukewarm Tsing Tao one day with all of you.

  I’m greatly in debt to my always excessive and often provocative group of Lakeland friends, whose over-the-top weekend adventures, political commentary, ghost hunts, two a.m. Moon Tower discussions, brash and decadent senses of humor, unwavering character and honesty, and total 2012 preparedness will certainly prove to be the inspiration of much nostalgia while I’m away. But not to worry: my move is only to expand our franchise. Shawn Nelson, Brian Corbett, Miles and JD (you’re my honorary Lakeland friends), Kyle Roman, Damon Devorss, Cindy and John Windsor, Clint and Stephani Tolbert, you guys from that local metal band I kind of like, and the rest of you characters—never stop hiding from the sun. Never.

  In Beijing, I’d like to give the following people a big awkward hug for their support, drinking games, speeches on the global transition toward socialism, and Mandarin lessons: Liam Holly, Whitney Rosenberg, Dustin Zagars, Winnie Zou, and especially my Jinlv. Thanks to all of you, I’m living in one of my own ridiculous novels.

  If not for the occasional monetary support, Sunday dinners, political arguments, reverse inspiration, and emotional turbulence of my family, this book would have been ten pages of notebook paper scribbles hidden away in my hall closet. Josh and Brandie, Dad and Chris, Grandma and Pops, and especially my Uncle Jeff…thank you so, so much. I promise that one day I’ll figure out what I’m doing with myself, and you will too.

  Strange and sad as it may be, I also feel hugely indebted to my extraordinary, supernaturally perceptive cat Ellis for his support during this difficult project. Too many times to count, Ellis’s unique and decidedly un-catlike ability to interpret and empathize with my weekly moments of melancholy and melodrama truly saved my life. He repeatedly put a halt to the production of this book by hopping into my lap while I was trying to write it, but I was never too busy for him, even if I was sometimes too busy for everything else. I could never love another cat in China, nor will I try.

  It would be unfair (not to mention boring) to leave out the following family, exes, and haunts from my acknowledgements, as your cynicism, hypocrisy, abandonment, betrayal, and slight insanity inspired me to burrow into my womb and abandon your world. To the Jessica franchise, the amoral friends, the bigots, the Nanluogu Xiang girls, the old unstable women, the Amazon literature professors, the various other former protégés that shall remain first-nameless, and anyone else who scanned the I-hate-you list looking for your anti-prestige—there’s nothing left to say. You are now…officially…forgotten.

  To God…thank you. I’m glad you make international house calls.

  I’d like to dedicate this novel to Natalie Ballard, a true soul mate and one of the most passionate and beautiful people I have ever known. She brings me Nyquil when I’m sick, loans me her collection of suicide notes, attempts to convince all of her Internet friends that my writing is interesting, and is much smarter than me to boot. This book only exists because of you, Natalie. Therefore it’s yours.

  Finally, to my hometown of Lakeland, Florida: I love you, but it’s over. Lake Mirror is pretty, the swans were a nice touch, and those Oysters Rockefeller at Shucky’s remain truly transcendent, but I want my key, my security deposit, and my gray jacket back (you can keep the railroad spike). I think we would both benefit from a change.

  Jason S. Hornsby

  Chinese New Year, 2009

  Beijing, PRC

  Document One

  “And in my dream the sky eats the airplane and the Western moon drains all hope like two unholy carnivorous ships that pass in the night.”

  Shanghai, PRC – San Francisco, California – Orlando, Florida

  Combined Populations at 10:05 PM GMT + 08:00 on Thursday, December 6, 2007: 19,862,186

  “Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them.”

  - Octavio Paz, El Laberinto de la Soledad

  “一般来说, 公司里刚刚从国外回来的年轻游客是最没有教养的.”

  - Jonathan Swift

  “Beyond this room, beyond this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at the desk that was not quite the same desk…lay an entire world of streets and people. What sort of world it was now, there was no telling.”

  - Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder

  10:22:04 PM

  The dead are all around us, I realize for the third time since they found my father yesterday, and continue staring.

  In the airport bar where my girlfriend Tara and I are pounding away overpriced Asian beers before our flight, I spot a man with a briefcase attached to his wrist by a long metal coil and thin handcuff about three tables away. He is illuminated in green-gray smoke-light from his own cigarette and the Yanjing Beer lamp burning above his head, and he methodically stirs around whatever the clear concoction is in his glass. Even from where we’re seated I can hear the ice crinkle and collapse into its own melted abyss. When he notices me leering at his wrist, at the silver handcuff wrapped tautly around it, I look back at Tara and pretend to be engaged in a conversation. When he resumes his attention on the soccer game playing on mute from above the bar, I commence gazing at him. I am in awe.

  I found out yesterday—of all days, it had to be yesterday—that because of the limited space in China, the dead are not usually buried. They are burned, cremated, and their dust is scattered into the air for the living to eventually inhale. Ex
cept not really. Although family and friends will always tell the government that they have cremated the body, this is often not the case. Those cash-strapped and others reticent to let loved ones burn will more often than not simply take the corpses of freshly deceased relatives away from town and dig a shallow grave somewhere along the way. Throughout China this happens, someone told Tara and me at the university today as we were rushing around trying to tie up the loose ends. Across the country, there are forgotten Asians buried just underneath our feet.

  Here, the dead truly inhere all around us.

  “What are you thinking?” Tara asks me.

  “About what?” I say, motioning at the sprite little waitress for another beer.

  “About anything, I guess.”

  “I’m thinking about what Nalan Minghui said at school earlier, about how the dead are buried all over the country and none of it’s marked.”

  “God, I was running around frantically trying to get our shit together before the flight. I don’t even remember.”

  “Well, Nalan Minghui said it.”

  “So why are you thinking about that?” Tara asks.

  The man in the gray suit, black tie, and handcuff notices my gaze yet again, but this time we make eye contact for several sweat-inducing seconds. Something seems to occur to him as he looks at me, and whatever it is causes his facial features to soften and his grip to relax on the empty glass he’s holding. I cringe but cannot look away until he smiles, tips his drink at me, and begins to stand up. He doesn’t look any older than forty, but winces like an old man when he struggles to his feet.

  “I…guess…I was just thinking…” I am lost in my own terrified barroom reverie, watching as the man saunters over to the counter to order another clear drink, and smiles politely as he tosses down a bill for 50 Yuan.

  “Were you thinking about your father?” Tara asks. “Is that what brought the dead Chinese thing up? Because that makes a lot of sense, actually—”

  “Well, I wasn’t thinking about my father—I was trying to save that awful thought process for the plane ride back to the States—but I suppose I can think about it now, if you’d prefer.”

  “Don’t be a dick, Layne. I was just asking. You’ve been really quiet about it since you found out last night. I was just trying to give you the opportunity to discuss your thoughts on going home under these circumstances.”

  “Take it easy, Sunshine. You can turn the psychology degree off for now. I’m fine.”

  The bartender hands the man another drink, and he immediately begins heading not back to his own table, but toward us, toward Tara and I at our little corner underneath the mirror. I try not to let him know just how aware I am that he is approaching us, but we match eyes again and I force a welcoming nod, despite the beads of sweat materializing underneath my arms and at the bottom of my spine.

  “People die,” I say, turning away from my girlfriend. “Hello there.”

  “Good evening,” the man says in a dignified West Coast accent. “How are you two doing?”

  “Just great,” Tara says, casting me a quizzical glance. “How are, um, you, sir?”

  She suppresses a giggle. I am again reminded that Tara is not entirely used to the adult world yet. She had just finished college a few months before we left.

  “I’m fine, thanks. But listen, I was just wondering—may I join you two for a few minutes? It’s just that I’ve been here waiting for this flight for a good while now and haven’t spoken to any other Americans in days—”

  “No, absolutely, come join us,” I say, pointing at the free chair just behind the briefcase attached to his right arm. “Have a seat. My girlfriend and I always love the chance meeting with another expat.”

  Tara gives me a look of incredulity. Her expression is code for: Is this normal? I shrug, not knowing the answer.

  The man sets his drink on the table, pulls over the chair, and sits down gingerly in it, as if the metal legs will deform and collapse under his brisk weight. Then he delicately rests the briefcase on the floor directly next to his heel and brings his right arm—the one with the handcuff attached at his wrist—up to grab his spirit. He raises his glass for a toast, and as he does so the metal coil clinks against his chair. I look away from the sound.

  “A toast,” he says. “To chance encounters. Gan-bay.”

  “Gan-bay,” Tara and I repeat in a way that sounds as if we are asking a question, and we clink our own tall mugs of half-drank beer against his full glass. We drink solemnly and I’m pretty sure Tara wants this man to leave.

  “By the way,” he says, “my name is Scott. Jonas Scott.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Scott,” I say, hoping he will correct me and instruct us to call him Jonas. He doesn’t. A scattered few of the Chinese bar tenants cheer at a goal being made on the TV above the bar. “This is my girlfriend Tara Tennille, and I’m Layne Prescott.”

  “So nice to meet you two, Layne and—and, um—Lydia?”

  “No,” Tara says brusquely. “It’s Tara. My name is Tara.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, sitting back hard against his seat and wiping away a single droplet from his neck using the free hand. “I’m losing my hearing, I think. It’s Tara, right?”

  “Right…Tara.”

  “I apologize,” Mr. Scott says. “It’s just a little loud in here, is all.”

  “No problem,” I say for both of us, attempting to gauge Tara’s demeanor. “So where are you headed tonight, Mr. Scott?”

  “San Francisco at eleven twenty-three.”

  “Wow, what a coincidence,” Tara says. “That’s where we’re headed too. And then we have a connecting flight back East. Where are you going after San Francisco?”

  “Nowhere,” he says, but does not add anything to his statement, and I peer across the bar as a middle-aged German couple discreetly slips their pubescent son a sip of their beer.

  “We’re heading home for the holidays,” Tara says. “In Florida.”

  “Where do you two live in Florida?”

  “We live in this little beach town south of St. Augustine and north of Daytona called Lilly’s End.”

  “Oh? Lilly’s End?”

  “It’s where we grew up,” I chime in. “It’s quaint like a Norman Rockwell painting but just as boring. It’s one of those bona fide nursing home towns where old people from Michigan and Indiana come to die.”

  “Come on, Layne, it’s not that bad,” Tara interjects predictably. “It really isn’t, Mr. Scott. Lilly’s End is a nice place to live.”

  “I’m sure it’s a charming little town,” he says, but with a slightly menacing grin, as if he has seen how dreadful Lilly’s End is with his own eyes and knows Tara is simply wistful for home right now and therefore full of shit.

  “Have you ever heard of it?” I ask.

  “Actually,” Mr. Scott says, “I think I have. Didn’t some surveyors accidentally dig up some Indian artifacts or something there not too long ago? It made the news?”

  “Incredible,” I say. “I’m pretty impressed. Yeah, that was us, in fact. Right before we left they found a large stone clock or something in the spot where they planned to build a new post office. From what my mother’s been telling me in her e-mails, the archaeologists called out there hadn’t figured out what the spirals in the center are yet, and so the city planners don’t want to move it.”

  “Maybe they should leave it be and just build the post office somewhere else,” he says quietly, taking a gulp of his drink. “Maybe they should not look any further into the matter and just leave it where it sits and forget about it.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Tara says, nodding.

  “It seems to me that the world would be a much better place if we just left the myths alone sometimes and forgot about rationalizing everything. Some events are better left unexplained, or better yet, explained in some kind of obscure, Fortean manner. Things are much more interesting that way.”

  “I’d agree with tha
t. I miss having the Loch Ness monster myth,” I say, realizing how stupid what I just said was but remaining unable to stop myself when I add, “That clock or whatever it is will probably mean something much more prosaic and mundane than what we all imagined it to. It will turn out to be some kind of agricultural chart or something far less exciting than what the townsfolk will project. I say just let it sit there and perplex us forever.”

  Mr. Scott does not respond, just stares down at the case on the floor. Tara inspects her lap and picks at a small white bump on her jeans that cannot be scraped away by her fingernail. There is a moment of quiescence between the three of us. Nervous swallows of beer and frantic glances around the bar ensue.

  “So uh, what brought you two to Shanghai?” Mr. Scott finally asks us. His metal coil sounds like a spinning roulette wheel when it slides carelessly against his chair as he drinks.

  “Actually, we’ve both been teaching English in Suzhou now for the past four months. At Soochow University.”

  “Very nice,” Mr. Scott says. “I’ve been told the market for English teachers here has swelled a great deal in the past couple of years.”

  “But not the pay, unfortunately,” Tara adds.

  “Where were you two again? Suzhou?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Venice of the Orient, they call it. Beautiful city. I’ve read that the most stunning women in Asia live there, as well.”

  “I don’t think all that much of them,” Tara says, chugging from her glass of beer. I take a large gulp of my own but swallow only pangs of regret and traumatic flashbacks.

  “But that’s what they say, anyway,” I throw in.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, it’s pretty early in the month,” Mr. Scott begins. “Aren’t you two going home for the holidays a bit…prematurely?”