The problem really started when Colliver conjured up not the fiction of the great dead author (of which he was a diffident fan), but the author himself.

-I frighten you, Colliver?

-Yes.

-But why? Clearly you like me or I wouldn’t be here.

-I do like you, I just never felt I could put myself inside your work. Do you. Your stories aren’t that accessible.

-So then why are we talking now? What am I doing here?

-I don’t know. Ego?

-Yours or mine?

-Mine?

-Are you asking me or telling me?

-Fine, my ego. But then there’s that fear. Normally, it’s pretty easy to manipulate an author’s work at will.

-Armies of citizens with pitchfork pens all ablaze storming the writer’s castle! What thievery!

Colliver narrowed his eyes.

-Whatever. Look, it’s just that you’re far more difficult, so I’m lacking confidence. Imagine, in this day and age, the 21st century, to lack confidence! I think I’m just stuck.

-Well, what did you begin with?

-A little something based on “The Balloon.”

-Maybe “The Balloon” is too obvious.

-I’m a fan, though, remember? I start from an obvious place. I can only work with what I have and a lot of your other stories are way too complex.

-You don’t think “The Balloon” is complex?

-Of course I do. But as an object, it’s less complex than the emotion you stuffed into your stories and sprung on the reader like magic. I can’t dissect that.

-Actually, “The Balloon” is probably the best example of “stuffed,” as you so expertly refer to it. What about the final paragraph?

-What about it?

-Much is revealed there, and if you miss it, you miss “The Balloon’s” main objective. Obviously you—oh, forget it. I’m just being sensitive. Perhaps I am inaccessible, scare you too much. I see you’ve been at it for four or five days now and nothing’s come. It’s not meant to be that difficult, is it? After all, there’s nothing stopping you. Isn’t that the point of all this?

-Right, exactly. It’s the 21st century. I can go on.

-Doesn’t even have to be good.

Colliver considered this a few moments.

-Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far. I like it to be good.

-Well, then perhaps you should have dialed into someone with a wider audience. I mean, why make it so hard on yourself?

Colliver, though it appeared he was merely thinking, suddenly started to weep.

-Wait, hold on, stop crying, Colliver. I mean, it’s not like this is easy for me, either, you know. Hang on, I have an idea. You have a nice railroad apartment here. It’s like the one I lived in on West Eleventh.

-I’ve walked by it.

-You live here with your mother?

-She doesn’t bother me.

-Does she let you drink?

-Booze?

-Yes, liquor.

-Sometimes.

-Lucky you. Is she here?

-She’s at church.

-At night?

-She prays.

-Does she bowl?

-No. What? Why?

-Just trying to get something going for you. Okay, so she doesn’t bowl. How about you go down the hall to the bookshelf? There’s one, isn’t there?

-Yes. My mother used to teach school.

-Okay, go down the hall to where we can’t see you. Then take up a book from the shelf.

-Out of view?

-Yes, so we can’t see.

-We? There’s only one of you.

-Figure of speech. Go.

-Okay.

Colliver got up from his desk, collected himself, and did what he was asked.

-Like this?

-Yes, good, out of view. You have a book in your hands now?

-Yes.

-You’re holding the book?

-Yes.

-Which book?

-You really want me to tell you?

-Now would be the time.

Colliver read the title, something difficult to make out.

-Was that French, Colliver?

-Yes.

-I take it you don’t know French?

-No.

-Okay, forget that. Try another. Got one?

-Yes.

-Do you feel it, Colliver, what I’m pushing you toward?

-Yes, I think so. This time, more. A little, anyway.

-What is it?

-The feeling or the book?

-The book.

-Aren’t you supposed to guess or something? Why I am telling you?

-Hey, it’s your fantasy. You’re afraid. You said so. If you weren’t so afraid, I imagine I would be guessing.

-Oh, right, okay. Well, it’s a small green book with a tassel. Small.

-Hardcover?

-Yes. Hey, good guess.

-Not really. Normally, only a hardcover would have a tassel.

-Oh, right. Well, then good observation.

-It’s what I did, Colliver.

-Yes, but in a skewed sort of way, you have to admit.

-Yes, skewed. Okay. Go on.

-Poetry.

-You are still envisioning someone else here. Someone you are not afraid of, Colliver, and thus someone who will eventually guess and make everything seem okay. I am not going to guess eventually. Just tell me. I’m sorry, I know I’m difficult.

-Rimbaud. Season in Hell.

-Was your mother a French teacher or something?

-No.

-Is it your mother’s book?

-No.

-Where did you get it?

-A very handsome guy left it at a party. I think it was a trick.

-What do you mean, a trick?

-Bringing the book to the party. This was a long time ago, like in the 1990s. Sometimes people brought books to parties and weren’t looked at strangely even if their intention was simply to score.

-And how did the book come into your possession?

-He left it behind.

-It mustn’t have been important to him.

-At first, yes. He sat in a chair and leafed through the pages attracting people. But then it became unimportant in the end, the moment before he left with a woman.

-Do you think it was ever important to him in the first place?

-No, that’s just it. He wasn’t someone who needed to bring a book to a party in order to appear attractive.

-He left with someone? A woman who was more important?

-I don’t recall.

-A man?

-I said I don’t remember.

-You said he was handsome.

-So what?

-Remember.

-I can’t.

-You won’t?

-I am unable.

-Okay, Colliver, come back.

Colliver went back cautiously and looked with great diffidence at his fantasy, the great dead author, who had materialized into much clearer form since he’d gone down the hall: a pleasant-faced, portly, bearded, bespectacled man. It seemed impossible that such a benevolent face could create such strange fictions.

-You look just like the photos I’ve seen of you.

Colliver held up a large hardcover with a white dust jacket. On the back was a photograph of the great dead author, who looked at the picture but didn’t reach out.

-I’m forty-two years old there.

Colliver put the book down and felt more at ease.

-Do you know about my aloneness?

-That’s not a word, Colliver.

-It’s not?

-No. At least it wasn’t. I suppose it might be now.

Colliver took down a heavy blue dictionary. The great dead author looked on eagerly.

-Oxford?

Colliver flipped back to the front cover.

-Merriam-Webster.

They consulted, failing to find aloneness.

-Told you.

-Let me check online.

-Why? Don’t bother. Of course it’ll be online. Lots of words used now that are non-words, right, Colliver?

-Right. Like combining of two words happens alot now. I see it alot, do it alot.

-Yes, so much. Or somuch. Or sometime. Perhaps some day, or should I say someday, when there is less personal occupation, it’ll revert to how it was meant to be. There is too little resistance now.

Colliver ignored this last part.

-So do you know about it then?

-About your aloneness? Yes, Colliver. I know a great deal about you. Most things.

-You have a tone. What, you think it’s just feeling sorry, right? Pathetic?

-It’s feeling, I’ll give you that. For what, I don’t know.

-You know then about the sky feeling, too?

-The lowering down, you mean?

-Yes. Unreal, so you do know.

-Yes. But it bores me so, Colliver.

-Oh, it does?

-It’s like a dramatic prop that doesn’t work correctly. Strains.

-It’s just how it feels to me. I can’t explain it better or feel it better.

-Because you don’t have that ability.

Colliver, embarrassed by this, adjusted the lamp on his desk, nervously touched some loose papers with the tips of his fingers, and then turned back to the great dead author.

-When I sleep, I can dream anything I want.

-You read that somewhere.

-So? Isn’t that what this is about?

-Didn’t I write that once?

-No. I don’t know. I can, though.

-No you can’t, Colliver.

-Who cares if I read it? I mean, isn’t right now, in this waiting period, isn’t this what’s done? I mean, what I’m doing, or trying to do, right this minute with you?

-Lifting?

-Yes. Taking, using, lifting, without originating.

-Originating I suppose is part of the future, the next unseen wave, just as it was part of the past.

-I guess. So what about it? Lifting? Fandom? It’s not wrong is it? I mean, so many do it.

-How could it be wrong then, Colliver?

-Wrong’s the wrong word. Dammit, I don’t know the right word.

-Unfortunately, I was part of that last wave, so I can’t help you there.

For a few moments, Colliver considered the apparition of the great dead author.

-Something’s just struck me.

-Share, Colliver.

-Well, while I am afraid of you, isn’t it a fact that you did some lifting of your own?

-I had a formal originality. I never once stole from anyone’s work.

-No, I know. It was beautifully original.

-One hell of a word, don’t you think? Original?

-Don’t get off track. You did take from certain sources, though. Batman, the Joker, the Phantom of the Opera, Robert Kennedy.

-If you don’t realize there was an element of collage to my work, Colliver, then we should end this right now. You shouldn’t actually be allowed—

-No, I do understand. I get it. Give me a chance. My heart is pounding.

-You’re doing fine.

-Thanks.

-That’s what people like to hear now, right? Fine?

-Yes, oh yes, fine is a must.

-Everything has to be okay in the waiting period, is that it, Colliver? Acceptable? No gatekeeper, no resistance.

-Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

-What’s that, Eliot?

-An even bigger fear of mine.

-For me, too.

-Really?

-Sure, Colliver, that sort of thing never goes no matter how fantastic you get.

-I guess it’s ironic, isn’t it?

-Here it comes.

-What, all of a sudden you don’t like irony?

-Don’t like? I used to eat and drink irony, Colliver. What’s so ironic about my fear of Eliot? Fantasies have fantasies, you know. What do you think we do here with all our time?

-No, I’m not talking about that. God, you are sensitive.

-That’s what happens in death.

-Really? I’d have thought the opposite.

-Of course, that’s what we’re fed to think in life, but the truth—

-Fed or led?

-Fed, Colliver. You might think I’m here because you’re stuck figuring out how to insert yourself or a weakly-envisioned character of your creation into one of my stories, but the truth of the matter is that I’m simply pissed off that you’ve even considered doing so in the first place. I don’t dislike you, but I am angry. I am here to impede you.

-But everyone’s doing it.

-You keep saying that. And everyone? Really?

-Many.

-Yes, an uprising, but go back and make your point about Eliot. It was probably more interesting.

-All I was trying to say is that that line, about humankind and reality, it’s just so ironic now. Now more than ever.

-What’s so ironic about it?

-You know, for a fantasy you don’t have a great deal of omniscience.

-Following your lead, Colliver.

-Ironic because it feels so true and yet we are drowning in reality. Saturation of news, reality TV.

-Unreal!

-Yes, completely unreal.

Colliver looked at his computer screen, which was dark. The papers around the keyboard were blank save for a few crossed out attempts at “The Balloon.”

-Do you know what will happen?

-To what, Colliver? Television?

-What? No, I mean in general. Overall.

-Oh, no. No way.

-No way you know and won’t tell me, or no way you have no idea?

-The latter.

-Latter with t’s or d’s?

-Does it matter?

-Well, what do I do?

-About what? Frankly, you’re all over the place here.

-About the aloneness I mentioned.

-Occupy yourself, Colliver. Pacify.

-Pacify?

-Yes, pacify. It’s what’s done, now more than ever. More chances to do so, too. With it you’re less alone, even while being alone. It’s proven.

-Okay. So what do I do about you? About this situation? Just write?

-There is no system, just as no value, so yes, just begin, whatever comes to mind.

-Without vision?

-The situation is liquid. Vision doesn’t come into it. The vision has already been had for you.

-Right, okay. And since there is nothing no one can’t do now, no stopping, this has to be the natural progression.

-Now that’s ironic as hell, if you ask me.

-Is Hell ironic? Not that, you know, I’m assuming you know.

-It can be, Colliver. But that’s not what I meant. I just meant that God is going out of it, right, and yet there is nothing no one can’t do now, as you say. That is some great faith if you think about it!

-Faith in self, though. It’s different.

-But a kind of faith nevertheless, Colliver, don’t you think?

-I suppose. They say there’s no audience left.

-How can that be, though? From what I can tell, tickets are still being sold, albums, books, paintings bought.

-Yes, but there’s no division any longer. The audience is the performer, the performer the audience. As they take their seat or open the cover, they are bubbling already with desire for their chance. Take me, for instance. You think my left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing? Can it be a society where everyone’s the artist? That seems terribly unbalanced to me.

-At some point, we all have a bottle of indifferent California wine sitting on a nightstand while we make love in the dark.

-Ooh, I like that.

Colliver quickly jotted this down.

-What’s that from?

-Doesn’t matter.

-It’s yours?

-If you were a real fan, you would know.

Again, suddenly, softer this time, Colliver began to weep.

-Stop, Colliver, I’m sorry. Tell me, what word stands out most to you?

-From that line?

-Yes, from that line.

Colliver thought a moment.

-California?

-Of course, California.

Colliver looked pleased.

-I’m being facetious, Colliver. Don’t you understand subtle variations? The word that should really stand out is indifferent.

-So the age I’m a part of is a dark room of sex with a bottle of bad wine on the nightstand?

-I didn’t say bad, Colliver. Or sex.

-Indifferent.

-Yes, something like that.

-I don’t agree. Besides, that’s way too cynical, don’t you think?

-I’m just a passenger here, Colliver, what do you want from me? A lie?

-No. So is that what I should go with?

-What? The California wine?

-Yes, I mean what about that scenario? I don’t love it, but it’s blowing up in my mind at the moment. I can picture myself there in that room as one of the participants. Maybe not the sex part.

-Can you picture yourself as the bottle of indifferent wine?

-As the wine?

-Yes, Colliver.

-It would take some effort. I don’t know. Maybe.

-Try.

At this word, try, the image of the great dead author left Colliver. He was alone in his room, still sitting at the desk. Soon, he heard his mother come in. He listened without breathing to the splash of her keys on the marble table in the entryway, the coat slipping off her shoulders, the mumbled prayer at her lips. The heaviness of her.

Colliver sat more erect in his chair, rocking himself at the buttocks. He felt he had enough material to try now. Tons, in fact. Material slipping out of his right ear like ooze. He’d written so much already with far less to go on, without a visitation like he’d had tonight; how hard could it be to take this one on? Stories, vignettes, vinaigrettes, recipes, entire novels, screenplays, all based merely on inspiration he received from the work of authors of whom he was a fan. Now he had it direct from the author himself, a super highway with no speed limit, police, or another car for miles.

He switched on the computer. The machine hummed. It was night. His room, the entire apartment, was dark. His mother had gone to bed. She never bothered him. If she bothered him too much, he might move out. Where would that leave things?

Colliver opened a new blank document, and when he did so, the bluish grey light was ghostly upon his face. A pool of mercury, he thought, which was what he always thought just before he stopped thinking altogether and began typing with great speed.