The Reckoning

Several days later, Dexter returned to the Attic with a companion, a man is his mid-forties.

“This is the one I was telling you about, Gerard. He calls himself The Sardine.”

Pleased to meet you, Mr Otway, mainstay of Berthcut & Sons. The shop, I mean.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

The business would fall apart without Gerard.

Logged-In Public: How can a business not have computers?

Berthcut & Sons is set in the 1970s.

“See, Gerard, I told you they had a funny way of talking about things.”

Your associate, and supposed “boss”, his and your lives, the customers, the business itself are part of a novel.

“You’re saying we don’t exist,” Gerard laughs.

No. You are fictional characters with a basis in reality. In other words, real fictional characters.

“That’s nuts, Gerard.,” says Dexter. “Saying we have a basis in reality is like saying water has a basis in hydrogen.” 

You may be more significant, more important, than the people you’re based on.

L-I P: What you were saying in the previous column? We’re not actual people.

You’re more like a concept.

“Frank and I, even Wal-terr, aren’t actual people?” Joe T. asks.

Not really.

Honey and Frank start to wail and cry.

“See what you’ve done,” says McNulty. “Now I have to waste the rest of the day consoling Honey. Talking her back from the edge.”

Imagine this as a reckoning.

“Why did I come here in the first place?” asks Dexter.

Maybe you were curious. Your world seemed limited.

“Gerard, tell him he’s wrong.”

“I’m not sure what to think.”

“Are you going to drag in all the characters from that book?” McNulty asks, as he leads the broken remains of his wife out of the bar.

“What’s he mean, dragging in the characters?” asks Gerard. “Are you responsible for our being here?”

The Sardine directs action. But no one controls everything in their world.

“That explains why the Pope is throwing his weight around,” says Joe.

Dexter informs Gerard that there’s a pope hanging around the bar.

Pope Sixtus the Fourth. He barged in here around 25 columns ago.

“Want me to make you a drink?” Wal-terr asks.

“What? No. I don’t drink,” Gerard says.

Dexter wants one but not a rum and coke. Maybe a screw driver.

“Thanks, Mr Sardine.”

“We have fresh oranges,” says Wal-terr.

“Why’d you make Dexter bring me here?” Gerard asks.

I didn’t make him.

“You said. . . .”

Dexter was so agitated, he needed you to confirm or debunk what I told him.

“We don’t have to stay.”

“Wait, I just ordered a drink,” Dexter protests.

You don’t have to stay. But you don’t have to leave. Let Dexter finish his drink. Don’t act like you’re the boss, Gerard.

Don’t listen to him, Gerard.

“You must be the Pope,” says Dexter.

I’m pleased you recognized me.

“Yeah, the funny hat and clothes,” Dexter remarks.

Another Renaissance scholar the Sardine has dragged in!

Gerard steps toward the Pope and inspects his regalia.

“Very impressive. We could certainly make you a new tiara, the three-tiered form, the triregnum. The triple crown.”

[No horsing around here, remarks the Pun Pal.]

I need a clergy suit. Try to blend in more. But no clergy collars.

“Come in later today, or tomorrow.”

Dexter is worried that Gerard forgot about their predicament, although calling questions about whether one exists or not a “predicament” might be an understatement.

Gerard takes Dexter aside, explaining that regardless the situation, a salesman should be ready to grab a possible sale, especially from such an exalted personage.

The Sardine is getting impatient. Dexter’s right. Are they real persons or not? Are they viable entities outside their given settings? Now the Pope saunters in and throws the discussion off the tracks.

Maybe it’s your reckoning, Mr Sardine, way more than it is for the rest of them. You’re so sure of your reality, your place in this world, as author of the columns, you never considered that you’re like the rest of us. A character from someone’s imagination.

The Sardine has not, nor would he, consider this. He’s a persona for the author, essentially one and the same.

Except that the writer you consider the persona, The Man Who would be the Sardine, is himself a fiction.

If you check the end of the Sardine book more carefully, you will find that Pellatier actually saw The Man Who would be the Sardine.

And what about Pellatier? Have you considered his relative reality?

Not a chance. Can’t even think of myself thinking about the possibility that he’s not. . . .