Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas

At the center of "The Omega Force," which opens Right Livelihoods, is a buffoonish former government official in rocky recovery. As the story begins, Dr. "Jamie" Van Deusen is asleep on a neighbor's beachfront porch. He soon comes to life, determined to protect his habitat - its golf courses (and Bloody Marys), its pizza places (and beer) - from "dark-complected" foreign nationals. His patriotism and wild imagination are mainly fueled by a fall off the wagon.
The collection's second story, "K&K," concerns a lonely young office manager at an insurance agency, where the office suggestion box is yielding unpleasant messages that escalate to a scary pitch. Ellie Knight-Cameron has some reason to feel insecure among her colleagues, but her responses to these random diatribes illuminate the costs of a very contemporary capacity for delusion.
The book ends with a cataclysmic vision of New York City after the leveling of fifty square blocks of Manhattan. Four million have died. Albertine, the "street name for the buzz of a lifetime," is a mind-altering drug that sets "The Albertine Notes" in motion. Good memories are enhanced to joyful dimensions under Albertine's influence - then forgotten, along with the bad. People want desperately to forget, to reverse time, and self-inflicted havoc is wreaked along the way.