Fiction Empire

21st Century: 00s

September 14, 2001
Mr. Mooney lets Joe out of the cage, three days after 9/11, after locking him in to teach him a lesson.

September 22, 2013

September 22, 2013
Joe locks Beck's ex-boyfriend Benji in the Mooney bookstore's basement cage.

September 23, 2013

September 23, 2013
Benji's second day in the cage in the Mooney bookstore's basement cage.

September 24, 2013

September 24, 2013
Benji's third day in the Mooney bookstore's basement cage. With Stephen King's Doctor sleep being released, Joe has busy day working at the bookstore. Later, Joe and Beck have their first date.

September 25, 2013

September 25, 2013
Benji's fourth day in the Mooney bookstore's basement cage.

October 25, 2013
Joe and Beck's second date at Peach's party.

October 26, 2013
The day after Joe and Beck's date at Peach's party. Joe leaves Beck a voicemail asking to take her to a movie at the Angelika. She declines due having already seen it, being still kind of hungover and having so much writing to do.

October 27, 2013
Joe looks at his phone and it's been fifteen hours and two long days since he and Beck kissed the night of Peach's party.

October 28, 2013
Beck invites Joe to join her on a trip to IKEA to help her buy a new bed. Back at her apartment, Peach shows up sick so Joe ends up putting the bed together alone, then goes to the bookstore and murders Benji by spiking the soy latte he brings him from Dean & Deluca with peanut oil, since Benji is allergic to peanuts.

October 31, 2013

October 31, 2013
Beck dresses up like Princess Leia for Halloween. She does not ask Joe to be Luke Skywalker with her.

November 3, 2013
It's been six days since Benji's passing, and Joe still hasn't seen Beck in person. They have been talking on the phone and he's starting to get worried about the friend zone.

November 4, 2013
Joe gets 5 am email from Beck regarding her fight with Peach the night before. Joe and Beck schedule a date for that night, but then Beck cancels when Peach freaks out about someone (Joe) breaking into her residence.

November 5, 2013
Joe and Beck have lunch at Sarabeth's. Joe asks her out for that night, but Beck tells him she has a girls' night planned.

November 6, 2013
Joe and Beck have lunch, then Beck has a writing night planned.

November 7, 2013
Joe and Beck have brunch.

November 15, 2013

November 15, 2013
Joe surprises Beck with a carriage ride in Central Park and then Bemelman's Bar at the Carlyle Hotel, where Beck receives an emergency call from Peach, cutting the date short.

November 28, 2013

November 28, 2013
Beck spends Thanksgiving with Peach's family.

OTHER

Benji

Benji
Benji (social media post that Joe writes): I'd fuck Miley Cyrus. #deepthoughts.

Benji's family dog's name.

Trivia

Name Game-Animals

Benji's family dog's name.

	Spud
	Pete
	Rascal

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: You look at me and I nod and you crumble in my arms, and it looks like we're hugging, another young couple off to IKEA to get feathers for the nest and eat hyped-up meatballs, and nobody can hear you crying except for me. You try to wiggle away but I hold you, and your big Portman eyes are glossy and your cheeks are red and there's an old couple across the way and the dude nods at me like I'm Captain America and we're almost there and you're wiping your eyes.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: Two days ago, you started stressing about Halloween. You were going to be Princess Leia (you really are a flirt), and you were taking pictures of yourself and your friends and getting drunk a lot. You did not ask me to be Luke Skywalker, and going forward, we are gonna have some fun fights about how to celebrate Halloween.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: A proper cremation requires time and chemicals, but I think I did well, given the circumstances. And I care enough to box him up and bring him home, and most people in my position would leave him out on the island. I crack a smile because when you think about it, you're not really Princess Leia (your buns were much smaller), and I'm not really an undertaker. There's a symmetry of some kind, and I like it.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: My, you have a way of making me do things I don't normally do. I haven't dressed up for Halloween since the third grade (Spider-Man), and though it's gotten harder over the years, I've managed to silently protest that whore of a holiday for the bulk of my life. Yet here I am in a mothball-scented dressing room at Bridgeport Costumes.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: 6:08 and the next dude in line is buying the new King and The Shining just to be bold-he calls The Shining a prequel and I want to cut his face.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: No, you're not like those girls. You don't stage Faulkner and your jeans hang loose and you're too sun-kissed for Stephen King and too untrendy for Heidi Julavits and who, who will you buy?

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: The day is against me. I forgot that Stephen King has a new book out, Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited follow-up to The Shining. New King means crowds, even a week or two after the book's release-people are lazy-and hordes of shoppers giddy to be reunited with Danny Torrance.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: Doctor Sleep turns my shop into a fucking Church of Stephen and I have no room to think about you, prepare for you. We are inundated with Kingophiles, couples trying to save their marriage with a book club, older fans who have waited forever, young punks who want to check into an independent bookstore on Facebook, freaks who highlight the bad parts and yearn to reeanact, withdrawn dullards longing for the companionship promised by a page-turner, women who want more out of a book than a feisty fuck with a commitmentphobic banker.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: The next asshole is rummaging through his wallet for his credit card to buy his Stephen King so he can (fingers crossed) read about a sicko doing sick things because he's too much of a pussy to do all the sick things he wants to do, things he's probably wanted to do since he was a kid.

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: The after-work depressed book buyers are coming steady, going home to their dungeons to let Stephen King distract them from their pathetic, lonely lives.

Name that Benji's storage locker is regi...

Joe Goldberg
Joe Goldberg: Suspense is good for people. It makes us stronger. This is why America loves Stephen King so much, he keeps us on the edge of our seats until it hurts. He also knows that all people, whether groundskeepers at Fenway or privileged young fucks, are capable of going insane if placed under the right circumstances. Stephen King would appreciate my work with Benji and I smile as I lock the door.

Trivia

Name Game

Name that Benji's storage locker is registered under.

	Stephen King
	Thomas Pynchon
	Stephen Crane

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