The Fictional Man (28 page)

“He said something to me. I didn’t really understand it at the time – I understand it a little more now, but I still don’t know if I’ve forgiven him for it. Maybe I have.” Bob sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “
‘Good characters grow, Bob.’
That’s what he told me.”

Niles could see the tears glistening in his eyes.

“
‘Good characters grow.’
”

The car sped on through the driving rain.

T
HEY STOPPED FOR
lunch at a sushi place in Sacramento.

“I’m not sure I want to eat raw fish,” Niles said, making a face.

“It’s not
raw fish,
it’s sushi. Jesus.” Bob was looking over his shoulder, trying to judge the parking distance. “You’re hopeless, you know that? Look, how about this – we eat here and I’ll let you drive for a while. I know you’ve been salivating over the damned thing all the way up.”

Niles raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure? You don’t want to retain your right to turn us around and go home?”

“I can still run us off the road,” Bob said, chuckling. “And anyway, I’m getting a little tired. There’s only so much interstate I can take.”

“Still,” Niles muttered, “I’m not sure. I’ve never eaten sushi before.”

“Neither have I,” Bob grinned. “Come on, try something new for once.”

“I’ve tried enough new things this week,” Niles muttered darkly, and after that he had to tell Bob everything – about Liz, about the two times he’d been over to her apartment, the strange game they’d played. How he’d left it.

He didn’t mention Danica Moss.

“She sounds fun,” Bob said, shrugging and digging into his salmon skin rolls. “She sounds like just what you need, if I’m being honest.”

Niles frowned, poking suspiciously at a chicken teriyaki with his chopstick. “How so?”

“Well,” Bob smiled, “for one thing, it might loosen you up a bit. Get you to be a bit less uptight about who gets to be ‘real’ and who doesn’t. I mean, this Liz –”

“I don’t know her real name,” Niles sighed. “I never got it.”

“You dark horse, you.” Bob rolled his eyes. “We’ll call her Liz. But find out her name, or take her up on her offer and make one up for her. Get a number with it.” He picked up an edamame and flicked it into his mouth with his thumb. “God, these are good. Anyway, this Liz – she came out of a real human womb like a god-fearing person, right? But she wants to be a Fictional. That’s the exact reverse of my situation. I mean, you see that, right?”

Niles shot Bob a look. “You’re saying if I said I thought you were real, you’d want to play kinky sex games with me?”

“If you just took me seriously for a second I’d definitely forgive you for the black eye,” Bob said, munching on another roll. “And maybe I’d want to start fresh. Not that I’m speaking for her here – I don’t have any particular insight into this girl’s mind. And you did treat her like shit, even if she has forgiven you.” He looked up at Niles, smiling. “She does sound fun, though. And probably not that serious about you, which might be another thing you need – unless you actually get off on hurting people, in which case you should probably stay single for, you know, ever.”

“God, don’t pull any punches,” Niles muttered, pushing his teriyaki away. Bob grabbed it and moved it to his side of the table.

“You want to know why else she’s perfect for you?” Bob said, picking up a piece of the teriyaki and trying it. He pushed it back to Niles, scowling. “You’re insane. It’s all that boiled beef or whatever you ate growing up – you can no longer taste real food. Eat it.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re insulting them, and you’re embarrassing me. Eat it.”

Niles blinked. “Is that
Indiana Jones
?”

“It feels transgressive. Like I stole his hat.” Bob grinned. “The other reason she’s perfect for you is that you’ve got things in common. In that she wants to be in a story where she’s the hero. And so do you.”

Niles frowned. “Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He picked up a bit of the teriyaki with his fingers and gave it an experimental nibble. Then a bite.

“Like Iyla said,” Bob smiled, “you’re always telling a story about yourself. A little on-going fiction where you’re the hero and everything you do is – well, not
right,
exactly, but at least sympathetic. You’re a good guy.”

“A good Joe,” mumbled Niles. Then he told Bob about the narration.

“That’s a little fucked up,” Bob said, cocking his head. “How long has that been going on?”

“Pretty much my whole life,” Niles replied. “Well, my whole working life. Although even at school I was doing it to an extent – I don’t know, maybe a lot of people do that when they’re teenagers...”

Bob ate his last roll. “You wanted to be fictional. A fictional character you could write and edit yourself, because that would give you control over your life.” He chuckled to himself. “Although what do I know, right? What does Ralph say?”

“I never told him about it.”

“He’d have come up with that exact same bullshit.” He looked Niles in the eye, mock-seriously. “One strike for me, I guess.”

“You should let me have one of mine back. Anyway, now the whole narration thing... it’s turned into these daydreams, these sort of little fantasies where I imagine everything just... going horribly. The worst possible outcome, or things that are just... I mean, yesterday I imagined getting so full of myself that I turned into a black hole and narrated an autobiography.”

“Wow.” Bob blinked. “You should write some of those down.”

Niles shook his head, finishing his teriyaki while Bob signalled for the bill. “So, you’ve proved you’re the new Ralph. What do you think it means?”

“Christ, don’t ask me. Maybe... I don’t know. Maybe you’re just sick of the story of Niles Golan, brilliant genius author and second coming of Shakespeare. Maybe it’s time to start the story of Niles Golan, not so much a prick.” He shrugged.

Niles smiled despite himself. “What the hell,” he said. “Maybe it is.”

A
S SOON AS
they were back on the road, Bob fell asleep – he seemed to pass out almost immediately – leaving Niles to drive the rest of the way up I-5 towards Redding. It wasn’t as much of a pleasure to be driving the Mercedes as he’d thought it would be, and after an hour and a half on the road, he found his eyelids drooping slightly, and the traffic noise becoming increasingly soporific. He really should have gotten some sleep himself. Still, he was sure he could tough it out.

The author, having made this grotesquely irresponsible decision, immediately fell into a dreamless slumber that lasted until the speeding car jumped the centre reservation and ploughed explosively into a bus filled entirely with screaming orphans and helpless kittens and puppies, which smashed in turn into a convoy of nuclear missiles.

A Public Service Announcement was immediately commissioned, entitled “Don’t be a Golan!” and starring a clone of Hitler in the title role.

Niles shook himself. Now that he thought about it, toughing it out probably wasn’t such a good idea.

Music, that was what he needed – either something really good, like Billy Joel, or something horrible like that new thing that sounded like robots ejaculating. He searched the dial, trying to keep the volume low enough not to wake up Bob. Wait – was that ‘Scenes From An Italian Restaurant’? It was!

Perfect.

He was still singing along, feeling much fresher, when the last chords faded out and the radio started on the traffic report, followed by news of the capture of the Sherlock Holmes Killer.

Niles turned it up.

“...breaking news at the top of the hour is that the Sherlock Holmes Killer is in police custody, and surprising nobody, it’s Sherlock Holmes! But what is surprising LA’s finest – and putting more than a little egg on their faces – is the news that the killer is the same Sherlock Holmes who, up until this morning, had taken charge of the investigation! Sounds to us like it’s ‘Sher Luck’ that the LAPD caught him! Meanwhile, Congress met again today on the matter of...”

Niles spun the dial. Next to him, Bob blinked sleepily. “What’s going on?”

“They’re saying Sherlock Holmes did it – the murders.” Niles replied, searching the radio for a dedicated news channel. He caught Bob’s look. “The
Classic
Holmes. The one who was on the TV in the bar.”

“You’re shitting me,” Bob said, and took charge of the dial. After a moment, he found a proper news channel, which told them the whole story.

M
ISTER
S
HERLOCK
H
OLMES
had, of late, been possessed by a desire common to humanity, but uncommon to the Fictional kind; the desire for progeny. Fictionals were, of course, sterile – the interbreeding of man and fiction was not something society felt it could permit – but Holmes had always been unconcerned with the flesh and its pleasures. To him, the problem was an intellectual curiosity, a fascinating and delightful puzzle. How could he, as a Fictional, reproduce? What would that mean for one such as him?

The answer came to him, as it often did, while playing the violin. He was a creature of story, a living story – and thus, his child must also be a story, one that would grow in the telling until a Fictional was gestated for the sole purpose of telling it. Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes was no writer of fictions. He could take notes, compile dossiers, even compose music – but he was, at the core, a creature of truth and certainty, who had removed all knowledge of the telling of stories from his mental attic in order to make room for more practical items. His imagination was used to divine the mechanics of crime, to imagine ways of murder that, as outrageous as they were, were not impossible – for once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth.

His imagination was for murder, then – so be it. His story would be a murder mystery, a mystery entirely centred around Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes would be both mother and father to this strange new child – for Sherlock Holmes would, in one form or another, play all the parts.

The first thing to do, as an author, would be to get literary representation; and Maurice Zuckerbroth was whispered of as the sleaziest agent in Hollywood. He – at least in Holmes’ version of events – lived up to his word, seeking out ways of gaining the rights to an upcoming murder spree, selecting a ghost writer who would punch up the somewhat dry style of Holmes’ reports into something worthy of
The Strand
of old.

The next stage was to secure his alibi – ‘Action Holmes,’ for whom he acted as friend and mentor, was of particular use in this, for he could be relied on to claim that Sherlock Holmes had been on set as an adviser for a full day of shooting. However, this included the time Classic Holmes spent hidden away in his trailer – a trailer which seemed to have only one entrance and exit, which no man could pass through unobserved; but which was also equipped, thanks to Holmes’ innate cunning, with a false floor through which the great detective could leave the set and back lot whenever he chose. A recording of his violin served to allay any of the second Holmes’ suspicions.

In this way he crept out to murder his first target, the most recently translated Sherlock Holmes – who, still enjoying the first flush of his fame, and a weekly presence on the television screens of the nation, presented the ideal way to gain immediate press attention. Having committed the grisly deed with a heavy quizzing-glass, Sherlock Holmes returned to his trailer via the secret entrance, ‘heard’ the awful news ‘for the first time,’ and rushed in front of the cameras, his Watson in tow, to find the clues he’d left behind and ensure the story of murder he had begun would reach the widest possible circulation.

Next, he killed Zuckerbroth, the agent, with a sword-cane – in stooping to blackmail the great detective, he had outlived any usefulness he might have had. (His wife, Aline Zuckerbroth, offered her own version of events, stating that Maurice had only been informed of Holmes’ plan on the night of his death, and had resisted corruption to the last drop of his blood. This became the official story after she threatened to sue anyone who printed the true one.)

The last to die was Sexton Blake, who had so agreeably made himself a suspect – and thus, as long as the cameras followed him around everywhere he went, a most tempting target. After all, the man was practically a Holmes, and the plan, such as it was, required the deaths of every Holmes; including, sadly, the original in the San Quentin gas chamber. As it was, his next attempt – on ‘Action Holmes,’ the 2009 model, who despite his natural imbecility was still a Holmes and thus far too close to divulging the truth – was a spectacular failure. ‘Action Holmes’ lived up to his nickname, and Sherlock Holmes the killer was delivered to the police, battered and unconscious.

An ignominious end for the world’s greatest detective! But not for his plans, or his strange dream of reproduction on the fictional plane; for the story was abroad, and gathering steam.

“W
ELL, FUCK,
”
SAID
Bob, shaking his head. “That’s it. For us, I mean. They’re going to build a new Guantanamo after that.” He rubbed his temples. “Christ, I’m tired. I feel like I’ve been up for days.”

He scratched his arm, staring out of the passenger side window. They were almost at Redding now, after a full afternoon spent listening to the news on different radio stations. Parts of it they were unable to believe – Bob couldn’t imagine any Sherlock Holmes going so completely round the bend, although he’d slept through a fairly convincing statement on the matter from Holmes himself, while Niles was on Aline’s side in the matter of Maurice Zuckerbroth agreeing to conspiracy to murder. “He’d go to the chair too if he’d been an accessory,” Niles said, shaking his head, “and besides, he just wouldn’t
do
it. He was never
that
sleazy.”

“We’re all going to the chair,” Bob yawned. “All us Fictionals, I mean. You real people are going to be just fine.”

“They’re not going to do anything,” Niles said, shaking his head. “Well, maybe they’ll pass a law against turning his murder spree into a film, or something. I could see that. And I can see the studio getting fined – which one was it, Altamont? – but they’re not going to put anybody in Gitmo. You’re just being paranoid.”