The Famous Author’s Museum, by Ryan Boudinot
The Director of the Museum of History and Industry slid the final piece of paperwork across the table. Drumming his fingers, Louis Roundtree regarded the single line waiting for his signature.
"Take your time, Mr. Roundtree. I want to make sure you're positive about making this extraordinarily generous gift. I know I’ve said it so many times over these past few weeks, but it truly is an honor to be granted stewardship over your legacy. I remind you, once you sign, you will have no legal recourse whatsoever to your belongings or to live in your apartment ever again."
"I lived in that apartment for thirty years," Louis said, "All my major works were written there. Those novels no longer belong to me. They belong to my readers. It feels fitting that I bequeath those who've given me this remarkable life in letters a deeper way to connect with the work. Ever since I visited the home of Nobel Laureatte Halldor Laxness outside Reykjavik, I decided that one day my home would become a repository of dreams. Now is that day. Besides, I hear the call of the forest and mountains where I will live out my twilight years. My cabin in Leavenworth will suit me just fine."
Louis Roundtree had signed many things in his life. Autographs, book contracts, checks to charitable foundations. But this perhaps was the most audacious signature he would ever make: the vast majority of his possessions and the rooms where he had accumulated them, handed over for posterity. He pressed his Mont Blanc against the line.
In the weeks that followed, the museum set about preparing his apartment for the public. When the museum gave Louis a tour of his apartment in its new form, he was taken aback by how thorough they were. A few pieces of furniture had been replaced with replicas and look-alikes, but apart from that, one would be hard pressed to know that anything had changed. The actual items from his old home–the typewriter used to write such classics as The Left Handed Wasp and O Pioneers!, the shirts worn during interviews with Terry Gross, even an empty bottle of wine brought back from France after a symposium on Proust's In Search of Lost Time–were all there, arranged like trophies on shelves or propped up casually beside photographs depicting him doing stuff unrelated to writing with friends, famous people, and former lovers. Little scannable labels on many of the items in the apartment pulled up additional information on a special app, which was pretty neat.
Louis retreated to his home in the mountains outside Leavenworth, feeling like a man who had just witnessed his own funeral. This mostly empty cabin surrounded by pines was the new beginning he'd been hoping for, a clean break, the audacious start of a new creative period. To give away most of his earthly belongings in his own lifetime struck more than a few journalists as borderline insane, but he considered it nothing short of an awakening. All his old books belonged to that old city life. Now he'd begin anew among the glaciers and woodpeckers and wandering deer.
Two weeks into his new life, an evacuation order screamed out over the county as wildfire swept through the mountains. Louis threw some photo albums in his Volvo and joined the convoy escaping to Western Washington. Watching the news in a Motel 6 outside of Issaquah, he learned that the entire town of Leavenworth was lost, with over 500 structures, including his new home, reduced in mere hours to ash.
A few days later, he stood in the ruins of his cabin. The air was ponderous with smoke and ash. He picked up a few pieces of wood from what had been his front porch and tossed them into a pile by the side of the road where they were already collecting other bits of charred lumber from neighbors' houses. Then he drove back to Seattle to begin again in an apartment that wasn't even really his anymore, but now belonged to everyone who'd ever read one of his books or seen him interviewed on television.
When he knocked on the door, Louis was met by a 24 year-old tour guide named Philip. "Hi there! The Louis Roundtree exhibit isn't actually open at the moment."
"I'm Louis," Louis said, "My place just burned down. I'm here to retrieve a couple things."
"Okaaaay," Philip winced. "Do you have a ticket, or..."
"I was the donor. I'm the eponymous Louis Roundtree of this exhibit."
Philip squinted at him, as if trying to recall a distant memory of someone who looked like this man standing before him now, or pretending to understand the meaning of the word ‘eponymous.’ “Oh! You're that writer guy? Okay then!" Philip said with a big smile and an outstretched hand. "But like I said, we open in half an hour, and I'm going to need to see a ticket. But don't worry, you can easily purchase one on the website."
Louis grumbled and went across the street to the park, where he ordered a ticket on his phone. By the time he returned to the apartment a line had formed of other ticket holders waiting for admission. Louis pulled his hoodie over his head hoping to not be recognized. At 10 am the door opened and Philip the chipper tour guide scanned his QR code.
"Welcome to the Louis Roundtree Apartment! I'm Philip, and I'll be your guide today. We have a lot of ground to cover so let's get started."
Louis followed behind with the rest of the group as they passed through his old living room where he'd written most of his books, into his bedroom where he had slept beside many women over three decades. He was relieved that everyone seemed more interested in reading about him on their phones than paying attention to him or talking to him. As they entered what used to be his office, Philip stopped at one photograph depicting Louis sitting next to Terry Gross for an interview on Fresh Air. "This is my favorite picture from this exhibit," Philip said enthusiastically, "It shows Mr. Roundtree just after receiving news that The Left Handed Wasp has been nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award!"
Louis opened his desk drawer and started rooting around for his extra phone charger.
"Sir? Sir, let's keep our hands off the exhibit, please," Philip said.
"I just need to grab a charger," Louis said.
"No touching the exhibit," Philip said, "Or I'll have to ask you to leave."
Louis held up his hands in a "my bad" sort of gesture and followed the tour into the living room where everyone stood staring at a portrait of him reading to a packed theater from when The Abortionist’s Arborist was part of Seattle's One City, One Book program. "Mr. Roundtree here is known for being very active with community programs," Philip explained, "And this particular event took place just last year!"
A petite lady in a red coat raised her hand, "Excuse me, Philip. I have a question. Who is that woman in the picture?"
"That, ma'am," Philip said, "is Mrs. Roundtree."
"She looks very young in this photo."
"Actually, he was never married," Louis piped up, "That was a gallery owner named Erica who he dated for a few months before she dumped him for some shitbag glass blower."
Philip frowned, "I'm not sure where you got your information, sir, but Mr. Roundtree lost his wife of forty-three years only two years ago." Philip resumed the tour through Louis' old dining room, where he had hosted many dinner parties over three decades of living here (an exaggeration); into his kitchen where he used to make breakfast every morning while listening to NPR (he actually hated NPR, despite his history with Terry); out onto his patio deck where Louis would smoke (not a smoker) on sunny days surrounded by admirers hoping for just one autograph or literary opinion (100% bullshit).
The tour concluded and Louis still didn't have a phone charger that he could plug into the Volvo. That night he slept in his car across the street from his old apartment.
"What are you doing here?" Philip asked Louis when he showed up for his tour the next morning. "Didn't I make it clear that this apartment is not available to Mr. Roundtree? He's no longer associated with us."
"Why are you referring to me in third person?" Louis said, "Besides, Mr. Roundtree bought another ticket."
The seasons changed, a pandemic gutted Louis's investments, and his insurance claim for the burnt down house was denied owing to some sort of database snafu of near-fractal complexity. Right before Christmas, the Volvo was impounded and Louis set up a tent in the park across from his old apartment where thanks to this one guy named The Dog Man he developed an opioid addiction. One day, he noticed a flyer on a telephone pole advertising an exhibit called The Many Loves of Louis Roundtree. With some money he pandhandled, he bought a ticket at the main museum box office.
The next day, he arrived at the museum of his former life as they opened. The same tour guide Philip stood outside greeting people.
"Mr. Roundtree, I'm sorry, but you'll have to leave," Philip said when he saw Louis standing in line with everyone else. " I suggest you find a shelter where you can take a shower. We can’t have you coming in here and potentially damaging the items on display."
"That's funny," Louis said, "Because I've been living in a tent across the street for almost three months. So why don't you go fuck yourself."
"Security," Philip grunted into his Bluetooth headset. Two beefy guys in Polo shirts bearing the museum logo (a stylized headshot of the author looking pensive) escorted Louis to the curb, where he stumbled and fell, narrowly avoiding knocking down two tourists wearing T-shirts, purchased from the gift shop, that bore the cover image of The Left Handed Wasp.
"I live here!" Louis bellowed as visitors to the museum sidestepped him on their way to take in a retrospective exhibit of the author's much celebrated sex life.