The Dizziness of Freedom - Chapter 3

Sweet floral perfumes drifted up from the magnolia trees that spotted Dorian’s back yard. A landscaper pruned the trees in the morning sun while Dorian reclined in the hammock he’d set up on his second-floor balcony. Periodically he would shake and flip the newspaper he was reading to keep it standing upright on his belly, and then he would take a sip of his coffee or grab a bite of his goat cheese-and-herb sourdough toast from the side table. The newspaper would sag again, and again he would flick his wrists to bring it back to attention. The cycle continued like that until Dorian was done reading the paper. Bite, crinkle, flip, coffee, crinkle, flip, bite, crinkle, flip, coffee, crinkle, flip, page turn crinkle, flip. 

One of these flips brought the bare-chested man, crumbs of toast and drips of black coffee in his chest hair, to the entertainment section.

“Fuuuuuck me.”

He was looking at an article headlined Will This Mark the End of the Superhero Era?. In smaller print “Unfamiliar: Beyond Knowledge” Coming This Month. The article photo was a buff blond action hero in a cowboy hat. “No one told me it was this month,'' Dorian mumbled to himself. He ripped the page out of the newspaper, balled it up, and chucked it at the railing, but the balled-up paper clump wasn’t heavy or aerodynamic enough and fell about a foot away from the edge.

Dorian groaned up and out of the chair. He grabbed the crinkled page of newspaper, balled it again with melodramatic flair, bringing his arms wide out and smashing his fists into the crinkled paper. Cranking his arm back like a professional baseball pitcher about to strike someone out, he threw the paper ball over the balcony. This time the wad made it over the railing where it caught the breeze and, unfurling a little, drifted down to the concrete pool deck below. In his mind, the balled-up newspaper was heavy, and it soared over the balcony railing before landing in his well-manicured lawn. And then spontaneously combusted. When the scrunched-up paper was no more than a black mark of charred grass and ashes, Manuel would walk over to clean up the smoldering pile and think Damn, my boss is cool, or something like that. Instead, the crinkled paper rolled like a tumbleweed across the lawn for a few seconds until Manuel saw it and picked it up. 

“Excuse me sir,” Manuel called up to the balcony. “Did you drop this?” he continued, holding up the discarded paper. Dorian rolled his eyes.

“Can you throw that out for me Manuel?”

“Sir? I can’t hear you.”

“Throw it away.” Dorian said, a little louder than before. Manuel held a cupped hand to his ear. “Throw it the fuck away, Manuel! Christ!” Dorian was yelling now. Birds perched in the various magnolia trees flew away, buffeting the air and shaking the trees. Manuel’s eyes widened and he shrank away with the crumpled paper to the trash can.

Dorian closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. He could see the thick lined pages, the soft worn leather binding. A musty smell, the wonderful smell of something old and wise. 

And so Dorian stood on the balcony looking over the railing, watching Manuel throw the crumpled paper in the trash. His robe hung loose off his body, blue spider veins creeping across the backs of his exposed calves. It’s no one's fault but my own, Dorian thought. No one had forced him to sign over the movie and television rights to his book series, unless maybe they had.