Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia

Also by Dana Spiotta

Lightning Field
Eat the Document

SCRIBNER
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Dana Spiotta

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First Scribner hardcover edition July 2011

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Designed by Carla Jayne Jones

Manufactured in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011017816

ISBN 978-1-4516-1796-2
ISBN 978-1-4516-1798-6 (ebook)

For clem coleman

The beauty for which I aim needs little to appearunbelievably little. Anyplacethe most destituteis good enough for it.

Jean Dubuffet, Landscaped Tables,
Landscapes of the Mind, Stones of Philosophy

I just wanna stay in the garage all night.

Garageland, the Clash,
written by Mick Jones and Joe Strummer

STONE
ARABIA

S he always said it started, or became apparent to her, when their father brought him a guitar for his tenth birthday. At least that was the family legend, repeated and burnished into a shared over-memory. But she did really think it was true: he changed in one identifiable moment. Up until that point, Niks main occupations had been reading Mad magazine and making elaborate ink drawings of dogs and cats behaving like far-out hipsters. He had charactersMickey the shaggy mutt who smoked weed and rode motorcycles; Linda the sluttish afghan who wore her hair hanging over one eye; and Nik Kat, his little alter ego, a cool cat who played pranks and escaped many close calls. Nik Kat addressed the reader directly and gave little winky comments about not wanting you to turn the page. Denise appeared as Little Kit Kat, the wonder tot. She had a cape and followed all the orders Nik Kat gave her. Nik made a full book out of each episode. He would make three or four copies with carbon paper and then later make more at some expense at the print shop, but each of the covers was created by hand and unique: he drew the images in Magic Marker and then collaged in pieces of colored paper cut from magazines. Denise still had Niks zines in a box somewhere. He gave one copy to her and Mom (they had to share), one to his girlfriend of the moment (Nik always had a girlfriend), one was put in a plastic sleeve and filed in his fledgling archives, and one went to their father, who lived in San Francisco.

Nik would take his fathers issue, sign it, and write a limited-edition number on it before taping it into an elaborate package cut from brown paper grocery bags. He would address it to Mr. Richard Kranis. (Always with the word Kronos written next to it in microscopic letters. This alluded to an earlier time when each person in Niks life was assigned the name and identity of a god. Naturally his dad was Kronos, and even though Nik had long ago moved on from his childish myths-and-gods phase, their father forever retained his Kronos moniker in subtle subscript.) Nik would draw all over the package, making the wrapping paper an extension of the story inside. After he mailed it off to his father, he recorded the edition numbers and who possessed them in his master book. Even then he seemed to be annotating his own life for future reference. Self-curate or disappear, he would say when they were older and Denise began to mock him for his obsessive archiving.

Denise didnt think their father ever responded to these packages, but maybe he did. She never asked Nik about it. Her father would send a couple of toys in the mail for their birthdays, but not always, and not every birthday. She remembered him visiting a week after Christmas one year and bringing a carload of presents. He gave Denise a little bike with removable training wheels and sparkly purple handlebar tassels. But the most significant surprise was when he turned up for Niks tenth birthday.

Nik and Denise lived on Vista Del Mar about two blocks from the Hollywood Freeway. Their mother rented a small white stucco bungalow. (In his comics Nik dubbed the house Casa El Camino Real, which later became Casa Realpronounced ray-al or reel, depending on how sarcastic you were feelingand they found it forever amusing to always refer to it that way; eventually even their mother called it Casa Real. By the time Nik was in high school, he had become one of those people who gives names to everything: his car, his school, his bands, his friends. One who knew him wellsay, Denisecould tell his mood by what nickname he used. The only things that didnt get nicknames were his guitars. They were referred to by brand namesthe Gibsonor by categoriesthe bassand never as, say, his axe, and he never gave them gender-specific pronouns, like shes out of tune. Giving nicknames to his gear seemed unserious to him.)

When they first moved in to Casa Real, Nik had his own room while Denise shared a room with her mother. Later on Denise got Niks room and Nik made the back dining roomwith its own door leading outsideinto his spacious master bedroom/smoking den/private enclave. Later still he would commandeer the entire garage. Nik stapled carpet remnants on the walls and made a soundproof recording and rehearsal studio.

For his tenth birthday, Nik wanted to go to the movies with a couple of friends and then have a cookout in the backyard with cake and presents. That was the plan. Nik wanted to see Dr. Strangelove, but Denise was too little, so they went to the Campus on Vermont Avenue to see the Beatles movie A Hard Days Night. Nik was a bit of a Beatle skeptic; he had the 45s, but he wasnt sure it wasnt too much of a girl thing. The movie erased all his doubt. Denise remembered how everything about it thrilled themthe music, of course, but also the fast cuts, the deadpan wit, the mod style, the amused asides right into the camera. The songs actually made them feel high, and in each instance felt permanently embedded in their brains by the second repetition of the chorus. They stayed in their seats right through the credits. If it wasnt for the party, there was no question they would have watched it again straight through.

When Denise reluctantly followed Nik out into the afternoon light, it shocked her to discover the world was just as they had left it. There it stood in hot, hazy, Beatle-free color. No speed motion and no guitar jangle. But it didnt matter, because they still had the songs in their heads, and they knew they would go to see the movie again as soon as they could. They took the bus to Hollywood Boulevard to look at records. Then they walked from Hollywood Boulevard up to Franklin, and Nik began to sing the songs from the film a cappella; he could perfectly mimic the phrasing of each Beatle vocal. Nik could also imitate the Liverpool accents, and he already knew some of the lines by heart (