“I’ve got a good friend who runs the coffee shop in town, and they’re in the same boat. Hard to have a coffee shop with no Wi-Fi.” I said this mostly in the hopes that he’d keep talking.
“Did they accuse him of being the problem?”
“No.” I laughed. “I don’t think so anyway.”
“Well, that sounds nice. They’re in here every week telling me I’m up to no good. I’m just trying to make a living here.”
“When was the last time you saw them?”
“A couple weeks ago now, I guess. And then I catch the guy sneaking around the back looking through our stuff!”
“The cable guy?”
“Yeah, he was back there looking for who knows what. I’ve seen homeless guys do that, trying to find something to sell. But this guy’s got a job. What is he doing going through our trash? You ask your friend about that, OK?”
“That does sound like him, actually. He’s always looking for a way to make a quick buck.”
“Tell him to do it some other place!”
My heart was pounding with the lies and the unapologetic North Jersey flair for confrontation. I decided there wasn’t much more I was going to get.
“Well, I’m really sorry this has been so rough. I’ll give Kurt a piece of my mind for you when I see him.”
“You do that.”
—
I got back in my truck, drove out of view of the front windows, and then pulled around the back of the hotel. It was time to dive into that pile of detritus that Kurt “Everything I Don’t Like Is a Conspiracy” Butler had been illicitly wading through earlier that evening.
I wished I had gloves. It was cold out, and, under a dusting of snow that had just begun to fall, a lot of the stuff looked broken or dangerous. It was fully dark now, so everything I saw was under the harsh glare of my cell phone flashlight. What I found was what you would expect. Trash. Two soggy bar stools with split faux-leather tops, a printer and an old CRT monitor, an ancient mop and its broken bucket, some warped plywood, a bike frame, scraps of carpet, Pop-Tart boxes, and a ton of empty water bottles. Maybe this is where the neighbors all brought their junk. But what there wasn’t was anything at all that you wouldn’t expect to find in a big pile of trash behind a crappy hotel.
So then I decided to look deeper. It felt just the slightest bit like the Dream, a shadow of that sensation of knowing that, somewhere, something was waiting to be found. I lifted up a piece of splotched pink carpet and found, underneath, a couple hypodermic needles and a soggy old book.
“Nope!” I said aloud, and then I tiptoed my way out of the mess as fast as felt safe. I couldn’t help but imagine what my dad would think if he saw me in that moment. Then I got mad at myself for caring. And then I got mad at myself for giving up.
I mean, it was dumb. I was at a hotel, so it was probably a Bible. But it wasn’t really big enough to be a Bible. OK, this wasn’t actually like the Dream, it was colder and muddier and with a higher chance of contracting hepatitis. The weather was always so nice in the Dream, and you never got tired. And you never had to talk to other people. This mystery sucked.
I shuffled back to the disgusting pink carpet, lifted it up again, and carefully picked up the book.
“The Book of Good Times,” said the cover.
I took it back to the truck and started reading.
Do not tell anyone about this. Do not post an Instagram story of this or tweet it or call a friend and share it. This is a magic book, but its magic only works for you, and it only works if no one else knows. It won’t always make sense, but it knows more than you. So unless I tell you differently, clam up, buttercup. Let’s get straight to what you want to know.
You’re safe, for now. I’ve made sure of that. Sorry about the nonsense at Cowtown, you don’t have to worry about Fish for a little while.
Whenever I thought about the Cowtown nonsense for too long, it got too weird too fast. Someone who was running this RG must have known where I was and that I had gotten a bunch of money out of an ATM. Either that or they had been watching me. And then they mobilized a bunch of players to come for me? I only thought it was possible because it had happened. But this! This book was even more unsettling. I felt like stopping reading right there, but my eyes caught the next line, and it pulled me in like a fishing net.
You’re on the right track. You got this far on your own, but now you need to do the hardest thing yet. You need to wait. You need to go back to your Airbnb and look after your potato. You need to have Derek and his family over for dinner. You need to stop looking at the ground and start looking at the sky.
I know that stepping back from this search will be hard, and why would you take my word for it? I’m just a book that was under a soggy carpet. But that’s where I needed to be for you to find me right now. Maybe I could tell you a story that would make you listen to me. I don’t know that you’ll like hearing it, but I don’t know how else to make you listen.
How about this:
When you were a kid, you were afraid of wooden furniture. Not, like, furniture
