The Allergic Boy Versus the Left-Handed Girl: A Novel

By Michael Kun

When Jimmy Nail finally gets around to reading the phenomenally popular novel The Left-Handed Girl, written by the iconic P.J. Darbin, he recognizes it immediately. It’s his own book, the short novel The Allergic Boy, that Jimmy had written back in college, and given to Darbin to read when they were both eager college students. That was before Jimmy dropped out of school. Before Jimmy joined the Army. Before Jimmy suffered a severe head injury that leaves him with screaming headaches and occasional confusion.

But it’s his book. He knows it’s his, even if no one will believe him. Not his wife. Not Darbin’s big-city publisher. Not Darbin’s team of lawyers. And not the mean-spirited judge who’s assigned to hear Jimmy’s lawsuit.

How can Jimmy prove that he’s the true author of the hit novel and not just a greedy and addled war veteran with a head injury and a frivolous claim?

When his dusty old notebooks and his own memory convince no one, Jimmy knows that his only hope is to find the red-haired girl he’d been mad about as a teenager, the enigmatic Poppy Fowler.

Or Poppy Fahrenberg.

Or Poppy Fahrenheit.

Whatever her surname, she is Jimmy Nail’s one and only hope.

His one and only hope for love.

His one and only hope to establish his sanity.

And his one and only hope to get the credit he deserves. The money, too. He can’t forget the money.

But did Poppy even exist, or was she just the creation of Jimmy’s sad and troubled mind?

Jimmy has lost everything. He’s lost his wife and his daughter. He’s lost his parents. He’s lost his savings. What he hasn’t lost is his love for a red-haired girl who may have been the basis for a novel that has made someone else world-famous and awfully rich.

In this unique and inventive novel, Michael Kun explores the nature of truth, the imperfection of memory and the very idea of love. As Jimmy Nail learns that he must love whom he loves, regardless of appearance and even gender, Kun infuses Jimmy’s quest with humor and emotional depth.

Praise for The Allergic Boy Versus the Left-Handed Girl and Michael Kun
"I've always been a fan of Michael Kun's writing, and his inventive, hilarious new novel provides the perfect escape." —Sarah Pekkanen, bestselling co-author of The Wife Between Us
“... a writer in the vein of J.D. Salinger.” —The Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Once readers sample Kun’s hilariously off-kilter world view, they’re frequently hooked for life.” —The Baltimore Sun
“This novel deserves serious attention as the herald of a truly interesting new voice.” —Publishers Weekly
“[This] is the work of a careful, attentive young apprentice apply himself to his craft; it is a solid achievement.” —The Chicago Tribune
“Kun writes with deceptive ease .... He takes us where we want to go.” —The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“Kun is one of our favorite writers ....” —Indianapolis Men’s Monthly

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Sager Group
• Release date: May 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950154500

Michael Kun

Michael Kun is the author of works of fiction and non-fiction. Among other recognitions, his novel You Poor Monster was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and was chosen as “Book of the Year” by Baltimore.

Book preview

Praise for Michael Kun

A truly interesting new voice.

—Publisher’s Weekly

A writer in the vein of J.D. Salinger.

—The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Once readers sample Kun’s hilariously off-kilter world view, they’re frequently hooked for life.

—The Baltimore Sun

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You Poor Monster

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Everybody Says Hello

Corrections to My Memoirs

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A Thousand Benjamins

Non-Fiction

The Baseball Uncyclopedia (co-author)

The Football Uncyclopedia (co-author)

The Movie Uncyclopedia (co-author)

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See our entire library at TheSagerGroup.net

This is a work of fiction. Many of the details, places, characters, and events were inspired by real life. None of it really happened; none of the people really exist. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.

The Allergic Boy Versus the Left-Handed Girl: A Novel

Copyright © 2021 Michael Kun

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover and Interior Designed by Siori Kitajima, SF AppWorks LLC

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN-13:

eBook: 978-1-950154-50-0

Paperback: 978-1-950154-51-7

Hardcover: 978-1-950154-52-4

Published by The Sager Group LLC

TheSagerGroup.net

Aaaah-chooo!

—The Allergic Boy

Cough! Cough!

—The Left-Handed Girl

For my daughter Paige

Table Of Contents

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

DEDICATION

SUNDAY PAPERS

A SIMPLE TRUTH

INTRODUCTION

CONFIRMATION

A SIMPLE, HUMANE REQUEST TO P.J. DARBIN

A CLARIFICATION

YOU MUST KNOW WHOM TO HATE

DISCLAIMER

ANOTHER COMMENT ABOUT JUDGE MILES C. LEVY

MY DAUGHTER, THE BOX COUNTER

A COMPARISON OF ALLERGY HISTORIES

P.J. DARBIN’S SKILL IN BOARD GAMES

AN APOLOGY

AN EXPLANATION

EXHIBIT A — The Allergic Boy

EXHIBIT B — The Left-Handed Girl

EXHIBIT C — A Photograph

EXHIBIT D — A Letter to Peter John Darbin

A NOTE ABOUT THE CHECK

EXHIBIT E — Another Letter to Peter John Darbin

A NOTE ABOUT THE SECOND CHECK

EXHIBIT F — A Telegram to Peter John Darbin

EXHIBIT G — Another Telegram to Peter John Darbin

WHOM NOT TO HATE

EXHIBIT H — A Story

PULL OUT YOUR THUMB

EXHIBIT I The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

A MESSAGE TO THE FAMILY OF PRIVATE FRANK DITTO

FRANK DITTO’S FAVORITE JOKE

ONE MORE THING

ENOUGH BOOKS ALREADY!

AFFIDAVIT OF MRS. GINGER SEEL

A RESPONSE TO THE AFFIDAVIT OF MRS. GINGER SEEL

IN MY YOUNGER AND MORE VULNERABLE YEARS

CLARIFICATION

EXHIBIT J — The Great Gatsby

SWEETHEART

EXHIBIT K — My Composition Books

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

A LETTER TO THE FORMER GINGER JILL-BEAR

AN ENTIRELY ACCURATE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE TELEGRAM

THE SPAGHETTI YEARS

THIS IS POPPY FOWLER

GRACE AND MERCY

A REMINDER

A DETAIL YOU MAY CONSIDER IMPORTANT

ONE MORE THING

THE FIRST CHAPTER

EXHIBIT L — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

MY DRIVING LESSONS

THE MANY WAYS I PLANNED TO KILL UNCLE ROB

MARYLAND VERSUS VIRGINIA

EXHIBIT M — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

POPPY’S PARENTS

MAY YOU ROT IN HELL

I KNOW WHAT LOVE IS

EXHIBIT N — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

AN APOLOGY OF SORTS

A COMMENT ABOUT MARCUS, MARCUS AND O’MALLEY

EXHIBIT O — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

NO TRICKS

THE SHITTY MOVIE VERSION

EXHIBIT P — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

NOTES

EXHIBIT Q — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

FAHRENHEIT

EXHIBIT R — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

NAIBLOW, NAIL, NAIMMEN

EXHIBIT S — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

THE KEY WITNESS

EXHIBIT T — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

INTERROGATION

AN EXPLANATION

A FURTHER INTERROGATION

EXHIBIT U — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

NOBODY DIES

A QUESTION OR TWO FOR MY DAUGHTER

EXHIBIT V — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

MY COMPUTER

EXHIBIT W — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

NO CREDIT

EXHIBIT X — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

EXHIBIT WHATEVER — WHAT EXHIBIT ARE WE UP TO?

ON WE GO

ABOUT THE GIRL

EXHIBIT Y — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

THE DIFFERENCE IS IN THE DETAILS

TWO QUESTIONS

TODAY

MY DEFENSE

AN APOLOGY

EXHIBIT Z — The Allergic Boy versus The Left-Handed Girl

I KNOW

A FAIR REQUEST

DEDICATION

About the Author

About the Publisher

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The original, typed manuscript of this strange volume you hold in your hands was discovered among the personal effects of one James Edgar Nail of Baltimore, Maryland and delivered to this publisher by his daughter in a shirt box. It is being published here verbatim, including its unwieldy and inflammatory title, as well as several purposeful misspellings of words not often misspelled by men and women of letters (dictation, ascot, etc.). Any substantive errors or misstatements that remain within the text are Mr. Nail’s, not this publisher’s, and have not been remedied so as to preserve evidence of Mr. Nail’s state of mind and to allow it to be conveyed to the reader without any editorial filter. In short, you will find no corrections and no apologies herein.

It appears, but cannot be verified, that the original manuscript of this book was written by Mr. Nail at different times between the calendar years 1982 and 2006, that conclusion being based upon the handwritten dates on several well-worn notebooks discovered among Mr. Nail’s effects, as well as his references to historical events that occurred during that 24-year span of years and the absence of references to any events that transpired thereafter. There are, for instance, no references whatsoever to any historical events occurring after 2006 (such as presidential elections), or to any technology that was available thereafter (smartphones or electric cars), and several individuals long deceased are referred to in the present tense in the manuscript as if they were still among the living, including noted filmmaker Orson Welles (d. October 10, 1985) and professional basketball player Wilt Chamberlain (d. October 12, 1999). Additionally, Mr. Nail makes reference in one passage to being 62 years old, soon to be 63. Given his March 27, 1944 birthdate, as verified by a birth certificate issued on that date by Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, that statement presumably would have been written sometime in calendar year 2006 unless Mr. Nail was confused about his own date of birth, the possibility of which is more than slim.

Although on occasion Mr. Nail refers to his publisher, and several passages suggest that his manuscript was soon to be published in some form, those references do not refer to this publisher, which only first received an unsolicited, typewritten copy of the manuscript in the United States mail from Mr. Nail’s daughter after Mr. Nail succumbed to a heart attack on a United Airlines flight headed toward Portland, Oregon; he was dead before the plane touched the ground, we have been told. To the extent Mr. Nail’s statements about a forthcoming publication suggest that he had contracted with a different publisher to distribute this book, this publisher’s legal representatives researched that possibility with considerable diligence in order to ensure that there would be no dispute with another publisher about the legal right to publish this work. No records were located that would indicate that any North American publisher had, in fact, purchased the rights to Mr. Nail’s manuscript or had otherwise planned to release it for general sale to the public.

Intriguingly, the Autumn 1997 catalog for the publisher Advanced Medical Media includes a reference to a nonfiction book entitled Allergies and Handedness, attributed to an author with the name Tomas Verdi, M.D. and scheduled to be published in hardcover edition in November 1997. It does not appear that book was ever published by Advanced Medical Media or by any other publisher, for that matter. No copies of that book have been located, nor does the Library of Congress have any record of such a book, and efforts to find one Dr. Tomas Verdi proved similarly fruitless, suggesting the name was a pseudonym or that he was a foreign author. Further, United States Bankruptcy Court records indicate that Advanced Medical Media filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998 under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code, and other records indicate that the company ceased all operations in 2002. Moreover, the very brief description of the book that appeared in Advanced Medical Media’s Autumn 1997 catalog — An analysis of recent studies regarding the correlation between allergies and left- (or right-) handedness — confirms that it indeed was not the same book as Mr. Nail’s and that the similarity of the titles is coincidental and nothing more. Accordingly, if any publication of the book that the reader holds was planned, it may well have been self-publication by Mr. Nail through one of the many vanity presses that were operating at that time. It is just as likely, if not more likely, that any anticipated publication was imagined by a man with a large scar on the side of his head.

At the request of Mr. Nail’s estate, any author’s royalties for this volume, after first being credited against the small advance payment made to the estate, shall then be directed to settle Mr. Nail’s unpaid medical bills and other outstanding debts, with any royalties thereafter to be distributed to several charities and nonprofit organizations identified by his estate, including the American Cancer Society and the Agazola (Oregon) Neighborhood Crime Watch.

For reasons that will become evident to the reader shortly, this publisher is obliged to present this volume as a work of fiction. Libraries and bookstores are requested to shelve volumes of this book with works of fiction.

They are not bound to do so.

—Jessica M. Cavanaugh

Senior Editor

May 19, 2008

THE ALLERGIC BOY

VERSUS

THE LEFT-HANDED GIRL

A Story of Grace and Mercy

(But Also of Theft, Injustice and a Fucking Scar on the Side of My Fucking Head)¹

By Jimmy Nail

¹ A note to the editor: I ask kindly that you not remove fucking from the fucking title. Except if you need to do so for copies sold through the Book of the Month Club. I understand they can be prickly and may have a distaste for profanities. The same for publications in any countries that have laws forbidding the use of profanities. Israel perhaps? Hong Kong? Nova Scotia? (Although Nova Scotia may not be a country. That is probably worth researching.)

DEDICATION

For Poppy Fowler.

Not Poppy Fahrenberg.

And certainly not Poppy Fahrenheit, which is an absurd name for any person, real or imagined.

If someone ever walked up to you at a social function or a business meeting, took your hand in her tiny hand, and introduced herself to you as Poppy Fahrenheit, you’d laugh until you were gasping for breath. (Gasp, gasp, gasp!)

But I am straying from the more important point, which is the dedication of this important book. This book is dedicated to Poppy Fowler, wherever she may be, with grace and mercy.

SUNDAY PAPERS

The newspaper from which I would someday learn that Peter John Darbin had a heart — The Sun, one of Baltimore’s daily papers — was the very same newspaper that I had delivered to neighbors as a teenager, waking in darkness at five o’clock in the morning to the beeping of an alarm clock (beep-beep-beep), folding the papers into thirds and stuffing them into a burlap shoulder bag, wheeling my bicycle up and down the streets, tossing papers on the stoops of row house after row house, then returning home for a quick breakfast before school.² Most mornings, though, it was cold cereal with milk or, if we ran out of milk, water.

Sundays were different. I still rose at the same dark hour — five o’clock (beep-beep-beep) — but like most Sunday newspapers, the Sunday Sun was much larger than the weekday editions. More sections, more advertising inserts (Luskins Appliances Big Spring Sale!), more everything. The Sunday Sun was too heavy and too thick to fold, or to carry in a burlap bag, or to distribute by bicycle. Instead, I would load the Sunday papers onto the same red wagon that I had played with as a younger boy, then pull the wagon behind me on the sidewalks as I walked the streets, a process that took several times longer to complete than the weekday routine but, hopefully, would lead to generous tips from customers who peered out their living room windows and saw me struggling.

It was on one of those Sunday mornings in June, the beginning of the summer between my junior and senior years at Theodore Roosevelt Regional High School, while returning home with my empty red wagon, that a stray black dog the size of a pickle barrel appeared between me and our row house. I did not think much of it until, as I approached, I realized that it not only was not retreating, but it was baring its horrible, yellow teeth, the same sickly color one might associate with a colicky baby. When I stopped, the dog knew I was afraid; dogs, like lawyers, can sense fear, or so I have been informed about both. When I took a small step in retreat, confirming what the dog already knew, it was upon me in a snap, its beast’s teeth digging into my bare left calf like my leg was a ribeye steak (I was wearing shorts in the early summer morning).³

Just then, I heard the shriek of a frightened little girl nearby. It was chilling, like something you would hear in a horror movie before someone in a mask buried an ax into some girl trying to escape a haunted house. Was the girl behind me? She shrieked again. Where was she? Only then did I realize that the shrieks were coming from my very own throat; my voice had not changed yet and would not deepen until I had made my way to New York University. The beast’s sharp, wet teeth twisted into my leg, producing another shriek, then a sneeze (aaaah-chooo, my dog allergy). I twisted but could not break free. I could not imagine an end to the attack, or the shrieks, or now, the sneezing (aaaah-chooo, aaaah-chooo, aaaah-chooo!). But suddenly, there was a dull thump, the sound of a bag of sand landing on solid ground. My leg was free, and the dog was scurrying away. It might have been whimpering; let us say it was. Someone had kicked it solidly in its pickle barrel ribs, and that someone now had a hand on my shoulder.

"You