A.J. Campbell lowered the folded newsprint to his lap. His heart fishtailed and he struggled to breathe. This thing he had just read was an impossibility.
 
Afternoon sunlight continued to stream down on him as he sat on the bench in the median. The aroma of fresh bagels wafted from the backpack at his side, but he no longer noticed. Cars and people kept on moving past, but the cacophony of New York City had gone silent. A.J. wrestled with his stubborn mind, straining for a ray of understanding.
 
Twenty minutes earlier, after picking up a dozen of the city’s best bagels from H&H, he had stopped at the corner of Broadway and 80th and grabbed a half-tabloid size publication from a rack on the sidewalk. It was a free paper that had suddenly started appearing all over Manhattan, the inaugural issue—Spring 1994—of Espresso Lit. He had set down his bag and relaxed on a bench in the tree-lined strip between the lanes of Broadway traffic, happy to be lounging in the perfect June sunshine. He had perused the pages, read a six-line poem, glanced at the first sentences of an essay or two, then settled in to read a piece under the Fiction heading whose title had caught his eye. It was a short story called “Desert Vacation,” written by someone named Robbie Brand.
 
But it was A.J.’s story. It was an episode from his own life, from nearly ten years ago, and it had things in it that no one knew, not even his ex. They were secrets, his alone.
 
After a moment of mute grappling, his stunned inner silence gave way to a deluge of questions and curses. Could this be a coincidence? Could someone have had the very same experiences that he had? Could a writer have imagined scenes identical to his own life?
 
No, no, and no.
 
Then, goddamn it, who is this Robbie Brand guy? And how the fuck did he get my story?
 
A.J. was afraid he knew at least part of the answer. During the year of his divorce and career change—months that were both terrible and wonderful—he had formed a habit of scribbling in notebooks: his thoughts, the events of his life. He had kept at it for the four years since and had begun to enjoy the writing process. So, the problem was that he had written this very story himself—or a version of it, a rather different version—first in his journal, then typed up, in manuscript form. His somewhat vague artistic goal was to get it published as a “personal photo essay” or some such thing, in which his photographs of the desert would illustrate his “memoir.” Or the text would be captions for a coffee-table photo book. Or something. 
 
The text was printed up and ready to go, with taglines inserted for where the images should go. But then he’d had second thoughts. He was no writer, he was a photographer only—a picture-guy, not a word-guy. Not only that, but the “truth” he told made him look like a jerk—which, sometimes, he was. So he chickened out and left the stack of pages hidden in a desk drawer in his apartment. It had been there for several months now.
 
The fact that the setting, the characters, the sequence of events, had all been set to paper—had been brought forth from his mind into physical reality—told him that there was only one way this could have happened. Someone, probably someone he knew, had read his journal or his manuscript. Then had rewritten it and published it under a pseudonym. The creep had stolen his work. The creep had stolen his life.
 
But how? And who? And, perhaps inconsequentially, why?
 
The last question could be answered rather easily: Why? Because they could. That was human nature.
 
The other questions A.J. vowed to answer. Awareness of his surroundings returned all at once as an ambulance blasted past with an ear-splitting wail. He was on his feet, heading for the bank of phones that stood on the uptown side of 80th. 
 
The number for Espresso Lit was in the small print of the masthead. His quarter clinked into the phone. As it rang, he eyed the headlines in the row of newspaper vending machines along the curb: the President defending himself against accusations of sexual harassment. Who’s lying, Bill Clinton or Paula Jones?
 
Right. Everybody’s lying, that’s who.
 
A woman answered. “I need some information about one of the authors published in your new issue,” A.J. said. “Can you help me with that?”
 
“The only information I can give you is what’s printed on the back page in the contributors’ notes. Did you look there?” She sounded pleasant, but bored.
 
“Oh.” A.J. flipped the paper over and found the name in bold type. But he saw with a glance the blurb was useless: Robbie Brand likes his martinis shaken, not stirred. He may give up the writing racket at any moment.
 
“This guy Robbie Brand—there’s no information here. The guy stole my story. I need to talk to him.”
 
“You’re referring to, um, ‘Desert Vacation,’ right? Are you saying the story was plagiarized? Because that's a serious accusation.”
 
“Look, I don’t know about any legal definitions or anything. I didn’t write these exact words, no. But this is my story, from my life. I don’t know how he got it, but it’s not cool. Not cool at all.”
 
“Okay...” Her voice went soft and sweet. “It couldn’t be just a marvelous parallel? Or that you feel a real kinship with the characters? I mean, that’s what a fiction writer does, sir, if you know what I mean.”
 
“Yeah, you think I’m a wacko. I'm not. Can you put your boss on the phone?”
 
Her sugary tone vanished. “Ha. I am the boss. I’m the editor. There are only two of us who run this thing, it’s part-time, you were lucky to catch me in. And I need to tell you: each of our authors signs a contract stating that they have full ownership of the material they submit to us, so Espresso Lit is definitely not liable.”
 
“Okay, okay, I don’t intend to sue you or anything. I just want to talk to this Robbie Brand guy. And maybe you should, too.”
 
“Like I said, I can’t give you any information.”
 
“But didn’t you pay him? You must have his address or something.”
 
She took a deep breath and exhaled into his ear. “I'm sorry. The best I can do is take your name and number and let him know that you need to speak to him. Will that suffice?”
 
“That’ll be helpful, thanks.” A.J. calculated that he had planted a seed of suspicion in her mind, so she would indeed contact Brand, and there was a chance she would give him A.J.'s contact information. But at the same time, he assumed Brand (whoever he really was) didn’t need that information. After all, there was a distinct possibility he’d already been in A.J.’s apartment. He’d already snooped through A.J.’s private things, read his journal, touched every surface with his greasy, contaminated fingers. So the call would work to serve him notice: he’d been found out. The bastard couldn’t hide forever.
 
A.J. headed east on 80th. He was on his way to the day’s work, a cameraman gig at 89th and Central Park West. There were few things he loved more than striding through the streets of New York on a beautiful day, and usually he would marvel at the unlikely fact of himself, a bumpkin from rural Utah, at home in the world’s greatest city. But today the brownstones and blossoms and noisy bustle disappeared under a chaos of thought. His memory was like a lightbox covered with color slides, as if the moments of his early marriage, its nasty end, his new life, were gathered into one simultaneous reality, a jumble of hues and moods all present at once.
 
One memory rose to the surface, floating on the feeling of inexplicable mystery he’d felt ever since he read the story in Espresso Lit. A few years earlier, he’d had an encounter with a stranger in a diner, a homeless hitchhiker who had seemed to wield some sort of hypnotic power over him. The man had seemed to be in two places at once, sitting with A.J. while also apparently rescuing a waitress from a criminal assault. Then he disappeared. A.J. had never been able to answer to his own satisfaction just what had happened that night, but he hadn’t been hurt in any way. In fact, the guy had been something of an inspiration, a gentle shove that sent A.J. toward a bold career change, a redefinition of himself, at the very time that his marriage was falling apart. But the whole thing had left A.J. with the conviction that there were things in this world that could not be explained. And now, that vibration was abuzz in his cells again: under his anger lived a strange fascination with the very impossibility of the situation he found himself in.
 
He loved the enigma, but at the same time, goddamn it, he wanted an answer. He visualized himself as a detective, tracking down clues until everything made sense. A temporary identity: private investigator on his own case. So that would be his next endeavor, he decided. Or rather, he would fit it in somehow, third priority after making a living and spending time with his kids.
 
He kept a steady pace, not so fast as to raise a sweat, picking his route on the fly by the red or green lights at every corner, never breaking stride: east on 80th, up Amsterdam to 82nd, then east again; up Columbus to 84th, then east again, and up Central Park West to his destination. He arrived a few minutes before the call time of 2:00 and found the production van already at the curb. Along with the video engineer and the second cameraman, A.J. loaded cases of gear onto two rolling carts and strapped them down with bungees. More crew members arrived and as the other cameraman left to park the van, the crew wheeled their carts to the service entrance of the stately pre-war building and took the elevator to the fifth floor. 
 
This job was one of many that A.J. had worked on for I.I.I., Image Impact Incorporated, a small husband-wife production company that served various corporate and educational clients. He always liked getting called by them; typically, the projects were not very exciting but they paid fairly and on time, and the crew, a handful of freelancers like himself, had become his friends. A.J. felt fortunate that, although he was a relative newcomer to the business, he had recently moved into a senior camera/lighting role with this company.
 
The shooting location was the high-ceilinged home office of a doctor who was the head of the addiction psychiatry department at NYU. They would be taping him in an interview with another specialist in addiction treatment. The location was familiar since the crew had shot other segments of this educational series in the same space. But the setup was not easy, a three-camera arrangement in a room that, while spacious, was not meant for all that gear and had tall windows whose light had to be controlled. 
 
Everybody went straight to work, but the banter never stopped. They all kidded each other as tripods went up, cameras clicked onto fluid heads, cables were strung, lights were raised on stands, barndoors adjusted and diffusion attached, microphones tested. A.J. had always loved the teamwork, but today he felt removed, in an invisible bubble of isolation. He kept up a cheerful front to cover a creeping distrust. Could any of these people be Robbie Brand? As far as he knew, none of them aspired to be a writer. But how could he be sure? From the President on down, no one was really who they seemed.
 
When setup was finished, the two doctors took their seats in front of the cameras as microphones were clipped to their ties and final tweaks were made to hair, makeup, lighting. The “Roll tape!” command was given and A.J. was able to enter the zone, the mental space that he always enjoyed on a job like this. It was a sort of fully-engaged relaxation, maintaining a laser-like concentration on the focus and framing of the shot in his viewfinder while at the same time calmly listening to everything the subjects were saying.
 
Today’s discussion was about the value of Alcoholics Anonymous and its spinoff, Narcotics Anonymous, as tools in the psychiatric treatment of addicts. The doctors were in full agreement that the AA/NA program was an indispensable aid in their work. Besides the fact that it provided the struggling addict with a community of fellow travelers plus a “sponsor” for individual support, the philosophies embodied in the Twelve Steps were fully in sync with current “best practices” for addiction psychotherapy. The “higher power” that was such an important part of the steps did not have to be the “God” defined by mainstream religion; it could mean each AA or NA group itself, the Twelve-Step program as a whole, or even the psychiatric treatment plan, for those few addicts who elected to go that route. The essential components were the addict’s admission of his life’s unmanageability and the surrender of his own obviously faulty will to something greater than himself, something with his genuine best interests in mind.
 
As A.J. watched and listened, his fingers lightly on the camera controls, the mystery that had been tormenting him faded out of his awareness. This was all new and fascinating information. Not because he had a substance abuse problem; he occasionally drank a beer or a glass of wine, and even more infrequently, shared a joint with friends. That was all; he could take it or leave it. But the discussion about the redefinition of God...there was a topic that piqued his interest. The trappings of his ultra-religious Mormon childhood—the irrational dogmas, the scripture quoting, the multiple prayers daily—all that was in the past now, left behind with his rejected former selves. But where did that leave God? A.J. wasn’t buying that old image of a white-bearded father in the sky anymore, but...what instead? Something in him rebelled against the glib cliché, “you can take the boy out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the boy.” And his encounter with the hobo hypnotist in the diner had pointed him toward new ways of seeing. He was determined that, eventually, whatever it took, he would be reborn into some deeper understanding of the invisible truths behind the video screen of the world. I swear to God, he thought with a smile.
 
 
© Brent Robison 2023.
 
This is an excerpt from the novel: A Book with No Author by Brent Robison, Recital Publishing 2023.