He suffers a prophetic nightmare vision, but thinks nothing of it. He reads Goldstein’s letter addressing Saint Stephan’s anti-Semitism and works on the 1,500-page manuscript to prove it is his. He convinces himself he has been right about everything
Zippy’s eyes startle open as he continues to mumble and babble on. Fighting desperately, grappling with the dreadful specter of his evil dream, his waking self surfaces above his mind’s black cerebral depths, where the horrors he’s just seen sink back into the murk of covering amnesia and forgetfulness.
The parts and pieces of him that blew apart draw and glue themselves back together as he again becomes aware of his surroundings, and hears someone kitty corner from him in his Comfort Zone section saying, “Shut up, shut up, oh, would you please just… shut… UP…?!”
He fights to shake the residue of terrifying images from his waking memory left by the nightmare – apparently, of the very plane he’s on crashing in some fallow wheat field somewhere in the American Midwest, killing everyone on board; the cause: a flock of birds hitting both engines as the plane was in the process of descending, as though to make some impromptu emergency landing.
He tears open several moist towelettes and pats and wipes down his neck, forehead, and face. He tears open myriad small packages of salty snacks and bitesize chocolates he’d gotten into his possession somehow and wolfs them all down. Snapping irksomely and presumptuously through the drape that obscures the plane’s gallingly best section ahead of him, he demands sparkling water from the flight staff, and again hears someone to the back and right of him in his own section stridently pronounce the words, “Shut UP!!!”
He decides to get to work on the 1,500-page manuscript in his possession and pulls it out of his bag, so as to commence marking it up with his notations, and such, to prove to Goldstein that it really is his work, and not that arrogant poseur Saint Stephan’s. And then, when he gets to L.A., sign that million-dollar, or more, deal!
He has a printout of Goldstein’s letter to him from the email he’d received from Goldstein just a few days ago, featuring the manuscript attachment.
Before getting to work, he takes pleasure in reading part of it again; it says:
“… and so imagine my relief, and good fortune, to learn that by your partial agency, you managed to remove that anti-Semite, Saint (so-called) Stephan from his position as chief editor of the Kyiv Poster, to replace him with yourself. As if that were his real name. Sure, sure. What a joke!
“Was he an anti-Semite in his position at the Poster? I bet you he was. Trash like that can’t hide his real self for very long. One way or another, and sooner or later, the truth always comes out. And I bet you that was one of the reasons you could not tolerate him in that position anymore and went straight to the Jewish publisher, Seth Sundance (actually, I know him a little) to make your strong case against him and get him fired.
“Because this Stephan, the way he’d go about it, you see, he was so subtle, you almost couldn’t tell he was doing it when he talked to you, and so his anti-Semitism, though it was definitely there, was almost imperceptible. The way he did it, it was like he was setting you up to make the accusation so that he could call you a nut, or something, for making it, and then you’d feel bad about it, because he did it all in a way that made it truly hard to prove.
“But I caught on! The way he was almost laughing at you if you were a Jew, making fun of you, mocking you, in just about everything he said when he talked to you. The topic never came up, but I just KNOW he held an anti-Israel position! But, again, you almost couldn’t tell.
“But like I said, I found out and saw through it all, and ended up hating him for it very, very much. But it is a righteous hatred. And so I decided there was no way I could do any kind of business with him anymore.
“But then I thought, wait a minute. I read your work in the Kyiv Poster, and more recently someplace else, but I can’t remember it now, but it doesn’t matter, because the point is, I recognized a whole lot of similarities between the way you wrote, your voice, your style, in the Kyiv Poster, and the way a lot of that big manuscript Saint Stephan gave me sounded.
“And I thought it just had to be the truth that one day, when you weren’t at your desk at the Kyiv Poster, this Stephan snuck around and found the folder with the file of the work I sent you in it, saw its great potential value, for movies and the like, and made a copy of it for himself.
“In fact, my guess is that he maybe even put himself in a position after that to show his true colors in that respected newsroom as just blatantly anti-Semitic, no holds barred, being actually as clever as he actually is, I hate to admit, though in a cunning, wild-animal sort of way, so that he would get fired, so that he could then come out here with the manuscript to see me. Because, probably, he thought, he had nothing to lose.
“Well, I’m here to tell you, he was wrong!
“But, Mr. Zamazda, with all due respect, I believe you can prove that the manuscript is really yours. That it is all of your work, and none of his, and all you have to do is prove it to me, and then we can talk, because we probably definitely will have something to talk about, and maybe then sign something like a million-dollar, or even more, deal, because I can see this happening, and I already have people out here very interested in it…”
Zippy is busy randomly turning the loose, 1,500 pages of Saint Stephan’s work over in his lap and hands, now, actually totally convinced that it is his, and that Stephan had indeed stolen it from him.
He is scribbling in notations without even reading the stories’ texts, such as: “Oh, really?”; “I don’t think so!”; “not on my dime”; “must change/this is crap”; and the like. He’s crossing out words and changing them for other words; inking out sentences, and scratching out entire paragraphs, or drawing in arrows to arbitrarily transpose them – now here, now there, and now everywhere. Like some maniac’s work, the notations, cross-outs, and scribblings soon cover vast fields of text throughout the MS.
There is one story in particular that, for some reason, catches his eye, and he actually reads it and, naturally, dislikes it, and so decides to eliminate it (all the time showing Goldstein that he’s doing it) from the collection.
“No… no… there’s NO WAY any of this happened! It’s just not possible!”
Ironically, he misses the two frames right after: Nos. 163 and 164; namely, “The Three Never-ending Nightmares of Z. Zamazda”, and “The Never-ending Nightmares of Zippy Z.”
He takes a break to think about his life, the actions he’s taken, and what their consequences might be.
To himself he says: ‘And there’s also no way any of this is happening due to the volition of the Ferret and some goony thug called The Half Guinea with his stupid dressed-up dog. Where did I even get that notion? I must be just really, really tired, and it was one of the bad dreams I had still playing around in my head, like a memory of something real. I mean, it feels really real, but I know, I know, I know – it’s not! I mean, this is my work; this is my manuscript! And I’m on this plane because I want to be!’
Yet, having had this thought, and come to this conclusion, what, in the end, does this say about Zippy… as a husband… and as a man… and, as a family man?
That he would just up and leave his wife? Quickly pack a bag after coming home frustrated and angry following an evening’s work at Soiree’s? Have enough presence of mind in that moment to purposely and demonstratively throw his working apron in a very specific manner into a corner, take his fedora from the coatrack, but then just leave his wife, slamming the door in her face, of all things, before she could even catch up with him? Without even changing out of his rented tux? Without a word of explanation? And just head to the airport… for L.A.? Well, L.A. was logical, as that’s where Goldstein was.
But still, it was all so sudden, and crazy, and senseless-seeming – like, well: Who the fuck behaves that way?!
‘I was under tremendous pressure,’ Zippy thinks. ‘And my wife’s very demanding. I was being humiliated at Soiree’s for chump change because of her, and I had to return home with really no explanation for my existence or any excuses for why I wasn’t able to make more of a success of myself and a life for her and our kids. But I had this manuscript, and its great potential value was confirmed by Goldstein himself – I have the proof right here – and so I decided to just go… and then come back with the prize… And then everything would be all right…’
His phone pings. Wi-fi? Zippy doesn’t understand, since there’s not supposed to be any internet on this plane – at least that had been the impression he got when getting on. In fact, he remembers asking about it several times. Are they that incompetent on this plane, or what?!
Well, but on the other hand, sometimes strange things happen in life without any good explanation, and we shouldn’t really worry about them… too much…
Filed by Saint Stephan, May 8, 2025