The Minotauress

Stu lit a cigarette. Still. There's something funny. 'So what have I got? A Harvard grad with a two-hundred-year-old book in his pocket hanging out with two redneck deadbeats in a hotrod at two in the morning?'

Oddly, White Shirt seemed relieved. 'Well, since you're arresting me, I guess I'll have my day in court.'

'Yeah, you will. And you know what else? You don't seem to care in the least that you're going to jail.'

The guy smiled in the rearview. 'Perhaps it's my predestination. All experience is life, Officer, and all of life is experience, and the truth of that experience is what I crave, to infuse into my novels. My books allegorically bid the question: How Powerful Is The Power Of Truth?'

Great. A wack-job...

The man rambled on. 'I don't mind the experience of arrest, for I've never been arrested before. It's something I can later write about... in truth; and I'm certain I'll be exonerated once I have some discourse with the judge. As for the personages I was cavorting with previously?' The man paused, smiling meditatively. 'Good or bad, all people are part of the truth of the world, sir. An unlikely trio indeed, I'll admit. But as a writer, I learn from everybody.'

Stu was sick of the chatter. 'I guess on that note I'll remind you that you have the right to remain silent.'

'Of course, but one last thing, if I may, in response to your query. Isn't it possible that people, good or bad, can be symbols for something else, something much more esoteric, even daedalic? Almost like characters in a work of fiction, but fiction with a meaning extant between the lines. You can only hope that it's a worthy work, hmm? See, I'm a writer but in a much deeper sense, I'm a seer. What I long for more than all else is to see. And, alas, I've seen much tonight, and for that I give great thanks... to God.'

'Are you on drugs? You don't look the type but if you are, things will be easier on you if you let me know in advance.'

'The only drug I'm on, sir, is one that's quite legal.'

'Yeah?'

'Irony... '

Stu smirked as he pulled into the station. 'I think you're a weirdo, and you're getting on my nerves. I need you to be quiet.'

White Shirt said nothing more, but that subtle smile never left his face, almost as though it were part of his spirit.

Courtney looked up, alarmed, when Stu gently shoved the guy into the booking room.

'Well what have we here?' the woman enthused. 'You shore don't look like a bad guy.'

'I'm a speculative novelist,' the man said.

'Shut up,' Stu ordered. 'And sit down.'

'What he do, Stu?'

'Ripped off a credit card and tried to buy gas with it.'

White Shirt opened his mouth to object, but Stu pointed at him.

White Shirt closed his mouth.

'Oh,' Courtney added, 'and look. The chief's tickets to the Testicle Festival were in the mail.'

'Good.' Stu stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. 'Now he'll be in a good mood tomorrow, and a better mood when he sees that I got a bust. Shit, I haven't had a solid arrest in a month.'

'Good work, Stu... ' But Courtney, now, seemed to be looking at White Shirt with some scrutiny. 'Ain't I seen you before, on TV? Some show on one'a them weird cable channels?'

White Shirt beamed. 'The Signatures show, on Ovation Channel, yes! I was interviewed last year about my most recent novel, The NEW American Tragedy.'

Stu paused between puffs, looking cockeyed at the guy.

'This guy's a famous book writer, Stu—'

'Not actually famous in the popular sense but critically acclaimed,' the man interrupted. 'Raymond Carver wasn't terribly popular either; nevertheless, he remains perhaps the great American prose writer of the century, modernity's answer to, say, Sherwood Anderson.'

'Shut up,' Stu told him again. He rubbed his temples. Maybe this guy ISN'T bullshitting. Stu looked right at him. 'What the hell is a critically acclaimed novelist doing in Redneckland?'

'Searching for errant truths, Officer. See, I infuse relatable modern fiction scenarios with charactorial demonstrations of the existential condition. Allegorical symbology, it's called, rooted in various philosophical systems.'

Both Stu and Courtney stared.

The guy kept it zipped as Stu rolled an arrest report in the typewriter but before he could even begin to ask the prelim questions, Courtney peeped, 'Uh, Stu?'

'Yeah?' he grumbled.

'I gots somethin' ta tell ya... '

Stu frowned at her. 'What?'

She seemed sheepish. 'Them Testicle Festival tickets weren't the only thing that come in today's mail... '

Stu snapped his gaze on her. She was holding up an envelope.

He gulped dryly. 'Is it... '

'For Sergeant Stewart Cummings, from the Richmond Field Office of the Bureau of Alcoholic, Tobacco, and Firearms... '