“The Garage is . . . It’s a prism, isn’t it? It’s multidimensional, not just some flat tract.”
A prism. This sounds to me like boilerplate.
“Or a palimpsest, maybe that’s more accurate.”
Tape two—I’ve come armed. My one eye shows comprehension and Dwight looks stunned.
“The garret. The studio. Now the garage. It’s an all-American updating. And the book itself was conceived in a garage, because isn’t that where art comes from, so to speak?”
“That’s true,” I say. “What part kept you awake?”
“The whole. The sum. This sense that your concept pre-dates both of us. That it wasn’t so much authored as channeled. Eat.”
“I like to get it all cut up in squares first.”
“I’ve had this feeling before with certain manuscripts, that I’d seen them before, in some other life perhaps. Frankly, I smelled plagiarism.”
I laugh from a place in myself that doesn’t often laugh. A place I associate more with rippling sobs.
“That happens,” Dwight says. “Naked copying. Sheer fraud. It’s not always a crime, though; sometimes it’s an illness. The writer knows the book appeared before, but he feels the original author was the plagiarist and stole from him telepathically. But not in this case. This was daylight larceny. The writer—a midwesterner like you, from one of those states like Missouri, but not Missouri, the one just like it—”
“Arkansas?” I say.
“I think of that as the South. A former slave state.”
“Missouri was too. Read
“Please. Do I look like a man who hasn’t? Please.”
“People read and then forget. That’s all I meant.”
“You’re speaking of yourself here?”
“No, everyone.”
“Anyway, I dug up the original, showed it to him side by side with his book, and even then he had a fancy story. Very different from your case.”
“My book’s not stolen.”
“You’ve yet to end it. How could it be?”
“I’m close, though.”
“Does he leave the Garage? I don’t see how he can. We think of garages as places men put behind them once they’re successful. Lincoln’s log cabin. But that’s your twist, of course—for you, the garage is holy and sufficient.”
“Interesting. Until now my idea was that he’d leave eventually, but only once he realized that the whole world . . . Interesting.”
“I’m looking at you. You’re sincere. You’re puzzling through this. I’m glad. This heartens me. You’re not a thief. What’s happened here is pure Huck Finn.”
“Excuse me?”
“Reading and forgetting. And by the way, you were right, I’ve never touched Twain.”
“Are you saying this isn’t my concept?”
“Or title or character or theme or anything. It’s a first-class subconscious memory you have. Photographic. Yet lost to you. Amazing.”
I lay down my fork. What’s eerie about Dwight’s hunch is just how close it might be to the truth given what I’ve been learning about my brain. If I didn’t know otherwise, I might share his doubts, but in fact I remember clearly how, when, and where the idea first arose. His name was Paul Ricks and I’d just helped fire him from Crownmark Greeting Cards in Minneapolis. When I showed him his master self-inventory, which rated high for artistic talent and enterprise, he tore the thing into strips and said “You’re kidding, right? You really believe I can leave two decades of copywriting, roll up my sleeves, hide out in my garage, and hatch a whole new existence?” To which I said: “If I didn’t, I couldn’t do this.” And Paul said: “Prove it.” And I said, “Tell me how.”
“You’re innocent, but you’re guilty, too,” Dwight says. “I’m deeply sorry, Ryan.” He salts his pork.
“Suspicion is not conviction. You’re way off base. My book seemed too good for a novice and so you dreamed this.”
“I had a tip,” Dwight says. “You mentioned one of my authors yesterday. Soren Morse, the aviator.”
“Aviator?”
“I’m doing his sophomore book. We talk quite frequently.”
I’m dumbfounded. There are layers to this thing . . .
“So I mention your book to him, because I’m proud of it, and Morse said that’s like
“Two characters without names is not the same name.”
“Over my head, that. Try this: a phrase from your book that appears nineteen times and also occurs in the
