The Fine Art of Reading Riley

Stone placed the invitations in the mail on January 1. As of January 10, he had heard from a few guests who wanted to attend. Now it was January 11, the day of the event and… Stone looked at his watch and realized he had eight hours until book club members started arriving at his two- to three-hour party. The scheduled time for the event was 7:00 P.M., but Lance, his irresponsible and s*x-swooned nephew, never failed to be late, and his bestie, Conner Worthington, had to work late, probably tied up at least until eight. No matter what, the book club started on time each month, with or without all nine members, all of which Stone knew would eventually show. Feeling overwhelmed, having a lot to do today and suffering from a clusterfuck of thoughts inside his head, Stone wanted everything to be perfect since the last book club event at Marigold Lofty’s cottage in Harrison Hills turned out be an epic failure. Stone wanted tonight to be enchanting, almost whimsical, and rather uppity, without coming across as being pretentious and arrogant, which all of the club members thought of him. He had a list of chores to accomplish by seven that evening. The Tudor needed cleaned from top to bottom. Sadie Harrison, a Baptist Congolian with bright-white eyes and a beer belly, had planned to come around at noon and scrub the place clean, concentrating on every nook and cranny. Stone had hired the grandmother of six to do menial tasks throughout the year. He wanted to impress his book club members the way Marigold tried to impress them with a male stripper named Ralph X, which ended up being far too shocking. Stone had groceries to buy at The Basket Grocery Store and a stack of Robert Riley paperback books to pick up at Turn the Page Books, which were door prizes he wanted to share with his guests. There were also flowers to pick up, chocolates, both gifts for Lance, since it was almost his twentieth birthday. Lance loved flowers, a botanist at heart, always captivated by red roses or pink carnations. At some point in his day, he had to eat. Honey mustard drizzled over a cranberry-almond salad with sweet- and salt-buttered rolls had been the plan for lunch. Granted, it wasn’t the healthiest, low-calorie meal he could chow down in a hurry, but it seemed better than two cheeseburgers, a large fry, and a milkshake at a fast food restaurant. Weight had always been one of Stone’s problems. Love handles were a nuisance in his life, and he tried to work out at least three times a week at Muscles & Men, a gay gym on Plimpton’s Main Street. He really needed to cut back on his carbohydrates, though, having a sick weakness for a slew of breads, particularly rye and pumpernickel with slices of Dutch cheese. If he could just lay off the pasta, too, things in the weight division of his life would look better for him. For now, it wasn’t going to happen, particularly today. Besides lifting a few weights, jogging, and rowing at his local gym, he liked to speed walk. Studies in a variety of fitness magazines stated that speed walking could be unhealthy, and other magazines said it was the way to go. Stone really didn’t care what nonfiction writers thought of his workouts, wanting all of them to mind their own love handles, of course. So shame on them. The reason he enjoyed speed walking so much was because he could listen to one of Robert Riley’s megahit e-books. Truth and Eco’s Desire was Stone’s last pick, and he wasn’t unsatisfied in the least. Something about Riley’s writing came across as soothing, meticulous, and challenging all at the same time. He really couldn’t explain why he liked Riley so much, but he did. No one was about to tell him otherwise. Truth and Eco were lovers during a nuclear and apocalyptical war set in 2093, somewhere in, or near, Kansas; Riley didn’t make such a place official for his readers. The author purposely created the characters as hermaphrodites, confusing most readers and critics, which Stone loved about the four-hundred and fifty-page tome. Most of the other club members found it tedious and a blur. Another attribute about the book entailed its short chapters, a total of over two hundred, and all being less than two pages long. Yet another fascinating fact about the best-selling novel was that Truth and Eco were brother and sister, but not by blood, only by reconstructed tissue after spending the first five years of their lives in a German hospital that had mastered cloning. Honestly, Stone thought Riley an impervious genius on paper and one of the great thinkers of today’s unexceptional world of fluff and beach reads. All twenty-seven novels the author published and shared with the world left Stone feeling bewildered, enlightened, depressed, and happy. And Stone couldn’t wait for number twenty-eight, Misfortune of Myth, which just happened to be out in April of the following year, a six-hundred and fifty-nine-page hardback by Smithington Company, and costing a steep thirty-two bucks per copy. “Get a move on it, pokey,” Stone said to himself, admiring his salt-and-peppered hair in the mudroom’s mirror positioned above a Crate & Barrel bench where guests could sit and slip their shoes on and off or take a slight breather. How he had obtained a sprinkle of gray hair at such the young age of thirty-two was beyond his comprehension. His twin, Samuel, still had a full head of black hair, without the tiniest streak, dapple, or blade of gray. Samuel had always tried to up him on everything, though, ever since Stone could remember: career, bank accounts, property values, BMWs, and vacations. No wonder the brothers didn’t talk anymore, living on two different sides of the country, ignoring each other to the best of their abilities. Stone still looked rather young for a man who had just exited his twenties, even if he had some gray. His friends, who inevitably included the book club members, thought he acted older, not that he could help it, of course. He was clean-shaven, with sparkling blue eyes, a slender, sharp Greek nose, and straight teeth thanks to braces at the age of fifteen. Stone looked almost like a cartoon character: somewhat clumsy, thin-lipped, pink-cheeked, and not at all his age. If he could only lose some fat around his neck, he might be involved with a man. But his discreet and private love life was another topic for another time since he had to leave and carry out his chores. Truth told, he didn’t want to think about the extra meat around his middle. Samuel had always called it blubber and bullied Stone through grade school, middle school, and high school. Some things were best not to think about, right? This is what he processed while leaving his Tudor unlocked for Sadie Harrison to enter and start cleaning. He headed outside and into the cold driveway where his snow-covered BMW was parked.