You are impressed with the accommodations on the journey. Every long passage of terrain that the Omnibus tours lasts a good portion of a day, and every night you find the rooms at the Comfort Inn Suites are just as advertised: clean, spacious, modern, and comfortable. The showers are hot, the water pressure high, and the bathrooms have been updated with those gleaming LED bulbs that run around the perimeter of the mirror, lights so luminous and clear that you see their ultra-white gleam in your eyes, and you feel like a model on a photo shoot. Frankly, your reflection is more flattering here, and that pleases you. This whole adventure makes you feel spiritually bolstered, worldly, magnanimous.

After several stays during the journey, you think about it and are impressed that I have secured the Comfort Inn Suites as a sponsor, and you really like the Pilot Precise V7 Rollerball pens that come in the swag bag too. You have taken my recommendation and used them to journal about your experience; you do so each night before bed, nestled under the cloud-like comforter.

But despite all this, there is one night when you cannot sleep. It’s the middle of the night when you wake, and the room is dark. Three A.M., the clock says. You slip from bed, stealthily unzip your luggage and find the cigarettes stuffed in your dress shoe, shoes you’ve had no need to wear yet. Pocketing the Comfort Inn keycard, you slip out, letting the door latch softly behind you. You walk down the carpeted hallway, past the roaring ice machine, and out the security door to the parking lot.

There you light up and look first to the black night sky, then off into the distance at the forested ridgeline in the dim moonlight. Then far across the parking lot you notice the Omnibus itself. It’s parked out of the way from the regular cars and trucks, like an oversized animal penned in a corner.

Curious, almost hypnotized, you cross the lot, keeping a lazily clandestine frame of mind, smoking, a sense of treachery and excitement growing. As you near, you see that a single lamp glows inside the bus. You tiptoe close and peer into the cabin, only to see me, Ben, seated, reading a stack of manuscript pages. But in a moment, I set them down, tidy the stack, and leave them. I walk up the aisle to the front of the bus and deboard. You hide by the rear tires, circling around to stay out of sight as I head to toward the hotel entrance. Breathless, you watch me pass under the canopied entryway, through the automatic doors, and into the hotel lobby. I must be headed to the bar; it's the only thing open at this hour.

Your heart racing, you fling your cigarette, creep up to bus door, tap a button, and with the chuff of hydraulics, you are admitted. You climb the steps, and dash to the rear. You grab the stack of papers, and scurry out. In the parking lot, you put the pages under your shirt, and in an unconvincingly casual stride, you return to your room.

You draw your curtains tight and begin to peruse the pages, which, oddly, begin at Chapter 19. In short order, being the astute reader that you are, you understand that these pages—based on the words in the running head—are from a work titled The Exploding Fete, the psychic territory which you toured not so long ago. You recognize the setting as the large and opulent (translation, in our times: grotesque) townhome of Mrs. Candace Winslow, the chairwoman of the board of the Foundation for the Advancement of Inclusivity and Recognition. Yes, an unmistakable setting. And there, in it, is a character named Johan Damgaard.

⪤

—19—

In the corner of the parlor farthest from the entrance and farthest from the room where the food had been served was a loveseat backed up against some built-in shelves. Here in this picturesque corner sat Johan Damgaard, Dane, 38.

His hair was the color of silkworm silk: nearly translucent, and shaved close above each ear, to the crown, showing the fairness of his scalp. Where it was not shaved, it was long, providing a dramatic contrast in lengths; and the long parts swooped in a curve away from his forehead, stiffened and made heavy by thick, goopy pomade, and so immovable, and always creating the precise desired effect no matter the movement of Johan’s head. His hair was worn, in other words, in the fashion of the day. He had a narrow face and a long pointy nose with nostrils barely slits. Eyes like two licorice gumballs. Cheeks like an excavated hill for tears to run swiftly down.

“I remember I used to sit with my Sisi,” Damgaard said, “on the hillsides aaaall afternoon. Sisi means cousin in my language. For hours and hours, we would laze in the grass on the hills outside my town, soaking in the summer sun, with no greater care than dreaming up creatures we saw in the ever-shifting shapes of the clouds. My cousin—Liva was her name—was one year older than me. Just enough older so that I was filled with fascination of her. Oh, how I admired her. She always seemed to know something about the waarld which I had not yet learned. She always said things that I could never have imagined on my own. My brain was too feeble. But Liva, she made observations of things I failed to notice. Conclusions I lacked the wit to draw myself. I envied her so strongly. But I also loved her madly. When she took my hand to lead me across Jyllandsgade—that is the main road in central Aalborg, where I come from—the world seemed to stand still, the earth to stop spinning entirely. I was captive to the sight of her flowing brown hair, her long limbs, and especially her electric hazel eyes, which were as big as my own swelling heart.”

“When we grew tired of staring at the clouds or grew too warm lazing in the sun, we would walk down the hill and into the grove where the gerlaap trees grew. Do you have gerlaap trees here?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said the young woman beside Damgaard.

“I did not think so either. I think the gerlaap tree only grows in my country.” He sipped his scotch on the rocks, which was melting fast due to the number of bodies in the place and their close proximity.

“There in the shade of the gerlaap groves, I would hoist Liva up into the branches. Then she would pull me up after her, and together we would climb among the limbs, high in the shaded boughs, moving from limb to limb as easily as if among the rooms of our own home. In fact, this was our home—or something just like, for it offered safety, a type of above-ground privacy, and held us at a remove from the outside world. It was heaven to me. Our goal, of course, was to reach the ripest and biggest of the gerlaap fruits and eat them. Which we did, in abundance. Have you ever eaten a gerlaap fruit?”

“No, I’m sure I haven’t,” answered the young woman beside Damgaard.

“I didn’t think so, since the gerlaap trees, as I said, only grow—to my knowledge—in my country.” He sipped his scotch—a very good scotch, Glen Livet. “The fruit has a husk which must be peeled off. The husk is hard and bitter. But inside is the tender, greenish flesh, full with seeds. One eats the seeds like with a pomegranate. They are crunchy. The flesh is moist and sweet, kind of like a kiwi or passionfruit.”

The young woman smiled appreciatively.

“At the end of an afternoon, there would be so many empty gerlaap shells on the ground beneath our tree, that we were not required to climb down the trunk to reach the ground. We could simply roll off the limbs, and it was only a short fall before we landed safely in the pile of empty husks. By now, our bellies were as big as bowling balls. Then we would walk to the riverbank, where we would wash our sticky hands and faces, and drink the clear, cool, sparkling water. Amazing, no?”

“Johan, you tell such beautiful stories. I can see them like a film in my mind’s eye! Why haven’t they made a film of your stories? People would love them! You’d be a millionaire.”

“Many people have told me this,” Johan said drily. With a tremble of his hand, he rattled the ice cubes in his drink, then tipped the cup to his lips. “And yet what would I do with millions of dollars? The only thing I need to live is my stories. And stories cannot be bought. Not for all the money in the world.” This Damgaard said with an air of calculated disinterest.

“What happened to Liva?” the young woman asked. “Are you still in touch with her?”

“Ah, no, unfortunately, fate was not so kind to Liva. The joys we shared on that hillside and in the gerlaap groves would be among the last she would know. Liva was away at boarding school when she caught ill and died. It came on very suddenly. I was on my way to see her when she expired. By the time I arrived, it was too late.”

The young woman closed her eyes. Tears, one at each eye, emerged from under her eyelids like sleepy animals from their burrows. Trailing down her cheeks, they washed away her foundation makeup, drawing lines like those children draw on construction paper, the color of sorrow.

Damgaard took the woman’s hand in his. “Would you stay with me tonight?” he said. “The life of a travelling storyteller is a lonely one. I’m so far from home, and it is not only trains that sadden me, but planes and taxis, shuttles and busses as well. I always feel that with every journey I make, I am travelling to the Herlufsholm School for Girls. Always I am too late to save Liva.”

The young woman’s throat flexed as suppressed tears travelled down her sinus passages and into her throat. Her cheeks and neck flushed the color of a Queen Elizabeth rose petal, onto which fell the shadow of Charles Knott, founder, CEO and lead architect at Knott Architectural Design.

“Pardon us, folks,” Knott said, sidling into a position not unlike a dentist would assume if he wanted to straddle either Damgaard, the young woman, or both, in the interest of gaining leverage to manually extract a rotting molar.

Knott, 48, wore cobalt blue wide-weft corduroy pants, belted, and a black turtleneck. His eyeglasses bore a tortoise shell pattern. There are many variations of middle-aged baldness, and Knott’s was the type wherein the remaining hair is still dark and full, and the hairless pate totally bare, no stragglers, and its skin a healthy and tan tone, unblemished by age spots. It is a rather attractive baldness, of which Knott was justly proud.

Beside him another figure inched in: Boris Czecknik, Serbian, also an architect.

“Good evening,” Czecknik said, with an academic air. He sensed he was interrupting some kind of canoodle.

“So you see here,” Knott explained, “it’s actually a yellow poplar that they used for the built-ins. I like it.”

“Is it a rare wood?” Czecknik asked.

“You can get it easily enough.”

“Pricey?”

“Fair, I’d say. And that’s a modern touch, and what I really love is, look up here, the egg and dart molding.” Knott pointed up, and both men gazed skyward. “Typically in an application like this you’d see probably dentil or cove molding. Nothing wrong with that. But this was, I think, a daring choice, showing some cleverness even.”

“This is unique.” Czecknik nodded.

The men squeezed onward in an apparent counterclockwise tour of the entire townhome. “Down here you can see, nothing special, typical five-inch baseboards, topped with quarter-round trim.”

“Mm-hmm. Question.”

“Yes.”

“Approaching the building, we see neo-Gothic features on the exterior. Gables topped with finials. Windows with decorative crowns. Arches, parapets, towers.”

“Yes, yes.”

“It’s unusual to see this in new construction. How do you account for—”

The men’s voices were buried by speculative chatter as they moved further along the crowded room to examine its other features.

Damgaard and his female friend had gotten up to fetch fresh drinks by this time, and when they left, their places on the love seat were immediately snatched up by….

⪤

That’s it. That’s the end. Tomorrow is another busy day of touring. You turn over the last page and stare a minute at the ceiling, before issuing a contented sigh and switching off your lamp. You love that here in your Comfort Inn Suites room, the lamp switches are on the base, with a simple-to-use rocker style switch, not the twisting type up there somewhere under the shade near the hot bulb. You will definitely be getting on Yelp to throw down five hearty stars for the Comfort Inn Suites.