This book has a rather strange and unfortunate history. But it’s one we can all understand and sympathize with. Leaving out the sordid details, in short the founder of Aqua Fox Press (AFP) abdicated his publishing throne and absconded abroad during COVID. But not before publishing The Mombaccus Expansion in its not-yet-final version. The result is an overlong, typo-speckled plot that doesn’t cohere. Thankfully, in 2024 a new literary press, Synthetic Prophetic, obtained AFP’s catalog; editors there are working to perfect the book, with plans to release a revised edition.
Synopsis
The quaint, historic town of Mombaccus, in upstate New York, is expanding. A pandemic happened, and many residents of New York City (population 8 million), are relocating there. Among the newcomers are Damon Townes, a music producer and aspiring entertainment mogul from the Bronx. With his fiancée’s modelling money, he buys the Old Girdle Factory building, an architectural jewel in Mombaccus’ working class crown, and starts a fashion production house. Axis Jeans fails hard when a newly upsized iPhone rips the seams of the iPhone-designated pocket of Axis’ flagship line of jeans. Also bad for business is the social media outing of Townes for his abusive and sexist behavior towards Marla when they were on holiday in Morocco. (Marla wishes to change genders, and this frightens him.) Moving into literary publishing with his college buddy Wolf Lewis, they further explore what it means to be on the “wrong side of history,” by inadvertently publishing a condensed “retelling” of the much-prized masterpiece Infinite Jest.
Sci-fi satire with many writing-world in-jokes and jabs at NYC trade publishing’s self-seriousness.
Sample
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The van climbs further up the mountain road and soon, they arrive in a mountain village, where the road teems with vans and carts, foot traffic, dogs. It’s like a mountain Medina. This is Ishmael’s home village, and he shakes many hands and calls smooth greetings to other young men as he crosses the road, leading the group into a mazes of covered tents and stalls. “This is Berber market!” Ishmael calls, spinning around to address the group, remembering his duties.
Damon is mortified on several levels. It’s one thing to parade through a fabricated construct like Epcot Center. But these Berber farmers have carted their goods to market, and are haggling at scales over cuts of lamb and piles of turnips, and here they were gawking.
Secondly, the filth is off the charts. Fish fry in woks set over charcoal fires that nestle, seemingly, into stall countertops made of 100% congealed soot and grease—just islands of blackened … something! Piles of carrots and potatoes lie on the dirt floor, where men crouch, their fists filled with paper dirham notes. Crates of plasticware clutter the ground, holding mittens, toddler dresses, VHS tapes.
“What a lovely jumper,” the English woman utters, but it’s all ancient stuff, like you find discarded behind Good Will. Destitution incarnate.
Damon is just embarrassed, ashamed to have paid money to tango through the spectacle, their opulence swinging. But also insulted that it was presumed he’d want to see this.
Damon’s eyes catch every nuance. The straw hats, natty wool sweaters, the polyester slacks and blackened bare feet. Missing teeth. Bowl and scissor haircuts. Some time in the aughts, a manly passion for style and one’s appearance became branded, derogatorily, as effete with the term “metrosexual.” Damon never called himself that when the term was in vogue, but now, in this Moroccan outpost, his true loves—cleanliness, high fashion, style—are thrown into high contrast.
A voice blasts in his ear, “Bracelet! Silver bracelet! Five hundred dirham!” Damon turns to see a man waving a fistful of aluminum trinkets. Damon errs, making eye contact, but is too ashamed to forcefully shake his head. The man deserts his corner and walks beside Damon, saying, “Please, sir. For your wife. Is beautiful.”
“No thank you.”
“Please sir. Four hundred.”
“I really don’t want…” Damon’s voice catches. He can hardly speak. He’s so ashamed for the man—for himself. Damon searches for Ishmael to intervene, but he’s far ahead in the tumult.
The man keeps shoulder to shoulder, though the walkways between stalls are narrow and he has to skip over goods on the ground. The man’s face is close—his breath, his teeth, his rheumy eyes. “Please sir. Help my family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Heart to heart. Three hundred. Heart to heart.”
“No price. I don’t want.”
“Please sir. Two hundred.”
Damon tries to scurry away. The man puts his hand on Damon’s arm.
“One hundred.”
“Don’t touch me, man!” Violently, he rips his arm free.
This gets the attention of Ishmael, who dodges out of the head of the line, saying something in Berber or Arabic to the beggar, making a shooing motion.
Marla, Damon sees, has turned and offers a reasonably compassionate look. She knows his capacity for losing his temper. Damon raises his eyebrows high as if to say, Yes?!
“Sorry, man,” Ishmael says.
“It’s cool.”
“Ils sont Chinoise!” Robert calls to the peddler, appearing beside Damon. “You all right, Damon?”
“Of course,” he laughs uncomfortably. “Dude’s persistent.”
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They regroup near where they entered.
“Is a wild place, huh?” Ishmael says.
Joan has her kids pulled close, looking nervous but relieved to have survived it. Robert steps in holding a bunch of carrots he’s just bought.
“Who wants a carrot?”
With a loud crunch he breaks one off in his mouth, handing carrots to Matty, Kendall and Joan.
“Matty, you should eat something, because we have to do a little hiking still,” Joan says.
Damon, trying to be more of a sport, accepts a carrot and bites into it like the rest.
“Chomp!” he jokes, making a face at Matty as they both nosh.
“Okay, everybody ready?” Ishmael says.
“I think Damon wants to buy some jewelry first,” Marla jokes.
“Very funny, babe,” Damon says, sighing and putting his arm around her.
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Next is a walk on a rocky mountain trail that passes through a grove of walnut trees. Ishmael explains that long poles are used to harvest the walnuts. The trail ascends, becoming a steep rocky staircase, and Matty falls behind. Joan sticks by her son’s side.
“Go ahead, everyone! We’ll catch up!” she calls, when Gerald and his wife/sister stop and look worriedly at the wide gap between Ishmael and the rear guard. Ishmael stands waiting 30 feet up the slope, where the trail switches back.
Robert takes a sorry tone when explaining to Damon: “Poor guy, his guts haven’t been right for a couple days. Dehydrated. Low energy.”
“Right,” Damon says. Though he agrees, no real connection forms here. It won’t, in fact, form until the wee hours of the night, when Damon climbs out of a deep sleep, his gut gurgling and wobbling.
Right now he is dealing with a wave of judgment of Matty. What kind of wuss kid can’t walk up a couple hundred yards of incline? Yeah, it’s warm, but it’s hardly sweltering.
Damon picks bitter carrot shards from his teeth.
At the top, they reach a roaring waterfall, where another group of tourists is already gathered. Selfies. Packs of French teenagers posing, vamping. Away from the crowd, Damon crouches beside a still pool to scoop the cool, clear water from the stream and drink. Slaked, he rinses his hands, splashes his face, splashes the back of his neck. When no one is looking, he submerges his sore wrist, trying to reduce the swelling.
From the waterfall, they descend down a different face than they came up, reaching a gravel road that wraps around the mountain. Marla is walking ahead with Kendall now. Damon sighs, takes a knee, then plods on.
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The last stop is a stucco and cinderblock house, the home of someone that Ishmael describes as “a family friend.” Inside, two women work in a kitchen lit only by daylight. Everyone is greeted and shown the toilet—a hole in the floor, a water bucket for flushing. Briefly, they gaze off a concrete terrace to the valley below before being ushered to a room that is bare but for floor cushions. There they sit while the women and Ishmael bring trays bearing maroon tagine pots. The lids are lifted on steaming potatoes, chicken, and cut planks of a squash-like vegetable. A heaping basket of the same bread they ate at the argan oil outlet mall is passed around.
The food is tasty and warm, but soon the room is swarming with flies. Twenty, then forty, landing on everyone’s hands and faces, on the food.
Joan, ever matronly, assures Matty that it’s okay to keep eating. “They’re harmless. They just like it here!” she says brightly.
But this denial of ugly truths is offensive to Damon. Insects carry disease. This is Africa, after all. Damon sets his plate down, wipes his mouth for minutes, tuning out of conversation. When Ishmael comes in to check on them and claims there are no flies at all, Damon hits his limit. He gets it: the guy wants good reviews on TripAdvisor. But to Damon there is something about his jokey dismissal of real threats that is too much like Trumpism and too much like the impending terror of Marla’s lingering decision, like the actions she wants to take that would bring real consequences.
Claiming the need to stretch his legs, Damon leaves the room.
From the terrace, he looks off to the mountains. The sun is still high, and the sky clear. But it’s a joyless sight: he hasn’t found the moment to have the talk with Marla yet, and it’s looking more and more challenging. His eyes search the barren landscape, seeking any activity to snag on, to study, to observe. But there’s nothing. Just the land and a couple other houses.
When he hears footsteps, it’s Robert.
“How do you do it?” Damon says.
“What?”
“Accept it. Or maybe you haven’t.”
“Oh, that. It’s challenging. But, you know, I’m a scientist. I’m right-brained. It’s nothing more than the presence or absence of some chromosomes. Fundamentally, Kendall will still be the same as before. As my Dominique. The same person as the one Joan and I made. They won’t be a girl anymore, that’s all.”
“Hmm.”
“Marla seems very understanding.”
“There are some things Marla refuses to understand.”
“Is she unhappy with…”
“You mean the way she is gendered. It’s an adjective now, you know? Gender isn’t just a thing. It’s a thing that happens to you, or that you do.” He paused. “I think she’s unhappy with the hardships of womanhood. That’s what she says anyway.”
Damon tosses the only stone available to him over the terrace. A spar of fieldstone that makes no sound, just vanishes somewhere below.
“You want my advice?” Robert says.
“My Canadian friend, I do not. However, I should probably hear it. It might amuse me.”
All he heard was the cruel reminder that something as whimsical as American cultural tastes—basically a fad, a trend—was dictating the course of his life. The decorous thing for him to do was gracefully concede to the destruction of something he held sacred: Marla’s delicate, curvaceous, lithe, feminine body, which he had so enjoyed.