The Family Unit and Other Fantasies Read online

  LAURENCE KLAVAN

  THE FAMILY UNIT

  AND OTHER FANTASIES

  ChiZine Publications

  PRAISE FOR LAURENCE KLAVAN

  THE FAMILY UNIT AND OTHER FANTASIES

  “A playwright, graphic novelist, and mystery writer, Laurence Klavan has long enthralled audiences with his extraordinarily fertile imagination, insight, and style. He is also an admired short-story writer. The Family Unit and Other Fantasies brings together his best work, reminding us of the pleasure of unplugging, putting your feet up, and living someone else’s life for a while.”

  —T. J. Stiles, author of the Pulitzer-winning The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

  “I have this secret addiction to the short stories of Laurence Klavan, which sneak up on me at odd moments in little magazines and small presses. Attention, all! Give these stories big magazines and big presses. They are full of unexpected joys and always leave me feeling terribly uneasy and blissfully satisfied.”

  —John Guare, Tony Award-winning author of Six Degrees of Separation and The House of Blue Leaves

  “These are wonderfully strange tales—cunningly written—eerie and satiric by turn—often evoking tremendous pathos.”

  —David Greenspan, five-time Obie Award-winning author of The Myopia

  “Laurence Klavan knows all too well that the world is changing too fast to offer us much in the way of shelter. To remind us of this, he’s written an impressive collection of stories—some playful, others tender or sobering, all of them shrewd and surprising and wise.”

  —John Dalton, author of The Inverted Forest and Heaven Lake

  “A masterful, unnervingly funny collection set in a society with no place to hide: in other words, our own.”

  —Irina Reyn, author of What Happened to Anna K.

  “Laurence Klavan uncovers the places you didn’t know exist, the gaps between everyday life and existential horror, where the disconnect between reality and the weird operates its quiet and subtle magic.”

  —Maxim Jakubowski, author, and editor of The Mammoth Book of Erotica

  “Disturbing, surprising, and unflinchingly intimate, Laurence Klavan’s stories make the mundane bizarre and are absolutely engrossing.”

  —Danica Novgorodoff, author of The Undertaking of Lily Chen

  THE CUTTING ROOM

  “A witty spoof. . . . Klavan gleefully slices and dices every known specimen of the Hollywood film trade. . . . Worth its weight in popcorn.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Highly entertaining . . . Klavan knows his turf. . . . Sure to put a smile on any movie buff’s lips.”

  —Leonard Maltin

  “Brimming with engaging tidbits of movie trivia. . . . This tongue-in-cheek whodunit marks the long overdue second coming of a gifted novelist.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  THE SHOOTING SCRIPT

  “Hilarious. . . . [A] wholly entertaining sequel: a frenzied encore for suspense fans and an edifying indulgence for seasoned film buffs.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Hard-boiled nerd Roy Milano is back in another screwball adventure...Enough delightful insanity to please fans of silly suspense (from Jonathan Lethem to Kinky Friedman.)”

  —Booklist

  WASTELAND

  (co-authored with Susan Kim)

  “A Lord of the Flies for future generations, Wasteland is an irresistible and complex novel that I just couldn’t put down.”

  —Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author

  “Kim and Klavan’s world-building enticingly trickles through the brutal, fast-paced, multilayered plot, which is fueled by a sweet romance between brooding Caleb and spunky Esther and plenty of mysteries. . . . The first in a planned trilogy, Wasteland raises plenty of captivating questions and doesn’t shortchange readers on satisfying answers.”

  —Booklist

  BRAIN CAMP

  (co-authored with Susan Kim; Illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks

  “Smart, disgusting fun . . . sly social commentary with a fizzy dash of stomach-lurching horror.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A throwback to the kind of paranoia that Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives capitalized on. . . . Kim and Klavan, who balanced adventure and kids’ social issues so well in City of Spies (2010), do the same in another well-rounded adventure here, as the far-out (and kind of gross) climax mixes with genuine insight into dealing with parents, fitting into a new crowd, and handling the pressures of performance.”

  —Booklist

  CITY OF SPIES

  (co-authored with Susan Kim; Illustrated by Pascal Dizin)

  “[An] excellent graphic novel—it has a great plot, interesting characters and fantastic artwork.”

  —Wired.com

  “It is hard to know which to praise more in City of Spies, the grand, old-fashioned story crafted by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan, or the enchanting artwork by Pascal Dizin. . . . The tale of Nazi spies in New York is full of a Golden-Age Hollywood ambiance, like some lost Hitchcock or Hawks film. Mixing romance, humor, suspense, and pathos, this graphic novel should be handed out to every young reader you know—after you’ve enjoyed it yourself.”

  —Asimov’s Science Fiction

  “A terrific adventure story. . . . Rip-roaring fun.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred)

  “Told with seat-of-the-pants, graphic-novel immediacy, [this] is an artful melding of jewel-box illustration with noir atmosphere—Tintin directed by Hitchcock. Still, the story’s slant is all its own. . . . The snappy, uncluttered tale has a rousing visual flow and plot depth on a variety of fronts. Plus, the Nazis wind up swimming with the fishes. Pow! Pow! Pow!”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  DEDICATION

  for Susan

  CONTENTS

  Praise

  Dedication

  The Family Unit

  Hole in the Ground

  What the Wind Blew In

  Stray

  The Unexpected Guest

  Long Story Short

  Versatility

  Modern Sign

  The Happy Hour

  Alert

  Bomb Shelter

  Old Tricks

  The Dead End Job

  The Son He Never Had

  Home Invasion

  Acknowledgements

  Publication History

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also Available from ChiZine Publications

  THE FAMILY UNIT

  It was unclear what the woman wanted, sitting in the Wiltons’ house. She said that Bode had let her in, though he’d been taught not to do so, to politely close the door and get his parents if he did not know someone. (If Sarabeth was home alone, she was only to call through the closed door and not open it at all.) It was a safe neighbourhood, nothing ever happened there (except for that one home invasion and armed robbery, and that was at that contractor’s house on the day his payroll was delivered; it was obviously organized crime, no one was ever arrested, cops turned a blind eye, and the man and his family—Arch couldn’t remember their names—had moved away soon after); it was safe, but still. The woman said Bode had been on his way to baseball practice and sort of run into her on his way out; Arch and Celinda would have to talk to him about that.

  Still, as Arch entered and saw her on the sofa, he really couldn’t blame the boy: the woman was perfectly presentable,
fit right into the suburban setting, even almost blended into the country-style plaids and stripes Celinda had selected. The woman was so at ease in fact that she did not seem surprised to see him and only smiled, sweetly and incidentally, before speaking.

  “Hi, Arch. How are you?”

  Arch quickly took in whatever information was available, which was the woman’s age (middle) and the way she was attired: her checked blazer, soft grey slacks, and black pointy-toed shoes—plus the portfolio covered in a pink plastic notebook she was carrying—were visual clues to where she worked and what she wanted.

  “I don’t know who told you,” he said, placing his keys down on a bookcase, then instinctively snapping them up again, he wasn’t sure why, before replacing them. “But the house isn’t for sale.”

  “Oh.” She laughed as if Arch were a child and endearingly silly. “I’m not here about that.”

  She half-stood and handed him a business card. Four words printed in grey floated on a light blue background, like threatening clouds in an oblivious sky: Brenda Keen, Diversified Enterprises.

  “I’m sorry,” Arch said, putting the card down beside his keys so that they sat in unintentional contrast to each other, formed a lady-or-the-tiger-type choice. “I don’t know your company.”

  “Oh, yes, you do,” she said, easily, sitting down again. “Every day.”

  Arch glanced around the room, an action she seemed to be encouraging. What had her company made? The windows? The leather in the chairs? The paintings of stubby, gnarled yet valiant New England fishermen Celinda had selected? All of it? More? When he looked back, Brenda had already opened her portfolio and was spreading pages with surprising indelicacy across their coffee table.

  “Now, we’ve done the assessments,” she said, “and I think you’ll be impressed by the advantages of this arrangement. The fuchsia chart represents the potential first quarter growth in. . . .”

  She continued like this, in the foreign language of finance—foreign to Arch, anyway, who edited a tennis magazine and left the management of their money to others—until she ended by looking up, the pages as if by magic reshuffled and placed again in the portfolio, which she was handing him. “So I think you should seriously consider letting us acquire your family, and the Wiltons becoming a wholly-owned D.E. subsidiary.”

  Arch took the portfolio silently, his grasp so limp that he almost let it fall before he snapped it up again. He was thrown but not shocked; he had heard of this happening to other families, he had just never thought his own would be the target of a takeover—or was that too antagonistic? Wouldn’t they be beneficiaries?

  Indeed Brenda counted off the positive reasons for the offer: Arch’s job at Ace magazine, lucrative but not suffocatingly corporate; his quirky habit of collecting and restoring old radios; his five-day-a-week use of an exercise bike that controlled his cholesterol; his twice-a-week lovemaking with Celinda, impressive after twenty years of marriage. Celinda, too, rated kudos (according to Brenda and, by extension, D.E.) for her therapy practice that still left her time for Arch and the kids; her diligent care of her elderly mother, now in a nearby facility; her Eastern cuisine cooking class and classic novel book club. Even Celinda’s use of an anti-depressant after her father’s death (Arch read along in the portfolio) had been sensible and short-lived; she now relied on yoga for mental and physical health. As for Bode and Sarabeth, the boy at twelve was a playful and good-humoured Little Leaguer (coached without bellicosity by Arch), and the sixteen-year-old a dedicated high school thespian whose most recent role, Emily in Our Town, had been well received—plus she was still a virgin, and (this was stressed in italics) by choice.

  This kind of consistency made the Wiltons a safe investment, a valuable property, and one that would be a good fit beneath D.E.’s umbrella of international assets. As Brenda became quiet and put her hands into her lap, Arch couldn’t help it, he felt pride.

  “We’ll give you all some time to talk it over,” she said, standing. “But you should know we don’t make this kind of offer often—and certainly not with such unanimity on our board. You got fifteen out of fifteen—first time!”

  After shaking his hand—and refusing coffee or a cookie or even a glass of water, and they lived in a dry climate—Brenda left, giving one last, particularly knowing and appreciative look at the painting of the fisherman hanging above their hearth.

  “Okay, okay, great,” Bode said enthusiastically, tapping his foot during the family meeting. “Whatever, whatever, let’s do it.”

  “You know, that is really annoying,” Sarabeth said, pointing at the foot. “Mom and Dad, will you please make Bode stop doing that?”

  “We’ll be done in a second,” Arch said. “But not before we take a family vote on this.”

  Bode’s hand immediately shot up, which only further annoyed his sister.

  Arch saw Celinda discreetly check the caller ID on a cell phone pulsing on the coffee table; she seemed as eager to get to work as Bode did to the ball field. Arch thought for a second that his family was being a little rowdy this morning, at a time when their high quality had deemed them worthy of purchase. Then he thought, this is what they want, it’s us, the Wiltons, so what am I so worried about?

  “Now all in favour—”

  “Will I get my own credit card?” Sarabeth asked suddenly and, as usual, dramatically. “Will I? I’ll die if I don’t.”

  “We’ve told you no, sweetheart,” Celinda said. Then she added, analytically, “We already give you credit. Do you feel as if we don’t?”

  She didn’t speak fast enough to keep the girl from picking up the portfolio pages lying on the table that she had heretofore ignored. After a cursory rifling, Sarabeth stopped and pointed to one line. “It says yes. So I vote aye,” and she raised her hand.

  “I vote ear,” Bode said goofily, and grabbed his bat.

  Arch looked at his wife, who was clearly disconcerted by this particular benefit of the deal—though, to be fair, she hadn’t asked more than a few questions and had seemed just as excited and immediately okay with it as the kids.

  “Oh, all right,” she said, shrugging. “Sure. Aye.”

  “Now here’s how it’ll—” Arch started to say but soon found he was alone, his cheeks having been quickly kissed by his wife and daughter, his hand shaken with comical gravity by his son.

  Though the specific financial terms were vague to Arch, he knew that there would be a cash payment, that the family’s stocks and savings would be transferred to D.E.’s control and each member would be in fact issued a new credit card that featured a hologram of his or her face—and came with strict spending restrictions for the kids, to Celinda’s relief. The shifts in their routines would be otherwise imperceptible, except that all four were provided square, red-bordered stickers for their clothing, bags, notebooks, and cars that contained their names and underneath, “A Diversified Enterprises Subsidiary.”

  In the week ahead, to get everything off on the right foot, representatives of the company appeared at the family’s daily events. A man in a three-piece suit sat in on Ace’s editorial meeting and vocally approved of Arch’s suggestion of a feature on overweight ball boys. Another politely stepped forward to dispute a strike called during Bode’s Little League at-bat. A woman gave line readings to cast members at a rehearsal of Harvey to bolster Sarabeth’s performance. And Brenda Keen herself observed Celinda’s session with a particularly voluble patient and piped up that he should “stop talking and listen to Dr. Wilton for a second.” All of this was what had been meant, Arch and the others understood, by the line in the portfolio that said, “D.E. will stick by you.”

  Friends who read of the Wiltons’ acquisition in the local paper’s “People on the Move” column were either resentful or openly admiring but, in any case, envious.

  At the end of the month, Brenda Keen again appeared, this time in the Wiltons’ den. She said the cleaning woman had let her in, t
hough Arch thought it was Magdalena’s day off. What she said next made him forget any such concerns.

  “This is your first quarter review.” She opened a new blue plastic notebook. “And I have to say your performance has been exemplary.” She lauded the stability and success maintained in their work and recreational lives. “Congratulations.”

  Arch was too pleased by her approval to speak, though he felt slightly sheepish about feeling such pride. Knowing he sounded obsequious but unable to stop himself, he blurted out, “How can we improve? Tell me. We want to do even better.”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Brenda uncrossed her legs, once more clothed in grey slacks, and stood. “Now—there’s something I’d like to show you.”

  In a gas-efficient sedan, Brenda chauffeured Arch to another suburb twenty miles away. She drove with smooth and ruthless efficiency, tailgating or swiftly passing stragglers without ever using her horn. They reached a house that was similar to the Wiltons’ but conspicuously more run-down.

  Inside, she introduced him to a couple of Arch and Celinda’s ages named Red and Karina Blum.

  “The Blums are the first proud owners of a Wilton franchise,” Brenda said. Arch could indeed see satisfaction—and what he now recognized as intimidated shyness—on the couple’s pale, smiling, sweaty faces. By Red’s side there sat a newly delivered box of old radios for his restoring; Karina nervously held and twiddled her fingers on a curled yoga mat.

  “We’d appreciate any tips,” the husband was bold enough to say to an original Wilton. “Anything at all.”

  “We’re off to a good start,” Karina threw in, encouraged by her husband’s temerity and by the easy atmosphere Brenda had made sure existed. “But, well, Red, you had something—”