“Happenstance” is about urban Asia in winter and summer, romantic connections, and the permanence of music. Enjoy the excerpt below, and feel free to send comments and feedback to holinauthor@gmail.com.
He forgot who said it or how it came up, but it was definitely after the third pear cider, on one of those drizzly December evenings in the subtropics that soak the tips of your shoes. The pub had been overrun by a bunch of Londoners, all sweaty and red and shouting, and it wasn’t even football season. On the stage a band in flower print shirts was covering Muddy Waters: Got my mojo working… got my mojo working… They were shooting for blues, attaining rockabilly.
That’s when one of the Londoners divorced himself from another conversation just long enough to say to him very distinctly: Every great story must have at least one of the following: a death, a departure, or a tragedy involving a child.
Hmm, he replied, in slow motion. He didn’t even get a good look at the man who spoke to him―bad teeth, skull-tight ski cap, and now his back was to him again. And yet his fingers moved of their own volition and jotted the words down on a napkin: death, departure, children. Then he thought about it a bit. No doubt most literature these days was about children. Orphaned children, abused children, handicapped children, bereft children. Death? A trickier one, did minor characters count? Death and rebirth? Figurative death? And departure? As in leaving a state of mind, or physical movement? Departure was just another way of representing death anyway.
He drank his fourth pear cider. He was a wuss, no doubt about it. Beer too bitter for him, wine and straight alcohol too strong. The pussification of society. Like obsessing over weak mosquito spray for days on end in the jungle. He had been to the jungle, too insect-ridden, then to the beach, too quiet, and now finally he was in the city, six months later. Freshly unemployed, he had told his friends before he left home, half-joke and half-challenge: I’ll be writing the Great American Novel. Six months later, one hard drive crash, fifty pages of meanderings, zero epiphanies.
He flipped through the bills in his wallet―just enough for another drink. Not here. The Londoners weren’t so bad, at least they were laughing and talking and existing. He just needed to move. If everything fails or sucks, then stumble forward because people believe in the illusion of motion. There’s a departure for you.
Outside the rain had stopped and fog was settling in. Squat buildings built to earthquake code huddled under flyovers and highway overpasses. He took note of a karaoke bar with shuttered windows and rust-brown curtains, a mackerel tabby cat crouched just underneath on the sidewalk, its aggrieved eyes tracking his movements. Why insult a cat by naming him after a fish, he mused. Smeared newspapers and pink plastic bags littered the streets, makeshift umbrellas having served their purpose. The locals were wussies too―who needed umbrellas with such a light drizzle? Today’s revelation: he fit right in with everyone else here. No big deal to get wet, we all dry out in the end and eventually we’re dust. How morose. He was luxuriating in it and it felt good for the moment. He liked these crisp, empty streets where he could project anything he wanted on them. A notion that this city would soon be razed had taken hold of him. All inhabitants evacuated long ago. He would be a roaming minstrel, a low-rent Chaucer (impossible, wasn’t Chaucer low-rent already?) snatching local stories from the empty air. And if he should chance upon someone on the road, he would look in their eyes, recognize someone dear to them, and begin to sing: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together… Wait, wasn’t that from a song…?
Then he saw the simple blue neon sign down the street that curved out a sexy number 2, and heard the Beatles music.
***
You ever read The Tibetan Book of Death? the taxi driver asked her.
She didn’t answer immediately; she was trying to think chords. “For No One” was always tricky. Beginning on the B (although for her purposes she had moved it up to a C sharp), it was easy to start off singing the harmony instead of the lead melody, and hard as hell to shake the habit. Singing is sometimes subconscious―you steel yourself to do it a certain way, and then something erupts from out of nowhere and you’re off on a tangent. Sometimes brilliance, mostly dreck. She tried to curl her fingers into the shape of a C sharp guitar chord. Her fingertips trembled in place, or was it just her vision dilating? Outside the streetlamps were shimmying as they sped past them.
She shouldn’t have had the pot cookie―it had seemed like a good idea at the time, something simple and fast, and how could something so sweet be so destructive? Check that, destructive wasn’t the right word. She was more irritated than anything else. It had seemed like an hour had passed, but it had only been five minutes.
The driver was still talking―he hadn’t even waited for her to respond. He seemed nice enough, middle-aged and round with laugh lines around his eyes, but she couldn’t focus on him, only the digital clock on his dashboard that danced every which way. The Buddhists believe that at every moment, the universe is dying and being reborn, he was saying. So that means you’re dead and alive right now, with infinite universes open to you.
Please say no more about that, she thought, you keep talking like this and I can’t take responsibility for what my body will do next. This was going badly. The other boys in the band had been so excited about the pot, they had bought it from an American, an aging rocker Takashi had called him, but he called any American over forty an aging rocker. This one fit the description though, with his iron-gray hair pulled into a ponytail and peppery stubble on his cheeks and floppy beach sandals he wore everywhere he went. They must have fouled up the cookie recipe. Maybe a faulty English-to-metric conversion. Two kilograms for every pound, or was it two pounds for every kilogram…?
We’ve got thousands of selves within us, the taxi driver grinned. We just need to peel them back.
He was an awfully sweet man, this driver. He reminded her of her father, who was at home right now, bedsheet up to his chin and shivering without benefit of drugs, face as pale as the walls, and in the next room her mom and relatives were playing mah jong. Clack clack clack all night long. Did Dad mind the ruckus? He would never admit it even if he did, he was that way, and he had passed on his infinite politeness to her. Infinite universes.
As far as her mom knew, she was at night school, learning English in the hopes of getting some sort of vague secretarial career. Could one live an entire life getting by on lines from Beatles songs? She suspected one could. She tried to pull one out of her head just for demonstration but could only come up with silliness: The doctor came in, stinking of gin, proceeded to lie on the table… She stared at the driver’s wrist, which was ringed with Buddhist prayer beads. They seemed to be breathing.
How do you peel them back? she asked. Just like singing, the words popped out.
Meditation, said the driver. Your mind must be still so it can open up. I read the Tibetan Book of Death years ago and it’ll take me the rest of my life to study it.
Study. Of course. It all came down to study. She didn’t have the energy for it. She wasn’t tired but the pot had rendered her inert. If the driver wanted to pull over and have his way with her, she probably wouldn’t utter a sound. She tugged weakly at her skirt, tried to lengthen it a bit. Not that anyone would be turned on by her legs. Stubby, like elms. Plenty of times she had heard foreigners say that women from her country had the best legs. At least mine look healthy, she thought. No scabs, blotches, knobby knees.
Here we are, the driver grinned. You don’t have to believe me, just read the book and think about it. Everyone has their own path.
She thanked him, and with a weak little shove, she got the passenger door open. Once again she was crushed by the humidity of the summer evening. Directly before her was the karaoke joint, rust-brown curtains billowing out in front of the opened windows. On the sidewalk, cooped up in a cage scarcely big enough to contain it, was a shih tzu dog with raccoon eyes―hello, Rocky Raccoon―and as they locked gazes it gave a surprisingly throaty yelp. Inside the bar a male voice was squawking “Oops, I Did It Again.” Takashi, no doubt. Already she was anticipating the five beers she would drink, the unholy interaction of alcohol with the pot in her stomach, the oatmeal texture of her puke. Then she saw the cool blue neon sign down the street that spelled out the number 2.