Of course I ran. All the French I could speak was, “Rouge puis blanc…” I dashed after the escaping heroin dealers. The police ran after me. We were all running across the plaza, between the legs of the Eiffel Tower.
And there they stopped. The couple stopped, and I stopped. Panting and breathless, they shouted, “Look up, Chuck! Look up!”
A few bystanders stood around. The police officers were catching up.
The couple already had their heads tilted back, gazing skyward. I looked up.
From where we stood, under the center of the tower, it rises upward like a vast, square tube. Floodlights turn the tapering structure into a bright tunnel of light that seems to stretch into infinity. My heart pounding, sweating, a little drunk, I looked up into this glorious, blazing tunnel.
And the entire world disappeared into darkness.
Nothing existed. With no visual points of reference I lost my balance and collapsed to the sticky concrete. Everyone gasping in unison, that and my heartbeat were all I could hear. I was blind. The world was gone. And my fingers clutched at the rough ground for fear I’d lose that, too.
Someone began to clap. Everyone joined the applause.
My eyes adjusted. The druggy couple and the police were still there. The Eiffel Tower rose over us, no longer a tunnel of light, but a looming, dark oil derrick.
Will you think I’m crazy? Worse, will you think I’m a liar if I tell you that during that long moment when the world had disappeared, while I seemed afloat in nothingness, I heard my dead grandmother speak? People invent this stuff, but where does our imagination come from? All I can tell you is what her voice said. It told me, “This is why we’re alive. We come to earth to have these adventures.”
The moment after which everything is different.
The heroin addicts were only pretending. During the course of the dinner, the entire table had argued over the one experience I had to have, that they had to provide for me, while I was in Paris. Everyone knew I was exhausted, and that my schedule wouldn’t allow for any sightseeing. So they’d plotted to bring me to this exact spot at exactly midnight when the lights of the Eiffel Tower would be extinguished. They’d baited me over the cheese, goaded me to frustration. Then they’d kept me awake. Once I was in a car they’d dawdled at traffic lights, always stalling so they could arrive at the Champ de Mars moments before midnight.
The panicked dash had been staged to deliver me breathlessly to this spot. Even the police understood, more or less, what was taking place. I’d been wrong about everything.
These strangers I’d hated so much, in this city I’d begun to fear and despise, they’d all conspired to antagonize me, to enrage me. A team of people had ultimately plotted to bring me to a joy I never could’ve imagined.
We keep tabs on Tom. Some of us, his former students. Someone will drop by his house and later spread the word as to whether or not he could recall her name. Whether he was losing weight. If he might even be writing again. Eventually every writer becomes another writer’s story.
Don’t get the idea that Tom’s workshop was always bliss. Certain students wanted overnight success and attacked him when that didn’t happen. In recent years a female student accused Tom of favoring his male students, and she campaigned for all of his female students to abandon the workshop.
More recently it came to light that someone at my agent’s office—the same agency that represented Tom—had been embezzling for years. Tom’s money, Edward Gorey’s money, Mario Puzo’s money, my money, millions of dollars. So much for my lax checkbook balancing!
The agency folded. The thief went to prison, and the courts could find no money to recover.
This isn’t a happy ending, not exactly. But there’s always an ending after the ending. That one, I said.
If you were my student I’d ask you to consider just one more possibility.
What if all of our anger and fear is unwarranted? What if world events are unfolding in perfect order to deliver us to a distant joy we can’t conceive of at this time?
Please consider that the next ending will be the happy one.
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About the Author
Chuck Palahniuk has been a nationally bestselling author since his first novel, 1996’s Fight Club, was made into the acclaimed David Fincher film of the same name. Palahniuk’s work has sold millions of copies worldwide. He lives outside Portland, Oregon.
Also by Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Survivor
Invisible Monsters
Choke
Lullaby
Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon
Diary
Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories
Haunted
Rant
Snuff
Pygmy
Tell-All
Damned
Invisible Monsters Remix
Phoenix (ebook original)
Doomed
Beautiful You
Make Something Up:
Stories You Can’t Unread
Fight Club 2
Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color
Legacy: An Off-Color Novella for You to Color
Fight Club 3
Adjustment Day
