have you. Your ideas will make us happier.’ Time passed, and again they came to his door, this time shouting. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Share your ideas for making this country wealthier.’ ‘No, no,’ they shouted. ‘It’s your ideas we trust to put more money in our pockets.’ Then a great war came. The people came stampeding to his doorstep with their pitchforks. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Please, help me preserve this country for your children. Give me your ideas.’ Again they refused. ‘We gave you power so you could decide for us,’ they yelled. When the sickness came, he pleaded with them again, and was again refused on the grounds that he knew best. This time, when he failed, they came for him, cast him to the winds. ‘That man was worthless,’ they said. ‘He never did what we wanted.’”
“That’s how it happened for you,” I say.
“That’s how it happens for every elected leader.”
“So you left?”
“In the night like a common white-collared thief.”
We speak of other things after that. Of apple pie and ice cream, of baseball, of times when people still celebrated July Fourth. Of times when those we loved were still with us. When a stable government meant we were less free, but pleasures lay thicker on the ground.
The next morning, the captain finds him hanging from a thick pipe below the decks.
“I saw you talking,” he says. “Who was he?”
“A good man, for all his flaws. Better than most.”
Lisa listens as the crew cuts the president down, throws him overboard with nary a prayer to send him on his way. Her head tilts as though she’s trying to put this into some context that makes sense in her world. She can’t see, yet she
Her fascination makes me shiver.
“Do you think he could fix me?”
I know what Lisa means. “If what the Swiss says about his past is true, yes. But the risk would be huge. You’d need somewhere clean, sterile. Proper equipment. We have none of that.”
“I bet Greece has hospitals.”
“You’re right. But what they don’t have is electricity.”
“I don’t care.” A tiny smile curves her lips. Her face is soft and dreamy. She looks content. “I bet he could fix me.”
Nick likes to hang out in my head sometimes, as though he’s enjoying the clutter.
“Sometimes my temper gets the best of me.”
“Yes.”
“Go away.”
“No, stay with me.”
About a week after he mentioned his sickness, I began scanning the newspapers for his obituary. I know, I could have just picked up the phone, called, but I didn’t. Denial and acceptance; I had a foot planted squarely in each. See, with a newspaper I could lick my thumb, rub it against the paper, make it not true. But I couldn’t handle hearing the phone ring off into infinity. There’s no way to erase the sound of a dead man not answering.
On the door’s other side the grayscale world is waiting. I slip a leash on my gloom and go out to greet it. When I reach the lobby, my feet stop. Someone has thrown a pair of combat boots in my path. They’re filled with Nick.
“You’re not dead,” I say.
“I’m not dead.”
“Why? How?”
He laughs. “Dying wasn’t on my list.”
My smile sputters until it’s full and real. “What is on your list?”
“Not dying. Coming here. This.”
He reels me in, cups my face with both hands, and becomes my whole world.
“What else is on your list?”
“Zoe…”
My lips are cooling too quickly; I know what he’s going to say. “I get it. I do. You have to go. Men need to be heroes.”
“I don’t want to fight,” he says. “But I want to win.”
“I know. And I’m glad you came. But if you die out there, I’ll hate you forever.”
“No you won’t,” he says, and turns until both feet point toward war.
The glass door drifts shut behind him. My hands dangle by my sides, those useless things.
How do you file a restraining order against sadness?
Week after week there’s nothing. The obituaries come thick and fast now. Not just the elderly, but young people dying of what appears to be an errant stomach flu. The media blames it on farm animals, contaminated food, illegal immigrants, but really they don’t know. And I feel better in some ways because how could this have started with me? It’s arrogant of me to think I could be that important. And yet, a voice still tells me none of their guesses have struck truth. None of them speculates that somewhere in this city there’s a box filled with shards and bones, and the whole thing feels like death.
The newspapers don’t list war deaths. With the Internet still dead, computers are little more than boat anchors, so there’s no database running queries, spitting out names, or coming back with—one hoped—
We return to the old ways: lists slapped onto walls in government buildings, people hovering, hoping, fists pushed between their teeth, chewing their lips, twirling their hair. Nervous tics. Superstitious, too.
Jenny and I visit the library every evening. She’s always there in her cherry-red coat, the one that should be too warm for this time of year, leaning against the center pillar. I see her sometimes as a stranger might: relaxed, the contrast of her dark hair against the red wool pleasing to the eye; a vibrant young woman. The illusion lasts until I’m close enough to read her face. We sprang from the same gene pool, and while we look like our own separate beings, her facial expressions are my own. Constant fear has knocked the girlish layer of subcutaneous fat from her face so that the line of her jaw and cheekbones jut through her skin in an off-key rendition of magazine- cover chic. Her brow line dips in the middle even when she paints on a false smile, like she’s doing now. I’ve faked that same smile before. I’m faking it now. And she knows that I know that she knows.
Wearing that polyester smile, I jog up the stone steps to meet her. My preference would be to sit at the bottom, pull myself into a ball, and rock back and forth until the world swings back to normal. But I have to be strong for Jenny, because Mark is out there. Like so many others, he swapped a keyboard and mouse for a gun and cut-rate body armor.
We perform the ritual: hug, squeeze, peck on the cheek.
“How was work?” she asks.
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine. Ready?”
“Sure.”
More lies.
We push through the towering doors, take a sharp left, stride to the far side of the lobby, where the wall is covered in corkboard.
