Sunklands

“Whatever happened to Fern?” she asks, now at the table downstairs drinking her morning coffee and listening to Frank tell about his latest, let’s keep calling them dreams. Visions as well.

“She closed her Fern restaurant,” Frank reviewed. “It returned to its original Crucial Fix coffee shop (form) and lost half its space in the process. I never saw her again.”

“I thought she was your all important mentor,” said Daisy to this.

“She was (!).”

“Welll?” she prompts. “Spill the beans.” She sips her Jamaican dark roast, no sugar no cream, waits for more.

Frank thinks back, thinks back hard. Fern was with him even at the what he would consider the beginning point of the thing, when it was only a giant spool crazily being rolled from just beyond her old computer circuit shop also called Fern — Fern’s, actually, as he clarified it in his mind — and into his own backyard where it would serve as a new and special writing desk for completing his Great American Novel, the one he still works on to this day. The table and novel became one in his mind at some point along the way. But he and best bud Laramie lost control of of the spool when trying to roll it across busy Innocence Boulevard around the halfway point in their about football field length journey. “Whoa Nelly!” Laramie exclaims, replacing one N word with a safer one while watching it race into traffic, finally being hit by a green Subaru SUV near the other side. Almost made it but not quite. Oh how his life might have changed if only that spool would have safely crossed to the other side. But, no. Much of the remains settled on the curb and he was able to look down on it from the sidewalk, a semi-circular piece of wood here, a couple of bolts that held the thing together there. He gawked at the heap of rubbish, thinking his life had come to an end along with the giant spool he so identified with now. He’ll remain a petty thief and 2 bit con artist in the ghetto of south east west central Lost Sanos forever and ever and never become the successful author he wished to be. Then Fern walks up, wondering what all the commotion is about. The spool table was rolled right past the windows of her store and she was compelled to go out and follow the two black men doing the deed. She hadn’t quite found her calling in life and neither had he.

“Fascinating story, Frank. Thank you,” Daisy said after he illuminated much of this to her. She pressed down on the top of her head with the non coffee drinking hand, as if trying to flatten it more. A living, breathing reminder of what Frank did to Mikie at the end of, let’s keep calling it a game. GTA V. Vision as well.

“Let’s talk about you now, Daisy,” he requested, itching to get back to her Nigerian origins, the mother-father conflict over AI now kind of mirrored in their own debates about it.

“But we haven’t figured out where Fern went. Fern first,” she insisted.

We? Frank thinks to himself. Are we creating all this, all the stories we tell each other — together? A true partnership of independently thinking creators in that way? He stares into her blue or green eyes and concludes: could be. tbc