Brett Josef Grubisic This Location of Unknown Possib

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.Two white sheets remained.Marta placed the letter into a folder labeled Homeward: Admin.She’d already secured a photocopy in the Correspondence: History file in the desk’s bottom left drawer.The letter’s duality, banal and momentous, was proving so difficult to resist.She’d snatched glances between classes that morning.If nothing else the offer promised diversion, a break—ludicrous and unprecedented but invigorating—from routine, she’d been telling herself.Tempted by celebrity, so facile, chimed in a background voice, less friendly.12:48PM.She swiveled the chair away from the wall of books and studied the immense vista.The scene felt underdeveloped, a photographic study Ansel Adams might have discarded, since all the surfaces—turbulent inlet, coniferous mountainsides, densely cumulous sky—seemed mopped by inky watercolour.Greywashed, a vision of springtime stripped of the usual green bursts and life-affirming connotations.Black-pebbled concrete formed a thick frame around the inset window panes of the office.A home away from home, this stout fortress of a building.After the resurgence of seen-but-not-read Tolkien a few years ago, two arts students had said, “In the Dark Tower?” within the same week when arranging an office meeting—as though the roof sprouting paired horns or a wrathful amber eye would surprise no one.Trends cycling as they did, though, the name’s sticking was anybody’s guess.The matte concrete slabs of the exterior had appeared on cineplex screens more recently as the barricaded compound of a fearsome African warlord in a mutant superhero movie sequel.Perhaps quizzical students now exclaimed, “I’ve seen that place somewhere before, I just know it” as they passed by.Or, equally plausible, no one commenting at all.Marta conceded that the tower’s facade—that of an unadorned modernist bunker—loomed imposingly.After that, she found the Tolkien analogy nonsensical.Early-, mid-, and late-career vanity and politicking flourished, naturally.But brooding evil, Machiavellian tactics? Hardly.Assigning a C+ to an essay barely indicated a sign of power, let alone chthonic malevolence.The vin ordinaire of any office environment, professional rivalries, intense resentments, and grievance accretions were likewise known, albeit stored out of sight.As for the elaborate class hierarchy—untanned latter-day devotees of Matthew Arnold still genuflecting toward Oxford nested at the tip of the pecking order; at the base, brown-skinned women with broken English providing custodial services: “If you find a moment today, er, Dhatri, will you please vacuum my office?”—Marta supposed that arrangement, like good and evil, reached far back, as old as tragedy.The portentous architecture, then, meant nothing except unlucky coincidence.True, alongside the kind- and coldhearted, she did pass by hunched Gollums and tightly-wound Lizzie Borden types muttering in hallways from time to time; as with asylum lifers and feral animals, a simple rule applied: steer clear, don’t meet their eyes.Marta withdrew the letter and read the familiar words, for an instant miffed by the author’s choice of a nostalgic typewriter font:Dear Professor Spëk:I have been instructed to contact you because our production team has the good fortune to be in your vicinity.You may have heard that The Prophet of Djoun, a biopic of Lady Hester Stanhope, is currently in pre-production.Of course not, Marta thought once more, why would I have? Oh, movie people and their egotism.Your expertise, as revealed through your book Imperial(ist) Empress: Mysticism, Écriture Féminine and the Levantine Writings of Lady Hester Stanhope, would be a tremendous benefit for our production.If you can spare some time, one of the project’s executives, Mr.Jakob Nugent, would be happy to explain our offer and the technical details over lunch.We thank you for your time and hope to hear from you soon.Sincerely,Lora WilkesAssistant to Jakob NugentFolding the letter, Marta shrugged: what’s the harm of one meal? Alongside the usual low morale doldrums coinciding with the school year’s sputtering out, distressed thoughts had been mushrooming about the shiny prestigious career she’d willed—through methodical labour, more or less—into existence, on track now and unwavering until the onset of decrepitude.That legacy brought to mind a luckless character from a Poe story, walled inside a dusty catacomb for eternity by pages instead of stones.Losing mental pliability year after year as bones grew porous and brittle: squinting at a hidebound future that hadn’t yet unfolded drew Marta’s breath short.Marta pictured Poe pacing inside that leased white Bronx cottage on a swampy, sweltering August night, the air gassy and fetid; months earlier Lady Stanhope had passed away, obscure, half the world away [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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