I put the book down, my armpits slick with sweat. I realized I hadn’t been breathing as I pulled in a sharp gulp of air. I picked the book back up.
The man picks the book back up.
I put the book back down. What the fuck?
And then he picks it back up again. He’s been doing a very good job. Fantastic. The world needs calm voices right now. He’s been one of those voices. He’s not chasing the most attention, he’s not trying to turn every scrap of social capital he has into more social capital, and that’s hard, so I want to let him know that that’s appreciated. He’s doing the right things. I’ve been reading his Twitter, and I really liked Pose too. What a great show. The world needs more content about people just loving each other. I also really liked this tweet:
Andy Skampt
@AndySkampt
None of us have forgotten that the Carls changed our minds, but it’s important to remember that we all change each other’s minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance.
I don’t think that’s really an accurate portrayal of what was done to your mind, but it is good to pull tensions down and also to call attention to the power you each have over each other. “Mind-altering substance” . . . very clever. You always were a clever one. Do you remember when you pulled the mic up your own shirt and clipped it onto your collar and then decided that April should be the star? You didn’t know what choice you were making, but you knew you were making a choice. You didn’t just chase the flame, and the magnitude of that choice . . . well, here we are. You always wanted to be famous, but you gave that away. But then it came for you anyway, just in time for you to not really want it. Of course you feel guilty about it. That’s fine. You shouldn’t of course. You’re doing the best you can with what you have, but of course you feel guilty. That’s fine.
The money in your bank account, the follows on your Twitter, you think they’re all hers and that you just inherited them. But almost everything is inherited. It’s not about deserving. It’s about what you do with what you have. And, so far, you are doing well.
Anyway, you should go get a sandwich.
The man stands up from the table and takes the stairs to the ground floor so he has some time to think. He walks to Subway, where he orders a six-inch sweet onion chicken teriyaki sub with provolone, bell peppers, onions, tomato, and lettuce.
He gets a Coke to help settle his stomach, but he only drinks half of it because he doesn’t need all that caffeine right now. And he doesn’t get the meal, even though the chips would only be an extra 75 cents.
Then he’ll take his sandwich to Tompkins Square Park, which is a nice park, even though it’s a bit of a walk, and he’ll eat his sandwich.
Rebecca at Subway is waiting to make his sandwich.
Go get a sandwich.
And that’s where that page ended. I turned the page, and there (and on every other page in The Book of Good Times) was a single sentence, “Go get a sandwich,” repeated over and over again.
So, I mean, what do you do? At the very least you want to go see if the person who will make your sandwich is named Rebecca.
—
The sweet onion chicken teriyaki had been my sub since high school, which was something April knew about me . . . probably. Which made me think that maybe it was April who had written the book. Or maybe it was just someone who had watched me order a sandwich once. It felt like April, though. The words definitely felt like April.
I was understandably distracted on my walk to Subway, which is probably the only reason I ended up walking past the plaque that had been placed in the ground where New York Carl once stood. I hadn’t admitted it to myself, but I must have been avoiding this area.
The plaque was a simple bronze square laid into the concrete that said only “This was the location of New York Carl.” A fresh rose had been placed on it, and no one had accidentally kicked it away yet. Part of me thought the rose was a nice gesture; part of me thought that strangers didn’t have the right to mourn April. She was my friend, not theirs. That was the whole fucking problem, that everyone in the world thought that April May was theirs. All they knew of her was the caricature she created for them. I looked up and saw someone had lifted their phone to take a photo of me.
“Oh, come on!” I half shouted, immediately regretting it, before marching over to Lexington thinking that maybe I had mentioned my affinity for sweet onion chicken teriyaki subs on Twitter at some point and someone had stored that fact away for their elaborate prank.
—
“Six-inch sweet onion chicken teriyaki on Italian, please,” I said to the woman at Subway. I’d ordered a similar sub from her probably a dozen times since I’d moved to the neighborhood. She was in her early twenties, and I couldn’t help myself from guessing at her ethnicity. She looked Asian, but with dark skin and an accent that I didn’t immediately recognize.
Her name tag read “Becky.”
“Short
