The man’s name turned out to be Walt and he told Susannah Fontaine-Williams that the bag would cost her ten thousand, not the fifteen hundred he first quoted. And she wouldn’t really own the bag, just a license to use it that Walt could revoke any time. He produced a 40-page document outlining myriad terms and conditions she’d have to agree to. “Here,” he said. “Just check this box and initial. No one ever reads these things.” She was impressed. Walt told her he got the idea from Apple and Microsoft and Google and… Anyway, she really had no choice. During her trial week with the bag she stuffed everything in it she could: files, books, makeup, pens, a notepad, a straightening iron and a curling iron just in case. And still it weighed next to nothing. If she shook it, it didn’t make a sound and nothing shifted inside. Once, it fell onto its side on a table and nothing spilt out, as if it was empty. But reach into the interior void, and there was that hairbrush, exactly where she left it. As she saw it, well worth the ten grand. Hell, a decent bag without this kind of storage would run a few thou and not even Oprah had anything like this hanging from her shoulder. “Deal,” she said and extended her hand.
Category: featured
I am not having an affair with Susannah Fontaine-Williams
“Who is she, this Susannah?”
She isn’t anyone. She’s made up.
“You’ve based her on someone… who?”
She’s just a composite of every talk show host, game show-er, blond TV personality. Turn on the TV and you’ll see her on every channel.
“Why are you holding her hand in Chinatown?”
Well that’s not me – it’s just me writing in first person. I like to write first person; I can omit all of the details that omnisciency requires. It’s not me.
“Hmm.”
Look, if you want, we can just leave that story where it is. I haven’t figured everything out yet.
The conversation is happening last night. We had just seen the movie Her and were sitting in the lounge at the Stone Barn hoping for a seat at the bar. Our first time there – an extraordinary place – I was drinking a scotch concoction that included something almond and cinnamon and wheat grass and a few other things that you couldn’t imagine would taste so good. I think there was triple sec in there. The fire was going and people waiting for tables were dressed very well. Except me in jeans and a sweater – we hadn’t planned on popping in but here we were. A fire warmed the room.
My wife has the most delicious and irrational jealousies because everyone knows I married up. I’m the lucky one in this relationship. My blog isn’t a confessional, although wouldn’t that be something?
“No. I want to know if you’re going to sleep with her.”
Well, it isn’t me, and we can assume that the two characters are intimate.
“I knew it!”
If you want, I’ll just write about something else. I have something like three readers…
“Well, no… Why is the bag so expensive?”
You’d pay that much for a bag like that wouldn’t you? Maybe more, right?
She nods and I can see she’d really like a bag like that. SFW’s carrying needs are based on hers of course.
“Where does everything go and why can’t you put electronics in there? Is it a black hole or some kind of a portal?”
I haven’t worked it all out. However she’s impressed me with the sci-fi terminology (she doesn’t think much of the genre).
About this time I’m thinking we should give up on getting seated at the bar and go eat somewhere else when a polite man in a suit tells us that it will just be a few more minutes.
Soon they transport our drinks to the bar and put little menu booklets in front of us. The couple to our left enthusiastically explain how things work – they’re on the foraging menu and have been there three hours already. I am salivating and my wife is smiling. We have for the evening left Susannah Fontaine-Williams in Chinatown holding the extra-dimensional bag. There’s no way I’d ever bring her to a place like this anyway…
Susannah Fontaine-Williams and the Extra-dimensional Bag, Pt. 1
It’s Feb. 1 and the garden is still beneath a coat of snow criss-crossed with footprints and pocked by various tree droppings. Even the roof, bathed in sunlight, still has snow and ice on it. In the summer, there were tremendous spiderwebs spanning the eaves with huge, voracious spiders and these webs have been replaced by lengthening icicles. Winter’s lock remains and the heating system creaks and groans.
A thing to look forward to today: my new phone arrived at the destination sort facility at 6:28 AM this morning and a man in a blue uniform will deliver it to me by noon. It says so on the tracking page and I believe it.
Let me tell you something I don’t believe: Susannah Fontaine-Williams does not love me although she says she does. She’s too practical for love and I’m just someone who can knock down 18 year old Scotch Whisky with her dram by dram and throw her pithy phrases that sometimes ends up on her show, the fourth most-watched afternoon talk show in the land.
She has the most amazing extra-dimensional bag and it’s gotten her into several kinds of trouble. It all started when we were on Canal Street looking for knockoffs and a man led her into a narrow shop with bags hanging from the walls and ceilings like cave bats and piled everywhere on the floor. You waded more than walked through this place.
“I need a bag that will hold a lot,” she told the man. “But isn’t very big.”
He pointed to the knockoffs and SFW held them, appraised them, hoisted them onto her spaghetti-strapped shoulder and shook her head no. No. “Too big. Too heavy.”
“Fifty dollars.”
“No.”
“OK, forty.”
She took my hand and we looked at each other and laughed and walked out of the store.
The man said, “Wait. Come with me. I show you something special.”
He led us to the back of the cave to a door covered with dusty bags and found the knob beneath the faux leather. We walked onto a creaky, wooden stairway. Bare fluorescent bulbs hung every few feet so where we hoped for and expected a puddle of dark, we were instead treated to blue-white light. After 27 steps, one of which had an nail sticking straight up (“nail, watch out), we landed in the basement, a big, neat, mostly empty space.
“My workshop,” he said.
At the far end was a metal desk under exposed fluorescent tubes. On it sat a single bag.
“That doesn’t look like it would hold very much,” SFW said.
The man smiled and handed her the bag. SFW dutifully put it on her shoulder.
”The straps are too short.”
“Put your hands on strap and lightly pull,” and as she did the straps lengthened.
“Oh… how?”
“Now, put something in the bag, your wallet…”
SFW pulled out her wallet, a bulky thing weighted down and fattened with credit cards, slips of paper, loose change and lots of cash. She always carried too much cash.
“It will take up the entire bag,” she said.
“Put in everything else you have with you now. Except nothing electronic.”
She piled in a notebook, a few loose pens, a makeup kit, a toothbrush…”
“You carry a toothbrush?” I said.
It all fit. I looked in the bag and it was black inside, dark, although a bright light was shining directly over it. I reached in and felt around for her wallet and pulled it out. “Huh.”
“How much?”
“For you, $1500.”
“Too much for a knockoff.”
“Not a knockoff. This is one of a kind. A prototype.”
He gestured to his workbench with his neatly organized tools and implements and tubes.
”Tell you what. I like you. I watch your show. You take it with you, try it for a few days. If you still want it, buy it. If not, just give it back. No charge for trying it out.”
She looked over at me.
“Why not?” I said, not realizing that that question would be answered soon enough.
“Remember,” the shopkeeper said. “Nothing electronic.”
“Well, where do I put my phone?”
“Outside pocket. Always in the outside pocket.”
…to be continued.
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