Brilliant Idiots

By Nick Lenoir

Three generations of a family pursue their dreams, look for a meaning to their lives and change their past when things go wrong. This curious book is packed with humor and positive energy. It brings a new light to old perceptions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Lenoir
• Release date: Oct 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005216313

Nick Lenoir

Nick Lenoir was raised by wolves after being abandoned in a forest, in Romania. At the age of eight, he was found by a young girl named Emma and her grandmother.The boy would never know that his two older brothers had been abandoned in the same forest. Unlike him, they didn’t survive. A French priest found the children's remains. He insisted on having them buried in a proper cemetery and asked to have three words written on their grave: Les garçons sauvages.

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Brilliant Idiots

By Nick Lenoir

Text copyright © 2019 Nick Lenoir

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Chapter 0 – The Brightness

Part I

Chapter 51 – A Step Closer to Normality

Chapter 52 – That’s What You Get, Fred, for not Loving Us

Chapter 53 – No Longer the Dumb Mom

Part II

Chapter 66 – Himalayan Heights

Chapter 67 – Let Us Starve in Style

Chapter 68 – Lights Out

Part III

Chapter 182 – No Pain, no Statue

Chapter 183 – Playing the Parts That We Were Given

Chapter 184 – No Lunch Break for Mary White

Part IV

Chapter 497 – Getting High and Falling Low

Chapter 498 – Multitasking Around the Coffee Machine

Chapter 499 – Ariana’s Last Interview

– CHAPTER ZERO –

The Brightness

Charles and Christine spent their vacation in a picturesque seaside village, on the Western coast of a country plagued by civil war. It was Charles who had made the reservations. As he cared little about the news, he did not know that the once peaceful land he was planning to visit was in ruins, or else he would have opted for Greece or the Maldives. Both of them were dentists, in their early thirties, and had started to work soon after finishing their studies. They did not have many opportunities to explore foreign countries. Charles had come across a photo essay that boasted the village’s idyllic settings and glorious beaches in an old magazine he had found on the small bookshelf above the toilet, at his parents’ home. He had decided to visit it with Christine and had managed to have her trust him enough to pack her bags and be blindly led to a surprise destination. As they sat on the plane, Christine speculated about what the mysterious place could be. She hoped it would have a warm climate because she had packed only light clothes. The plane jerked into motion and started its ride backwards, away from the boarding bridge. She looked around.

‘Are we the only passengers?’ she asked.

‘Looks like it,’ he replied.

Christine played with a piece of thread that protruded from her armrest while the plane took off and made its way through the layers of clouds, to the blue skies above.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

He told her and she laughed.

‘What an adventure,’ she said. ‘I’ve always fancied learning how to use a hand grenade. Oh, come on, you can tell me the truth.’

Charles turned white. It was not a joke. Christine was stunned, then angry, then terrified. In a panic, she rang for the air hostess and asked whether it would be possible to return to the departure airport. She was told not to worry, that no plane of that airline company had ever crashed and that everything would be alright. Christine buried her face in her arms and brushed off Charles’ hand when he reached out to touch her shoulder. Five hours later, the plane landed, and the couple were directed through a series of halls, towards customs. During their flight, Charles had hoped that the airport would be a welcoming place, with familiar duty-free products sitting on their shelves and beautiful people smiling from their ads. Christine would have realized that the country had not been too much destroyed and maybe would have forgiven Charles for his terrible mistake. They might even have joked about how much worse places appeared in the news than they did in real life. Charles and Christine would have chuckled, like they did sometimes when they were a little drunk and walked hand in hand to the exit, towards the bright sunlight. Alas, Charles’ expectations were reduced to shambles as they entered the first building. The airport had been so severely bombed and so much rain had fallen through its ruined ceilings that the place could have been used as a décor for a post-apocalyptic movie. To make matters worse, a bunch of surly men in military fatigues followed them closely with guns.

Christine walked on and showed no sign of being bothered by her hostile environment. In the middle of a dark corridor, she stopped.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ she shouted.

Charles dared not look at her. The armed men froze, clutching their weapons. They exchanged a few muted words in a foreign language and grouped around the couple. Christine did not lose her composure. She forced a smile and addressed the man standing closest to her, wanting to know when the next plane would be leaving the country and where she could buy tickets. Christine was told that commercial flights had been reduced to a minimum. The next one would be leaving in ten days, at a quarter to three in the afternoon. She rubbed her forehead as the information sunk in.

‘That’s the plane on which I have our return flights booked,’ Charles whispered.

The couple walked towards the end of a large hall that contained piles of chairs and trolleys. An officer in a dusty uniform was waiting for them, the tips of his fingers touching. There was no queue. Charles and Christine handed over their passports, which the man stamped without speaking a word. One of the armed men proceeded towards a backroom and returned with their luggage.

‘I’m terribly sorry for handing over your luggage in such a manner,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, our conveyor belts are all broken.’

***

Christine sat in the taxi’s back seat, with the luggage. There was no room for Charles, so he sat in front.

‘Are you journalists?’ the driver asked.

‘We’re both dentists,’ Charles replied.

As they drove towards their hotel, Charles noticed a few houses still standing, painted in joyful colors, followed by ruined homes and shops. It was depressing.

‘Have you been bombed lately?’ he asked, before realizing that his question might have sounded childish.

‘There’s a ceasefire until Sunday,’ the driver replied. ‘We’re hoping that it will be extended until the end of the month.’

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed,’ Charles whispered. The sun was shining, the sky was a beautiful shade of blue and Christine would not be bombed out of their hotel room’s bathtub, at least not until Sunday. Their vacation might end up not being that bad after all. He turned around and smiled at her. Tears were running below her huge sunglasses.

‘Are you and the other dentist married?’ the driver asked.

‘No,’ Charles replied. He looked out of his window, at a pale blue wall, the only vestige of a destroyed school.

The taxi departed, after dropping Charles and Christine off at the hotel. The building looked abandoned, even though its front lawn was well tended and the footpath leading to the main entrance had been cleaned.

‘Are you alright?’ Charles asked.

Christine did not reply. She picked up her suitcase, wiped her face with the back of her hand and went inside. Charles followed. The lobby was surprisingly cool, with dark green marble tiles on the floor and heavy gold-colored curtains around the windows. Charles noticed a key on the counter, with a hand-written note inviting them to proceed to their room. The couple did as they were instructed and did not meet anyone along their way. Christine dropped her suitcase on the luggage stand and sat on their bed. Charles pulled the curtains open. Their room was very spacious and located on the ground floor of the hotel, with a large sliding door that led to a small terrace. A white beach stretched out beyond it.

‘Look at the view,’ Charles said. He slid the door open and stepped into the sea-scented air. ‘Shall we go for a swim?’

Christine was still angry and did not reply.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s make the best out of this. We have a paradise beach all to ourselves.’

She glanced outside and gave him a small nod. Charles went through his luggage and extracted purple swim shorts, which he put on with his back turned to Christine. His body looked good, thanks to regular visits to the gym, but his black hair was always a mess, no matter how hard he tried to shape it into something that looked acceptable. Christine extracted a turquoise bikini from her suitcase. She walked to the bathroom and locked herself in, to change, even though Charles had seen her naked a thousand times. She was short and very slim, almost skinny, and let her long hair fall in voluminous curls, down to her thighs. Her eyes were a dull shade of brown, but had specks of gold in them, in certain lights. The couple left their room and took tiny steps towards the dark blue water.

‘The sand is so bright,’ Christine said.

Those were her first words since they had left the airport. Charles was grinning, while keeping his eyes closed. He managed to open them only once they had reached the ocean. The waves flowed around their ankles, pulling sand from beneath their feet. The couple saw no one, no matter where they looked.

‘Where is everyone?’ Christine asked.

‘Maybe we’re the last people on Earth,’ Charles replied.

She gave a timid smile.

***

The hotel’s dining space was dark when Charles and Christine showed up at eight that evening. A huge silver bowl sat on a round table, in the middle of the room, covered with a white cotton sheet. Christine lifted one corner of the fabric to check what was inside the bowl. It contained a lone dead fly. There was no one in the room, neither staff nor customers. The couple decided to go outside, into the village, to search for a restaurant. As they walked along the deserted streets, they came across a number of dining places, none of which looked as if they had served a warm meal in the past couple of years. Most of them had been boarded up while others had been burnt to the ground. Littered across the streets were restaurant signs that had probably been blown off their storefronts by bombs. They boasted venues such as Matt’s Lobster Heaven or Irma’s Celestial Steakhouse. Charles and Christine considered heading back to their hotel, to sneak into the kitchen and help themselves to some food. They spotted a light at the end of an alley. Thankfully, it turned out to be a restaurant. The couple was so relieved that they laughed and hugged each other. They would not starve to death, not that evening. What’s more, the place was extremely popular, judging from the many dark silhouettes that could be seen through the window. They entered and were greeted by a tiny waiter in a suit.

‘Two?’ he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he led them to a large table that was occupied by eight other customers. There were two free seats, in the middle, facing each other. Charles sat down, but Christine did not. She had turned white and seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness.

‘Is something wrong?’ Charles asked.

‘The other customers,’ she whispered. ‘Look at them.’

He glanced at the woman seated to his right and almost fell off his chair. It was a plastic dummy. He jumped to his feet and looked all around the restaurant. Apart from the waiter, there was not a single real person in the room. As he held his breath, it struck him how eerily silent the place was, like a tomb. Could they not at least put on some background music?

‘We need to go,’ Christine said.

‘Do you serve real food?’ Charles asked the waiter.

‘Yes, sir,’ he replied.

‘Honey, I’m afraid we don’t have many options. We either have dinner here or we go to bed hungry,’ he said.

‘What about our other plan?’ she pleaded. ‘We talked about getting food from the hotel’s kitchen. We would pay for it tomorrow so it would not count as stealing.’

Charles shook his head. ‘Come to think of it, our hotel very likely keeps everything locked up,’ he said.

Christine grudgingly sat down. Charles did the same and the waiter walked off to the kitchen.

‘What’s going on?’ Christine asked.

Charles shook his head. ‘That guy must have lost his mind because of the war. Or maybe he misses having a full restaurant, thus the plastic dummies.’

Christine glanced around, at the ones seated around their table. The woman next to Charles caught her attention. She was wearing a black corset with a sophisticated white wig that contained intertwined black feathers. Several rows of pearls hung loosely from her thin, long neck. Charles followed her gaze.

‘It looks like we have some very stylish neighbors. Do you reckon this is how people used to dress in this country before the war?’ he asked.

‘That woman looks like a slut from a nineteenth-century whorehouse,’ Christine replied.

‘She could have heard that,’ Charles whispered.

The waiter returned with two bowls of light green liquid, a jug of water and a thin black bottle.

‘Cold cucumber soup,’ he announced and left.

‘We didn’t order this,’ Christine told Charles.

‘I guess supplies are limited,’ he replied. ‘They always are during a war.’

Christine sniffed her soup. Seeing that Charles had started eating his and had not died, she resolved to try hers and swallowed a spoonful while pulling a face.

‘Oh, come on, it’s not that bad,’ Charles said. He poured himself a glass of the liquid in the black bottle and took a sip. ‘This tastes like a very fruity gin. Would you like some?’

Christine shook her head. She ate her soup very slowly, almost comically, like a child being punished for petty misbehaviors. Charles did all the talking, asking the plastic people whether they were enjoying their evening, or telling Christine she was pretty when she sulked. He never received any replies. Twenty minutes later, the waiter walked in with the second course, shredded lukewarm chicken and diced zucchini. As they ate, Charles kept pouring himself glasses of the liquid from the black bottle.