Dusk was settling into the Valley and all of Fresno was standing on each side of the road with a beer in one hand and a hose in the other, watering their carefully landscaped yards. Shelly intersected them in an eastbound Honda Civic. As she drove through the thick air, she thought of how it was the color and temperature of a forgotten cup of tea. She had slept through her Existentialism in Literature class on Desmond’s floor and didn’t feel like going to her Math 001 class, which started in five minutes. I’m a writer, she thought. What do I need with math?

As her Honda Civic propelled her through one of the most polluted days of that year, she lost herself in a day dream concerning which picture of herself would be used on her first published book. There was that one her ex-boyfriend took of her posed as Colette. But there was also the one taken at the abandoned fig packing building in which she wore her Weimar-cabaret-prostitute get-up. Yes, It would have to be that one since it created the illusion of cleavage. Shelly didn’t even have the chance to think of where she wanted to drive before she found herself parking in the driveway of her parent’s house where she had lived for the entirety of her twenty-one years. Oh well, she thought. Might as well stay here.

II.

Reeling with the raptures of The Word, Kevin put pen to paper and wrote the following:

The Universe lifted its hemline and I beheld the ankle of God.

Verily, I have seen Truth within myself and cannot turn away. Shelly Sternberg, If only I could impart to you The Kingdom of Wisdom and Peace that I have come to know. I want to communicate with you from that corridor of my mind that knows no words, for it is that corridor where all true Humanity resides. The undaunted, untainted pure meaning of who we are. It is in that place where true minds meet without ever saying a paltry word and are free to just be human. I wish that you could know that side of me instead of the chaotic outer shell that you knew in high school. I know that you might not want to talk to me after all that has happened, but please Shelly, give me the honor of revealing to you my true self. I have shed the past like a needless shroud, for I have been born again.

The road to finding peace within myself and penetrating the Ineffable Corridor was not an easy one. Learning how to give the Gates of Perception the slightest push has been integral to my newfound voyage of self-discovery and also my rehabilitation. Like Isaiah’s seraphim, the men on my cellblock have laid a live coal to my lips and said, “Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged”. Only instead of a live coal, they have laid to my lips the fine cherry-colored sweetness of The Word. Just two shot glasses full of The Word and I was able to transcend all of my transgressions.

I am sure that you are unfamiliar with The Word, so allow me to educate you. Before I came to the San Joaquin Correctional Facility, I too was ignorant. Yet within the first few weeks of my arrival Brother Cheech and Brother Ned taught me the esoteric prison-art of distilling The Word. The tradition goes back centuries and is handed down from inmate to inmate. It requires only a King James version of The New Testament…the kind with all the word recorded therein as having been spoken by Our Lord printed in red. Through a secret process called The Technique, the red ink is distilled from the page into a revelatory liqueur. Upon drinking the tangy Words of the Lord, dimensions within the Self are opened.

I feel honored to be part of this Secret Fellowship. Learning The Technique has made me feel that my time here in the San Joaquin Correctional Facility is legitimized. Unfortunately, the code of our Secret Fellowship prevents me from revealing the step by step process of how to distill The Word, but maybe you and I will meet again upon my release in 6 years and I can show you. Together we can bask in the glory of The Word and our Ineffable Corridors can unite and create a brilliant and radiating Presence.

Do you know that passage I quoted from Isaiah, Shelly? It is in The Bible of your people, the one without any red words in it. But it is still a very good book. To be frank, these past three years in jail have given me a lot of time to think things over, read, reflect, workout in the weight room, and appreciate those who are of real worth in my life. I know that we were merely acquaintances in high school and from different worlds. You, with all of your lecherous friends around you constantly like some impenetrable wall of briars, probably never even gave much thought to me. I must have been just another 300lb, bald guy in a flannel who was in love with you. But verily I tell you that those brief exchanges we had in the hallway, those occasional “Hey”s and “’Sup?”s, were monumental to me. I have always known that we were soulmates.

If I can leave you with one impression from this letter, it is that I have changed - I have grown my hair out, I quit the dope and the meth, working-out in the weight room has turned all my fat into massive muscle, and Cheech is reworking that swastika tattoo into a sheep. The Word has helped me see the error of my ways and I am ready to start life anew. When I picture my future self, I see that I am beside you.

Please thank Desmond for giving me your new address. And also thank him for being black and beautiful.

Peace and Love from Cellblock 23,

Big Kevin

III.

Shelly squashed the three pages of carefully lettered words into the palm of her hand until it became a hot, compact ball and then threw it at Desmond’s head.

Desmond ducked and the letter smacked against the poster on the wall of a well-oiled muscle man in a bulging turquoise bikini and a yellow construction hat. “Hey, watch it. You almost took my eye out with that.”

“You are a sick and evil man! How could you do this to me? What were you thinking? That I’d want this freak to know where I live? That I’d want to hear about his jail-time revelations?” Shelly paced up and down the worn carpet of Desmond’s sparsely decorated living room, doing her best to step over the numerous comic books and newspapers that littered the floor. “How can I write my novel under this kind of stress?!” She stopped at a piece of lawn furniture and kicked it over for effect.

“Easy there, little Shelly. There’s no need to put on the dramatics, especially with my roommate’s furniture.” Desmond stretched and yawned calmly, actions Shelly perceived to be mainly for her irritation. He stood the lawn chair upright, then moved it slightly to the right, then slightly to the left until the placement of the chair suited his aesthetic sensibility. He sat in the lawn chair and continued.
“ It’s just that when I went up there to visit him he asked about you a lot and I didn’t think you’d mind.
I guess that I was wrong.”

“That’s right you’re wrong! This is a dangerous criminal you’re dealing with. I don’t feel safe now that he knows where I live.”

“Oh cut it out, Paranoia Pants. He’s really a nice guy. He’d never hurt you. And besides, hopefully you’ll move before the six years are up.”

“Nice guy? Desmond, he tried to kill his drug dealer with a hammer! A hammer! And now he’s drinking red ink! How could you do this to me?” She sank to the floor. “Woe is Shelly,” she sighed.
Desmond joined her on the floor and grabbed one of her long red braids. “Little Scrappy…Little Little Scrappy…” he sang and then quickly stopped after she shot him one of her patented Looks of Death.
“ O.K. Shelly, I don’t think you should be mad at me. I mean, we were all friends back in high school.”
“ No. You were his friend. I hardly knew the guy.”

“Don’t you even feel bad for him? While we were at graduation, he was on trial like some criminal.”
“ He is a criminal! It’s his own fault. You’re acting like bludgeoning someone half to death with a hammer is something that could just happen to anyone.” Shelly stretched her full five-foot one-inch frame out along the floor and considered the idea, imagining herself on trial for assault with various deadly hardware items. After she pictured a monkey wrench scenario, she turned her attention back to Desmond and said, “You know, I never did understand why you hung out with him in high school.”
Desmond laughed nostalgically. “Oh, I was going through this phase where I was attracted to big, fat, red-necky white guys. Sort of like a ‘love your oppressor’ thing. Now I just like going to visit someone in jail.”

“Mein Gott,” Shelly said, then rolled across the carpet to the other side of the room. She stopped when she collided with the wall. She lay there for a while, then reached with great effort for that day’s issue of The Fresno Bee, which was almost out of her reach. She checked the air quality chart on the back page. The white-gloved arm of Paco the smiling bee graphic pointed exactly to the line between Unhealthy and Hazardous. Paco’s advice for the day read, “Unhealthy air, kids. Stay indoors today…and remember to stay bizzzy!”
“ I hate Fresno!” she said, tossing the newspaper into the air.

About an hour later Desmond nudged Shelly’s shoulder with his shoe.
“ Come on. Wake up, Shell. I have to take my Grandma to daycare.”
“ Huh? Did I fall asleep on your floor again?” Shelly sat up and rubbed her eyes. Like Silly Putty, her face picked up the print from the newspaper she was using as a pillow. “I was at a poetry reading with Charles Manson…and you were there and…”
Desmond pulled her up from the floor and hung her book bag on her shoulder. “Come on. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” He pointed her swaying body toward the front door.
Shelly stopped and sniffed at the air. “What’s that smell? It’s like something’s burning…in the kitchen.” She turned and made her way toward the kitchen. Desmond grabbed at her arm in an attempt to stop her, but she was small and quick. Tripping over a generic rootbeer can, an expensive first issue of The Sandman, and empty bags of Leroy’s Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips, she arrived at the scene of smoke and destruction.
“ Oh man, Desmond. You didn’t,” she said in disbelief as she surveyed the mess of pots and pans and paper pulp all over his kitchen. A page from Luke was frying in a Teflon non-stick omelet pan, sending gusts of gray smoke up to the ceiling. Another page boiled next to it in a spaghetti pot. On the counter, amid countless lumps of colorless pulp, several red-printed pages of The Gospel fed into the fruit-juicer.
Desmond pushed past her and turned off the stove. “Oh, and as if you weren’t going to try it as soon as you got home.”
“ No! Absolutely not. I would never destroy The Bible. It’s wrong!” Shelly crossed her arms tightly.
Desmond scrunched up his forehead with confusion. “What do you mean wrong? You’re an atheist.”
“ I don’t give a shit about God. But that’s a BOOK you’re destroying!”

IV.
On the colorless wall of his cell, Big Kevin wrote, “In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God.” Later that evening, Big Kevin was put on latrine duty as punishment for writing on the wall with his own feces.

V.
“ We are all infinite monkeys,” Shelly announced in the midst of a conversational lull. Like most nights, she sat at the large felt-covered table in the back room of Livingstone’s Bar with an assorted entourage. She liked to think that it was Fresno’s answer to Dorothy Parker’s Round Table, only without the wit. The entire table raised an eyebrow at Shelly’s surprising, yet not uncharacteristic, proclamation.
Desmond looked around the table from where he sat between Shelly and her shaky friend Netty. “No. There are only five of us. But maybe Blarg counts for infinite.”
After snorting and rolling his eyes, the rapidly aging Nate Blargwell called to the young bartender who was on his way to a smoke break. “’Nother Martini, Barman.” The bartender ignored him as usual so Blargwell turned his attention to the food stains on his shirt for a moment, then looked up at Desmond with a look of constipation and said, “You think I’d be appreciated around here a little more. Remember when I use to buy you all liquor when you were kids? I never heard you call me names then.”
Guido O’Malley stood as he often did when he was delivering a punch line or making a point he considered incredibly insightful. “Yeah, you just never heard us, you O.F.B.”
“ O.F.B.?” Blargwell asked.
Guido raised his beer in glee, spilling some on his IRA tee shirt. “Yeah! Old Fat Bastard!”
Netty sat quietly and picked at her track marks.
Blargwell looked as if he was going to get up, but then settled back in his chair and mumbled, “This coming from the human Big Gulp. Why don’t you quote some Yeats incorrectly, as you are so fond of doing. At least I went to a real college.”
“ Sure Blarg, but you came back to Fresno like all the losers. I’m getting out. I’m going to Ireland…”
Shelly knew she was the only one who was really ever going to leave, but she wasn’t about to sink to their level. Instead she slammed her hand down on the felt table and screamed, “Why isn’t anyone listening to me?”
Guido, Blargwell, and Desmond looked back at Shelly and resumed their polite quizzical looks from before the argument. Netty asked vaguely, “Talk about the monkeys.”
“ Thank you.” Shelly cleared her throat. “We are all infinite monkeys.”
“ Yes, we already know this,” Blargwell snorted.
“ Sha!” Shelly raised her hand in silence. “We are all infinite monkeys! Don’t you get it? You’ve all heard that classic speculation about how every Shakespeare play could be reproduced in an infinite amount of time by an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of typewriters. Well, this is it. We’ve reached the infinite mark. As we sit at home in front of the Internet, we are all infinite monkeys. Don’t you know that all possible meaningful web site names have been used or copyrighted? Even DogTongue.com. I checked. We have not only reproduced Shakespeare, but every word combination possible.” Shelly’s eyes gleamed, as she became intoxicated with her own brilliance.
Guido nodded his head. “Yeah. TINSTAFL, man.”
Shelly pulled on one of her braids in an effort to understand. “What? Tin stafel?”
“ Yeah. There Is No Such Thing As Free Lunch. It’s a simple economic theory that our entire economy is based on. That’s a neat idea too.”
Desmond clasped his hands together. “Oh yes! And if a tree falls in the forest does anyone hear it?”
“ Or which came first?” Netty asked. “The chicken or the egg?”
“ I fucking hate all of you. How come we can’t have a challenging conversation for once?” Shelly grasped at her forehead with both hands.
“ Oh come on,” Desmond said. “Sometimes you act like your mother weaned you on double lattes.”

VI.
The following was carved onto Kevin’s chest during the night by what he believed to be seraphim.
Big Kevin
Mighty Kevin
Coming to carry you home.
Big Kevin
Mighty Kevin
Shelly, you’re not alone.

VII.
Three hours and four or five well-gin and tonics later, Shelly and Netty climbed into the Honda Civic and drove down Van Ness Avenue. Netty never got around to getting a driver’s license, but she lived with four roommates and was usually able to get a ride when she needed one. The five of them lived in a three-story dilapidated Victorian in a neighborhood even the police wouldn’t venture into. The house was commonly called “Billy’s Hole” but for reasons unknown to most.
“ So that fat Nazi actually wrote you a letter?” Netty asked in a tone that showed a little too much amusement for Shelly’s taste.
“ Yes, and it’s not funny. I mean, what if that freak comes looking for me?”
Netty removed a small leather zipper bag from her Hello Kitty purse and began to unpack the medical contents. Shelly looked over at Netty and swerved the car. “Hey! Don’t fucking shoot up in my car! It grosses me out.” Netty put her kit back into her bag and rummaged for a pack of cigarettes instead.
“ I think you should write him back…you know, start a romance thing as some kind of, like, literary exercise. By the time he gets out, you and me will be living in San Francisco, right?” Netty broke three matches while trying to light her bent cigarette.
Shelly pulled in front of Billy’s Hole and turned off the engine. “Uh…yeah. About that, I was thinking that maybe…I mean, I’ll be in grad school and everything and we might not really be able to live together.”
“ Oh come on. It’s not like you’ve been accepted to any schools yet,” Netty exhaled.
“ Well, I haven’t applied to any yet. Anyway, we don’t need to talk about this now. Can I come in and use the…uh, euphemism.”
“ The toilet? Need to drain the lizard, Shelly? Yeah. Come in. Why don’t you spend the night?”
Shelly and Netty walked through the knee-high dead grass towards the rotting front door of Billy’s Hole. There were no streetlights in the neighborhood. Only the moonlight and the faint hint of a low watt light bulb emanating from one of the windows made their navigation possible. “Damn it,” Netty said as she dropped her house key. She got down on her hands and knees to search for it in the grass. Her short bleached hair blended with the former grass and for a moment Shelly thought Netty was gone for good. Most of the yard was filled with shadows cast from the leaning house and a huge dead oak in the neighbor’s yard. Shelly had completely lost track of where Netty was and began to feel a random panic. She remembered the story Netty told her about how the cops tried to tow away one of the roommate’s cars because they thought the house was vacant. That story gave her the chills every time she thought about it.
“ Netty? Where are you?”
“ Mmph…stupid key…” Netty emerged a minute later on the other side of the yard with the key. In her other hand she held an old horseshoe that gleamed in the moonlight in the few places that it wasn’t rusty.
“ Look what I found! So are you going to spend the night here? Pleeeease!”
“ Oh, Netty. My mom would freak. Anyway, I hate to spend the night away from my stuff.”
Netty threw the horseshoe back into the grass and fumbled with the lock. “I do it all the time. Come on. You never spend the night with me. You hate me.”
“ No,” Shelly said with a yawn. “I don’t hate you. I’m a writer. Writers write. I have to go home and work on the novel. Now hurry up. I have to pee or I’ll vomit.”

When Shelly emerged from the bathroom she bumped into one of Netty’s roommates. She had seen him a few times at school but never actually spoke with him. He was a philosophy major at State and he was wearing a Kafka tee shirt.
“ Oh, hey…I was just using the uh…I am here with Netty.”
“ Yeah. You go to Fresno State, right? You’re Shelly.”
“ Yeah, that’s me.” Shelly giggled in a way that she found instantly hideous. She thought that it was the kind of giggling that only comes with well-grade gin. “You’re Phil?”
“ No, that’s the other male roommate.” This time he giggled and pushed up his wire-rimed glasses with his middle finger. “I’m Johnny. Say, do you want to see my posters?”
“ Yeah I do.”
She and Johnny creaked their way down the wooden hallway. Out of the corner of her eye, Shelly saw Netty passed out on the floor of her bedroom.

VIII.
It was Wednesday, arts and crafts day in the San Joaquin Correctional Facility. Big Kevin arrived early to the gym, which was converted every Wednesday into the Art Room, in order to get the first choice of canvas. He painted furiously and passionately for an hour. When he was done, he stood back and delivered a speech upon the piece’s meaning to the few inmates left in the room:
“ Behold my latest masterpiece, My Chaste Hebrew Queen. Note the use of texture applied only in the yellow and red paint, while the more muted tones remain slick, glossy, and one-dimensional. You might find this to be a rather academic assay, but to me it seemed the natural painterly progression of the composition. Instead of thinking about theory and form, I created this solely from my heart. I let the emotions explode onto the canvas in an orgasm of color and figure, letting them splooge where they may. See the warmer tone here in the uppermost field of the canvas? That is Shelly’s true inner being and this wash of ultramarine blue through here and here is her impeccable virtue.”
Cheech, the only man who had actually been listening, studied the canvas for few seconds and said, “It just looks like a bunch of paint.”
Kevin turned to Cheech, still grasping his paintbrush tightly. “Only to the untrained eye. Let us distill The Word, Brother.”

IX.
At 4 a.m. Shelly rolled out of an unfamiliar bed and hit an unfamiliar wooden floor with a crash.
“ What the…? What time is it?” She quickly stood up and turned on the overhead light. “Where’s my skirt? I have to go, now!”
Johnny sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes. His spiky brown hair stood up on his head like a crown. “No…get back in here. I’ll make you breakfast when we wake up for reals.” He was still wearing his Kafka tee shirt.
“ What the fuck are you talking about? I have to go home. I live with my parents. They’ve probably already sent out the National Guard.”
“ You’re an adult. You should have the freedom to stay at a friend’s house if you want.” Johnny reached for her hand but failed to touch it.
“ You are obviously not a Jew. Now help me find my skirt.”
“ What’s that mean?”
“ I don’t know…my dad’s an emigrant. He doesn’t believe in freedom.”
Johnny got up and began to look under the bed and then behind a chair. “I think my grandfather was half Jewish.”
Shelly rolled her eyes at him, but then saw her skirt on top of a bookcase where it had been thrown a few hours earlier. “Can you help me reach that? God you’re tall, aren’t you?”
“ So I’ve heard my whole life. Can I at least go back with you to your house? Then we can just wake up later and hang out all day. Maybe go for a walk or over to the 38-plex and see that new movie about the…”
“ No! Why would you go back to my place? So my mom can make you breakfast? What are you thinking? Anyway tomorrow is my day to write. I’m a writer. Writers have to write, you know.” Shelly began to re-braid her hair.
“ That’s cool. I have a paper to write. We could brainstorm together in a café or something.”
“ Look Johnny, I really like you. I just really need to go.”
“ I don’t think you like me very much.” Johnny pulled on a pair of jeans over his boxer shorts.
Shelly sighed. “No, I do. It’s just…I want to leave Fresno, ok? And I don’t have time for this, you know?”
“ Now? You want to leave Fresno now?”
“ No, for grad school. I don’t want to be just another idiot that hangs around Fresno for the rest of my miserable life.”
“ Why did you even sleep with me?” Johnny asked.
“ I…I don’t know. I was drunk. You were wearing a Kafka shirt.”
He laughed and looked at his foot for a second. Shelly picked up her bag and began to search for her car keys. Johnny stood up and touched her shoulder. “You didn’t seem drunk. You seemed fun.”
“ Then you’d hate me when I’m sober.” Shelly turned to walk out the door.
“ Maybe.” Johnny said.

When Shelly arrived home, her mother stood at the top of the stairs in the dark like a thin, glowing specter.
“ Hi Mom,” Shelly said as she ran past her and shut her bedroom door. She could hear her mother and father arguing at the end of the hall. As she pulled off her shirt, she noticed it smelled like Johnny’s unwashed hair. She held it up to her nose a moment and then put it back on.

The next day Shelly got up and cleaned her room. Then she turned on her computer to write, but decided to alphabetize her books instead. When she was done with that, she went back to the computer and opened a file called “The Novel”. She minimized that screen and began to play Tetris on her computer. An hour later she had beat her previous all time record and decided it was time to open “The Novel” again. She stared at what she had written for close to a half-hour:
PREFACE
Ladies and Gentlemen: What you are about to read may
shock and amaze you. The following might disrupt your pedestrian
sensibilities down to your very soul. You may experience unpleasant
feelings and vertiginous urges, catastrophic fits of malaise with your
life and multivalent confusion complicating your already myopic
vision. The pitchers of milk in your overstocked refrigerators may
curdle and your stockings could run in despair. The hemlines of your
dresses will ascend into the heavens and your hats will throw themselves
out of moving vehicles. Any ounce of banality lurking in the washtub of
your mind will immediately evaporate, leaving nothing but a filmy residue
behind. In short, Ladies and Gentlemen, reading the following not only may,
might, and could, but inevitably will change your life.

CHAPTER ONE

The phone rang. It was Desmond.
“ What are you doing bagel-head?”
Shelly flipped on the TV and put it on mute. “I’m writing, Desmond. Today’s my day for writing.”
“ Guess what? I figured it out. I really did it.” Desmond’s voice sounded edgy to her.
“ Did what?! Are you all right? Do you need me to pick you up somewhere? What is it?”
“ I distilled The Word this morning! I finally figured out how to do it.”
“ Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
Desmond was suddenly on the verge of tears. “It’s…it’s beautiful…I worked on it all night and then around 4 a.m. I did it.”
Shelly blushed at the mention of 4 a.m. “Did you actually drink that crap?”
“ Yes! Yes I did. I…I can’t even begin to tell you. I’m just coming down from it right now. I’ll bring some over right away. Don’t go anywhere.”
Desmond hung up before Shelly had the chance to argue with him. She sat back down at her computer and stared at the screen:

CHAPTER ONE

Within ten minutes Desmond was in her room with an old Vodka bottle filled with about an ounce of a red viscid liquid.
“ You won’t believe the things I saw this morning. I mean…wow! If I ever feel more inspired in my life, I think my head will explode. I saw truth! I saw beauty! I saw the next winning lotto numbers!”
Shelly held the bottle up to the light of the window. “You’re shitting me, right? I mean, ink can’t do all that. At most it will probably give you cancer.”
Desmond grabbed Shelly’s head with both of his hands. “No! It’s not just ink. It is The Word. It must be some special substance from Ecuador or something. That’s not regular ink, my friend.” Desmond paused and cocked his head. “Say, did you have sex last night? Something’s different in your aura. It’s not as high-strung or something. Or it’s high-strung in a different way.”
Shelly’s shoulders tensed. “Why are you saying that?”
“ I don’t know really. I think it’s this stuff. Come on. We’ll do a little together and we’ll finally write that play about the first gay man in space. Come on. You’ll feel so inspired!”
Shelly looked over at the nearly blank screen of her computer. “Ok, what the hell.”

Upon ingestion of The Word, an average human will feel the effects in 6.5 minutes. Shelly, having a lower body weight, began to feel lightheaded within four minutes. Within ten minutes she and Desmond were making up robot dances for the first gay man in space. Desmond’s mind was bursting with larger and grander dance moves and he had to run outside to the front lawn. Shelly’s two-story house was inhibiting his thought and he needed the open air to give them room to grow exponentially. As he leaped and cartwheeled across the front lawn, Shelly finally sat down at her computer and began to type:
Dear Kevin.

X.
“ I’m pretty sure that’s a typo, big guy.” Cheech squinted at the computer-generated letter. “It’s suppose to say ‘good behavior’.”
“ Oh ye of little faith! It’s the Truth. I’m getting out early for ‘god behavior’.” Kevin grabbed the form away from Cheech and read the words again. “ ‘God behavior’. They noticed!” He sighed with joy and fell back onto his bed with abandon.
“ It’s got to be ‘good behavior’. Who’s ever heard of ‘god behavior’?” Cheech paced up and down their cell with his arms crossed behind his back.
Kevin held the form to his heart. “Well now you have, my brother. Aren’t you happy for me? I was chosen.”
“ Yeah, sure I’m happy for you. You’re getting out early and you deserve it…but…it just don’t make any sense. No one’s ever heard of ‘god behavior’.”
Kevin quickly stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders. “If it is a typo, it is a typo from God.”
Later that evening, Kevin wrote a short letter to Shelly:
In one month I will triumphantly return to Fresno on God’s parole.

XI.
“ So like I was saying, I already finished the first three chapters,” Shelly told Desmond through her cordless phone. “I sent Chapter One to SF State with my application so I’m as good as in. Do you want to hear the first chapter?” She was sitting upside-down on the family room couch with her legs over the backrest as her mother read the newspaper next to her.
“ See I told you drugs were the answer,” Desmond said.
“ No. I don’t think that’s it. I think it was that letter I wrote to Big Kevin. It was pent-up fear that was giving me writer’s block. By writing out all my feelings about him and high school and all that, I was able to clear my head and start in on my important work.” Shelly’s mother rolled her eyes at her and went into the kitchen.
“ Why don’t you read that to me instead.”
“ I deleted it as soon as I was sober again. It was just the process of writing it that was important. Come on. I really want to read you my first chapter.”
“ Uhm…o.k,” Desmond agreed. He smiled as he looked on his desk and saw a copy of Shelly’s letter to Kevin. He had printed it while she was in the bathroom vomiting red ink three weeks ago. She had been too high to notice. Desmond took a seat on the floor in front of his Sega and pushed in a cartridge that said “Real War III”.
Shelly ran upstairs to her computer and opened the file called “The Novel”. “Alright. ‘Chapter One: One morning a gigantic insect awoke to find himself transformed into a Gregor Samsa…’” Shelly stopped reading as she heard a familiar digital melody in the background on Desmond’s line. “Hey! Are you playing video games?!”
“ I’m listening.”
“ No you’re not. You’re playing a stupid video game.”
“ I can listen and play a video game at the same time.”
“ No you can’t. You don’t care about my novel.” Shelly clenched her jaws together until she saw blue sparks appear in her eyes.
“ Now, now. That’s not true. Can I just read it later? I mean, it’s kinda hard to sit and listen to it over the phone.”
“ Yeah, whatever.” Shelly hung up on Desmond and read the chapter aloud to herself. When she had finished, she made some minor adjustments to a few sentences, and then read it again.
While she was reading through Chapter One a third time, she caught a familiar scent for just a second that made her heart jump. She stopped reading and inhaled deeply, but couldn’t find the smell again. She smelled around on her desk, first the computer and then the various stacks of paper and books that covered the rest. She let her nose lead her around the room as she raked her brain to place the smell. It was something really meaningful on a shelf of her mind that she couldn’t quite reach. Perhaps the smell was a memory from childhood or something encountered in a dream, an amorphous scent covered emotion. She crawled on all fours, searching under her bed and then back towards her desk. Then she saw it, the shirt she wore when she spent the night at Johnny’s. What she smelled was Johnny’s hair. The shirt had sat on the floor for three weeks, but it still smelled of Johnny’s hair. She held the shirt up to her face and entered a doorway of realization. Johnny had been three weeks ago and Johnny had actually happened.
Shelly’s mother walked into her room with the mail, but stopped to watch as Shelly sat on the floor, rubbing a shirt on her face. When Shelly showed no signs of stopping, her mother raised an eyebrow and said, “Mail call.”
Shelly gasped and threw the shirt on the floor. She caught the two letters her mom tossed her and waved meekly as her mother left her room. “Thanks Mom.” The first letter was from SF State, but it was much too thin to be the acceptance letter from the MFA program. She tore it open and was much dismayed to see that the single sheet of paper was in fact an official SF State MFA Program rejection. She immediately thought of the several ways the rejection could have come to her by mistake. Perhaps someone with a similar last name had sent in a really crappy manuscript and there had been a mix up.
Shelly’s hand shook as she dialed the admissions office. While she waited for someone to answer the phone she began to re-read Chapter One. She dropped the phone in terror as she realized that she had written the worst piece of shit ever to grace a color monitor.

Mr. and Mrs. Sternberg couldn’t get their daughter out of bed for two days. Shelly ignored their pep talks and refused phone calls from her friends. Desmond came by once, but she pretended that she was asleep. During one of her few trips to the bathroom, she considered calling Johnny, but the thought of having to explain everything that had happened in the past three weeks seemed too much like work. She lay in her bed with the pillow over her face, trying to conceptualize oblivion.
In a last ditch effort, her father brought her an unopened letter he saw lying on the floor.
“ Look what I found, Shelly.”
She rolled over so her back was facing him and drew the blanket over her head. Losing his patience, he pulled the blanket off his daughter and pulled her up by a braid. Shelly screamed with pain.
“Now look here! I didn’t even get to go to high school let alone Graduate School. We were poor. I worked in a factory at age fourteen. Do you understand?! Now I live in a two-story house with a daughter who will never work in a factory. Open your letter and be happy!” He threw the letter in her lap and stomped out.
Shelly tried to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. She opened her letter without looking at the return address, but recognized Kevin’s handwriting as she read the one sentenced message. At that moment, everything became clear for Shelly.

“I have to move! I’ll do it as soon as the semester is over in two weeks. I’ll just take off for San Francisco.” Shelly paced back and forth in front of her parents’ dinner table. She was wearing the same dress she had worn and slept in for the past two days. Her dinner plate lay full and untouched.
Her mother’s eyes followed her as she paced. “Just ‘take off’, huh?”
“ But the school’,” Her father panicked, “They don’t want you. What are you going to do there?”
Shelly stopped pacing to glare at her father. “I’ll just live there. I’ll get a job. Do what people do. You know, I can’t live here forever. I’m twenty-one years-old!”
Mr. Sternberg slammed his fist down on the table. “I forbid it. You’ll move when a college wants you.”
Tears formed in the corners of Shelly’s eyes as she pictured her own untimely death. “But that guy is going to kill me! He’s coming back from jail to kill me…or steal me. I don’t know what he’s going to do! I don’t want to stay around like a fool and get slaughtered! That’s not the way I am supposed to become famous! I don’t want my foot in the door of fame clad in a clown shoe!”
Her father knitted his brow. “What does that mean?” He turned to his wife. “What is that suppose to mean?” Mrs. Sternberg shrugged and he continued, “Look, we can have a restraining order put on him and everything will be fine. Eat your dinner.”
“ It’s not just about that. It is and it isn’t.” Shelly sat in her chair but couldn’t bring herself to put any of the dinner in her mouth. She was now convinced that she needed to move no matter what. How could they not understand her? How could they deny her the one human right every child has – to escape their parents?

XII.
In the throws of tragic news and a severe Word hangover, Kevin wrote:
Shelly, my light, my life, my one and only tie to the Divine:
How much torture can a man endure when his spirit’s enlightenment surpasses the emotional planes perceivable to most men? The simple daily routines are chaffing me like so many pricks and briars! O Shelly, how can I go on living when I have lost my faith in God and Man and, alas, The Word? All three have deceived me, used me, and left me an empty crusty shell.
Where do I begin? What has happened to me has been a cruel spiritual bait and switch. It’s like the Good Book says, “The Lord Givith and The Lord taketh away”, only now I know what these words truly mean: The Lord givith SO He can taketh away. He is an Indian Giver of the highest order and He plays with men’s souls as if they were plastic chess pieces. He and I have a lot to work out and my feelings are becoming more and more conflicted, especially now that The Word has lost its potency as a direct transmitter to Him. Last night I tried to reach him for hours, drinking glass after glass of The Word, but he would not answer me.
I suppose I should just come forth and say it. I was the victim of life and all the cruel tricks it can play on an honest man. How was I to fall prey to the trickery and deceit that lies within the Typo? First, the Typo made me a God and a free man. Then it just made me the wrong man. The dismissal from jail was not for me, Kevin Long, but for a Kevin Longcope. Part of me damns the day Kevin Longcope ever crawled from his mother’s womb, but I know that it is not his fault that he is now a lucky bastard. I forgive Kevin Longcope and wish him the best of all things in his freedom. I truly hope that he has such a beautiful Chaste Hebrew Queen to return to as I do.
O Shelly, it is you and your radiant words that keep me alive. Desmond took the liberty of mailing the letter that you were too shy, too humble to mail all by yourself. I have read it three times a day since it arrived two weeks ago. I find your description of our future reunion so eloquently written, so charged…and, Dare I say, erotic! My heart bursts with love every time I read the part where you say, “Kevin, the only way to conquer my fear would be to suffocate under your girth, dying painfully in our first and final embrace of terror.” Such vivid and glorious language you use! Yes, I would be so happy to die in the final embrace of our love! Sometimes love can feel like terror, you are so right.
My love, I need to sleep as my head is throbbing and my vision is dimming. I will continue this letter after I take a nap.

XIII.
Shelly had refused her parent’s help. She drove the $19.95-sized U-Haul up to San Francisco and moved what little she brought by herself into a studio apartment above a liquor store called Home Boy Liquor. A middle-aged tenant of the building helped her up the stairs with her mattress and offered to carry the remaining boxes, but she didn’t trust his eagerness and kindly told him she could manage by herself. He assured her that he worked out at the gym regularly and even showed her his muscular upper arm. She eventually allowed the man to carry all the boxes for her, as it was easier than getting him to go away.
Once she was alone, she unpacked everything, taped her collection of famous writer postcards to the walls, and connected her phone and computer. She created a sitting area in one corner of the studio out of some Moroccan throw pillows and artfully slung scarves where she could entertain her various new literati friends.
“ So this is it,” Shelly said aloud. “Yes. Now things are really going to happen.” She lay on her mattress looking at her new existence: four walls that contained a kitchenette, a window, the front door, and closet-like bathroom. It was all hers and for only $800 a month. Her savings would allow her three months before she had to look for a job. She figured the novel would be done by then. She created an extremely structured regimen in her head that would allow her a minimum of 8 hours of writing a day. Without the distractions of Fresno, nothing could get in the way of this goal.
As Shelly lay on her mattress thinking of her new regimen, she became more and more angry with Desmond, Netty, and her parents for getting in the way of her writing. It was their constant interruptions and refusal to take her seriously as an artist that had prevented her from becoming the serious artist she was destined to become. She buried her head in her pillow and pulled at her own hair as she sobbed with anger over her misspent youth. “If only,” she muffled into her pillow, “If only they left me alone…” She stopped speaking when she heard the strangeness of her voice in the empty room. She sat up and listened. Her voice was gone and replaced by a faint ringing. She tried to concentrate on the ringing to determine its source. It became louder and more unbearable and was soon hurting Shelly’s ears. She became dizzy and nauseated and covered her head, but the sound remained. The more she tried to block it out, the clearer her ears rang. She realized that the ringing was silence, something she had never noticed before.
Shelly crawled on her hands and knees to her phone and dialed. On the third ring, he answered.
“ Hi Johnny. It’s Shelly. Guess where I am.” Again, she giggled nervously, but this time if felt good.

XIV.
“ He’s dead alright,” The San Joaquin Correctional Facility doctor pronounced while checking Kevin’s wrist and neck for a pulse.
Cheech began to shake involuntarily. “Then why’s his fist all clenched like that?! He’s not dead, Dr. Watson! Look!” Cheech pointed at Kevins tight grasp around a ball of paper.
“ No, he’s dead.” Dr. Watson pried the blurry pulp from the rigormortised fist. “Probably a suicide letter.” He placed the ball of paper into a plastic bag he had brought with him and then looked at Cheech through his enormous glasses. “I have to take him into the coroner’s office now. Do you have any idea why he killed himself? Where would he have gotten poison?”
“ No! He didn’t kill himself, man!” Cheech, still shaking, hugged himself in an attempt to warm up.
Dr. Watson nodded to one of the two armed guards that stood at the cell door. “So you did it, huh?”
“ No! It was The Bible! We all used to do it.” Tears began to fill Cheech’s eyes.
“ The Bible?” The middle-aged doctor repeated after Cheech.
“ Yeah, The Word. He drank way too much of it last night.”
“ Hmm.” Dr. Watson stood in order to show Cheech his towering height. “He drank the Bible, huh? Don’t you realize this man is dead? This is no time to be pulling some…”
Cheech grabbed Dr. Watson by the collar and began to scream, “THE WORD. THE WORD! HE DRANK THE WORD!”

The two guards escorted Cheech to Isolation while Dr. Watson and another guard lifted Kevin onto a stretcher.

 

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