'He was 15 hours late' A sampling: 'The Keep'

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Sep 9, 2007

DANNY HAD WAITED two hours in a gloomy little valley town for a bus to this castle that never frigging came before he looked up and saw its black shape against the sky. Then he'd started to walk, hauling his Samsonite and satellite dish a couple of miles up this hill, the Samsonite's puny wheels catching on boulders and tree roots and rabbit holes. His limp didn't help.

The whole trip had been like that: one hassle after another starting with the red eye from Kennedy that got towed into a field after a bomb threat, surrounded by trucks with blinky red lights and giant nozzles that were comforting up until you realized their job was to make sure the fireball only incinerated those poor suckers who were already on the plane. So Danny had missed his connection to Prague and the train to wherever the hell he was now, some German- sounding town that didn't seem to be in Germany. Or anywhere else -- Danny couldn't even find it online, although he hadn't been sure about the spelling. Talking on the phone to his Cousin Howie, who owned this castle and had paid Danny's way to help out with the renovation, he'd tried to nail down some details.

Danny: I'm still trying to get this straight -- is your hotel in Austria, Germany, or the Czech Republic?

Howie: Tell you the truth, I'm not even clear on that myself. Those borders are constantly sliding around.

Danny (thinking): They are?

Howie: But remember, it's not a hotel yet. Right now it's just an old -- The line went dead. When Danny tried calling back, he couldn't get through.

But his tickets came the next week (blurry postmark) -- plane, train, bus -- and seeing how he was newly unemployed and had to get out of New York fast because of a misunderstanding at the restaurant where he'd worked, getting paid to go somewhere else -- anywhere else, even the f---ing moon -- was not a thing Danny could say no to.

He was fifteen hours late.

Excerpted from "The Keep" (Anchor), copyright 2006 by Jennifer Egan. Used with permission. All rights reserved.