The Arranger

For seven years,  Victor labored as "an arranger. " A comfortable living could be made in this particular branch of editing,  but it normally didn't require much creativity. Notes, reports and summaries written by travelers were sent to Victor for "arrangement " into readable and marketable manuscripts.

Not only did each narrative require correct spelling and grammar,  they had to be distinct stories. The last duty created the illusion that awfull travel writers the firm published had the transformative experience of encountering alien cultures.

Victor had done little travelling in his own thirty years.  There were summer vacations in various rental homes on Long Beach Island in New Jersey.  After college he took a road trip through the Mid West with a girlfriend. This was little to work with when the arranger job was offered, so Victor searched writers like Leigh Fremor, Paul Bowles, Zora Hurston,  and Bruce Chatwin for guidelines.

A pattern emerged from this study: the narrator always encountered some flake or weirdo on the journey, hopefully one per chapter. 

One pilgrim, Denise Cummberbunch,  made abbreviated notes as she rambled around Europe. Her observations left little to build on.

"The English are so polite that I thought I was back in Alberta!" one sentence ran. 

"The French can be very abrupt in social situations." another read. A third: "I was shocked to learn all four Scandinavian countries have their own police departments!"

Victor had to agree with Denise there. He had worked with Norwegians and Finns and was always surprised by the stories they told of horrifying crimes in their home lands. So Victor conjured a incident where Denise witnessed in Stockholm the public strangulation of a family of raccoons by an unhinged Dannish chiropractor.
The editor loved how Victor "punched up" the article and encouraged him to continue.

There were shared experiences between the writers and the arranger.  One was the  feeling of passing familiar landmarks as they moved toward or away from their destinations.
Many times on vacation Victor watched from the back seat of his family's sedan as odd shaped dinners, light houses, and dinosaurs slid by.

Neither Victor nor the others could clearly name the sensation this movement caused. The best definition suggested "realization of distance" was inserted into the jumbled notes of a natural pharmaceuticals researcher.
Disorientation had seized the explorer while hiking the pampas of Patagonia, causing him to tread the same circular path for hours. Eventually the traveler encountered Jorge Luis Borges, on horseback, dressed as a gaucho.
"Young man, " the famous writer addressed the baffled herbalist.  "You need to go left instead of right at the next turn. "
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yes. Now I must return to my work!" Borges answered, pointing his horse toward the herd of hippopotamus that had just materialized nearby.
When he read the refurbished manuscript,  the researcher denied the incident ever happened.  Later he changed his mind,  admitting he was no longer sure.

Over lunch with his editor, Victor asked about "arranging " the more sexually explicit narratives he was assigned.
"Those are for our new 'Love Around the World' series.  Just fix the grammar and spelling. " the editor explained through a mouthful of roast beef.
"Most of them have no plots and barely mention a destination. " Victor replied.
The editor frowned as he remembered that English majors needed very clear directions.  "Vic, the orgasm is the destination.  Most of these stories read like after-action reports of the Battle of Stalingrad. I need you to add ....excitement...ah...."
"Exhilaration?" Victor suggested.
"Stimulation?"
"Oh yeah! Like...arousal!"
"Euphoria!?!" Victor continued.
"Rapture, Vic, give the readers pure rapture!"
Victor watched the editor light a cigarette.  "I'm on top of it, boss."

Victor obeyed and women's breasts  became cantaloupes and phalluses grew massive. All his effort gained Victor a substantial pay raise.
One manuscript proved so jumbled about time and location that the editor had to be contacted.  He proved unreachable,  Victor tried the phone number on the front page.
"I'm calling for Will van Houten.  This is Victor from the publishers. "
"He's not here right now," a female voice answered. "Can I help you?"
"I had a question about his essay on his trip to Jamaica last June."
Thirty seconds of dead air were followed by, "What trip to Jamaica?"
"Mr. Van Houten was assigned to do a profile of the lives of real Jamaicans. "
"My husband went to a freelancers conference last June,  that's  the only...."
Coldness riddled Victor's being. In frantic silence he scrambled to escape the conversation.
"Asshole!" spat the female voice.
For a moment Victor thought the woman was addressing him. And then the line was disconnected.

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