Удушье (Choke)

And Denny goes, 'Dude.' Watching the mob of people hold­ing rocks.

He says, 'You should definitely not be here right now.'

After we were on TV, all day Denny says, all these smiling people keep turning up with rocks. Beautiful rocks. Rocks like you won't believe. Quarried granite and ashlar basalt. Dressed blocks of sandstone and limestone. They come one by one, bringing mortar and shovels and trowels.

They all ask, each of them, 'Where's Victor?'

This is so many people they filled the block so nobody could get any work done. They all wanted to give me their stone in per­son. All these men and women, they've all been asking Denny and Beth if I'm doing okay.

They say I looked really terrible on television.

All it will take is one person to brag about being a hero. Being a savior, and how he'd saved Victor's life in a restaurant.

Saved my life.

The term 'powder keg' pretty much nails it.

Out on the edge of things, some hero's got everybody talking. Even in the dark, you can see the revelation ripple through the crowd. It's the invisible line between the people still smiling and the people not.

Between everybody who's still a hero and the people who know the truth.

And everybody stripped of their proudest moment, they start looking around. All these people reduced from saviors to fools in an instant, they're going a little nuts.

'You need to scram, dude,' Denny says.

The crowd is so thick you can't see Denny's work, the columns and walls, the statues and stairways. And somebody shouts, 'Where's Victor?'

And someone else shouts, 'Give us Victor Mancini!'

And for sure, I deserve this. A firing squad. My whole over­extended family.

Someone turns on the headlights of some car, and I'm spot­lighted against a wall.

My shadow looming horrible over all of us.

Me, the deluded little rube who thought you could ever earn enough, know enough, own enough, run fast enough, hide well enough. Fuck enough.

Between me and the headlights are the outlines of a thousand faceless people. All the people who thought they loved me. Who thought they'd given me back my life. The legend of their lives, evaporated. Then one hand comes up with a rock, and I close my eyes.

From not breathing, the veins in my neck swell. My face gets red, gets hot.

Something thuds at my feet. A rock. Another rock thuds. A dozen more. A hundred more thuds. Rocks crash and the ground shakes. Rocks crumble together around me and everyone's shout­ing.

It's the martyrdom of Saint Me.

My eyes closed and watering, the headlights shine red through my eyelids, through my own flesh and blood. My eye juice.

More thuds against the ground. The ground quakes and peo­ple scream with effort. More shaking and crashing. More swear­ing. And then everything gets quiet.

To Denny I say, 'Dude.'

Still with my eyes closed, I sniff and say, 'Tell me what's hap­pening.'

And something soft and cotton and not very clean-smelling closes around my nose, and