Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
When we meet for coffee this afternoon, I find out that we’re both reading the same book. My book club’s pick this month happens to be your bedtime reading.
So of course, I have to ask, “What’s your favorite story in the collection so far?”
“The one about the mermaid,” you answer without hesitation.
Mermaid. The word echoes in my mind, loud and out of place.
“I must not have gotten to that one yet,” I reply.
“Then you’re in for a real treat!”
Encouraged by your endorsement, I finish the rest of the book that evening but fail to come across anything related to a mermaid—even when I flip through the entirety of the book in case I somehow missed it. Maybe you’re reading a different book with a similar title.
“No no, it’s the same book,” you insist when I mention this possibility over lunch. “The mermaid story is after the one about the cartoon captionist’s midlife crisis and before the one with the to-do list addict.”
Those stories are definitely in the collection, so do I have some kind of abridged version of the book?
After lunch, I go to the bookstore downtown and look at the copies in stock. All of them have a table of contents that lists only the stories I’ve read. Maybe you have a different edition, one that’s from another country or part of a limited print run featuring bonus material.
But when I ask you where you got your copy, you tell me you bought it at that very bookstore I just visited. So I ask to borrow your copy. Happily, you oblige, dropping it off on the way home from work the next day. With covers identical to mine, this book looks the same but is slightly thicker.
When I open it to where you’ve left a bookmark, I’m taken straight to the mermaid story. So I read it. You’re right: it is a real treat. As are the other 3 stories your copy has that mine doesn’t. “The Problem with Memory Palaces” easily becomes my favorite.
The enchantment of these additional stories soon gives way to bemusement. They’re so good, so why aren’t they in all the other copies I’ve seen? Did the bookstore accidentally sell you a wayward advance copy, printed before a last-minute editorial call to save these 4 stories for a follow-up collection? But when I check the copyright page, it shows that your copy is a first edition—but printed in Winterra, the defunct name for what we now call the Northern Territories. I should have known. This is a book that could only be yours alone.
It’s like the blue avocado and the party favor kazoo that sounds like a wood thrush. I’ve all but forgotten about those mysterious little oddities that cropped up during childhood—objects you unwittingly altered with latent psychic powers or plucked from another world through a boundary that would become porous in your presence. However it happens, now I get to reap the benefits, get to not only read these charming stories but also talk about them with you. And there’s so much to talk about—starting with the part when the mermaid defrays the tuition for her oceanography studies by becoming a part-time sushi chef who serves as a de facto life coach, giving much-needed honest advice to one of the restaurant’s regulars as he sits at the bar, relating his woes over nigiri after nigiri. Shouldn’t she have seen her gift for counseling complete strangers at this point or shortly afterwards?