Literago’s pleased to present Neptune City, a new work in serial by C.T. Ballentine. More installments coming soon. — Eds.

Of course the warehouse, being empty, was considerably brighter than it had ever been during that whole ordeal. Walter wondered, had it always been this dusty? All memories seemed to him nocturnal: an array of colored lights swimming through a field of obscure electronic equipment draped in red satin, Walter wheeling about in an office chair, fetching a drink for one guest, a roach clip for another. All the while trying not to talk too much about Alexis, her absence conspicuous in what had been, primarily, a three month litany of loneliness began with their last kiss at O’Hare’s terminal three. There had been phone calls, sure, but phones, thought Walter, were bullshit.

The dust cast Stockwell in a murky penumbra of filth. Their eyes met with a naked recognition of shared shame. For explanation, Stockwell pointed a pudgy finger at the cell phone nestled into his shoulder’s hollow, no doubt attempting to liquidate what remained of their antiquated assets. Walter retreated to his former office cum bedroom—barren now—the diagrams and flowcharts torn down, the homemade chandeliers gone who knows where. All that remained was one sheet of that goddamned, infernal red paper.

“Must be strange,” said Stockwell, ducking to maneuver himself through the doorframe. “Being back here. Seeing it empty.”

Walter nodded.

“How have you been?” asked Stockwell with an uncharacteristic fragility.

Walter considered an offhanded quip about amphetamines or perhaps some light hearted reference to the week he’d spent certain he would die at Stockwell’s hand, but figured the gravity of the situation was probably best left unmocked and so answered instead with a shrug.

“I’ve been alright,” he added, after a moment. “Or you know, better anyway.”

Stockwell nodded. “Don’t suppose you know anyone looking to buy a reel-to-reel?” He didn’t wait for an answer, moving instead to the main room, pacing among the empty shelves. “We’ve gotten rid of most of it,” he said. “But some of this shit…a four hundred pound paper cutter, industrial kitchen sinks? These things do not move quickly.” Walter lit a cigarette in agreement.

Stockwell turned abruptly, a faint blush showing through his beard. “We gave your share of everything to Quill, you know, considering…”

“Of course,” replied Walter, leaving a trail of smoke to hang lazily in the dust-humid air. He took a seat at the folding table, fidgeting automatically with the fly swatter while Stockwell returned to his phone. The flyswatter, for Walter, conjured images of the first Smith & Jones office, back when the pair had operated in the relative sphere of anonymity to which they would likely return after the press fervor faded. The storefront had been positively overridden with flies. Unsurprising, really, given its equally dusty location in a largely uninhabited, low-rent corner of Chicago’s Paseo Boricua neighborhood, the playground Puerto Rican flags casting an ominous shadow on the front door of the building where Walter and Alexis first met.

He’d gone to the office one evening on a lark, playing straight man to Stockwell who, upon entry, set himself, predictably, to the task of irritating living hell out of both Smith and Jones by offering, unsolicited,  all manner of heavy handed advice on everything from plumbing to payroll. Within four minutes he’d offered to restaff their entire operation. Smith, red faced, failed to allow any of Stockwell’s opinions to pass unchallenged, while Jones resigned himself to sipping bluegrass beer and, occasionally, killing a fly.

The two, Alexis and Walter, discovered some degree of union in their indifference, at first casting errant glances in each other’s direction, later engaging in a clipped and awkward conversation concerning Baudelaire, Godart and a mutual affinity for 7-11 cuisine.

“The Big Poorboy,” opined Alexis. “Is as close to arriving at a class consciousness as any sandwich I know.”

Walter laughed. Alexis furrowed her brow.

“The sandwich,” continued Alexis. “Foodstuff of the proletariat finding its etymology in a goddamned Earl adds a layer of irony which ought not be ignored.”

Then and there, Walter asked Alexis out on a date. Alexis refused, then paused a moment and said, “Don’t get any ideas.”

The pair spent the duration of the summer hiding out in innocuous dive bars and passing notes—Alexis’s being mostly condemnation of their own bourgeois milieu, while Walter’s consisted primarily of sentimentally earnest flirtations. Alexis rejected the notion of a relationship outright, being unable to jibe with any notion as philosophically omniscient as love and, furthermore, refusing to relegate herself to systematic masculine oppression. Once, upon waking in Alexis’s spartan studio apartment, Walter said, “It’s just that I’d be sad if you were making out with other boys.” Alexis scoffed and refused any attempts at spooning for the rest of the morning. Never again did Walter broach the subject of relationships, preferring instead to, when allowed, exist quietly in Alexis’s embrace. The rest of his days were spent meticulously archiving the stack of loose-leaf notebook paper which had passed between their two hands.

Walter looked up at Stockwell whose phone was, at present, sitting idly at his side. “Have you sold the paper shredder?” he asked.

After a pregnant pause Stockwell answered. “We did, yes,” he said. “But the filing office…we haven’t gotten around to that yet. We tried selling it as confetti, but nobody bought that line.”

Walter advanced tentatively toward the filing office’s door while Stockwell looked on apprehensively. He stood frozen before it, until finally, with a cautious reverence, he pulled the handle outward to reveal a waist high stack of paper shreds. Contained therein were all of Walter and Alexis’s notes, in addition to blueprints of various skyscrapers, accounting ledgers both legit and otherwise and internet printouts concerning unified field theory, among other things. All destroyed in one manic burst when things had become, as Walter put it, a little too real.

Walter grinned. Taking a step back, he flung himself into the paper like so many autumn leaves. He lay on his back, tossing paper into the air, watching the corporeal manifestation of a year’s worth of dreams hang in the dust cloud overhead, flittering down onto his body like rain.