Famous Men Who Never Lived

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Hel stepped over the threshold from the sagging porch, squeezing her body between towers of junk. She fought off the tight, proprietary excitement that kindled in her chest. The cottage, marooned on a street of much newer semidetached row houses in the Brownsville area of Brooklyn, was smaller and shabbier than she’d expected. Dwayne Sealy, the owner, followed her in and pulled the street door closed behind them. As Hel’s eyes adjusted, she saw shoulder-high stacks of newspapers and magazines, blocking even the windows. A narrow path wound through the canyons of disorder, a passage three squares of brown-and-gold linoleum wide.

“Bulb’s out, I guess.” Dwayne flicked the switch up and down. “Wait right here—let me see what I can do.” He activated the flashlight app on his phone and maneuvered around her, making his way into the dim room beyond.

Happy to stay where she was, Hel breathed in the precious dust. Within these walls in another Brooklyn, the great writer Ezra Sleight had lived, rats under the floorboards, a pile of books in his bed. Within these very walls in a different Brownsville, he’d penned his best novels. His masterpieces. The Pyronauts. The Pain Ray. What to Do with the Night. But none of this was his. There was nothing worth discovering. Everything surrounding her here was an artifact of After, the time after the split.

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