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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496967312 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/10/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| File size: | 573 KB |
About the Author
Mike Sullivan lives in Southern California. He is an avid listener and promoter of classic rock music, modern rock music, surf music, hot rod music, and all other types of rock music, live rock bands, and rock concerts/events. He also has a thirst for poetry and philosophy and writes on those two subjects in addition to thinking about them. He sacrificed abstinence from dating women to create a hunger so that his romance writing would improve and to also get inside the mind of one of the main characters, the lonesome social studies teacher, Simon Goldberg.
Read an Excerpt
Fortunes of the Once Downtrodden
A Novel
By Mike Sullivan
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Mike SullivanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-6730-5
CHAPTER 1
Greetings. I am the omniscient writer of our story. In a way, I am like an omnipresent angel, adding flesh to bone, creating characters to fill in the events that happened or will happen. I remember it now when Frederick and Mitchell first walked in the lobby of the publishing house, the view was fantastic. It was a picture-postcard sunny, clear day, too. I recall that the two writers were on their best behavior. But, what I remember most clearly is the freshly-polished tiles and how they smelled, they were palace-stone light grey and they led up to one of the six large elevators which in turn led to Mr. Rollins' floor.
I followed them on their shoulder, dividing myself into multiple entities in order to be closer to them. Oh, yes, let me add that it was their right shoulder that I sat on. This is a story that will best be understood if read in continuous chunks of time and if read with hope growing with the passage of time like an overweight man's appetite. To take notes in the margins of your own personal, new copy would be highly suggested. In this manner, you can underline what motivates you, what impresses you, or what you'd like to remember; also when you write in the book, you make the book your own personal friend—a bit beaten up by an avid reader like yourself, but something handy enough, to make at least doing the laundry pleasant?!
Plus, you can always "reincarnate" your personal friend buy buying a brand new copy with fresh covers, and then writing your own inspirational thoughts and comments in its new paperback pages. Did it happen? Is it a true story? The truth is that it may or may not have actually occurred.
You are free to decide if it actually happened or will happen, or even if, somewhere, it is happening now ...
That damn cage was made of glass. As Mitchell Stein looked out from time to time watching the people with business suits walk home from work after leaving the nearby train station, he wondered when his turn would arrive. It was already the year 2032 and thus far out of that 2,032 years he had occupied twenty-four years and counting. Mitchell yearned for the day when he would be on the other side of the ticket booth, buying tickets and laughing at the losers with the multi-colored stupid movie theater uniforms. But now he was wearing one of those uniforms, waiting for the day when he would receive his certificate of completion as a secretary. Yes, he was ashamed of it, there was no hiding the fact that he was a man entering a traditionally woman's occupation. But, he kept reminding himself that the help wanted advertisements in the newspapers were nearly filled with openings for secretaries.
Furthermore, that was the only course of study he could afford, having wasted his money and some of his brain cells on drugs, mostly on smoking marijuana and occasionally sniffing cocaine. Now here was Mitch, sitting at the box office in a Modesto City, Long Island, New York movie theater—another dork in a city of uneventful dorks—reading his typing handbook, partly to pass an upcoming exam, partly to look busy and not stare out the box office window like some whimpering puppy, getting fed scraps in the form of a minimum wage by a major corporation.
Mitch's hair was dark, dark brown, a sharp contrast to his childhood friend and fellow employee, Fred, Fred-the-Red. Fred Murphy was not as smart as his friend, but it was not something to be jealous about. Mitch was not too smart either. They were two poor young adults, children of parents who belonged to labor unions. They worked under a Filipino manager with ten other Hispanic workers at the Carlton Theater.
"Uh, can I take my break, Jesus?" the rusty haired punk spoke like an intoxicated rock star being approached by a reporter.
"I told you my name is Hay-sus, not Jee Zus," scowled the Filipino who had chiseled features and looked handsome for a fifty year old.
"Sorry, Hay-sus, won't happen again."
"It's okay. Go ahead. Business is slow anyway," responded the newly hired manager, not making eye contact with Fred, even though he was half a feet away from him. Fred hid his government jobs newspaper underneath the theater trash can and gave a fake cough that lasted ten seconds, enough to draw the attention of his fellow, recreational drug user and signal him to take his break as well.
"Could I take my break sir?" Mitch asked quickly, yet timidly.
"No. You wait until Fred comes back," answered the theater manager.
"But my stomach hurts and I got to take a crap anyway," the secretary trainee said, caressing his stomach in a perfunctory way.
"All right, but be back soon!" snapped the theater manager, holding onto his clipboard to convey authority.
They both met at the back of the theater, near the exit doors. Fred dug his hand into his right hand pants pocket and pulled out a marijuana cigarette as fat as his index finger. It was a little curled like a cursive, lowercase letter "L" after being hidden secretly in Fred's pocket for some time.
"Yes siree, thanks to Jeez-us for givin' us our break, we could feel good right about now." His teeth were visible, stained with years of marijuana resin, tobacco, and coffee stains. They sat on the concrete ground and took turns puffing on the illegal cigarette. The whites of Mitch's light brown eyes gradually turned the color of Fred's hair.
Mitchell looked over his shoulder after he passed the joint to his friend to make sure nobody was coming over to invade their party, when he noticed a large grey envelope, filled with something, placed neatly near the wall about fifteen feet away, the distance between the free throw line and the hoop in basketball.
He walked toward it. At first he thought it was just the spontaneous curiosity associated with smoking your first joint of the day, but later on he would call it fate, some kind of mystical attraction that would forever change his life and the life of his friend—all for the better. That grey envelope was dirty, and wrinkled with liquid that had long dried. As he read a stack of papers holding onto them with shaking hands, he could hear Fred cough fervently in the background.
Fred's face twitched. "What the hell are you doing?! Come on and take a hit off this joint, we gotta soon get back from our break anyway." Mitchell's hands tried to flatten a thick collection of loose-leaf papers stapled at the corner, like some term paper. His eyes then landed their dazed look on the red brick wall which made up the alley. Mitch saw a cloud of warm herby marijuana smoke pass by the wall like a smoky blowfish, as Fred continued hungrily bobbing on the joint between coughs.
"Wait a second. I found something that we might be able to trip off ... Simon Goldberg, hey wait a minute wasn't that the guy who was stabbed not far from here? Yeah, that funny-looking social studies teacher who we saw on Channel 11, last Saturday when my folks weren't home and we were puffing on a fat one, just about to watch the Farewell Concert of Cream on DVD," Mitch said, insisting excitedly.
Fred slowly walked towards his friend, passed him the joint, as he looked at his wristwatch and then looked at Mitchell in a stern way. "So what? Just another loser high school teacher who got stabbed because he looked like a victim, like a young Bernard Goetz. He probably left his mail here just before the cops found his body six blocks from here."
Mitch's voice was coarse as his vocal chords shared space with the marijuana smoke. "Yeah, you're right about one thing, he must have dumped this envelope of his after he got stabbed right over here for safekeeping," Mitchell exhaled an organized linear stream of smoke and his eyes widened largely in awe at the few droplets of blood on the package. He continued speaking slowly, "But this isn't his mail. It's kind of like his diary and there's a story in here, too!"
Mitchell mildly licked his lips, stiffened his eyebrows, and silently looked into his Irish friend's, laughing, yet annoyed eyes to see if he knew the ramifications of their discovery. Mitch said, "There might be some money in this! Sort of like finding the hidden files of J. Edgar Hoover," the community-college graduate pondered, and scratched his head. He turned the pages of the social studies teacher's diary and manuscript, looking for any juicy information, and when he found some he enthusiastically read it aloud.
"This diary, my journal, in the masculine sense, precedes my novel, a love story that is the culmination of my twenty years of suffering with loneliness. I intend to make a lot of money from it and perhaps never have trouble finding a girlfriend. I guess that would have been a less noble goal than my other goal of being revered and admired when I'm alive and after I'm dead. If my novel becomes a success, I can achieve immortality like other great writers. The money would allow me to not have to worry about losing my job or getting a promotion and I can have the time to think about deeper things like philosophy and spirituality. Also I would love to maybe even spread more love and happiness throughout the world."
Mitch was motionless for a few seconds. He then flipped a couple of pages and looked for the beginning of the novel.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, a Queens-bound R train will be approaching our station in approximately two minutes." This mechanical feminine voice buzzed throughout the subway platform at the 59th Street and Lexington Avenue station in Manhattan, New York. At that moment, Richard Harrington saw a flash of white and he felt dizzy as everything seemed so slow. He fell to the floor gradually; the charcoal-black floor became blurry and he could not hear anything. He fell to his knees at an angle, then rocked briefly, and finally fell onto the foot of the staircase and rested almost motionlessly on his side, his eyes fixed on a strip of yellow.
"Hey, this is pretty interesting. I bet we could make some money off this, but we'd have to call it our own, or else we'd have to share the wealth with one of this guy's relatives," Mitch explained in an opportunistic, yet respectful way.
"Yeah, like people are gonna believe two potheads like us wrote this, look at all the fuckin' big words he uses—this doesn't sound like us," Fred said and started to head back to the front of the exit doors of the theater to go back to work.
"Wait a minute, we could say like we've been getting visions, revelations that tell us these things. Hell, people are getting filthy rich off operating those psychic network phone lines, why not us?!" Mitchell pleaded to Fred's back with wide open eyes. "Psychics are real popular now, especially with the Recession. Even small town detectives are usin' 'em." Mitch added, coughing in dry bursts.
"Are you kidding?! Is this like when you tell things with a straight face and then later on you say, 'just kidding,' because, I told you I hate that shit ... It's not funny." Fred's face was turning the color of his hair, red, with anger. Sometimes pot made Fred edgy and hot-headed instead of mellow. To feel a calm mellow-yellow and Rastafarian-cool was what smoking weed made others feel. Fred was not like most others.
"No, I ain't kidding Fred. Think of it, you and I could be millionaires—going to rock concerts in limos and having porno stars come to our mansion—just for typing this little, uh, story and calling it our own and then publishing it!" Mitch said, trying to be comical to lure Fred who disliked things being serious, especially now at work where many things were serious.
Mitchell took the diary and love story home and began to type it. He wondered if he should leave Fred out of the game and take all the credit for writing the future bestseller. Fred was acting like a wife who did not take interest in her husband's best-day-at-work-ever. But the red-head was his best friend, ever since they both were eight years old, and he just had to share the wealth with his long time friend. As Mitch typed he heard the phone ring.
"Hello? Hi, Fred. I was just typing the manuscript," Mitch said nonchalantly.
"The what?" Fred asked in a low voice.
"I was just beginning to type the novel, been at it for about half-an-hour, it's a good thing this guy has neat handwriting," Mitch spewed spit, like a frenzied journalist.
"Mitch, I was thinking. Ya know there aren't too many government jobs out there, and I kinda feel like I'd like to, ya know, get rich—get rich fast. So I decided to help you write your novel—if that's still okay?"
"Great! Come on over," Mitch replied. He then confusedly shuffled some papers, handwritten notes he had made, and then said over the phone, "I think you should read the story, too, so you'll get familiarized with it, in case some reporter or famous talk show host asks you about it. Heh-Heh-Heh! All right, bye." Mitch was still smiling when he placed the phone on the receiver, eyes staring aimlessly at the doodling he drew on a piece of computer paper. As he typed the words into his desktop personal computer, he read something which affected him. Even though Mitch was alone, without an audience, he read out loud:
Christie Patterson thought to herself while lying on her bed. I believe I met the most romantic man on the face of this cold planet. The most romantic man that was or will ever be. It's my vacant, hungry lifetime that I'm concerned with right now—He or anyone else like him will never return in my lifetime. His name was Richard and he was dying like a leaf in September. His liver was diseased. I curse all these tiring roles a woman has to play, to be attractive, to be pleasant. But, when Richard put his soft fingers on my cheekbones, I felt rescued and pacified by an Angelic power. At first he would not tell me what was killing him. I asked. I implored him with bitter, stinging tears. I will never forget the day I met him. I will never forget that glorious day ...
When Mitch had finished reading this, he paused. He was at first expressionless, but a slight smile emerged after a moment, even though what he just read sobered him a bit. He felt as if he had been civilized and imagined himself wearing a grey bow-tie and white top hat and tuxedo in a pink, red, green garden, the flowers smelled like natural perfumes. He pictured himself on a Saturday afternoon, an afternoon when he did not have to work or go to school, nor did he have to do so the following day. It was an afternoon spent with a lady friend, sitting on a white wicker chair while his hand extended over the table, petting his little rosebud-shaped red wine glass and with a heroic, yet modest smile, as he looked at her and she looked at him. Classical music played in the background. They would soon have cheesecake and tea with sugar to sweeten and moisten their fruity-dry, alcohol-bitter taste buds.
Mitchell paraphrased this revelation by typing it at a speed of 40 words per minute and adding a twist of his own—"I, Mitchell Stein, of Jewish extraction, was amazed to receive such a vision on Christmas Eve, while in bed, half asleep. I had to get up from bed and eat something. I felt that I had really worked up an appetite while sleeping! At first I didn't call it a vision. At first I thought it was just a dream. But later, later that image of that poor girl and her loss made me sad and was stuck with me. Then I kept getting these dreams. All of them were about this girl and this guy and the love story they had together."
At Mitch's front house door was the red-head punk. He came in with a grin so wide one could see all the battle scars on his slightly beige teeth. Mitch quietly led his friend upstairs to his room.
"Sit over here, Fred and read this out loud while I type it." Mitch insisted firmly without looking at his friend's eyes.
Fred sat down on Mitch's bed. "Yeah, alright ..."
"Excuse me. Is anyone sitting here?" A frail, pale man in his late twenties asked gently. "No." It was a short reply to a stranger. His hair was black. His eyes were aqua blue, piercing, and he had an air to himself that gave him the look of being royal, approachable, and a genius at the same time.
Fred struggled to read between chuckles induced by marijuana. "Hey, all the girls are gonna go crazy for this. It's like, uh, real romantic!"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fortunes of the Once Downtrodden by Mike Sullivan. Copyright © 2015 Mike Sullivan. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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