As I sit there alone at the breakfast table wondering if Linda will remember today’s significance, knowing deep down that she’s simply not going to call—I decide to instead wonder if the Nazi officer who carried my P-38 in WWII ever dreamed his sidearm would end up as modern art, across the Atlantic Ocean, in New Jersey, seventy-some years later, loaded and ready to kill the closest modern-day equivalent of a Nazi that we have at my high school.

The German who originally owned the P-38—what was his name?

Was he one of the nice Germans Herr Silverman tells us about? The ones who didn’t hate Jews or gays or blacks or anyone really but just had the misfortune of being born in Germany during a really fucked time.

Was he anything like me?

FOUR

I have this signature really long dirty-blond hair that hangs over my eyes and past my shoulders. I’ve been growing it for years, ever since the government came after my dad and he fled the country.[7]

And my long locks piss Linda off something awful, especially since she’s into contemporary fashion. She says I look like a “grunge-rock stoner”[8] and back when she was still around caring about me, Linda actually made me submit to a drug test—pissing into a cup—which I passed.[9]

I didn’t get Linda a good-bye present, and I start to feel guilty about that, so I cut off all my hair with the scissors in the kitchen—the ones we usually use to cut food.

I cut it all down to the scalp in a wild orgy of arms and hands and silver blades.

Then I mash all of my hair into a big ball and wrap it in pink paper.

I’m laughing the whole time.

I cut out a little square of pink paper and write on the back.

Dear Delilah,

Here you go.

You got your wish.

Congratulations!

Love, Samson

I fold the square in half and tape it to the gift, which looks quite odd—almost like I tried to wrap a pocket of air.

Then I stick the present in the refrigerator, which seems hilarious.

Linda will be looking for a chilled bottle of Riesling to calm her jangled nerves after getting the news about her son ridding the world of Asher Beal and Leonard Peacock too.

She’ll find the pink wrap job.

Linda will wonder about my allusion to Samson and Delilah when she reads the card, because that was the title of my father’s failed sophomore record, but will get the joke just as soon as she opens her present.

I imagine her clutching her chest, faking the tears, playing the victim, and being all dramatic.

Jean-Luc will really have his professionally manicured French hands full.

No sex for him maybe, or maybe not.

Maybe their affair will blossom without me around to psychologically anchor poor Linda to reality and maternal duties.

Maybe once I’m gone, she’ll float away to France like a shiny new silver little-kid birthday balloon.

She’ll probably even lose a dress size without me around to trigger her “stress eating.”

Maybe Linda won’t return to our house ever again.

Maybe she and Jean-Luc will go to the fashion capital of the world, the City of Light, auw-hauh-hauw!, and screw like bunnies happily ever after.

She’ll sell everything, and the new homeowners will find my hair in the refrigerator and be like What the . . .?

My hair’ll just end up in the trash and that will be that.

Gone.

Forgotten.

RIP, hair.

Or maybe they’ll donate my locks to one of those wig-making places that help out kids with cancer. Like my hair would get a second shot at life with a little innocent-hearted bald chemo girl maybe.

I’d like that.

I really would.

My hair deserves it.

So I’m really hoping for that cancer-kid-helping outcome if Linda goes to France without coming home first, or maybe even Linda will donate my hair.

Anything’s possible, I guess.

I stare at the mirror over the kitchen sink.[10]

The no-hair guy staring back at me looks so strange now.

He’s like a different person with all uneven patches on his scalp.

He looks thinner.

I can see his cheekbones sticking out where his blond curtains used to hang.

How long has this guy been hiding under my hair?

I don’t like him.

“I’m going to kill you later today,” I say to that guy in the mirror, and he just smiles back at me like he can’t wait.

“Promise?” I hear someone say, which freaks me out, because my lips didn’t move.

I mean—it wasn’t me who said, “Promise?”

It’s like there’s a voice trapped inside the glass.

So I stop looking in the mirror.

Just for good measure, I smash that mirror with a coffee mug, because I don’t want the mirror me to speak ever again.

Shards rain down into the sink and then a million little mes look up like so many tiny minnows.

FIVE

I’m already late for school, but I need to stop at my next-door-neighbor Walt’s[11] so that I can give him his present.

Today, I knock once and let myself into Walt’s house because he has to walk slowly with one of those gray-piped four-footed walkers that has dirty tennis balls attached to protect his hardwood floors. It’s difficult for him to get around, especially with bad lungs, so he just gave me a key and said, “Come in whenever you feel like it. And come often!”

He’s been smoking since he was twelve, and I’ve been helping him buy his Pall Mall Reds on the Internet to save money. The first time, I found this phenomenal deal: two hundred cigarettes for nineteen dollars, and he proclaimed me a hero right then and there. He doesn’t even have a computer in his home, let alone the Internet. So it was like I performed a miracle, getting cigarettes that cheap delivered to his doorstep, because he was paying a hell of a lot more at the local convenience store. I’ve been bringing over my laptop—our Internet signal reaches his living room—and we’ve been searching for the best deals every week. He’s always trying to give me half of what he saves, but I never take his money.[12]

It’s funny because he’s rich,[13] but always keen on finding a bargain. Maybe that’s why he’s rich. I don’t know.

A “helper” comes and takes care of him most days, but not until nine thirty AM, so it’s always just Walt and me before school.

“Walt?” I say as I walk through the smoky hallway, under the crystal chandelier, toward the smoky living room where he usually sleeps surrounded by overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles. “Walt?”

I find him in his La-Z-Boy, smoking a Pall Mall Red, eyes bloodshot from drinking scotch last night.

His robe isn’t shut, so I can see his naked, hairless chest. It’s the pinkish-red sunset color of conch-shell innards.

He looks at me with his best black-and-white movie-star face[14] and says, “You despise me, don’t you?”

It’s a line from Casablanca, which we’ve watched together a million times.

Standing next to his chair with my backpack between my feet, I answer with Rick’s follow-up line in the film, saying, “If I gave you any thought I probably would.”

Then I follow it with a line from The Big Sleep, saying, “My, my, my. Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains,” which feels pretty cool and authentic considering I have the Nazi P-38 in my backpack.

Walt counters with a line from Key Largo, saying, “You were right. When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”

I smile even bigger because whenever we trade Bogart-related quotes, our conversations seem to make a weird sort of sense that is unpredictable and almost poetic.

I go with a Bogart quote I looked up on the Internet, “There never seems to be any trouble brewing around a bar until a woman puts that high heel over the brass rail. Don’t ask me why, but somehow women at bars seem to create trouble among men.”

He goes back to the Casablanca well and says, “Where were you last night?”

So I finish the quote, playing Rick and say, “That’s so long ago, I don’t remember.”

He says, “Will I see you tonight?”

It sort of freaks me out, because no one will ever see me again after today, so the question seems weighty. I remind myself that he couldn’t possibly know my plan; he’s just playing the dumb Bogart game we always play. He’s clueless.

I become Rick again and finish the quote: “I never make plans that far ahead.”

Walt smiles, blows smoke at the ceiling, and says, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

I sit down on his couch and end the game the way we always do by saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“Why aren’t you in school learning?” Walt says as the flame from his Zippo lights up his face and another cigarette sparks to life. But he doesn’t really care. I skip school all the time just to watch old Bogart films with him. He loves it when I skip school.

He starts coughing and you can hear the terrible tobacco phlegm rattling.

A two-pack-a-day sixty-year-habit smoker’s cough.

Foul.

I just stare at Walt for a long time, waiting for him to wipe his hand on his robe and catch his breath.

I wish he were healthier, but it’s hard to imagine him without a cigarette in his hand. Like I bet even in his high school yearbook pictures he was smoking. That’s just who he is. Like Bogart too.

Man, I’m going to miss Walt so much. Watching old smoky Bogart movies with him is one of the few things I’ll truly miss. It was always the highlight of my week.

Walt says, “You okay, Leonard? You don’t look well.”

I shake off the weirdness, wipe my eyes with my sleeve, and say, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He says, “You got all your hair tucked up into that fedora along with the tops of your ears?”[15]

I nod.

I don’t want to tell him I cut off all my hair, for some reason, maybe because Walt’s one of my best friends—he really cares about me, I swear to god—and he’d know something was wrong if he saw my fucked-up haircut. He’d get upset, and I want to exit on a good note—I want this to be a happy good-bye, something he can remember and actually feel good about after I’m gone.

“Bought you a present,” I say, and then pull the turtle-looking wrap job from the top of my backpack.

He says, “It’s not my birthday, you know.”

I hope he guesses that it’s mine—or that he might figure it out, deduce it, so I wait a second as he fingers the present and tries to mentally guess what the hell it might be.

He looks so happy to get a present.

I kind of promise myself that I won’t kill Asher Beal, nor will I off myself, if only Walt just says “happy birthday” to me one time, as silly and trivial as that seems.

He doesn’t, and that makes me sad, even though I probably never even told him when my birthday was and I know he would definitely say “happy birthday” if I had.

But I really want him to say “happy birthday” to me without any prompting, and when he doesn’t, I get to feeling hollow as a dry-docked boat or something.

“Why do I get pink paper? Do you think I’m a faggot?” he says, and then starts laughing really hard and coughing again.

I say, “It’s the twenty-first century. Don’t be such a homophobe,” but I’m not really mad at him.

Walt’s so old that you can’t hold his bigotry against him, because for almost all his life it was okay for him to say “faggot” among friends, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

He also says things like nigger and kike and Polack and chink and light in the loafers and sand nigger and slant and spade and spook and camel jockey and smokes and porch monkey and just about a trillion other awful slurs.

I hate bigotry, but I also love Walt.

It’s like Herr Silverman teaches us about the Nazis. Maybe Walt was just unlucky being born at a time when everyone was prejudiced against homosexuals and minorities, and that’s just the way it was for his generation. I don’t know.

I’m starting to get sad about all that, so I change the subject by pointing at his present and saying, “Well, aren’t you going to open it?”

He nods once like a little kid and then tears into the pink paper with his yellow shaky fingers. Halfway in he says, “I think I know what this is!”

When he has the Bogart hat unwrapped, he says, “Hot digitty dog!” all corny and nestles the hat down on his white hair.

It’s a perfect fit, just like I knew it would be, because I measured his head once when he was passed out, drunk.

He composes his face, gets all black-and-white-movie-star-looking, and says, “I’ve got a job to do too. Where I’m going you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Leonard, I’m no good at being noble but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”

I smile because he switched my name in for Ilsa’s. He does that sometimes when doing lines from Casablanca.[16]

He smiles back real nice and says, “Wow. My very own Bogart hat. I love it!”

And then I just start lying and can’t stop myself no matter how hard I try.

I don’t know why I do it.

Maybe to keep myself from crying, because I can feel the tears coming on strong—like there’s a thunderstorm in my skull that’s about to break.

So I tell him I got the hat off the Internet on a site that auctions old movie props. All proceeds go toward curing smoker’s cough and throat cancer, which killed good old unkillable Humphrey Bogart. I say the hat Walt’s wearing right at this very moment was the same hat Humphrey Bogart wore while playing Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.

His eyes open really wide, and then Walt gets this sad look on his face, like he knows I’m lying when I don’t have to—like he loves the hat even if it’s not a movie prop, even if I found it on the street or something, and I know that too, that I don’t have to make shit up because what we have as friends is real and true already—but I just keep telling mistruths and he doesn’t want to call me on it; he doesn’t want to make me feel shameful and fuck up the good moment that is happening.

That sad look on his face just makes me say things like “really” and “I swear to god” like I do sometimes when I am lying.

I say, “It’s really really Bogart’s hat, I swear to god. Really. Just don’t tell my mom about this because I had to spend some serious money—like upwards of twenty-five grand I debited from her Visa card, which all goes to cancer research, all of it—and I had to get the hat just so that we might have a little piece of Bogie history, just so we might at least have that forever. Right?”

I feel so awful, because the truth is that I bought the hat at the thrift store for four dollars and fifty cents.

Walt’s eyes look all glazey and distant, like I shot him with the P-38.

“So do you like it?” I ask. “Do you like owning Bogie’s hat? Does wearing it make you feel tough and capable of saving the day?”

Walt smiles real sad, makes his Bogie face, and says, “What have you ever given me besides money? You ever given me any of your confidence, any of the truth? Haven’t you tried to buy my loyalty with money and nothing else?”

I recognize the quote. It’s from The Maltese Falcon. So I finish it by saying, “What else is there I can buy you with?”

We look at each other in our Bogart hats and it’s like we’re communicating, even though we’re completely silent.

I’m trying to let him know what I’m about to do.

I’m hoping he can save me, even though I realize he can’t.

His Bogie hat is gray with a black band and really looks like Sam Spade’s. It was a lucky thrift store find. It really was. Like Walt was destined to have this very hat.

I remember this other weirdly appropriate quote from The Maltese Falcon and so I say, “I haven’t lived a good life. I’ve been bad. Worse than you could know.”

But Walt doesn’t play along this time. He gets real twitchy and nervous and then he starts asking me why I gave him the hat at this particular juncture—“Why today?”—and—“Why do you look so sad all of a sudden?”—and—“What’s wrong?”

Then he starts asking me to take off my hat, asking if I cut my hair, and when I don’t answer he asks me if I’ve talked to my mother today—if she’s been around lately.

I say, “I really have to go to school now. You’re a fantastic neighbor, Walt. Really. Almost like a father to me. No need to worry.”

I’m fighting the big-time tears again, so I turn my back on him and walk out through the smoky hallway, under the crystal chandelier, out of Walt’s life forever.

The whole time he yells, “Leonard. Leonard, wait! Let’s talk. I’m really worried about you. What’s going on? Why don’t you stay awhile? Please. Take a day off. We can watch a Bogie movie. Things will seem better. Bogart always—”

I open the front door and pause long enough to hear him coughing and hacking as he tries to chase me, using his sad drugstore tennis-ball walker.

He could die today, I think, he really could.

And then I just stride out of his house knowing that it was the perfect way to say good-bye to Walt. My storming out right at that very moment was like the emotional climax of an old-school Bogart film. In my mind, I could even hear the stringed instruments building to a dramatic crescendo.

“Good-bye, Walt,” I say as I stride toward my high school.

SIX
LETTER FROM THE FUTURE NUMBER 1

Dear First Lieutenant Leonard,

Billy Penn is doing his best Jesus imitation.

That’s what you’ll say today when you get here and report for duty.

That’ll be in about twenty years and one hour from where you are in the present moment, roughly thirteen months after you decide to risk entering into the great, open, no-longer-civilized void.

Like me, you’ll decide that life on crowded, premium dry land—where you have to elbow everyone out of the way just for a breath of fresh air—is not for you.

And you would never live like a rodent in tube city, now would you?

Inevitably, you’ll come join me in what we now call Outpost 37, Lighthouse 1—what you currently know as Philadelphia, the Comcast Center skyscraper.

These days, tides rise and fall by hundreds of feet due to the increased speeds of weather patterns and the daily earthquakes that open and close gigantic underwater crevasses. Our planet is re-forming.

Today the water is so low, we can see Billy Penn’s feet and just a few inches of the old City Hall building atop of which he is still perched. City Hall is under the sea so it looks like Billy Penn’s walking on water, hence your Jesus reference.

Greetings from the future.

The year is 2032.

There’s been a nuclear holocaust, just like everyone feared there would be, and we’ve managed to melt the polar ice caps, which flooded the planet, covering a third of all known land with sea. Remember that movie your science teacher showed you? Well, Al Gore was right.

The nukes wiped out a fourth of the world’s population, and a food shortage from lack of land and fresh water took care of another fourth, or so they say.

Here in the North American Land Collective—we merged with Canada and Mexico several years ago—our overall losses weren’t as dramatic as in other parts of the world, but our land loss was just as great. This resulted in what has been compared to a migratory heart attack. Everyone was forced into the middle of our country, which caused chaos, of course, and required military law and a new sort of totalitarian government.

They’ve started to build vertically. Sky is the new frontier, the hot real estate. It’s all elevators and skyscrapers and enclosed tubeways in the clouds. People mostly live their lives indoors, somewhere between the earth and outer space, hardly ever breathing unfiltered air or feeling direct sunlight on their bare skin. They’re like gerbils in plastic-tubing cage cities.

But not us.

We have volunteered to man Outpost 37, Lighthouse 1, and we spend most of our days boating around the tops of what was once the Philadelphia skyline. Including you, there are only four of us here.

It is our job to provide light for any vessels that might accidentally find their way into our sector, so they will not crash into the exposed tops of underwater skyscrapers. We are to aid in military operations, of course, but we have not seen another human or a single boat of any kind in more than a year. We have not been officially contacted by the North American Land Collective government in ninety-seven days, nor have we been able to make our satellite links, which leads us to believe that all global communications have been shut down.

Why?

We don’t know.

But here’s the kicker: We do not care.

We are happy.

We are self-sufficient, stocked with twenty more years’ worth of poly-frozen food packets.

Scientists have proved that being exposed to so much unfiltered air, being closer to the great nuclear fallout clouds that drift aimlessly across Global Common Area Two, or what you call the Atlantic Ocean, will definitely shorten our lives quicker than smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and yet we are at peace with our position and feel as though we have escaped—or maybe like we have finally arrived home.

We’re living in the moment.

Sometimes we feel guilty knowing that so many people have suffered through the horrors that put us here, but as we had no control over those things, we simply try to enjoy our good fortune.

Our life is strange.

We spend our days in the boats searching the tops of skyscrapers for anything interesting, entering apartments and offices and stores as amateur archaeologists. These are the Egyptian pyramids of our time—“our underwater Machu Picchu,” you like to say.

You excavate more with the others, “reconstructing the lives of strangers.” It’s like a game. “Our greatest form of entertainment.” The three of you love to play Who Lived Here? and your answers are full of heroes and heroines who once did brave and noble deeds back before the sea swallowed up their entire civilization.

There are a trillion stories to be found beneath us. “Outpost 37 is perhaps the greatest interactive fiction library man has ever known.”

You said that, by the way.

I’m always quoting the future you.

You’re quite quotable.

You also love spotting dolphins. There is a large school of them here. They’ve begun to mutate due to the nuclear fallout and are slightly larger than they used to be. You often ride on their backs and call them buses. “I’m going to catch a bus,” you’ll say to S and she’ll clap and laugh as you hop onto one, holding the fin, being sprayed by the creature’s breath. We treat them like pets, swim with them often, and cut off the red squidlike parasites whenever the dolphins roll and offer up their smooth white bellies.

One youngster swims alongside your boat every morning when you make rounds. You named him Horatio, because he’s so loyal. We joke about him being your best friend and call you Hamlet, a play you are still reading nightly after all these years. “It gives and gives,” you say. Just like your high school English teacher told you.

But your favorite thing to do is scuba diving down into the city, exploring the watery streets that are still full of cars and hot dog stands and monuments and park benches and petrified trees and sports complexes and so many other things from our past, your present.

We only have so many bottles of oxygen in storage, so you don’t get to go as often as you’d like, because you are saving a few for the future. Rationing. You believe in the future now. It’s easy for you, because you love the present. Also, because you have S now.

You still get melancholy sometimes, especially when you think about the past, but mostly you are happy.

It’s a good, weird life.

We are a happy little family.

I understand that you are going through a tough time, Leonard. We’ve talked about it in detail during our late nights manning the great beam of light.

Your past—what you are currently experiencing—would be hard for anyone to endure. You’ve been so strong, making it this far. I admire your courage, and hope you can hold out a little longer. Twenty years seems like a long time to you, I bet, but it will pass quicker than you can ever imagine.

I know you really want to kill that certain someone. That you feel abandoned by your parents. Let down by your school.

Alone.

Peerless.

Trapped.

Afraid.

I know that you really just want everything to end—that you can’t see anything good in your future, that the world looks dark and terrible, and maybe you’re right—the world can definitely be a dreadful place.

I know you’re just barely holding it together.

But please hold on a little longer.

For us.

For yourself.

You are going to absolutely love Outpost 37.

You’re going to be the keeper of the light.

My first lieutenant.

Our beam is quite impressive, even if no one ever sees it but us—we send it out every night religiously. And when we turn out the lighthouse to conserve power, you will see stars like you’ve never seen before. Mind-boggling stars, the depths of which you will never map.

A strange, beautiful new world awaits, Leonard.

We’ve found an oasis in their ruins. We really have.

You want to see it, so just hold on, okay?

With much hope for the future (and from a man who knows for certain!),

Commander E

SEVEN

My school is shaped like an empty box with no lid.

There’s this very beautiful courtyard in the center, with four squares of grass, benches, cobblestone sidewalks that make a huge +, with White House-looking columns at the far end, and a cupola tower that overlooks the whole thing.

Before school or during lunch periods it’s crawling with students—like an awful cockroach infestation of teenagers. But during classes it’s serene, and I can never resist sitting down on a bench and watching clouds and birds fly by overhead.

I like to pretend I’m a prisoner kept in a dark, dank cell who’s only allowed fifteen minutes a day in the yard, so that I remember to really enjoy looking up. And that’s what I’m doing when Vice Principal Torres taps me on the shoulder and says, “I hate to interrupt the nice moment you’re having, but shouldn’t you be in class, Mr. Peacock?”

I start to laugh because he’s acting all superior like he always does. He has no idea that I have the P-38 on me, that I could shoot him in the heart and end his life right now just by pulling a trigger, and therefore he has no power over me at all.

He says, “What’s so funny?”

And I feel so fucking mighty knowing that the P-38 is loaded in my backpack, so I say, “Nothing at all. Care to sit down? Beautiful day. Beautiful. You look stressed. Maybe you should take a rest with me. Looking up at the sky is really healthy. I learned that by watching afternoon television aimed at women. Let’s chat. Let’s try to understand each other. What do you say?”

He just looks at me for a second and then says, “What’s with the hat?”

I say, “Been watching Bogie films with my neighbor. I’ve become quite a fan.”

When he doesn’t answer, I say, “You know—Humphrey Bogart? Here’s looking at you, kid?”

He says, “I know who Humphrey Bogart is. Now back to class.”

I cross my legs to let him know that I’m not afraid of him, and then say, “I missed homeroom and haven’t checked in yet at the office, so technically I’m on my own time. Haven’t punched in, so to speak, boss. Not yet under your jurisdiction. Right now, I’m just an everyman in a park.”

Vice Principal Torres’s face starts to turn eggplant purple as he says, “I don’t have time for double talk this morning, Leonard.”

So I say, “I’m talking pretty effectively, I think. I’ve answered all of your questions honestly and accurately. I’m always straight with you. But you don’t listen. No one listens. Why don’t you just sit down? It’ll make you feel better. It could really—”

“Leonard,” he says. “Enough.”

I say, “Jeez” because I was really trying to make a connection. I would have talked with him openly and honestly—no double talk at all—if he would have just sat down, taken a few minutes to be human.

What’s so important that he couldn’t take five minutes to look up at the sky with me?

Then Vice Principal Torres does this really lame, unoriginal thing, which depresses me. He probably does this bit with his son, Nathan, whose elementary school picture[17] is on VP Torres’s desk. Vice Principal Torres says, “Mr. Peacock, I’m going to count to three, and if you’re not on your way to class by the time I say three, you’re going to have a big problem.”

“What type of problem am I going to have?”

He raises his index finger and says, “One.”

“Don’t you think we should discuss the consequence of my possible inaction so I can decide whether or not doing what you have requested is truly in my best interest? I want to make an informed decision. I want to think. This is school after all. Aren’t you supposed to encourage us to think? Help me out here.”

He makes a peace sign, and says, “Two.”

I look up at the sky, smile, and then stand just before he says three, only because I need to shoot Asher Beal. That’s the only reason. I swear to god. I don’t want to make this day any harder than it will already be. I’m not afraid of Vice Principal Torres, his fingers, or his lame-ass counting. I assure you.

I start to walk to the office, but then I spin around and say, “I’m worried about you, Vice Principal Torres. You seem stressed. And it’s affecting your work.”

He says, “I’ve got a full slate today. Cut me a break, okay? Will you just go to class, Mr. Peacock? Please.”

I nod once and, as I walk toward the main office, I hear Vice Principal Torres sigh loudly. I don’t think his sigh is directed at me so much as it’s directed at his life—the fact that he’s so stressed and busy.

It’s like all the adults I know absolutely hate their jobs and their lives too. I don’t think I know anyone over eighteen who wouldn’t be better off dead, besides Walt[18] and Herr Silverman, and knowing that makes me feel confident about what I’m about to do later on today.

EIGHT

I do this thing sometimes where I put on this black suit I have for formal occasions such as funerals and I carry this crazy empty briefcase I got at the thrift store. Only I don’t go to school.

I practice being an adult, like I pretend I’m going to a job.

I walk toward the train station, and about two blocks away from it I always fall in line with other suits swinging briefcases.

I’ve studied their dead expressions enough to blend in.

I walk soldierlike, copying their steps, swinging my empty briefcase just so—almost goose-stepping.

I insert the coins into the bins outside the station and grab an old-fashioned paper newspaper, which I tuck under my arm, just to blend in.

I pay for my ticket at the machine.

I descend using the escalator.

And then I stand around all zombie-faced waiting for the train to come.

I know this will sound wrong, but whenever I wear my funeral suit, go to the train station, and pretend I have a job in the city, it always makes me think about the Nazi trains that took the World War II Jews to the death camps. What Herr Silverman taught us about. I know that’s a horrible and maybe even offensive comparison, but waiting there on the platform, among the suits, I feel like I’m just waiting to go to some horrible place where everything good ends and then misery ensues forever and ever and ever—which reminds me of the awful stories we learned in Holocaust class, whether it’s offensive or not.

Читать книгу онлайн Forgive me, Leonard Peacock - автор Мэтью Квик или скачать бесплатно и без регистрации в формате fb2. Книга написана в 2013 году, в жанре Современная русская и зарубежная проза. Читаемые, полные версии книг, без сокращений - на сайте Knigism.online.