Strange Tales of Secret Lives Read online

  SECRET LIVES

  Jeff VanderMeer

  For Ann, who is a big part of my secret life

  Cheeky Frawg Books

  Tallahassee, Florida

  Copyright © 2011 by Jeff VanderMeer

  Cheeky Frawg logo copyright 2011 by Jeremy Zerfoss.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke

  Originally published in limited edition hardcover by Prime Books, 2008

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  Check out the full line of Cheeky Frawg Books at:

  www.cheekyfrawg.com

  INTRODUCTION

  Some projects have more of a secret life than anyone can know. This one started with a revelation in the wee hours of the morning in a bed-and-breakfast in Robin Hood’s Bay, England, during a gathering of the writer group Storyville. It then progressed through a story called “Secret Life” that became the title story of my first major story collection in 2004, and then reached its full fruition in this book, Secret Lives. (And, no, this is not an attempt to confuse bibliographers.)

  How did this book coalesce? When my Golden Gryphon collection Secret Life came out, Ziesing Books asked if I could do something special to enhance the copies they were selling through their catalogue. Ziesing Books is run by Mark & Cindy Ziesing, two of my favorite people in the world. So I said, naively, how about I write a secret life for each of them? Then the orders started pouring in. Then the lives started getting longer and longer. I had meant to do each life long-hand, but after about nine of them I realized this was impossible. So I started typing them up and putting them on fancy paper, with nice envelopes that I then drew weird cats and things on. The Ziesings kept selling and I kept writing. Endlessly.

  And, inevitably, at some point, the project got away from me. I never wrote the long story about Anne Sydenham, creator of the Edward Whittemore site, that I had planned. In that story, Anne takes a speedboat and conquers a small island off of Madagascar, which she then rules for a decade under Marxist principles. (Someday, I will complete it.) Other stories became so long and complicated that they mutated from being secret lives into something else entirely.

  In the end, I had written so many secret lives that I simply ran out of ideas. At that point, I offered the last few people left in the lurch a free book or two and ran screaming out of the room.

  So, in short, this is not the definitive secret lives book I had envisioned. On the other hand, there’s something appealing about the fact that the project has, in its own way, mutated and had its own secret life. Each story begins with the truth, as given to me by the subject of the story, which permeates the first couple paragraphs before descending into fiction. Some reactions from recipients made me wonder about coincidence; for example, the priest who, unbeknownst to me had just gone swimming with sharks in Australia, only to come back to find my story about him swimming with sharks in Australia…In other cases, after publication of the print version of this book, I had people who weren’t the subject of the story think they had been--and email me to thank me for so perfectly documenting their real and secret lives. Then, too, a few of these stories led to longer stories; a part of one entry will even be included in a new novel of mine.

  In the end, all I can say is that I so enjoyed writing these little stories and I really enjoy reading them as well. They get a tremendous reaction when read aloud. I hope you enjoy them as well. And, er, no, I will not be writing you a secret life as a promotion for sales of this e-book . . .

  Jeff VanderMeer

  June 2011

  Tallahassee, Florida

  THE SECRET LIVES OF

  JIM DALY

  PETER DANSSAERT

  PETER HEISS

  TROY KNUTSON

  LYNN MINNEMAN

  ALLEN LEWIS

  PETER LAVERY

  STEFANIE BIERWERTH

  REBECCA SAUNDERS

  SYDNEY MILLER

  JIM HENRY

  FLENSING U.K. HLANITH

  JAMES PATTERSON

  KEVIN POINTER

  ANDREW HATCHELL

  DAVID KIRKPATRICK

  GEORGE WARE

  RICHARD MAYFIELD

  HONORIO ALVES

  BRANDON PERKINS

  BILL MOODY

  TROY

  ALAN SAUL

  LIBRARIAN BOB SCHEFFEL

  JENNIFER SEAUX

  JEFF GORDON

  DAVE DRISCOLL

  RICK AND PEGGY

  GAYLE DEVEREAUX

  JOHN AND MAUREEN DAVEY

  BOWEN MARSHALL

  RICH DEMARS

  TERRY TIDWELL

  RAJAN KHANNA

  CONSTANTINE MARKOPOULOS

  SHANE HAMMILL

  MATT CHENEY

  AFTERWORD: A REPORT

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  JIM DALY

  Jim Daly is a teacher and book collector who owns Arthur C. Clarke’s manuscript of Deep Range. Unbeknownst to friends and family, Mr. Daly is also the mayor of a miniature underground city of his own creation. He has built this city at an undisclosed location after much surreptitious removal of dirt over a period of several years, followed by an equally meticulous and masterful building and then resodding project. A trapdoor with artificial grass camouflaging it completes the illusion that no such subterranean building, no such city, exists . . . The city itself is an amalgamation of every city Mr. Daly has ever read about in literature, but with one important distinction. Mr. Daly has chosen to create every alley, every courtyard, every courthouse, not described on the published page. His frankencity lurches forward on the assumption of inference, of those selections of text where other elements are alluded to; it is the space between the words that Mr. Daly has mined for his creation. It is this which gives him pleasure, for he has not performed a stale re-enactment of that which already exists whole and glowing in every reader’s mind, but instead provided what each writer failed to provide, or could not provide . . . Built of spare parts—cast-offs and has-beens, the dullard sheen of dusty junk shop antiques re-imagined into utility and grace—the city has a unity instilled solely by the mind of its mayor-creator. In the light of day, the artificial suns of common bulbs, and in the dusk of dimmed track lighting, Mr. Daly admires his City on the Hill. All faiths come together here, he thinks. All faiths, whether fantastical or mundane, whether futuristic or anachronistic. Here, they form a single world, and it is good.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  PETER DANSSAERT

  Peter Danssaert researches the illegal arms trade, diamond smuggling, organized crime, and Lebanese networks. These rather mundane activities sometimes require him to travel to West Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. He lives in Belgium, known as one of the world’s foremost beer countries, with a football team respected for playing stingy, physical defense. However, despite his travels and his current location in Belgium, Danssaert’s ties are much stronger with the tiny country of Dissembla, which is, according to him, located somewhere between the Antipodes and “the gleam in the eye of the Fisher King.” More specifically, Danssaert is the King-in-Exile of Dissembla. Lately, King Danssaert has taken to announcing his status as royalty given the slightest provocation—such as passing a stranger on the street. “I am the ruler of Dissembla,” he will say. “Severe is my discipline, unwavering my justice. Er, when I left my place, I forgot to bring along a few coins for a cup of coffee. Care to loan a King a euro?” Several are the parties he has thrown for himself, to which bemused friends and family attend with ever decreasing enthusiasm (and in ever decreasing numbers). At these parties, King Danssaert makes his entrance
in the full traditional regalia of his office: The twin ostrich plums jutting from the steel helmet (that some mistakenly believe is but a common colander, out of context), the royal purple robes, made of finest rayon, inset with semi-precious stones, the fine denim slacks or sometimes tights, and the boots with the curious glued-on up-turned toe points. Lately, too, King Danssaert has told anyone who will listen about the ongoing war between Dissembla and Sembla, its neighbor—waged over a dispute involving two musicians, a cow herder, and a harmonica. At least, that is how it started; the issues are now too important to allow for quick resolution. King Danssaert is certain of this. And just as certain that as soon as the war is over, he will be allowed to return to Dissembla, there to take up his rightful place on the throne. “Spies abound,” he says to people who he knows not at all. “Spies are everywhere. I found one in my pocket the other day. I found one at the supermarket. I found one in the water faucet, dripping slowly into my apartment.” Peter Danssaert is fairly sure that his true enemies have long since stopped watching him, thinking him mad at all points of the compass, but has been in character for so long now that he is not sure he can stop. For, surely, some day the conflict between Dissembla and Sembla can be resolved?

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  PETER HIESS

  Peter Hiess lives in Austria and is a journalist, book author, translator, public reader, chief editor for an Internet magazine, married, and 45 years old. Despite his quite busy, productive life, he had for a long time felt an absence in his life. He didn’t quite know the shape or substance of this void, or what might fill it, but he recognized its presence in a sudden melancholy on rainy nights, a sadness upon hearing the ring of a public telephone, the apprehension of being set apart from the world when caught in that no-man’s-land at parties where you are not quite part of one group and not quite part of another.

  Hiess did nothing about this feeling for awhile, but, then, while surfing the Internet, he came across a website for an organization called The Institute for Further Studies. The description of the institute included this sentence: “As a subsidiary function, the Institute has for many years filled a secret need in the area of self-actuation and valuation.”

  Despite the bureaucratic syntax of the sentence, it struck a chord with Hiess. On a whim, he sent an email to The Institute for Further Studies, and included his snail mail address. In the email he wrote, “I would like to hire you to identify for me what I lack, and what I can do to satisfy that lack. I need something—you may call it a secret life, a calling, or whatever you like. But I need it, and I think you might be able to find it for me.”

  For several weeks, The Institute for Further Studies remained resolute in ignoring his electronic missive. He even forgot, after awhile, that he had sent it. He continued with his busy, frenetic schedule. Then, one day, a weathered-looking off-white envelope came in the mail, with the Institute’s name and address as the sender. A spark of excitement ignited in his chest. They had responded after all! Breathless, he read the letter.

  Dear Mr. Hiess:

  Thank you for your most unusual request. It certainly falls outside the brief of our not-for-profit organization. At the same time, the intensity of your emotion about your situation, your reference to part of our mission statement, and, admittedly, a general slow-down in our other activities, meant that we paid it more attention than we would have otherwise. In fact, we decided to pursue research into a “secret life” for you, as you call it, since we had some unused grant money that might otherwise have gone a’wastin’, as they say.

  To this end, we have thoroughly examined your everyday life using our foreign operatives (mostly ex-KGB). Through our proxies, we have examined your financial records, your applications for various forms of credit, the interior of your living quarters, and the contents of your trash.

  In addition to what we routinely call “invasive intel,” we have also considered relevant information about Austria, such as the presence in Vienna of noted dog enthusiast Jonathan Carroll, “the tinkerbell cows that hide in the fogs of Tyrol” (as one tourist put it), the omnipresence of lager, and your country’s online frog museum. We have also factored in the information you provided in your application about your career, marital status, and age.

  Our analysis of all of these elements (and many more) has resulted in only one conclusion: the perfect secret life for you will consist of serving as a private mascot for a wealthy utilities family in Thomasville, Georgia. We are sending you your mascot costume under separate cover.

  We will also be sending you a plane ticket to Atlanta, Georgia, where you will be greeted by Jed Perkins, the youngest son of the patriarch of the family, Jedediah Perkins, and transported in the back of a pickup truck to the ancestral residence. Once there, you will wear your mascot costume at all times, except when dining in your private shed in the back of the mansion. Your job will be to keep the Perkins family in high spirits with your antics and gambols. You may not speak at any time, but physical comedy is appreciated.

  It has cost us much in political and other capital to procure this opportunity for you. Therefore, this “secret life” is non-negotiable and severe penalties may result if you do not immediately report for duty. After a period of ninety days, one of our operatives, also wearing a personal mascot outfit, will contact you. If you are not experiencing the spiritual and emotional growth we believe this secret life will bring out in you, you will have the option to take up a secondary secret life that we are holding in reserve. (Although we do not believe you will find it as much to your liking.)

  Thank you—and good luck!

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Ronald Simpkin

  Institute for Further Studies

  P.S. From experience, I should let you know that the mascot outfit tends to get hot in the summer and cold in the winter. You will derive satisfaction from the fine workmanship of the authentic capybara hide mixed with alpaca that forms the outer surface. For several decades, this outfit figured prominently in our Masonic rituals down at the lodge, so it has some history to it.

  For several minutes, Hiess stood there, looking at the letter he had just read. Then he recoiled in horror, crumpled up the letter, and tossed it in a nearby trash bin. It was clear now, he thought, that he had no void inside of him. It must have been some recurring bit of indigestion. It must just have been something he’d eaten. It was all gone now. He didn’t need a secret life. He never would need a secret life again. Still, as he walked back inside his home, a part of him looked forward to receiving the costume, which he would put to good use, although not as Dr. Simpkin might have wished . . .

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  TROY KNUTSON

  Troy Knutson is a pharmacist who not only loves to impersonate cartoon voices but also experiences, by his own estimation at least, a high rate of success at this endeavor. Despite this, Troy has felt unfulfilled of late and, after trying several less radical approaches (including kung fu classes, followed by yoga), hired a private detective. “What do you want me to do?” the private eye asked. “I want you to follow me.” “Follow you?” “Yeah—follow me.” “And do what?” “Make a note of everything you find out.” “Interesting,” the detective said. “Wouldn’t it just be easier if I interrogated you about you?” “Maybe,” Troy said, “but I don’t want to do it that way.” “Okay, you’re the boss,” said the detective. “Can I bug your house? It’ll cost extra. It’d be easier if you just let me in and let me listen from a corner or something.” “No,” said Troy. “Just bug the house.” “Fair enough,” the detective said, and proceeded to do just as his client desired.

  The detective examined Troy Knutson’s financial records, the interior of his home, and, during the course of one particularly eventful night, the contents of his trash. He followed Knutson everywhere and spent many hours looking through the resulting photographs with a magnifying glass. He also bugged his phone and recorded his conversations. When he was done, he came back to Knutson and said, “I’ve done
what you asked. Now what?” “Well, what did you find out?” Knutson asked. “I found out you’ve got a regular routine. I found out your credit rating is pretty decent. And I found out you’ve got no secrets to hide.” “Very good,” Troy said. “Now, show me how you went about finding out what you found out.” “That’ll cost extra,” the detective said. “That’s good to know,” Troy said. “Show me.”

  So the detective showed Troy how he had done what he had done—tailing techniques, how to get his credit report, all of the tricks of the trade. At the end of it all, the detective took a sip of his scotch (they had retired to a local bar for the last part of the debriefing), and said, “Satisfied now, Mr. Knutson? I have been very thorough and professional. If you were hoping to find out something about yourself that you didn’t know, I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed. You have no secret life—secret from anyone else, or from yourself.” Troy smiled. “Oh, but now I do.” “Is that so?” the detective said. “You’ve kept something hidden?” “No,” Troy said, “but now I know that I want to be a detective.” The detective stared at Troy for a second, then sighed. “I should have known. I came into the business in a similar way. You start with self-disclosure and before you know it, you want in on everybody’s secrets . . . Mr. Knutson, you don’t really want a secret life. You just want a window into the secret lives of others. And that’s more of a burden than people think. It will change you in so many ways, and some of them aren’t good ways.” The detective took another swig of scotch, gave Troy a penetrating stare. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?” he asked. And Troy said, in a perfect imitation of Roger Rabbit, “I was born ready, detective.”

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  LYNN MINNEMAN

  Lynn Minneman is a stamp collector and a retired survey statistician. For a long time, he had been content with his life and with his friends and his family. However, one day he received a set of Lewis & Clarke commemorative stamps from the post office that changed his contentment to restlessness. In examining the stamp set through the clear protective envelope, he noticed a small, triangular stamp trapped in a corner, the illustrated side facing away. The back of the stamp had yellow discoloration, indicating some age, the glue having melted.