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If Imaginary Keith ever becomes historically significant, there are going to be certain questions that will pop up.  People will demand answers, because people, let’s admit it, are funny that way.  They want to know things that matter very little.

Like Spalding Gray.  Imaginary Keith sees people talking all about Spalding Gray, but realizes that he knows nothing about this man.  But he knows that he wrote and was in some movies and went floating in a river.

Maybe people will ask: Hey!  Imaginary Keith!  What about Spalding Gray?  And Imaginary Keith will turn and look faraway and dreamy, like he’s thinking of something that happened long ago, maybe something that he hadn’t thought about in a long time, and just now has resurfaced in his memory because of the curiosity of the people.  Imaginary Keith’s head may move slightly, up and down, just like curious people’s heads move when they too remember something from long ago.  And Imaginary Keith will stand there silently looking back at the curious people, giving them enough time for their own thoughts to drift a bit.  It will be a long enough silence that the curious people will begin to grow just a little bit uncomfortable.

Curious people, you might know, are uncomfortable with silence.

And then, finally, Imaginary Keith will say something.  Something like, “I just don’t know what happened to Spalding Gray.”

And because of the faraway look, and the dreamy eyes, and the slightly nodding head and the almost too long uncomfortable silence, the curious people will decide that Imaginary Keith has thought long and hard about the life and death of Spalding Gray.  They will think that there is great mystery here.  They will think that Imaginary Keith has clung to the hope that Spalding Gray will somehow survive floating in a river for two months.  That somehow he will turn up alive and well and kicking.  They will think so many things.  Their imaginations will run wild in that moment of silence as they try to fill something that is so unbearably uncomfortable.

So Imaginary Keith will answer the curious people’s questions by saying nothing.  Inside he will smile, thinking it is odd that silence can be mistaken so easily for reflection and knowledge.

And people, because they’re funny this way, will answer all of their own questions.  They will talk and talk and talk until they are sure they’ve said enough, making everything up as they go along.

Imaginary Keith is tied in a chair being force fed numbers.  One hand is loose, barely, so that he can sketch a concept for an arbor and gate.  Every five minutes I walk over and flick him on the back of the ear, then remind him that he’s had more then two months to get this done.  It’s his own fault.  His own doing.

I took out the gag once, but immediately put it back in when he began to compare me to a visit to the dentist.

Do you see the abuse I have to put up with?

Finish the damn sketch, I tell him.  I’m waiting, a customer is waiting, and even worse, Thor is waiting.

Thor!  Did you hear me?  Thor!  Finish your work before you really piss him off.

Imaginary Keith’s hand wiggled around when I said that, but I’m not sure if he was reaching for the pen or just twitching as I tightened the ropes.  His eyes look a little jumpy, but then he’s such a coffee freak.

Mongolian horde seekers have arrived here in large numbers today.  Great forces are obviously at work somewhere in the world.

But I fear your journey has been in vain.  A lemming crusade.  Here we wait patiently for Thor.  Here we fear no Khans.

They say that Thor will soon appear on the horizon and that the sun reflecting off of his helmet will be blinding.  They also say that the Khan brothers, having put down their weapons, will arrive only minutes ahead of Thor, and that they will have tiny, digital camcorders in their large, grimy, bloodstained hands so that they can capture the whole moment on film.

But then they say a lot of things.

I was thinking the other night about all of the things that slip through my life that are real but seem so unreal.  Things that I’ve seen with my own eyes, yet even at the moment of seeing them, begin immediately to surround themselves with doubts and questions.  Things that slip by so quickly, that even knowing they were real, I am left wondering because of the briefness I was exposed.

One time long ago, when Imaginary Keith was just a boy, he found himself sledding with his brother and a friend on a snowy hillside in Iowa.  A sunny, bright day.  A day after a storm, where the only thing showing against the blue sky is the intermittent cloud of your own breath and a handful of large, fluffy white clouds tumbling slowly along in the storm’s wake.

And on that day, now so long ago, Imaginary Keith had felt the need to look up into that sky.  Something pulled at his attention, and he remembers, even to this day, the pressure and bulk of his coat and many layers of clothing as he leaned back his head so that his eyes could reach whatever it was that called for his attention.  He remembers breathing slowly, so that the mist from his breathing wouldn’t be in the way.  He remembers a thick, gray, wool mitten coming up to shield his eyes from the sun as his eyes made the adjustment, going from the blinding snow white of the hillside to the deep, warm blue of the sky.

And on that long ago day, standing there on the top of that small hill, Imaginary Keith’s eyes found themselves resting on what appeared to be the front end of a large airliner, poking out from the clouds.  A large rounded shape, silvery white, sticking out slightly from behind a group of the large, puffy white clouds that hung low in the sky just over their heads.  Imaginary Keith sat and stared at the object, thinking that it looked like the nose of an airliner, but realizing at the same time that it didn’t move.

First in a low voice, and then louder and louder, Imaginary Keith called out to his brother and the friend, telling them to look up.  Something is up there, he said, knowing that they would look up and they would all see it.  Imaginary Keith took his eyes off of the object once, to see why his brother and the friend did not respond or say anything.  Only five or six feet away, surely they had heard him.  Surely they would want to look up and see whatever it was he was yelling about.  But when Imaginary Keith looked over at his brother and the friend, they were just standing there, silently staring straight ahead.  Imaginary Keith, looking straight at the two, told them to look up.  He pointed and motioned with his head.  He repeated himself, but the two boys just stood there, staring blankly at him.  They didn’t talk, they didn’t move, and they didn’t look up.

Imaginary Keith looked back up and the object was still there, poking out from behind the cloud even a bit more then before.  He watched it sitting there, wondering what it could be, knowing all along what it was.  He stared at it for maybe thirty, forty seconds, and then the object, silently and smoothly, slid behind the cloud in one quick motion and was gone.

And just as quickly as the object was gone, Imaginary Keith’s brother and the friend came back to life.  Suddenly they were talking and laughing and moving around, getting ready to head back down the hill.

Why didn’t you look up, Imaginary Keith asked them.  Why didn’t you say anything, he asked.

And the two boys just looked at Imaginary Keith like he was crazy.  What are you talking about, they said, then jumped on their sleds and disappeared down the hill, leaving Imaginary Keith to stand there all alone, thinking about what had just happened. 

But while a boy standing all alone on a hill might know what he has seen, he really has no idea just how hard it will become to separate real from unreal later in life.  He has no way of knowing that this is just the first of many things that will appear before his eyes and then disappear, leaving him to stand there wondering.  He has no way of knowing if he is better off for having seen the object, and now believing it, or whether it would have been better to be one of the other boys, staring blankly into nothing.