Unlike most people today, there was no political, health or social reason that led me to become a vegetarian; being born to Hindu parents automatically made me one.  Most Hindu children of my generation are raised vegetarian but as they grow older they shy away from the strict eating habits and begin to eat meat.  This usually happens when they move away to college because Mom isn’t providing tasty, vegetarian meals.  I personally have remained a vegetarian because I’ve realized that it is healthy and don’t mind spending extra time making a delicious, vegetarian meal as opposed to picking up a Wawa meatball sub.

This is not to say that I look down on those who’ve decided to ditch their vegetarian roots for quicker, simpler and hassle-free meals.  I am well aware that vegetarianism is not convenient, especially for someone who eats meat and has to provide accommodations to someone who doesn’t.  As a child, I was subjected to awkward situations when put in a room where everyone ate meat except me, and only meat was available to eat.  I would never speak up because at the time my immaturity, mixed with the feeling of being a nuisance to the host, would keep me quiet.  It was already bad enough that the other kids looked at my barely empty plate of side salad and olives and assume I had an eating disorder.  So, I’d go starve for the time being or eat something before I left from the comfort of my own kitchen.

Unfortunately, in my adult life, not much has changed.  There are still the awkward moments when attending conferences, fancy wine tastings or dining with parents of significant others, that bubble up the feeling of inconveniencing the hosts.  However in today’s world, it is quite surprising that these discomforts still exist.  We live in a world where more people are no longer vegetarians and vegans because of their religious choices, but because of their own decision to lead a healthy life and fight animal cruelty.  In addition to vegetarian and veganism, I’ve found that the uneasiness that I feel staring at a menu full of meat at a five-star restaurant also plagues the those who must lead a gluten-free way of life.  How horrible it must be for someone to have a food allergy, and also remain hungry, because of their self-consciousness of being different.

Of course you may think that I am exaggerating this feeling of shame when put in certain social food situations, so let me provide you with examples.  When I met my boyfriend’s father for the first time, we went to eat at Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse in Philadelphia.  I could have ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, guilt-free, but there was no meat-free item for me to eat.  So there I was, in an already nerve-racking situation eating a caprese salad as my entre while my boyfriend and his father had some variation of filet mignon.  What did I expect going to a steakhouse as a vegetarian?   See that wasn’t the bad part—it was more about not being able to suggest a different place to eat where everyone could be satisfied.  His father had made the reservations and informed us of them a few hours before we met.  For fear of being rude, I didn’t want to change the plans last second.  The feeling of wasting a seat in a steakhouse, that my friends would’ve killed to be invited to, took a couple months to recover from.

Another situation was a dinner party I attended at someone’s home.  The evening was filled with wine, laughter, and, for everyone except me, great food.  When we sat down to eat dinner, I quietly reminded the host that I did not eat meat and did not see anything I could eat.  She made a huge fuss apologizing over and over again.  Everyone started staring at me.  She told them all to wait 15 more minutes to eat while she cooked up something “special” to accommodate me.  When we finally sat down to eat, I had a plate full of heaping, buttered spaghetti.

There are obvious times when I have tried to avoid this type of situation by bringing my own food to cook.  One Fourth of July, my sister and I attended a barbeque with friends.  Expecting to have nothing to eat besides the pasta salads and fruit, we brought a box of veggie burgers.  The host was absolutely delighted that we had brought something to keep us full and happy; the guy manning the grill looked at us in disgust.  It was as though we were insulting him by asking him to cook a nonmeat burger.  In reality, we were the guests at his home!  Shouldn’t they have catered to all of their guests instead of us having to bring our own food to their home?  I couldn’t help but wonder who was being more impolite, the hosts or me?

Is it too much to ask for a host to accommodate to their guests?  Chelsea Clinton’s recent wedding menu has garnered a lot of press and comments on food blogs.  A self-proclaimed vegan with a gluten-allergy, Clinton chose to serve one meat dish (organic beef), and the rest was all vegan including her gluten-free cake.  Clinton even went as far as providing a color-coded map to guide her guests to the food tables where they would find the food that they enjoyed.  Many people have criticized her because she did not serve more meat dishes at her wedding full of carnivores.

When the tables are turned like this, it really gets me wondering why people are not accepting of other’s dietary choices.  Clinton is a vegan because she is trying to be healthy and practice the humane treatment of animals.  When a person who eats meat enters a situation where no meat is served, I don’t believe they have “nothing to eat.”  Their dietary restrictions do not include not eating vegetables, soy products, or lentils, they’re not being served anything unhealthy (for the most part), and no animal cruelty was endured bringing the food to the table.  Most vegetarians often provide a meat dish at their wedding, even though it goes against their core beliefs.  So why is it such an issue to provide a nonmeat dish that tastes good to a vegetarian?

I wish someone would write some kind of book that makes Oprah’s bestseller list about vegetarian/vegan etiquette.  That way, a guide would be available and we’d finally know who was being the polite one.  Should the guest anticipate that their dietary restrictions will inconvenience the chef and eat prior to attending an event?  Should the guest bring his or her own food to eat along with everyone else?  Or is the host always supposed to accommodate the guest? It’d be so nice if this could be all cleared up before I attend my next dinner party.  The overwhelming anxiety of eating with people is getting tiresome.

Sonal Patel is studying Communications in her fourth year at Drexel University. She is currently interning for the Drexel Publishing Group.

The Fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday. To me, and probably to all Americans, this day exudes a sense of freedom and feelings of pride and joy. Admittedly, in my elementary school and even high school days, that mainly meant freedom from school and rigid schedules more than in the political sense. Now at Drexel, the Fourth of July no longer embodies the lazy days of summer without school or work, but the holiday still offers that same excitement and serves as a reminder of how good we have it.

The way in which Philadelphia has celebrated the nation’s independence has changed over the years. As the birthplace of our independence, Philadelphia continues to lavishly celebrate the Fourth of July, as can be seen by the ten-day series of events that was held this year in honor of America’s birthday.

The first Independence Day celebration was actually July 8, 1776. The day was marked by the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. Bells and music were played in the background. During the first summer of independence, many towns held mock funerals for the king of England. This symbolized the death of the monarchy’s rule over the colonies and the birth of liberty. The next year, Independence Day was celebrated on the Fourth of July. Throughout the eighteenth century, Independence Day was celebrated with parades, speeches, and toasts. However, the day also provided a way for upcoming political leaders to discuss important issues the new nation still had to face, such as the rise of separate political parties.

As the nation entered the nineteenth century, Independence Day remained a serious holiday. By this time, the United States was much more populated and diverse. Abolitionists, women’s right activists, and other movements used the day as a political platform, arguing that they could not celebrate with the rest of the community because they were not granted the rights written in the Declaration of Independence. Traditions such as parades, picnics, games, and fireworks were also continued throughout the nineteenth century.

It was John Adams who wrote that this day “ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other,” but it was not until 1870 that Congress declared Independence Day a holiday. In 1938, Independence Day became a paid federal holiday, giving everyone the freedom to stay home and relax.

We are all familiar with how the Fourth of July is celebrated today, with parades, barbeques, fireworks, and with lots of food, drinks and music. Displays of red, white, and blue are common and American flags, balloons, and streamers are abundant. “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America” can be heard throughout the day, as well as other popular, patriotic-seeming anthems like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A” and Tom Petty’s “American Girl.”

This year, Philadelphia started the festivities early on June 25. At the Taste of Philadelphia event at Penn’s Landing, people sampled food from the region’s popular restaurants. A series of children’s events, “Go 4th and Learn,” opened the Franklin Institute and the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Tuesday, June 26 and Wednesday, June 27 respectively. Admission was free but on a first-come-first-served basis. At the Franklin Institute, children could interactively participate in a program about the Science of Fireworks, while at the Museum of Art children participated in art activities that focused on summer and Philadelphia scenery.

Another series, “Philly @ the Movies,” showed one movie per night from Monday through Thursday at outdoor locations including Penn’s Landing, LOVE Park, and Rittenhouse Square.

On July 2, an Independence Picnic was held for the public in Old City. Following American tradition, hotdogs were the main dish. Visitors could travel back in time in the historic district and meet characters such as Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross. Many toured Independence Hall to see where the Declaration of Independence was signed. Others visited the Betsy Ross House, which is fully furnished as it was during Ross’ time. And, of course, the Liberty Bell was surrounded by crowds of people. All of these destinations are free and open to the public year-round, but visiting on the Fourth of July would seem to reinforce a person’s patriotism.

The ten-day celebration concluded on the Fourth of July with several festivities throughout the day and into the night. Beginning at 10 a.m., Mayor Nutter started the day’s activities at a ceremony outside of Independence Hall. Following the ceremony was the Independence Day parade through Historic Philadelphia.

The United States turned 234 years-old this July. Birthday cake was definitely in order. Guests to the Independence Visitor Center could sample free cakes and other treats from Philadelphia’s own Tastykake.

Later in the afternoon, the party festivities were shortly interrupted to give way to the more serious Bell Tapping Ceremony. During this ceremony, descendents of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence honor their ancestors by tapping the Liberty Bell. Celebrators are reminded of the sacrifices and labor that went into winning and securing the freedom that we have today.

In another part of Philly, the Party on the Parkway was held simultaneously to the events in Old City. Party on the Parkway started at noon on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and ended at 8 p.m. with the traditional fireworks display. Throughout the day, musicians took the stage to entertain audiences. Younger members could bounce around in the inflatables and play games in the Go 4th and Learn Fun Zone. Everything was free, including the picnic food.

At 8.p.m, the Life, Liberty, and You Concert kicked off with performances by The Goo Goo Dolls, The Roots, Chrisette Michele, and Chuck Brown. These bands played until it was dark enough for the fireworks to begin.

While America’s birthday party has changed over the past 234 years, one thing remains the same – it’s a fun-filled day for everyone and one on which we should all be proud and thankful. For those of you who were not in Philadelphia this past Independence Day, definitely consider making the journey to the nation’s home of independence next year!

Carolynn McCormack is a junior at Drexel University majoring in English. She is also working toward the Certificate in Publishing and Writing.

Unearthed from the rubble of one of the Paginator’s own crime scenes, the following chapter was unearthed by our great detective hero, the Schnoz himself. It has been authenticated by the Philly CSI team (which is still looking to start their own television series by the by), as being one of the original chapters of the Drexel Serial Novel.

As to where it fits into the story, however, they have not been able to discern. Is it a first chapter, a final chapter? Does it answer some of our mysteries, does it create more?

Take a read of Elizabeth Thorpe’s installment, and you tell us.

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll

I’d had the feeling that Abioseh had been trying to tell me something in the meeting, and now he’d made himself perfectly clear.

“What made you think I’d be interested?” I asked Andy.

“Dr. Porter. He told me to tell you about it.”

I had been a bit of an Updike scholar in my grad school days, so much so that one of my papers on the Rabbit series had been published in the annual edition of the North Carolina Inter-Textual Journal Review. I’d long felt pride that it continued to be available through scholarly databases online, a pride I’d of course kept to myself. And then when I met Ginny, Ginny Updike, it seemed like incredible synchronicity, a sign from God. I wasn’t much of a believer, but it was the sort of thing that made me think about it.

Like that sign, there was no mistaking this message from Abioseh, no need to attend the meeting.

“Thanks for the offer, but I have work to do,” I told the kid. “Tell Dr. Porter I said thanks.”

The kid nodded and hitched his messenger bag tighter on his back.

I started to walk away, and then thought of something.

“Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“That blonde woman, in the meeting. Did you see her leave early?”

“Blonde woman?”

I sighed, irritated at having to describe her this way, “The deaf-mute.”

Andy just looked at me, ran his hand through his hair. The curls bounced right back, the way mine used to when I was a kid. Back then I never thought about going bald, no matter how many bald guys I saw around. My hair was a pain in the ass when I was a kid, my mom always trying to comb through the tangles or cutting all off for the summer, me without much control over it, over anything. Then, for a brief time, it was a bonus. Girls would come up to me at parties in dark concrete-floored basements, strangers coming close just to run their fingers through my hair. I remembered one Saturday afternoon when Ginny had made it into tiny braids, with colored elastics around the ends. It had been painful–all those tiny elastics pulling tiny hairs–but good pain. Nothing like the pain I’d been feeling since she left. And now my hair was gone and she was gone, and I wondered what she’d thought when she saw me this afternoon.

The curly-haired kid was still standing in front of me.

“You know, the woman with Don Riggs.” I hated that description of her even more.

“Um…” Andy pulled at his bag again. “I don’t think Professor Riggs was with anyone.”

“Well, maybe they didn’t come in together, but he was translating for her.”

“Are you sure you know who Professor Riggs is?”

“Of course I do. Everyone knows Don Riggs.”

“Well, I think he slept through the whole meeting. I never heard him say anything. And I never saw a blonde woman. There’s Maia, she’s blonde, but she’s not deaf.”

“You couldn’t miss this woman. Dog collar? Stilettos? Oh, but her hair wasn’t completely blond, it was pink on the ends. And she smells like a guy.”

“What?”

“Cologne, she wears men’s cologne. Used to, anyway.”

“Oh. Sometimes I don’t pay enough attention, I guess. Anyway, I have to go. I don’t want Dr. Porter to be disappointed in me if I’m late to the meeting.”

I sighed. “Well, thanks anyway.”

Goddamn kids, I thought as I walked toward the Market Street Bridge. This one seemed nice, but must be incredibly self-absorbed not to notice a woman as distinctive as Ginny.

I crossed the bridge, walking on the raised part near the railing, like I always used to when I walked home from Drexel. I still lived in the same place, a one-bedroom apartment in one of the hotels on the Parkway, but I didn’t come over to University City so often anymore. On my infrequent morning jogs I ran toward the Delaware instead.

The air was clear and cold and the wind had picked up. I pulled my hat down lower. Hats didn’t stay on the way they used to when I had hair. I turned left at the end of the bridge and went down the ramp to the paved river path. The river was running slow with cold, and there were few joggers or dog walkers out.

I tried to focus on the books again, the connection between them. Was it really possible that the Paginator was trying to establish a dialogue with me, by choosing the books I loved? But what about Palomino?

I thought about that pile of mass market paperbacks, smoldering on Penn’s campus, and the crime scene on South Street. Had we called anyone to document either scene, put some police tape around it? I hadn’t, and I doubted Phallic would have thought of it. He’d been too impatient to charge off and find a suspect. We’d been running all day, and suddenly I felt it. My head ached, and I was hungry. I should have grabbed a pretzel from one of the lunch trucks.

I was also disappointed in myself. Everywhere I went, I saw people doing their jobs badly. Unfriendly customer service agents on the phone. Asshole Wawa employees. Someone at the doctor’s office messing up the billing with my health insurance. But didn’t we cops have more of a responsibility? It was part of the reason I’d considered quitting teaching, before my final outburst made it a certainty. I felt like I had a responsibility to those kids, to guide them into loving literature, to inspire them to value the arts even if the rest of the world didn’t. And I kept failing them. I wasn’t like Ray or Abioseh or Don. I couldn’t keep the faith the way those guys did.

So I went into the police work, and there I really felt like I was doing some good. People need cops more than they need literature, or so I convinced myself. But then the killings started, and pretty soon we had fifteen bodies, and now we had one more. Yeah, homicides are too common in Philly, but still. Fifteen people with families, lovers, lives. And now another kid dead, and maybe a professor, too. How was it possible that nobody cared but me?

I walked under the Chestnut Street Bridge and reached the area with all the big flat rocks people sit on in the summer. One sparkled with mica in the late afternoon light. I sat down on it, letting my feet hang a few inches off the ground, like when I was a grammar-snob kid. My life, and I recognized the cliché even as I thought it, felt like one of those piles of charred books, but each book different. Interests, loves, family, pride, integrity, all gone.

But I still had a chance to turn things around. No more getting lost in the bottle, lost in fuzzy thinking. No more wandering around–it was time for action. What was Abioseh trying to tell me? He knew the Updike book would get my attention, probably knew how I compared my life to Rabbit’s. But did he know about the connection to Ginny? It seemed he would have to, if Ginny had been hanging around the English department. (Hanging around Don, I thought, torturing myself.) Not much seemed to escape Abioseh. So was it another clue that Ginny was involved? Did Abioseh think I was in danger? I don’t have an author’s last name, unless you count among literary greats the pop psychologist Maxine Schnall, but that didn’t mean I was exempt.

It seemed so strange that I hadn’t noticed Ginny in a room like 2020 MacAlister. It was dim in there, as usual, but still. Maybe Andy wasn’t observant, but I usually was. It bothered me that I had been so surprised, blindsided, by her. And it bothered me that I hadn’t been more careful about the South Street crime scene, had gone so far as to take a piece of evidence from it. If I wanted to get my job back for real, I’d have to get my shit together.

Of course, other people had to have seen Ginny. What about Don Riggs? It was preposterous to think that he had slept through the meeting. He talked to me, translating for Ginny, I know he did. I just couldn’t fathom why Ginny was there in the first place. Sure, she’d been an English major. But that was a long time ago, and Drexel didn’t have a masters program in English. They had that new philosophy major, but that didn’t seem like Ginny. So was she there for me? For Don? I couldn’t stop thinking about it, even though the sun was going down and it was getting colder. Long streaks of salmon pink clouds had appeared over the South Street Bridge. The thing I missed most about my life with Ginny was the half an hour before sleep when the two of us would read in bed. Neither of us read anything challenging after the long day. I mostly read sports biographies and she was into romance novels, fitting the gender stereotypes. She’d go through one after another, enjoying the orderly nature of the process. She went alphabetically through authors, and chronologically through their books. She wasn’t into the really trashy Harlequins, but went through stacks of bestsellers by Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts. Right before we broke up she was on a Lavyrle Spencer kick. I loved lying there next to her, both of us absorbed in our reading, our bodies warming each other.

My cell phone rang. I’d thanked the God I didn’t really believe in many times for ending my teaching career before the advent of cell phones. College kids must drive their professors crazy with those stupid things.

It was Phallic, of course, and he was still breathing heavily, so much so that I could barely understand him.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Schnoz,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“First, there’s no Professor Steel on the goddamnable fourth floor of this building. And they’re telling me he retired four years ago. So what gives?”

“Oh. Just a false lead, then. But I think I’m onto something. Why don’t you go over to Penn and see if you can talk to the English students there?”

“You want me to walk all the way over to Penn?”

“Or whatever. Do whatever you think is best.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I need to have a word with Dr. Riggs.”

Elizabeth Thorpe is an Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Drexel University.  She will soon be published in the Painted Bride Quarterly’s forthcoming Print Annual 4.

Last March I published an article here about the 2010 Best Translated Book Award, hosted by Three Percent, an organization for modern and contemporary international literature. Three Percent has since announced the winners of this year’s awards. In the category for best translated book of fiction, the award goes to The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House. The winner in the poetry category was the book The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova, translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse.

While the celebration of the year’s best foreign fiction and poetry may seem well commemorated, advocates for literary translation still comprise only a quiet voice in a big room. Because only about 3% of all literature currently being published in The United States is translated work, the market for international fiction and poetry is relatively small. The Argentine writer and translator César Aira, whose short novel Ghosts was included on the shortlist for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award, has pointed out in a interview that “any pragmatic translator would prefer to translate bestsellers, because they sell more and the prose is so bad that they’re much easier to translate.” This is a sad truth, which only inhibits the introduction of world literature to the general reader.

Grossman

Edith Grossman shed some light on this subject in her book Why Translation Matters, published by Yale University Press this past March. Born and raised in a middle-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, Grossman attended Girls High School, the city’s best public school for girls at the time, and was granted a scholarship to study Spanish at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her B.A. and M.A. She then went on to do graduate work at UC Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from New York University.

Grossman may arguably be the foremost translator of current Spanish-language literature. Since her first professional translation job at the end of the 60’s, Grossman has translated into English more than 30 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some of the authors she has translated include Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Álvaro Mutis, to name a few. However, her biggest project to date may be her translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s 400-year-old classic Don Quixote, published in 2003 by Ecco Press, and considered to be one of the finest translations of the Spanish masterpiece in the English language, earning acclaim from writers and critics such as Fuentes and Harold Bloom.

In Why Translation Matters, Grossman reveals her personal experience with publishing houses and their common attitudes regarding translated literature. The recurring perspective held by the larger presses is, as expected, driven by their profit motive exclusive of other considerations:

For most houses, translated works are not of compelling interest regardless of the wider significance readers and writers may find in them. Frequently, in fact, translations are actively discouraged. They can be commercially successful (think of the cachet enjoyed in this country by The Name of the Rose; Beowulf; Don Quixote; anything by Roberto Bolaño), and still the majority of American and British publishers resist the very idea of translation and persistently hold the line against the presence of too many translated works in their catalogues. Some years ago, to my most profound consternation, I was told by a senior editor at a prestigious house that he could not even consider taking on another translation since he already had two on his list.

The profit-driven nature of our country’s major publishing houses is far from secret, even to those with little interest in the internal workings of the publishing industry. Chad Post, director of Open Letter Books, a small press that publishes only translated fiction, points out that the commonly cited 3% statistic includes all translated books published each year in America. That percentage is drastically lowered when looking specifically at the amount of literary fiction and poetry published each year. Post also shares that, “Approximately 85% of the fiction and poetry published in translation every year is from the small houses—the indie presses, the nonprofits, the university publishers. These presses tend not to have much marketplace power, tend to be undercapitalized, and tend to ‘take risks’ on books they love and feel are good for culture, if not for business.”

The resounding conundrum is whether the big presses should take on more translated fiction projects, or whether readers and book-buyers should just try to care more. The equation looks bleak on both ends. What (or who) could convince big presses to publish more translated work? Surely, the only entity with that influence is the book-consuming body as a whole (though we all know it’s not these readers’ tastes that the big presses pander to, but to their wallets). And likewise, how can you make someone simply just care more? Readers won’t just start frothing at the mouths for the latest book of Bulgarian short stories—and how easily can they if they don’t know what books exists because publishers don’t publish them?

Aleksander Hemon, whose 2008 novel The Lazarus Project was chosen as a National Book Award finalist, has been living and writing in America since he left his native Bosnia in 1992. Last year he edited the collection Best European Fiction 2010, published by Dalkey Archive Press (generally regarded as America’s foremost publisher of translated fiction), and which showcased short fiction from writers of various European countries. Hemon claims in interviews that the American short story is marked by its ability to entertain the reader. While Hemon holds that this quality in fiction is not inherently bad, he advocates the importance of the type of fiction coming from other countries, which concerns itself less with entertainment and more with the avant-garde. The literature from Europe, as well as from other places in the world, is often free from the capital quotas and expectations imposed by our profit-driven publishing industry, and therefore can afford to be more innovative or unfamiliar and stand as works of art as much or more than as entertainment vehicles.

So, for readers and enthusiasts of foreign fiction, the challenge may lie on our shoulders. It would be a futile attempt to convince the big presses to trade their assurance of top-selling titles for the potential gambles they may take with lesser-known authors of the world. It would also be pointless to expect the common reader to demand more translated titles from the publishers, especially if they don’t know what they want because they haven’t encountered it yet. It is up to the readers who love translated works to spread awareness of it, to talk, to share, and to push our passion out into the world, or rather, from the world and into our own homes.

Michael Filippone is a senior at Drexel University, majoring in Music Industry. He splits his time between words (both writing them and reading them) and music (both making it and listening to it).

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Somebody’s been pulling my chain.  And he knew exactly how to tug it. Hard.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Barnes & Noble’s on Walnut, across from Rittenhouse Square.  Willy stood a few feet to the side.  By this time, he stopped calling me Schnoz and I started calling him by his first name.  He looked dazed and tired.  His mouth was slightly open in a dumb-looking way.  His hands were shoved into his coat pockets. But even dazed and tired, Willy checked out every pretty woman who walked past us. Willy the Watcher we used to call him.  He couldn’t help it.

It was 5:31 p.m.   People walked past us with that extra spring in their step — along with exhaustion in their face — that told you that it was the end of the workday.  Lunchtime, the pace was slower.  But now they were headed home to husband, wife, kids, maybe a stop-off at the grocery store.  I chewed hard on a piece of nicotine gum.  Otherwise, I would have lit up — after a decade off.  Hell, I wanted to join in the procession to head home myself, to the little place in South Philly.  I wanted nothing more than to step into my yard, shoot the shit with my neighbors if they were out, and step inside, grab a Heineken, flip through the mail and ease into my chair in front of the 36 incher.  It was an old one, one with one of those fat backs, but hell, I didn’t need plasma and all that fancy stuff.

If I were lucky, it would be a night when TNT was running back-to-back episodes of Law & Order and if I were luckier still, they’d show one of the early episodes with Jerry Orbach as Detective Lenny Briscoe.  In all of TV, Orbach was the one true fucker who acted the way cops really act.  And Lenny wouldn’t get caught up in literary bullshit.

Willy’s Nextel cackled.  It was Helen from dispatch.  They must have held her over to coordinate things. They always wanted Helen on the mic when the shit hit the fan.  Willy brought the Nextel to his ear, but that didn’t stop his head from locking onto a fast-walking brunette taking long steps in pumps and a cashmere coat.

“No listing for Tyler Updike in Philadelphia,” Helen said.  “Checking the suburbs. .. Search in progress for Ginny Updike … Captain is a block away.”

Willy placed his phone back into his coat pocket and shot a look in my direction. He walked a few steps and stood in front of me.  His face was red from the cold.  His gelled, combed-back hair was still in place. I felt the sting of the cold against my ears.

“You OK Joe?”

“Feel like I’m in a dream,” I said. “And I want to wake up and realize I’m in my King-sized Sealy.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment.   I reached in my pocket and got a piece of nicotine gum.

***

Captain Jimmy Papadakis sat behind the wheel of the Brown Ford.  The car was no better than the one Willy and I drove.  The Captain’s window was open and his left arm hung out to flip the ash of a cigarette on the ground.  We were parked across from Barnes & Noble’s, in an illegal parking zone.  The higher-ups were all on this, and the Captain wanted to talk to me and Willy (me really) so he could answer their questions.

The Captain sat behind the driver’s wheel.  His assistant, a detective named Lou Block, sat in the passenger seat.  He had a yellow writing pad on his lap. Willy and I sat in the rear. I sat behind the captain.

I reached for another piece of nicotine and took another deep breath.  It made some sense they would assign Captain Jimmy to run this.  His brother, Constantine Papadakis, was the president of Drexel.  I didn’t know Taki, as the Drexel folks called him.  But he had turned Drexel around, everyone said.  Had basically saved the place from going under.  What I knew was that his brother was a cop’s cop.

The Captain looked into his rearview mirror and locked onto my eyes.  “I got good people workin’ the Steel case, 80-year-old lady in Society Hil.  And I got my best searching for Ginny Updike.” He took a long drag off the cigarette and turned his head to blow a huge plume of smoke out the window.  He turned his gaze back to the rearview mirror and caught me.  “What I need is how this shit all connects.”

I held up the thin paperback, the Fustian Scoundrel and I leaned forward to hand it to the captain.

“Some old fuck of a student is pulling my chain,” I said.

“A student or just somebody who’s been studying you?” the Captain said.

I reached into my chest pocket and pulled out the spork.   “We haven’t said anything about this,” I told him. “Didn’t even tell Willy about it until a little while ago.”

“That’s a plastic fork,” the captain said. “What’s that got …?”

“It’s a combination of a spoon and a fork.  A spork.”

“And?”

In the book, I explained, the writer mentions that he planted a spork with a long wire of blonde hair around it at the scene of the Harry Potter burnings.

“Sounds crazy captain, I know this sounds crazy,” I said. “But my old girlfriend used to comb her hair with one of these.  And she was blonde back then.“

“So our man is messing with you. Either been studying you or is someone you have met.  Is that what you’re saying detective?”

“Yes,” I said.

The captain shook his head and mumbled a few words I couldn’t understand.

“Couldn’t make up a story like this,” the captain said, “’cause who the hell would believe you?”  He mumbled more words I didn’t get. Greek, I assumed.

Captain Jimmy laid a surprise on me.

“You ever read Don Quixote, detective?”

“No sir, I don’t think I got through that.”

“That’s a shame.  It’s a great book.  I’ve read it in Greek and English.”

“Wow, I didn’t know.”

“Lots of things you don’t know, detective.  Why would you know that?”

I nodded sheepishly.

“Book 2. Don Quixote.  The character learns that there is a book about him and his adventures.  Cervantes creates at author, by the way.  Cid Hamet Benengeli.  At one point, a man who has read the book is telling Don Quixote and Sancho Panza about it.  Sancho corrects the guy, says a story in the book, about his mule Dapple, is wrong.  The guy who has read the book. You know what he says? … He says Sancho’s account — Sancho’s sitting right in front of him, you understand? .. Guy is telling Sancho I don’t believe your story. I believe what the book says. See what I’m saying, detective?”

“I think so, sir.”

“ In part two other characters that Quixote and Sancho encounter, they too have read the book about the earlier adventures. So they act on what they’ve read.  Now what they’ve read could have been total bullshit.  Doesn’t matter.  Quixote and Sancho have to deal with all that’s been said about them.   And then it gets crazy, because sometimes the writer has gotten things right and Quixote and Sancho have remembered things wrong.  Quixote and Panza have lied to each other along the way.  So what they assume is true isn’t always true. See what I’m saying detective?”

“Sorta, sir.”

“You’re not the first person this has happened to.  The confusion about story and reality has been part of the canon since the fucking very beginning.  These young post-modern farts don’t know that.  I heard about the seminar.  They think their shit is all cute. It’s nothing.  Cervantes captured it all 400 years ago.”

The Captain lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out of his window.  A gust of cold air swept through the car.  He looked at me again.  This time he turned around.

“So cut the crap detective.  Get rid of the dog face.  This shit isn’t strange.  It’s part of life.  Your mother and your girlfriends, they know everything you did? Everything you really think? Hell no they don’t.  We block out what we really know about our parents and our friends.  We act on what we pretend to know, what we hope they are sayin’. Dad’s bangin’ every woman in town, and he tells us to treat ladies with respect.  We believe that. Act on it.  Dad might even compliment us on it, even though he’s been talking complete and total bullshit.”

He leaned forward and got under my gaze.  “So you ready to do this, detective?”

“Yes.”

He turned around and resumed looking at me through the mirror.

Helen came on the radio to the captain.

“What you got for me, sweetheart?” the captain said into the mic.

“No sign of Ginny Updike at her home,” Helen said. Her usually disembodied voice somehow sounded more real, more human.  “Officers on the scene are talking to neighbors.”

The captain held the microphone to his mouth.  “Keep me in the loop Helen. I wanna know when the dogs are barkin.”

“They’re barkin, Captain,” she said.

“Bark back at them for me, Helen.”

“Don’t know if I can do that, Captain.”

The Captain placed the mic back in its holder.

My head dropped to my chest.  If this guy had gotten to Ginny …

“Hey!” the captain said.  He looked in the mirror.  “Don’t go soft on me, Joe.”

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“You’re our brain. You’re her one hope.  What’s our next step?”

I was silent for a few moments.

“Let me propose a step to you, detective? Are you open to that?”

“Yes sir.”

“ How can you change up, such that you trip up this asshole? … He’s studied you. He thinks he knows you.  So you’ve got to change up.  Might be a lesson in there for you, detective.  Might be time to get outta your rut … Back to the point, he thinks he knows you. So you gotta think, what wouldn’t you normally do? How can you think that’s different than the way you normally think? What would you normally do if you thought a woman you loved was in danger because of you?”

“Can you turn the heat down, captain?” I asked. “Need a little air.”

Captain Jimmy turned off the heat.  I opened the window to half-way down.

“Close your eyes if you have to detective. I need you to be creative here.”

I closed them.

“He’s definitely going after Ginny,” I said with my eyes closed. “He says so in the book.”

“What else?”

I opened my eyes. “He would have banged Ginny, just to fuck with me, just to steal a twine of her hair.”

“What else?”

“He’d have to end it with something really special, something that’ll make him famous or feel famous.”

“We’re chasing down the publisher,” the Captain said. “See who this guy is … What else?”

“He’d come at me. That would be the grand finale.  He’d kill Ginny and maybe another Updike and then, he’d wait for me and pounce.  Killing me would be the end.”

The Captain was back on the radio to Helen.  Get officers on every Updike in Philadelphia, he told her, and call Drexel for student lists from the early 1990’s.

“Who would he do first?” the Captain asked. “Ginny or the other Updike?”

“He’d get Ginny last … and he would blame it all on me.”

Helen came on the radio.  “Captain … Somebody just used Ginny Updike’s ATM at 36^th and Chestnut, the Wawa’s.”

Captain Jimmy placed the blue light on top of the Ford and sounded the siren.  He pulled out and ran straight into a jam.  The Captain sounded the siren louder.  We inched forward.

“I hope it’s her,” said Willy.

I sat silent.  Finally, there was an open lane, and the Captain pushed hard on the pedal. By time we hit the bridge, we were doing at least 70.

There were two cruisers, lights swirling, double-parked in front of the Wawa’s.  We parked in the street and hopped out.  Even Willy was moving fast.

An officer, a young black guy, greeted the captain.

“She was in line when we got here,” the officer said. “We got here right away, and she was in line with two men.  We’ve got them in the back.”

He pointed to one of the double-parked cruisers.

I walked up the first cruiser and saw Don Riggs and Ray Brebach.  What the hell?  A skinny white officer stood outside the door.  “You can let ‘em go,” I said.

I walked to the cruiser parked further out, and in the back was Ginny.  I opened the door, and she looked pissed. She signed … I couldn’t read it, but I knew what the middle finger meant.  I closed the door.   I was never so happy to have someone give me the finger before.

The captain had his back to the street and his cell to his ear.  He flipped it shut and walked toward me.

“A Thomas Updike.  In the northeast …  pushed in front of a Septa Bus.”

“Was there a fire?”

“Nothing so far,” said the Captain.  There was a rumbled in the distance, and we looked east.  A huge cloud of black smoke rose up.  Hill Park.  The fucker had struck again at Hill Park.

The books were burned at the same place as the Steel books.  Sure enough. The Fustian Scoundrel.  Several hundred copies.  I moved through a few piles of ashes and then walked away.  I stared at the night sky.  Then it hit me, hit me hard.

It wasn’t the spork and it wasn’t Ginny.  Professor Porter was right.  I hadn’t revised my theories enough.  I was the next and final target of the Paginator, I told the Captain.  I huddled with the Captain away from the chief of detectives and the deputy commissioner.  Captain Jimmy smiled “Now you’re thinking, detective.  Or should I say Cid Hamet Bengeli?”

I opened the door to my house and led Willy and Captain Jimmy and Lou Block inside.  I was glad I had been keeping it half-way and had washed the dishes the night before.  I led them down the basement where I had tools, my lawn mower and a card table covered with boxes.  “This one,” I said.  I pointed to the box in the middle of the table.  A few days earlier, I saw the box and did a double-take. I had kept that box pushed further back towards the wall.  It was about two inches forward of where I usually kept it.  But the observation made no sense. It was a fact without a story, just a random occurrence and I had pushed it aside.

I opened the box, and looked through the stack of old journals.  My journals dealing with the Paginator case from three years earlier … they were gone.  I hadn’t written much, but I had about 10 pages.  Really embarrassing stuff, fantasies of banging various broads to escape the pressures.  Tales of old times drinking and getting slammed at Atlantic City.  And I had written about my old habit of revisiting scenes of the burnings in the middle of the night.  I’d cycle through, starting from the latest scene and working forward. Lookin’ for something I missed, taking time alone.  I just liked re-checking things by myself.

Captain Jimmy nodded.  “You’re the man Joe. Or should I say, Mr. Cid Hamet Ben Engeli?”

It was 3 a.m. when I arrived at the Hill.  I meandered along the brick path like I usually did or as I said I did in my journals.  But I was loaded on nicotine and caffeine and I was sharp, ready.  There was a U Penn dormitory on the far end of Hill Park.  And I made my way from the southeast corner of 33^rd and Chestnut to the northeast corner of 34^th and Walnut.  The path was a diagonal line.

I wore two layers of fire-proof clothing beneath my coat. I wore fire proof boots that ran up my leg beneath my pants, also borrowed from headquarters.  I had a gas mask in one coat pocket.  A rubbery skull cap tightly covered my scalp.  On top of that was a wool winter ski cap soaked in fire retardant.

Half way down the path the smell of gasoline hit me.  I also saw what looked from a distance like a huge duffle bag.  “Cid Amet Benengeli,” I heard a voice say in my ear. “You ready to bring Don Quixote back from his adventures?”

“Ready,” I said.

I came to the bag and stood in front of it.  I doffed my hat just as I did normally—only this time I slipped a gas mask around my face.  I took off running.  I heard wire crackling behind me. The night sky lit up.  There was a wave of heat on my tail, but I ran like I hadn’t run in years.

A crew of guys came out just as I reached the dormitory.  They tore the fire clothes off me.  I was hot, but I was fine.

“Story’s over Cid Hamet.”

They caught him in front of the Penn Bookstore on 34^th between Chestnut and Walnut.  He had detonated the bag of “books” from that point.  After the fire department boys put out the blaze, I walked through the wet ashes.  Sure enough.  Copies of my journals.  There was one sheet that I could still make out.  It wasn’t my writing though.  The sheet said. “No Staples.”

After this time, I hesitated before going up to the Paginator himself.  I feared he would be a disappointment.  I didn’t think he could live up to his end of the story.

Captain Jimmy summoned me to the car.  “You got to see him, detective.  This man has been writing your story for years now.”

I got to the car and looked through the window.  The author had his head down.  He wore black and had sunglasses from what I could tell.

The Captain handed me a sheet of typed paper.  It was my typing all right, though the words weren’t mine.  In big bold letters, the sheet said,

I BURN MY BOOKS. I BURN MYSELF.

I NO LONGER INVESTIGATE MYSELF.

HERE MY STORY ENDS.

Detective Joseph Michael Schnalls. The PAGINATOR.

I stood transfixed.  This no-good … no-good what? … no good murder, no good author? … This asshole had taken over my life, had pushed me to near ruin.   And he had come so close to pinning it all on me.

Captain Jimmy gave me silly smile.

“Got to admit,” I said to the Captain.  “THAT would have been one hell of a story.”

To which Captain Jimmy said, “Better than the crap — I mean “truth” — we’ll have to explain to the media a few hours from now. “

He waved me to open the back door to finally get a look at the man who had written my story, all but the ending.

I didn’t move.  I knew that once I saw his face, I would obsess about him, his life, his face, his body. I’d toss and turn all night trying to match the face and body to the deed.  Right now, I had my own image, my own created image of him in my mind.  I didn’t want to replace it with this other one.

The Captain waited. I didn’t move.

THE END

Robert Anthony Watts is an Associate Teaching Professor of English at Drexel University. 

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He tapped his right middle finger on his desk as he finished reading the newspaper story. Then he folded the paper neatly and put it in a recycle bin near his desk. One of the rules: Never save your clips.

His “Edits,” as he had taken to calling them, were heading in a final, inexorable direction now. He took in a breath. It had almost become too fast, even for him.

But he was going to create something.

He had to admit that at first he didn’t have a clear plan. It was vengeance, just vengeance. Yet he had a vague idea that the burnings were palimpsestic, and from there, the details, the structure of the rest, came to him as he wrote it. First, a few easy authors with clear themes, providing clear methods of “Editing.”. He became more obscure — Tarkington, for god’s sake — and then he caught, or was caught up, in the direction of the thing. He had realized that one person was driving this, and from that point he began to steady the path of the tale, so that it could only end in one way. But he didn’t want to Edit the big-nosed teacher/cop. He wanted to hit him harder than that.

And then, he promised himself, that would be the end of it all.

He looked at the corner of his desk, where a copy of the book he had made, in every sense of the word, rested. Tyler Updike’s The Fustian Scoundrel. The moment he conceived The Fustian Scoundrel was the moment he mapped the entire course of the larger story, after years of failed efforts to craft a novel in his own name. His works languished, laughed at sometimes, while in his position as the editor at Jewel Press he would watch lesser works with sexy titles or the potential for showy cover art be jettisoned out to the public. And the people would buy them.

After a few meager promotions — unnoticeable, really, to anyone else — he had realized he was in a position of some authority in the publishing sphere of minor works of fiction. Then he sat down at work on The Fustian Scoundrel, working under the pseudonym of Tyler Updike. In his position, he had forced it through the system as an editor and seen its publication, and he then lauded it falsely in several publications using another pen name. Other critics reviewed it. The highest praise?: “This book is not bad.” Copies of the  minor thing were actually purchased.

Years before, he was a timid, unsure student who wanted to know if he was a writer. He had a teacher, Prof. Schnall. The big-nosed professor didn’t last long. His students couldn’t stand him, and only a few terms after Schnall started he heard he had unleashed a bizarre fulmination at a group of freshmen. For some reason, though, he had immediately, and tragically, related to Schnall. As a non-traditional freshman (read: older than 18, but he was an opsimath) he had understood Schnall’s frustrations in that early period in both of their careers. So one day, toward the end of the term, he had handed over a short story to Prof. Schnall. He forgotten how it had even reached that point, whether he had asked (warned) Schnall or just handed it to him cold. Then he waited — for months.  Finally, he received back a copy of his document in one of those mustard interoffice mail folders with the words “Good effort — but I don’t believe in the characters” written across the top of the front page in blue pen. Underneath it was written: “Don’t you have a stapler?”, and the word “it’s” in his title “Gone Before It’s Time” was savagely circled; the circle actually cut through the paper. Schnall had missed the play on words, and blue, black, red — it didn’t matter the ink color; it stung. He remembered feeling numb as he leafed through the document, looking for something else that had been written. He found nothing.

He never talked to Schnall about it. He gave up on his dreams of being a “creative” writer at that point. As he progressed through his BA in English, he couldn’t escape feeling anger toward the creative writing lumpen in his literature courses, eating hamburgers in class and not having done the readings. The deaf-mute girl — and neither of them knew that she would be returning to the story one day — had signed in one class that literature meant what it meant to the person reading it at that moment. That was its purpose, not to fuel endless criticism. Most of those critics weren’t creating anything, she said.

When Schnall had lost his job at Drexel, the anger had subsided, but once he had learned that Schnall had become a policeman, he was shocked to discover how angry he was. His mind was telling him something important. He had to retaliate.

He hated the name “The Paginator.” He had always hoped they would refer to him as “The Critic” or “The Editor.” But while he couldn’t control his own media, his plan, as ill formulated as it was in the beginning, had gone on and taken shape, without his governing control, like a good story should. He had swept through the trajectory — Pynchon indeed! — of canonical works, moving lower and lower down the scale, sending subtle messages that only an astute reader could discern. He liked envisioning the failed teacher failing also as a cop in the one case in which he ought to be successful, missing all of the textual clues of the Edits. This would prove what a poor, detached reader Schnall really was.

He had found himself enjoying the whole thing and was sad now to see it coming to its close. He looked around the office. This was all there would be now. He would, though, be able to work here in peace once this was through. Maybe he would even write a real novel this time.

The Rowling and Steel Edits were not done with his trademark care and thought. He violated another rule: Don’t become compulsive; the story cannot control you. There were lots of Steels. He was getting too close to the end, so he had done this one sloppy-like, but he got away with shoving the old lady in front of one of those horse-drawn carriages downtown—he jammed the book in her bag and just shoved. It was an iffy, dangerously exposed way to kill someone—unless of course a hoof comes down on the head, which in this case it did (he was haunted that night by the thought that life would imitate “art” and the old woman would merely be paralyzed), and no one got a good look at him, which no one did. He had become anxious, wanting to make sure that Big-Nose stayed with this until the conclusion. Maybe he was being a bit too obvious, but in trying to read too closely, critics do miss things, and Schnall was an inferior critic. In the end, you cannot put too much faith in your audience.

His office was neat, everything stacked and sorted. He opened up a closet—at one time these editorial offices had been dormitory rooms—and moved aside several file boxes that contained old manuscripts and the records of the mostly broken-hearted conversations between editors and writers. In one of them was an old interoffice mail file. In another there was a greenish trash bag knotted at the top; it was full of books: hundreds—plus one—of paperback copies of Tyler Updike’s The Fustian Scoundrel. For convenience, The Fustian Scoundrel was a short book. He knew one day he’d be carrying it, and he wasn’t going through the experience of those Rowling tomes again. Beneath that was his bag—minus one elegantly made prop wand. All that was left in the bag was an unmistakable connection to Tyler Updike’s work.

He one-armed the backpack and slung the trashbag over his shoulder. Someone watching who knew how to pay attention, how to read details would have noticed that this lean, nebbishy looking man was more powerful than he appeared. It was time that this story moved toward its conclusion, he thought. He opened his office door and walked into the quiet hallway. He looked back for one moment into the office. He clicked his finger on the jamb as he looked back, making sure he didn’t forget anything. Tap. Tap. Tap. As he walked away, the door, with its agonizingly slow checker, drifted closed behind him.

This would be a fine birthday, he thought.

– — –

I couldn’t shake a lot of things today. Ginny’s comments through Riggs that the books have meaning for someone else. The name John Updike. The old skill of the literary sleuth to find connections in the strangest places (how long had I pondered poor Phallic’s unfortunate nomenclature?). I called around some local bookstores, but there had been no mass exodus of John Updike books. That made me feel better, even though, based on previous killings, it meant nothing. I had to see for myself, see if I could make some connection. I went to the Barnes & Nobel downtown and browsed fiction: Q, R, S, T, U—Updike. There must have been an uptick of interest in Updike since his recent death, as multiple copies of his books were on the shelves. What had that critic said of him?: “Fiction, Updike knew, isn’t about happiness, but about its pursuit.” I leafed through Segedin’s copy of Rabbit, Run again and then ran a finger over the volumes of Updike’s fiction.

Next to them was a slim book with a bright red cover. One measly copy.

Damn it if that cover didn’t get me. I pulled it off the shelf. The Fustian Scoundrel by some Tyler Updike.

I opened the book and started reading. I read a few paragraphs in the middle of the book, and I reached up, dizzy, to touch the spork through my shirt. The watch clicked against it. I tried to say, “I’ll be damned,” but when I opened my mouth all that came out was a quick puff of air, almost a gasp. With the book still open, my index finger holding the place, I went to the check-out counter and flashed my badge at a young man sitting on a stool. “Police business.” He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. I pressed on: “Can you get on that computer for me? I need to find someone.”

The fellow looked at me kind of sleepily. “Our Internet’s down.”

“Do you have a phonebook?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’ll do.”

Scott Warnock, PhD, teaches writing at Drexel and is the Director of the Freshman Writing Program. He is interested in uses of technology in writing instruction, particularly how learning technologies can help student writers. He is the author of Teaching Writing Online: How and Why, and he has contributed chapters to a number of anthologies and published his work in many academic journals. He’s also good for an op-ed or two a year in one of our area newspapers.

Check back here on Wednesday, May 26th, for the final installment of Turning the Page. Its author is Robert Anthony Watts.

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Another walk with Phallic, and again he was silent partner. Surprisingly. Nothing but heavy breathing and the sound of extra wide shoes slapping brick as we headed back towards Drexel. Almost like walking through woods in a snow.

I made a mental note to walk more once I got back on the force—with him as a partner it might be the only quiet time I would get. Would be good for him, too. Poor guy huffing and puffing across Hill Square, trailing me a few feet like an embarrassed echo, avatars of youth itself passing us easily by all the while: these kids chatting on cell phones, laughing with one another, life rolling out ahead of them as if a road that may yet lead to them to palaces of wisdom.

Avatars of youth itself. Palace of Wisdom. Where had that come from? When was the last time I had crap like that running through my head in my head while waving funeral traffic through the light at Broad and Moyemensing?  I needed to get clear. The longer this narrative went on, I knew, the harder to draw it to its logical conclusion.

Narrative? Christ. I was getting sucked back into the seminar room. This was no narrative. Narratives get wrapped up, or they don’t. There’s an ending, or there’s not. Perhaps a definite action, but maybe a point at which we’re compelled to draw our own conclusions or recognize the irresolvable conflict of competing ideologies. Maybe a sequel—they didn’t die in the explosion after all. The author does what the author wants, or at least what the author can get away with.

But this was a case, a mystery. A crime. Not something to be “wrapped up,” but something to be stopped, ended, done away with. There was at least one killer out there, and if I still knew one thing from my days on the force, it’s that a killer doesn’t care shit for what you make of the story. The killer does what the killer wants. A killer kills until you make the killing stop.

I had to act, and fast. Enough abstraction. The facts were there, I just needed to read them. Perhaps the reader has the last word after all.

Ashes of charred books, blackened snow. Blood hardening into the cracks of the frat house floor. Weird look on that Rowling’s face might be something, but why wouldn’t he look a touch off with a wizard’s wand sticking out of a gash in his neck? And—I reached into my pocket, touched it to make sure it was there—the shiny white spork, the wisp of hair. It had been sitting there, clean amidst the wreckage—it was waiting for me. Someone had returned to the scene. Delivered it. A note of hair threaded through it. What was the message? Ginny, maybe. A trick? I could see the sweeping arm of Riggs, the furious signing, him conveying her to me across the seminar room. Conveying her to everyone, but mostly to me.

Damnit if every time I saw Ginny I didn’t lose the thread. Did the Paginator anticipate this? Was this the spork-message? A red herring that would get me to follow that idiot Phallic to Drexel even thought Penn was closer? Get me thinking about Ginny instead of working the case? Maybe Ginny was right, and the books were meaningful to someone else. Maybe the books were meaningful to me.

Except if I was right, they didn’t mean anything at all. I was all tangled up—first cause and clean up crew. Author and interpreter. Reading meaning into something that was created to mean nothing other than what I made of it. If this was true, the facts were flimsy. Nothing was solid. There was no center and no certainty. The killer was going postmodern.

Henry James would have cringed at such arbitrariness, such a precise donnée spinning into a messy web that held nothing but loss—what could be learned, what is the picture, what will be illustrated in such a story?  What is the story about?

Fuck. Again.

I had to snap myself out of it. Not story, murder.

Isn’t every story though, in some sense or another, a murder? Apostrophe murders the dream of professorship, a staple straight to the heart. Dead. Memoirist murders his past. The murdered ghost of my love for Ginny, directing traffic in South Philly, invisible.

Good god, though. Wheezy, panting Phallic was right, and this in and of itself was a painful thought.  I did bring everything back to Ginny, couldn’t stop myself. But I had to stop. A dead body—a trail of dead bodies—is what mattered. The ribbon of blood running from the throat of Powelton kid mattered. These things were solid. And now, while I had been gratifying myself, orchestrating the useless speculations in the seminar room, another pile of books burned. Another murder coming up. Stay with the facts, Schnoz.

The fire was sloppy, rushed. Had someone left the seminar room? Couldn’t remember. No picture of it. I missed it, or missed at least knowing for sure that no warm body left that room—I missed it the second I stopped seeing what was right in front of my nose and allowed myself to be seduced by the murdered fantasy of the academy. The sooner I got away from this campus, the better off I’d be.

But we needed information, so I reached back, yanked Phallic’s coat sleeve, and pointed across the street. “This way, Willy, we’re going to the library.”

Phallic flashed his badge at the door, and we pushed through the turnstile. Not as crowded as it used to be, but a good amount of students scattered around the place. Although, at second glance, it didn’t look like much work was going on. Used to be claustrophobic in here, the long low rooms packed with kids getting paper cuts and sweating over coming exams. Hagerty had been the nightly pulse of the university.

“What are we looking for?” Phallic said. “You think the killer is in here? Or took the books out of the library? They got a surveillance cam?”

I shook my head. “Names, Willy. Go ferret out a local directory and see how many Steel’s we’re worrying about.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to find out what kind of book Palomino is. If I know what it’s about, I’ll know what the Paginator wants us to think.”

“Mr. Literary doesn’t know a book?” Standing still, Phallic had the breath to rib me.

“Fuck would I know about Palomino for?” I winked at him. “Get moving, try the basement—that’s where libraries usually keep the directories.”

Willy lumbered down the stairs, and I headed over to the circulation desk, nodded to the girl there. If I was lucky, I could get my hands on a dry copy of the book and see what the next message was.

“Title,” I said, “Palomino.”

But no luck. The girl read the computer screen, shaking her head. Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories? Yes. Palos De Nueva Invencion, O, Carta Que Dirige D. Jose De Arango A Don Jose Gonzalez Superintendente. Sí. But no Danielle Steel at Hagerty Library.

In a way, I could be happy about that.

I still had to see what was in the book. You burn Conrad and I can tell you what‘s up. Twain, I get it. I know the stuff, even the King and Rowling. Give me a Steel novel called Palomino, though, and who could even say if there’s a horse.

I headed back towards the stairs, where some undergrads sprawled on the couches like the library was their parent’s rec room. Pissed me off, and I could’ve laid into them, but as long as they were sitting around with a laptops, they might as well be useful. This was no seminar room, and the kids scattered around the place didn’t look like they were interested in anything, which was good. No messing around with theory and big ideas, I just wanted to know what the book said.

“Police business, buddy,” I said to one. “Here’s the situation: you’ve got to write a English essay about Palomino – it’s by Danielle Steel – what do you do?”

He looked lost, like he had never been asked to write an essay before. But he bit on the question.

“What do you mean?” he asked. Probably a nice enough kid, just wanted to help, but man he looked like he needed a good night’s sleep.

“It’s an essay, pal. What are you going to say to your reader?”

“So it’s like a report on a book?”

These kids were sluggish. The library was the new place to nap. He looked at his friends for help, but they all had headphones on.

“It’s not a report,” I hissed. “An essay. You get to know something about a something, and you tell the reader what you know.  Connect the dots, sleepy. Danielle Steel. Palamino. Tell me about it.”

“So, I just write what I think about it?”

“What do you think about it?”

“I don’t know?”

“So then what do you do?” I kicked his foot. This kid was pissing me off. No motivation. “C’mon – this paper’s due in 20 minutes. You need this grade. This essay needs to be done, now. What do you do when you need to know?”

“Are you really a—”

I kicked again. “A kid just died over on Powelton,” I growled. “Tell me something about the book.”

The kid broke. He scared easy. The kids in the seminar room would have been coming back at me with all sorts of questions about theoretical orientation, purpose, critical lens. But this kid clicked out of Facebook, launched a Google page, and got to work.  And when he did, something deep inside of me started to well up in protest. I knew I was outsourcing my work, forsaking the primary text, allowing someone else to create a meaning that I would be responsible for—but I didn’t have much time, and I needed to act. The kid scanned through pages, hit a few keys, looked at me, and looked back at the screen.  A few more keystrokes and he stopped.

“Okay,” he said. “I need an introduction, right?”

“It’s a start.”

“Okay.”

“So? The clock is ticking.”

“Okay, I got an introduction—“

“What do you mean? Already? Give it to me.”

“Yeah. Um. Introduction. New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel continues to captivate audiences with tales of love found, lost, and found again, against seemingly impossible odds and amidst a plethora of human drama.”

Right then I knew two things. The first was that this kid is no English major. Second was that I was a god damn fool. There’s no way the Paginator could be this devious.

Phallic was coming up the stairs. His cheeks were red, he was puffing, and he looked like he might explode. I looked the kid, who was looking up at me, waiting to see if I wanted to hear a supporting paragraph. “Cite your work, kid,” I said, “or you’re just looking for trouble.”

I turned to Willy. “Let’s go, Phallic. We’re gonna get run over again if we don’t move.”

“Nothing,” he rasped. “I don’t even think there’s any god damned books down there.”

“Forget that,” I told him. “Save your breath. And hurry—we’re idiots.”

Poor Phallic had been through it today, and it was taking its toll—hoofing it all over campus, sitting through that seminar, running off again. And things were only going to get worse for him.

We were out the door and onto 33^rd: Phallic trying to ask what was up, me pulling his arm saying, “c’mon, c’mon.” I hustled him across to the Mario statue, and pointed towards Center City. “Listen,” I said, “Head down Market, cut through to Main Building. Go straight to 422 Randell. Got it?”

“Right, 422, but—“ he wheezed, couldn’t even finish.

“Go! You’re looking for Prof. Donald Steel. Steel. Fourth floor, you’ve gotta take the steps.”

“But how—”

“Go.”

“Hey, Schnoz?” He stopped, bent over, hands on knees.

“What?”

“You’re back, Schnoz. It’s good to see you on it. It’s in your eyes.”

I winked at him.

“You just find Steel in Randell, fast as you can.” Phallic smiled at me again, pulled himself up, and turned to go. “And Phallic,” I called, stopping him. “When you get there, remember to take the stairs. The elevators never work.”

I headed south on 33^rd. The pieces were falling into place, and, if I was right, I had a unifying theory. But first, I needed to get another look at the scene of the Palomino fire.

I had just crossed Chestnut and was about to head back across Hill Square when I felt someone tug on my jacket. It was the kid with curly hair, Segedin.

“Hey detective,” he said. “I know you’re probably busy detectiving, but we’re about to have another seminar upstairs. Dr. Porter is leading the discussion.”

“Sorry, Segedin, but I’ve got work to do.”

He looked embarrassed, and I felt bad for being brusque. The kid probably just wanted to be helpful.

“It’s okay,” he said, “it’s not even like I like the book, I just thought you’d be interested in it.”

I looked down, and in his hand was a dog-eared copy of Rabbit, Run.

Dan Driscoll is an Associate Teaching Professor of English and Associate Director of the Writing Center at Drexel University. He is also on the editorial board for the Painted Bride Quarterly, an independent literary magazine.

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

It must have been the heat. Drexel always kept the thermostat set to a hundred through April, and in the dead of winter it was pumping away. Cold as it was outside, I was sweating. Even with heat fleeing through open windows in room 2020, the air was heavy, pressed down on me hard, a corporeal force. It must have been the heat.

How else to explain the thoughts — not thoughts — the lunacy, that now consumed me? How else to explain the puzzle pieces, jigsaw no longer but smooth all around and matching every which way, coming together? How else to explain the sinister plotting the worst part of me was now attributing to my sweetest, dearest, purest Ginny? How else, indeed, to explain this long string of rhetorical questions?

One student — had to be an imposter from Penn — managed to work deconstruction, imperialism, postmodern, heuristic, and ontological , along with three therefores, a pair of thuses, and one however, into the same sentence, without pausing even for a breath. But I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of there. The kids were smart, too smart (notwithstanding the vocabulary thug from that other college in Philadelphia). They had me doubting myself, what I knew before all knowledge. Ginny. I could call on them again, but wouldn’t — some insights carry too high a price.

Phallic caught up with me on Chestnut Street, outside MacAlister. The wind whipped something fierce, and I arched my back and looked to the darkening sky, my arms outstretched as if a good gust might carry me away and I could forget it all.

“Schno — ”   he started to say. In an instant I was back on earth, feet planted, staring him down with intensity he hadn’t seen from me in years. Many years. But he recognized, remembered, and shut his mouth.

I had been a professor, true enough, before my patrol days. Phallic was the only one on the force who knew why that had ended. Despite my little display a few minutes earlier in our ad hoc seminar upstairs, as a teacher I’d spent most of my time in the trenches teaching freshman composition. I didn’t have the temperament for it. Understatement. I was terrible. It started with staples. Really.

My first term, I spelled it out on my syllabus, clear as could be: Papers had to be stapled. Just one, in the upper corner. I reminded students before the due date — “please don’t forget to staple.” Five papers were turned in unstapled. A few weeks later, another due date, another reminder. Eight unstapled papers. The pages were folded together at the corner, a nightmarish origami abomination that came apart as soon as I tried to read them. Before the third due date, I pleaded in class, practically begged. Fourteen unstapled papers. It was all I could take. I refused to accept them. I stopped class right there and told the students to go find staplers, that we’d sit there and wait for their return as long as it took.

For twenty minutes the remaining seven students had stared at me while their peers ran down the stairs from the fourth floor of Curtis and spread across the campus in search of staplers to borrow. At the end of the term, students wrote in their evaluations of the course that I was “obsessed with staples.” Also, that I was “nuts” and should “get a life” and that my hair was “ridiculous.” I lightened up on the staples.

But apostrophes were another story altogether. I would not budge. Blame my mother. All growing up, we’d pass the time by finding punctuation errors — in magazine ads, billboards, restaurant menus, the sides of trucks. My father didn’t know a comma splice from a semi-colon; Mom divorced him when I was six. But I took after Mom, could spot an error coming and going and back again. I was a stickler for grammar and my students knew it. I wasn’t unreasonable, though — I tolerated the occasional stylish fragment. If intentional and serving some purpose. But not bad punctuation. And apostrophes were the worst. Mom would often say that she just couldn’t understand why people didn’t know how to use them. “It isn’t that complicated.”

On a Tuesday during my third term teaching, I called to the class’s attention that a student had written it’s when he should have written its. Another student raised his hand and said with complete confidence that the rule was arbitrary.

I pointed out that it wasn’t arbitrary at all. “It’s means it is. The apostrophe is connecting the words and replacing the missing letter.”

The student then said something I will never forget as long as I live. “A good rule, when in doubt, is to always use an apostrophe.”

My mother just about rolled over in her grave, kicked open the casket, climbed through six feet of mud and dirt, and caught a cab to Randell 114 to throttle him. It was an assault not merely on the English language, but on me and my family, as personal as a spit in the face. I lost my shit. Would’ve taken a GPS to track it down. I ranted for the rest of the class. I went off on kids today with their long hair and their good time rock and roll. I said, “On my mother’s honor.” Twice. I didn’t hurt anyone, but I did throw chalk. At the wall and the ceiling. When there was no more chalk, I threw erasers. Then chairs, the ones with the little desk on the arm. Campus security showed up after I’d finished with chairs and was trying to rip the blackboard from the wall, white dust everywhere. The students were already long gone.

I was fired. This was long before Porter was department head. I don’t remember who was in charge back then. I didn’t like to think about it much, had put it behind me. Brebach had protected me, made sure no charges were filed. At first he’d laid into me good for what I’d done, but when he heard about the apostrophes, he said if it were up to him, he would’ve granted me tenure on the spot. He shook my hand and told me I was doing the Lord’s work. But I had to go. I never taught again.

For a couple of months after, I was a mess, hit the bottle hard—the bottle fought back, kneeing me in the groin. I was drunk all the time. Scotch, mostly. Also beer. And tequila. Dear God, the tequila. I was a menace, kicked a lot of people’s asses over typos on menus and errors on store window signs. My old buddy Phallic bailed me out of some jams, finally got me onto the force when I’d calmed myself down and was looking for a new line of work. It’s why I put up with his crap for so long — I owed the prick. My old temper hadn’t surfaced in all the time since — 15 years — not even at the height of the Paginator case. But seeing Ginny, and those students, and … it was all too much. I had to hit someone. When I stared needles at Phallic, he knew. I was dangerous. He wanted no part of it.

He cleared his throat, coughed, choked back “Schnoz” and continued. “Um, Joe, what’s going on? I got lost after the first thus back there. What does ‘pusmodem imperilust constructionish onlylogical hysterics’ mean, anyway?”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t have to — a call came over Phallic’s line. There was a fire. Less than a block from where we stood. Books, they said. We were on it in seconds.

Just across 34^th Street was Penn’s Hill Square, an open field through which winds a red brick path, lined left and right with quotations that celebrate women—their liberation, their accomplishments, their tribulations, something. At the north end of the small park, behind a low brick building, was an alley of sorts, in it a dumpster. Next to the dumpster was a pile of books, hundreds of them, half-charred. A janitor had found the flaming mass and called the fire department. They put it out.

Phallic deferred to me. “The Paginator?”

What the hell was going on?

“Joe?”

“I don’t …. no, it doesn’t make any sense. None of it fits. It’s afternoon — the Paginator burns books at night. And this alley is too public—the Paginator is more careful than that. And look how many of the books didn’t burn at all — water from the hose did most of the damage. If nothing else, the Paginator is competent, but this fire wasn’t much of a fire. And this…”

“What?”

“Look at it.” I held up a copy.

“Danielle Steel.” Phallic scratched his belly. “So?”

“It’s Danielle Steel. Palomino.”

“So?”

“Phallic, we’ve got to get you a library card. Don’t you see? Sure, Stephen King was a departure, but he has his defenders. And Rowling has hers — if you call Harry Potter a kid’s book you’re going to piss off a lot of adults. I could see those two being the Paginator, maybe. But Danielle Steel? She’s sold a ton of books — millions of the things. But the Paginator was going after Fitzgerald, Conrad — Twain, for Christ’s sake. Twain! And now Danielle Steel? I just don’t see it.”

Phallic was catching on, the dumbass. “So it’s a copycat?”

“Someone’s messing with us.” Sadness set in. If it were the Paginator, that would mean Ginny was in the clear — no one present at the seminar could have lit this fire in time. But if it were just a copycat, then the killer could be anyone. Anyone at all.

Phallic was waiting for my lead.

I felt the spork through my pocket, hoped for some hope. “Let’s see how many Steels there are in the city, just to be safe.”

Scott Stein is associate teaching professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University and co-director of the Drexel Publishing Group. The book Drexel University Off the Record (the unauthorized guide for prospective students) lists “Scott Stein’s Humor & Comedy Writing class” as one of the “Ten Best Things About Drexel.” Stein is author of the novels Lost and Mean Martin Manning and editor of the online magazine When Falls the Coliseum: a journal of American culture (or lack thereof).

Check back here on Wednesday, May 19th for Chapter 6 of Turning the Page. Its author is Dan Driscoll.

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

“Shnoz? What the hell you doing? You daydreaming or something?”

The movie was unfurling. And now it was out of my head and I was in it for real.

“Shnoz?”

Phallic was waving his hands in front of my face.  I stepped back. I knew what I had to do. I was trained to it, and I missed it,  missed it more even than Ginny’s spiky caress.

“Don’t call me Shnoz,” I said to Phallic, my voice soft but even, brooking no dissent.  “The name is Joe.”

It was about respect. It was about using what I knew and going back to what I wanted: That’s how I was going to solve this case.

“We need to get these Drexel students together,” I said, taking my time, letting him see that I knew what I was doing. “We gotta talk to them, hold what I call a seminar. You know what a seminar is, Phallic?” I drilled him with my eyes and he just shook his head. “It’s a special kind of class, an intensive class, where ideas get kicked around, where meaning gets made.” Phallic looked confused, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t ask Phallic about the seminar, I told him. And now here we were, around the table, ready to go at it. There were the majors and the minors, not to mention the interns and the writing tutors, even the screenwriting majors, big Abrams people, were there. “Have them all come,” I’d said. And they had — all those Drexel kids who knew how to read really, really well. There were more of them than I’d ever dreamed back when I was an adjunct assistant professor —  the appellation sent a frisson through me. It had been fifteen years and it seemed like a lifetime — though, hell, Brebach looked the same. The man must be Dorian Gray.

I stood there at the head of the table and felt myself settle into that old posture, slouching but alert, that I’d copied from  Dibartolomeo, master of coiled laxity. We were in good old 2020 Macalister, site of delightful, endless faculty meetings, still lit like a mortuary but as good a place as any to get things going. Sure, I’d tried police work, thought that’s what I wanted to get back to, and I’d tried the other kind of work, the holy grail of the Ph.D., slaving away on  Latent Heterosexual Motifs in the Late Work of Henry James. But neither had satisfied that deeper, more primeval hunger to sit around a seminar table and talk.

“Hello people,” I said, looking over the sea of faces before me. God, they were beautiful, these kids, in their as yet untrammeled belief that literature mattered. “I’ve called you here today because I need your help. I need you to interpret a text.” I paused, letting the full force of it sink in. “It’s an important text, so I want you to give me your best close readings.”

“New Criticism — how passé,” sneered one of the cool interns, a lanky double for Eric Bana, who was holding a copy of Derrida.

“Good close reading never goes out of style,” I snapped. “You gotta do it first if you want to get the other stuff right.” I gestured disdainfully toward his Derrida, and he ducked his head. I looked around the room to see if anyone else wanted to show off. No one did. “Now listen up and listen good.”

The faces around the table were attentive now. Some had opened their laptops, prepared to google. They were ready.

“We’re trying to solve a murder here, and you’ve been trained, trained by the best there is, on how to read. I’m going to give you the story, see — the narrative, as I understand it– but you know about gaps and fissures and seams, and you’re gonna find them.

“Semiotic analysis!” cried one of the Philosophy majors — yeah, they had a Philosophy Major now.

“The figure in the carpet,” said another.

“You said it,” I nodded, pleased to hear reference to my old buddy James. “A bloody figure,” I added.

“’Start at the beginning:Tell me what you saw and exactly what it means,’” said a punkish girl in a party dress, one of big Abrams screenwriters — it was Grace Kelly’s line from Rear Window, and I gave her a look that said: smart allusion. Those film kids were good.

“Well,” I launched in, “we got a book burning and a murder right here at Drexel. But it’s happened before, you’ve read about it: fifteen times in total. Books burned, people killed.  First it was great books: Dickens, Conrad, Hemingway — you know, the usual canonical suspects. But the last two were different.  King’s The Shining, up in flames, and some hapless broad named King shot through the head. And now it’s the kiddie book, Harry Potter. And the victim’s a Drexel boy, name of Rowling, like the author. Found in a frat house watching TV. Magic wand through the neck.”

Some of the kids were scribbling and a few had their eyes closed, thinking hard.

“What was this Rowling’s major?” came a call from the end of the table.

“Finance,” I said.

There was a low groan — no love lost there. But even a finance major had a right to live.

“I see an intertextual thing going,” proffered one of the trash-talking majors. “TV watching, Finance, Harry Potter.  All middle-brow sorts of shit. Might be the work of one of those neo-cons  pissed about the way  high art’s getting fucked.”

“Or could be the other way,” put in another major, showing he could read against the grain:  “Could be the killer sees Rowling as a throwback to the bad old days: a threat to his beloved media culture.”

“Good thought,” I nodded. “Could be a book lover — or a book hater.”

“Irony,” someone threw out.

“Paradox,” piped in another.

A student with a row of piercings across his eyebrow that looked like exclamation points raised his hand: “Professor” — how I thrilled at the title — “do you think all the cases are connected?”

I told him I did, though I said that Phallic, who was standing beside me, properly cowed — he couldn’t have led a class to save his life — thought otherwise.

“Maybe it’s just, like, random,” said the pierced student:  “we’re the ones seeing the pattern.”

“Reader response sort of thing,” I nodded. “We’re filling in our own elaborate theories when the killer really doesn’t know much about books.”

There was a murmur around the table. Most everyone they knew didn’t know much about books. Their parents, for example. “What the hell is an English major?” their dads asked. “You speak goddamn English already.”

“It’s a  thought,” I acknowledged, “but my instinct tells me different. The shift in pattern to the non-canonical seems too calculated, the reversals too neat. Could be a copycat, but I think it’s the same guy. Killer wants to vary the content but can’t erase the form.”

“Style always betrays itself,” noted a confident redhead with cleavage. “There’s no mistaking a short story by Hemingway or a poem by Updike. Even working under a pseudonym, Oates, for example, can be spotted without much difficulty.” She spoke glibly and I noted that the guys were looking at her with a mixture of awe and longing. A girl with that kind of cleavage who could talk literature — hot! Too bad she was so full of herself.

“Character is destiny,” shouted out one of the minors.

I nodded. It wasn’t quite the right idea, but it wasn’t exactly wrong either.  “One can parody a style, of course,” I mused. “Beerbohm did it well with James. The question is whether we’ve got parody or a simple change in direction. Killers, like writers, can get bored, you know.”

There was another murmur of assent. Everyone understood boredom. They’d read those critical essays in The Norton Anthology.

And it was during this momentary lull, as the group shifted, recalling  being bored, that I saw her. I suppose I knew she was there all along. I’d sensed her presence, though camouflaged by a gaggle of scruffy Riggs-acolytes grasping their copies of The Hobbit. Maybe I’d caught a glimpse of her hair, gold with pink tips, or the glint of the dog collar around her neck, or, gazing among the sneakered feet, had seen the shine of her red patent leather stilettos. She’d moved into view now, Riggs’ group parting, Riggs himself showing obeisance with a sweep of his hand. I noted that her hair had grown and was caught up in a colorful scrunchy.

She had begun signing furiously.  Mute she might be, but boy was she verbal.

Riggs began to translate. Was there a language that man didn’t know? Along with French, German, old English, a smattering of Italian and Japanese, not to mention the license in Bikram Yoga, massage therapy, and cartooning, he apparently  knew American Sign Language. God I missed that guy.

“Maybe you’re concentrating on the content rather than the form,” Riggs translated Ginny’s furious signing with ease. “Maybe the books don’t have meaning for the killer. Maybe the killer chose them because they’re meaningful to someone else. –I should note” — Riggs interjected here — that the young lady placed a special emphasis on ‘ someone else’”. It was so like Riggs to want to capture the nuance of Ginny’s speech. Nor, I realized, was his gallantry lost on her. She gave him that seductive sidelong glance I remembered so well and fingered her dog collar. I had a sudden illumination that Ginny and Riggs were made for each other.

I must have looked blank as this epiphany swept over me, because the little redhead with the cleavage piped up: “She’s saying that the killer might have in mind someone who likes those particular books. That means the murders aren’t political; they’re personal.

“The personal is always political,” corrected Amato.  But no one wanted a Marxist analysis now.

“You’ve been on this case since the beginning, haven’t you?” queried a small student, possibly a dwarf — English majors were often oddly shaped, so much of importance was confined to their heads — “that seems significant.”

“How so?” I queried.  I saw, but I wanted it spelled out. I was beginning to feel queasy.

“Isn’t it obvious?” asked the precocious dwarf.

“You’re saying he –“

“He or she” — corrected the redhead.

I looked down at Ginny. It was hard to say how long her hair had gotten, seeing as it was caught up in the scrunchy. But it had  gotten pretty long and, reflexively, my hand touched my breast pocket where the spork lay next to my heart.  I thought back. Hadn’t I told her once that Stephen King was the modern Hawthorne? And hadn’t I waited on line for four hours  for the third Harry Potter? No one knew how much I liked those books, how I’d read them secretly in my library carrel when I should have been ferreting out heterosexual motifs in Henry James — no one, that is,  except Ginny.

Paula Marantz Cohen, Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel, is the author of four nonfiction books and four novels, including the forthcoming What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper.

Click here for Chapter 5 of Turning the Page. Its author is Scott Stein.

]]> http://drexelpublishing.org/2010/05/12/turning-the-page-chapter-4/feed/ 1 http://drexelpublishing.org/2010/05/07/turning-the-page-chapter-3/ http://drexelpublishing.org/2010/05/07/turning-the-page-chapter-3/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 16:00:48 +0000 Fred Siegel http://drexelpublishing.org/?p=2207 Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen Chapter 5 by Scott Stein Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts Detective Phallic was surprisingly quiet on the short ride over to 34th and Powelton. Good. If circumstances were different, I might have [...]]]>

Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Detective Phallic was surprisingly quiet on the short ride over to 34th and Powelton.

Good.

If circumstances were different, I might have chided him for his stupidity. If it were a bunch of kids protesting homework, it is unlikely some college boy named Rowling would suddenly be bumped off. It would have been a good time for creative invective, but instead I chose forbearance. I needed to think.

Abioseh Porter. His manner was even and confident and I got that he was trying to tell me something. I recognized the Michener quotation; and who would know about perseverance better than Michener, who wrote about a thousand books all with places in the titles? I didn’t recognize the other quotation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a clue in it. I made a mental note to visit Porter again, sans partner, to see what he had in mind.

Ray Brebach also might have known something. Despite his popularity and the fact that he obviously knew his stuff, he was one of the oddest ducks in the pond. He seemed way too interested in my investigations into the Paginator case, not that I was in a position to tell him anything, and not that there aren’t plenty of otherwise decent folk who get off on serial killer lore. But even so, it seemed strange that when Willy shoved himself into the office, Brebach got ants in his pants. And why would Brebach give the names of those three benign kids? They seemed to be the kind of kids who might have written mean things on each others’ Facebook pages, but they wouldn’t have burned a pile of books.

And finally, I reflected on my little felony; nestled with my car keys and the wallet that used to hold my detective badge was a spork with a long blonde hair. I doubted the hair was from Ginny. When I last saw her she had short, spiky hair and while it was a couple of years ago I don’t think this short, spiky hair had the time to get this long. Also, while Ginny is known for stomping on hearts, she has shown zero interest in burning books. Or killing college kids.

No, the evidence I unlawfully concealed was a message. And this message was for me.

“We’re here, Schnoz.”

Willy the schmuck jumped out the car and waddled towards the shaken kid sitting with his head in his hands beneath three huge Greek letters on the front stoop. I was playing Kato to Willy’s Green Hornet, so I took out my Dollar General note pad and a Chinese pencil. Neither was department issue, but right now neither was I.

Willy went, “Are you the kid who called?” The kid nodded grimly. “What’s your name, son?”

“Charles O’Malley.”

“What happened?”

Charles O’Malley took a sip of Vitamin Water. “I came home from my chem recitation at like 12:25. I walked in the door two steps, saw what was on the sofa, and walked out. That’s when I called 911.” He clenched his phone to his forehead. “You got here fast.”

“When we hear about a potential homicide we go fast,” Willy intoned with cop show intensity. “How do you know the kid’s dead?”

Charles O’Malley looked up at Willy with a shock of passion. “Look at him! Jesus Christ, look at him! He was my brother. If I thought I could help I would have done something!” Ferocious sparks shot out of Charles O’Malley’s eyes and into Willy’s and neither looked away.

Willy smirked. “You haven’t touched anything?”

The kid shook his head.

“Good,” said Willy. “Wait here.”

Charles O’Malley was right. Peter Rowling of 3403 Powelton Avenue was the victim of a homicide. There was no evidence of a break-in—but this was a frat house so the door was likely to be open. The victim’s body, propped up by extra cushions, was leaned back on a worn out sofa in front of a television set. Moments before his death, he had been eating pork fried rice from a round foil take-out plate, which was now on the floor at his feet. Some rice was still in his mouth, which hung open. Eyes open, too. White plastic fork — not a spork — in his right hand.

There was a horizontal gash through the front third of his neck from which flowed a red river of velvet that collected like a moat around his feet. Despite what had obviously been a violent death, Rowling’s body appeared tranquil, almost as if he were still watching television. Also, a foreign object had been jammed into the front of his neck. It was a piece of hardwood — maybe birch — 12-14 inches long with a handle. It was intricately carved, or rather turned on a lathe. The tapered end had been inserted into the center of the neck wound.

“What the hell is that?” asked Willy.

“That appears to be a magic wand,” I answered.

“Wha…?”

“Not the rabbit in the hat kind. It’s the kind brandished by students at that Harry Potter Wizard school.” Pause. “This one did not come from Toys ‘R Us — it’s a custom job.”

“Hey,” said Willy, who was about to state the obvious. “That the book that was burned by the train tracks?”

Then, simultaneously, we noticed the television. The sound was off, but the picture was on. Dead Peter Rowling was propped up in front of a Harry Potter Movie. In fact, the box from the DVD rental was similarly propped up on the coffee table, as if there were a possibility that we would have missed all the Potter references.

“Yeesh!” said Willy. “What do you think?”

What I thought was that this couldn’t have been The Paginator. Even if the Paginator had moved from canonical fiction to popular fiction, such as King’s and Rowling’s, it was unlikely that he would depart this far from his modus operandi. The Paginator’s previous murders were elegant; burned black though they were, the bodies always appeared neat and intact. Furthermore, the Paginator always struck on the birthday of the author and I am almost certain I saw, on the Today Show, Rowling celebrating her birthday at a lawn party in the heat of July. And most important, I believe the Paginator would have found this crime scene ham-handed and vulgar. His signature was the subtle fragment of a burnt book.

“Come on, Schnoz! What do you think?”

And suddenly, I saw a movie in my mind. In this movie I snapped and grabbed the knot of my partner’s cheap poly blend tie in my left hand and held up my right hand. I extended my first and fourth fingers and pointed them at his eyes like two fat red cocks. And I said “Listen to me you son of a bitch! My name is Joseph Schnall,” and I plunged my fingers into his eyeballs and felt them pop like chocolate cherries. Then, a head butt; watched him go down….

“Schnoz?”

By now, nearly a dozen cops swarmed out front.

“I think we should take Charles O’Malley’s statement.”

We walked out to the stoop. William Phallic talked with Charles O’Malley and I made use of my Chinese pencil.

Fred Siegel is a Teaching Professor and Associate Director of the Freshman Writing Program at Drexel University, where he has taught for 19 years. He is currently at work on “Man of Mystery,” a performance for the upcoming Philadelphia Fringe Festival that will include true stories, magic tricks, and dreams. Also, he is about to celebrate the two year anniversary of his dream blog. Visit http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/category/freds-dreams/.

Click here for Chapter 4 of Turning the Page. Its author is Paula Marantz Cohen.