Thursday, March 28, 2002
When I grow up I want to be Neil Gaiman. But that's another story.
Today was a very, very momentous day. I finally received my copy of the March 14th, 2002 number of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, which, on pages 91-103, contains my paper, "Stratigraphic distribution and habitat segregation of mosasaurs in the Upper Cretaceous of western and central Alabama, with an historical review of Alabama mosasaur discoveries." Literally, here's nineteen years of research distilled into twelve pages. It arrived in the mail about 2 p.m., while I was writing. In a Herculean feat of restraint, I managed to wait until about 5 p.m. to open the envelope, as I knew I couldn't possibly continue working on the Dancy story after having seen it, finally, in print. If you've been wondering — "How do I become a successful author?" — well that's one of the secrets: self-denial. Oh, and I also wrote about 800 words on the story today. I hope to finish it tomorrow.
And now, something I have been putting off for quite some time. It would appear that reports of my escape from Alabama have been greatly exaggerated. Or, to put it another way, if this post had been written by A. A. Milne, it might have been titled, "In Which the Author Attends to an Extremely Overdue Geographical Pronouncement.' Or something like that.
Way back in July, following some nervous paroxysm or another, some now only half-remembered fit of spleen, I resolved to flee this Godforsaken city once and for all. I went to Atlanta and found an apartment. It wasn't nearly as nice as my Birmingham apartment, but, then, it wasn't in Birmingham, so I figured I could live with the lack of space, the bothersome mosquitoes, the noise of traffic, the gas stove, the brown tap water, the windows that were permanently painted shut, the crime, and the absence of a dish-washing machine. The landlords, a Chinese couple (let's call them the Changs) went out of their way to accommodate me. They even agreed to paint most of the interior of the place red. Back in Birmingham, with the help of various friends, I packed up all of my belongings and discovered I had at least four times as much stuff as could ever possibly fit in my new place. So I rented storage space (in the creepy building I'd used as the model for "The Long Hall on the Top Floor," no less) and shoved three-quarters of it in there, leaving out only those things I thought I could not live without. Being me, that meant that such items as dinosaur bones, jars of pickled bats, and Sleepy Hollow action figures would be moved, while silly nonessentials such as the couch would remain behind.
Time for a new paragraph.
We rented a truck in which to move everything. We hired movers. I caught the flu. Now, by this time, it was August, so the temperatures in Birmingham and Atlanta were in the high 90s or low 100s, with matching humidity. My fever felt obliged to compete with the weather. But, to make a terrible, long, snotty story short, we moved. Oh, I took the cat. They wouldn't keep her at the storage place.
Now, fast forward to the evening of Sunday, September 23rd. That afternoon, Jennifer and I had a business lunch with Stephen Pagel, owner of Meisha Merlin Publishing. We ate Greek food while a truly stupendous thunderstorm pummeled Atlanta. Afterwards, we returned home, where Kathryn, our roommate who'd come all the way from Rhode Island, was waiting, having just gotten off work. If this is starting to bore you, don't worry. Here's where the special-effects budget kicks in. The thunderstorm was only foreshadowing. Anyway, it was hot and we were in a restless mood. We sat in the bedroom awhile, then left for a nearby coffeehouse. An hour or so later, we returned home to find that the entire bedroom ceiling had collapsed, dropping hundreds of pounds of plaster, sheetrock, and rock-wool insulation to the floor below. But that's okay. My antique furniture broke the fall.
We spent the next four nights in hotels, while incompetent workmen hired by the Chengs excavated what remained of the bedroom, doing their own damage to the few things the collapse had not already done in. When I sat down an hour ago to write about this, I imagined this part would be filled with all the particulars of the event, the gory details, but now I find I haven't heart to get into it. Once again, to make a long story short, our landlords agreed to pay for all our very substantial damages and our hotel bills, and refused to call in their insurance company or a building inspector. For a week, I had nowhere to work and worried constantly about other ceilings, in other rooms, collapsing. Never mind that had we not gone to the coffeehouse, the three of us would have been in the room. It was bad enough having to look at the crushed mass of wood and wrought iron, buried in great shards of plaster and, in some spots, three or four feet of rock-wool. It was the sort of domestic nightmare one imagines always happening to other people, like floods and earthquakes and such, but never to oneself.
As September ended and October began, it became clear that the Changs had been, shall we say, less than honest about their intentions of covering our damages. I hired a lawyer. They took that as cause to evict us. It was at about this point that I had another series of fits, which must have made my July conniptions seem tame indeed. Shock waves were registered on seismometers as far away as Fiji. Things got ugly. I couldn't work. I had deadlines and bills. I had two absolutely insane landlords (proprietors, by the way, of a certain popular Chinese restaurant on Peachtree Street) who had somehow concluded that kicking me out was to best way to avoid litigation.
So, at the end of October, we packed up and, because it seemed familiar and safe and I didn't have to explain why I couldn't give my present landlord as a reference to prospective realtors, I moved back to Birmingham. Into the same building we'd left in August. Into the apartment next door to the apartment we'd left in August. Tiddly-pom.
I told a few people, people who had to know. My agent. My family. Some editors and publishers. A handful of friends, but, for the most part, I've seen fit to allow people to continue to believe I was still in Atlanta. I was entirely too disgusted with the whole sordid mess, and far too behind in my work, to be bothered having to explain. And, I confess, the incidents were attended by a certain sickening sense of failure. Once again, I was back in this city which, despite whatever impressions my books might convey, is just a few miles east of the sphincter of the world. I'm only telling you now because I'm tired of avoiding references to Birmingham in these entries.
Well, that seems peculiarly anti-climactic. Confession can be very disappointing.
To date, the Changs still haven't made good on their promises. I've replaced or repaired most of the damaged furniture. Kathryn went back to Rhode Island because she hates Birmingham, and I can't very well blame her for that. We've thrown out the ruined clothing (turns out rock-wool is impossible to extricate from fabrics and isn't very healthy stuff). Almost all the stuff I put in storage is still in storage, as I simply haven't felt like unpacking it. And so on, and so forth. I keep telling myself this is a very temporary back-to-Birmingham, and soon I'll be out of here and once again somewhere more civilized. I work and try not to think about the thousands of dollars spent so far because of the ceiling collapse, or about the things that were destroyed that can't be replaced. The cat, damn her fuzzy soul, is just fine.
And I think that's quite enough of this for one night, thank you very much. Maybe someday, in some later attack of catharsis, I'll post a photograph of the room after the collapse. I've got dozens. And video.
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