“In an infinite and absolute random world, every possibility is a certainty.”

     – Forbes Maxwell

 

     Tomorrow I am to be married to the most unlikely of women. 

     It’s scheduled for 11:30 a.m. and is to be attended by nearly 400 guests, almost all of whom are friends or relatives of hers. We’ve purchased additional food for the over 100 photographers expected outside the reception.

     I don't think I'm going to go.       

     If I did, the church would be embarrassingly out of balance. Only Marcus, my friend of many years, one of only three friends in my adult life, is planning to grace my side of the room, and it’s looking like he isn’t going to make it.  All that weight on one side would likely cause foundation problems and curvature of the spine. The church will look like it had a stroke.

 

        *           *           *           *           *

 

     Given a few more years, Dante no doubt would have been quite the lady’s man. He was the talker. Jose was the quieter of the two boys. On this day, the two cousins played together as they often did, down the street from where they lived. 

     Technically, today they were further from home than they were supposed to be. Dante pointed out that since he’d turned twelve, they should be able to go two blocks further than when he was only eleven like Jose. Jose wasn’t sure about the logic, but he figured if they got caught, he’d blame it on Dante.

     Besides, they had more important things to think about.

           

     “What do you think it is?” Jose asked.

     “I have no clue. What do you think?”

     They were looking at what appeared to be a perfectly round, black spot against a brick wall.

     “It doesn’t look real.”

     “I know. It’s too… black,” Dante said. “That can’t be paint.”

     They had taken a shortcut through the alley, and the midday sun lit the little-used passageway surprisingly well. About two hundred feet in, across from an overflowing dumpster, they came across the spot. 

     “Touch it,” Dante suggested.

     “You touch it.” 

     Dante looked around and found an empty Mad Dog bottle. He picked it up and tossed it at the spot. Both boys cringed slightly in anticipation of the crash.

     There was none.

     “Whoa! Did you see that?” Dante said. “It just disappeared.”

     Jose picked up a piece of concrete and tossed it hard at the spot. It vanished as well.

     “That’s too weird. It’s like it just absorbs stuff,” Jose said.

     The two boys spent the better part of the next twenty minutes throwing anything they could find at the spot, always with the same result. Whatever they threw at it disappeared the second it made contact with the surface. Stuff didn’t fade away. It went from being there to instantly not being there without a sound.

     The boys had run out of convenient ammunition.

     “Touch it,” Dante suggested once again.

     “You touch it,” came the familiar response. But even as Jose was saying it, he was getting closer to the spot. Driven by curiosity, he moved within inches of the blackness.

     “You’re a chicken. You…” Dante said.

     As Dante spoke, Jose reached out.

     “Holy shit!” Jose said, jumping back.

     “What? What did it feel like?”

     “It felt weird. Very weird,” Jose said.

     “Weird? Like what?”

     “Like… nothing.”

     “Nothing?”

     “Yeah. Try it.”

     Dante walked up to the spot and gingerly touched it, his fingertips instantly disappearing into the blackness.

     “That is weird,” he said, smiling. “Watch this.” He stuck his arm in up to his elbow. 

     “Cool,” Jose said. “Can you feel your arm at all?”

     “I don’t think so.”

     “Pull it back out.”

     Dante did.

     “Can you feel it now?” Jose asked.

     “Yeah. It feels fine.” Dante massaged his arm just to be sure.

     “Stick your head in,” Jose said.

     “Yeah, right.”

     “Come on. Your arm’s fine. Your head will be fine. And maybe you can see what’s back there.”

     “I stuck my arm in. I’m the only one with any guts here.” Dante taunted his younger cousin. “If you’re so sure my head will be fine, stick yours in.”

     Jose knew he was right. He walked to within inches of the spot.

     “I’m not afraid,” he said, probably more to himself than to Dante.

     Jose looked at the spot, letting his fingers disappear and reappear back and forth across the plane of its surface. In his head, he already knew what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to stick his head in.

     “Come on, you pussy,” Dante said.

     “Yeah?” Jose was rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes. “Watch this.”

     And he jumped, completely disappearing into the spot.

     “Cool! Jose! What do you see?”

     No answer.

     There was no answer for the next fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes which seemed like a lifetime. Fifteen turned to thirty. Dante was supposed to be looking out for his cousin.

     “Jose!” He called out for the hundredth time.

     Finally, with no alternative, Dante inched closer to the spot. He had to help Jose. He couldn’t let him disappear. 

     Dante felt tears. 

     And he too jumped into the blackness. And he too disappeared.

     Neither boy was heard from again.

 

        *           *           *           *           *

 

     Now, in the spirit of honesty, the story you just read is fiction. The basic facts are true – the boys’ names, the fact that they disappeared, the existence of the “spot,” et cetera, but the dialog, I just made it up. I wasn’t there. No one was. I just thought it might be nice to start with a story. To kind of warm you up as a reader and warm me up as a writer.

           

     What I do know as fact is this:

 

Orlando Sentinel – (Local News section, page B8) “Two Boys Missing – Two boys, Dante Garcia, age 12 and his cousin, Jose Murphy, age 11, were reported missing yesterday evening. According to the parents, both boys are “very independent” but neither said anything prior giving any insight into their disappearance. A brief search was organized by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department but called off shortly after nothing was found in the immediate area. An expanded search is scheduled to resume at daybreak.”

 

     Dante and Jose were the first to disappear. This was the first official mention I could find related to one of the important events I am about to share with you tonight. I’ve been doing some research lately to better relate this tale to you. I found this on microfilm in the Forbes Maxwell Memorial Library. As you will later see, I knew Forbes Maxwell, but as I mentioned, I never knew Dante or Jose. I didn’t even know their names until recently, but I have chosen to think they were good kids. In some cases, we canchoose our delusions. I’ll share with you shortly what happened to the boys, but for now, you’ll have to be satisfied with this astounding coincidence: The boys’ aunt was the neighbor of my former landlady’s sister. 

     Now, I know that is not all that amazing, but it was to my landlady.  And coincidences are a big part of what this book is about.

 

        *           *           *           *           *

 

     A cavernous space, the human brain, abuzz with activity, like a Jetsons cartoon. It’s a fireworks display of exploding neurons spraying neurotransmitters, with odd names like dopamine and serotonin, across synapses where they nestle, lock in key, into the next neuron, which begin another whip of energy sprinting down the beginning of another nerve, resulting in yet another explosion. And so on. Chain reactions crack like whips, turning electricity into memories, urges, beliefs, philosophies, belches, and grocery lists.

     As the chemical carrier pigeons fly across synapses like George Jetson on his way to work, other chemicals and compounds, both natural and unnatural, try to way-lay the message. Some attempting to ambush it and kill it off altogether, and others trying to stop the chemicals that are out to stop the message. Such is the human mind.

     Like nearly everything natural, it is beautiful. Like anything complicated, it breaks down. Like anything natural and complicated, it breaks down often but usually works anyway.

 

        *           *           *           *           *

            

     While my brain and its neurons have functioned within the realm of “normal” for most of my life, it has never been totally right, always with its share of beeps and burps. Several evenings, particularly in college after 1:00 a.m. on weekends, it shut down altogether, leaving me with nothing but an empty memory, a hang-over, and a pasty white substance in the corners of my mouth.

     It has, however, for the most part, served me well. 

Would I know if it hadn't? Fair question. No one who has known me has ever seemed to think there was a problem, but you always have to wonder. I'll continue along my reality, content with the knowledge that although my brain baggage is always in question - it’s the only bag I have.

     Some people, perhaps most, have a real problem with their baggage, and in the end, I guess that is what every story is about. This one is no different.

     It’s about my baggage and the misplaced baggage of my friend Marcus. It’s about the designer bags of Mrs. Colleen Fisher, the First Lady of the United States, and the mismatched bags of Norman Hurst, one-time lover of classical music and the holder of three patented earth moving inventions. It’s about the lost baggage of Forbes Maxwell, who you shall meet shortly. It’s about explanations and the unexplained. It’s about the bags of authors and doctors and bartenders and fools.

     Which brings us back to me. 

     Before my non-wedding, I'd like to unpack some bags.