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“Well, we’re going to have a lot to sort out in the morning.”
“Like what?”
“You need help. Professional help. I’m not sure your mother realizes the seriousness of your condition—how much pain you’ve been in. These things don’t just go away.”
“She won’t listen to you. She’s crazy.”
“May I call her? Please,” Herr Silverman says.
I suck my lips into my mouth because I’m exhausted and don’t really feel like arguing with him, and then I nod, thinking, Herr Silverman can’t make anything worse.
“She’s under Fashion Designer Linda,” I say while I’m doing the pattern to unlock my cell. I hand him the phone and say, “But she probably won’t answer anyway. She never answers at night. Says she needs her beauty sleep, but really it’s because she’s sleeping with this French guy who loves sex and Linda is a nymphomaniac.”
I wish I hadn’t said that last joke, especially because Herr Silverman doesn’t even acknowledge it, let alone laugh.
He calls Linda, but she doesn’t answer.
He leaves a message saying that I’m with him at his apartment and he’d really appreciate a call back, because it’s an emergency. He leaves his cell phone number and then hangs up.
“Guess we wait for her to call,” Herr Silverman says.
I look away.
Linda won’t call back tonight.
I know from experience.
Herr Silverman pulls a pad of paper from a drawer, writes down Linda’s phone number, and sticks it in his shirt pocket.
“Did you paint this?” I point back at the X-ed-out-tree-with-fallen-decapitated-heads-of-famous-political-leaders painting that hangs over the couch. I don’t know why I ask. Maybe just to change the subject. Maybe because I feel bad about Linda’s not calling, and Herr Silverman’s belief that she will.
Herr Silverman’s face lights up like he’s either really proud of the painting or he’s just happy to have something to talk about besides how fucked I am. “No,” he says. “I purchased it when I went to Israel a few years ago. At an art show. A friend of a friend. Had it shipped home. A little extravagance.”
“It’s very good,” I lie. I don’t really like it at all. I just feel like I should be nice to Herr Silverman. I’m kind of worried that he’s going to use my secret against me—everything I told him about Asher—so I want to be on his good side.
“I like it,” he says.
“What does it mean?” I ask, trying to make him happy.
“Does it have to mean something?”
“I don’t know. I thought art was supposed to mean something.”
“Can’t it just exist without an explanation? Why do we have to assign meaning to art? Do we need to understand everything? Maybe it exists to evoke feelings and emotions—period. Not to mean something.”
I nod to acknowledge what he’s saying, even though it sounds a little like art-talk bullshit to me.
Still—I think about Herr Silverman and Julius having deep conversations about art and life and everything, and it actually starts to make me smile.
Life beyond the übermorons.
If I weren’t so tired, I’d continue the conversation, debating back and forth, just like in Herr Silverman’s Holocaust class, like he always wants us to. I’d go on for hours and hours, but I feel like my mind’s quitting on me—like I only have time for one or two more questions—so I ask, “Would you say it’s modern art? Something you’d see in MoMA in New York City? I’m sort of interested in modern art lately.”
“Well, it’s art and it’s modern. But anything painted recently is called contemporary art.”
I nod and say, “Do you think a picture of a Nazi handgun set next to a bowl of oatmeal could be contemporary art, or maybe just art?”
“Sure,” he says. “Why not?”
“Okay,” I say, and then we just sort of sit there silently until I realize I’m dangerously exhausted—that my brain is maybe at the end of its rope—and I can’t wait for Linda to not call all night, because I just don’t have the energy. My eyelids weigh a million pounds each. Through a yawn, I say, “Do you mind if I shut my eyes for a second or two?”
“Go right ahead,” he says. “Make yourself comfortable.”
As soon as my head hits his couch, the rope snaps.
It feels like my brain is falling down into some pitch-black abyss.
I dream of übernothing.
THIRTY-FOUR
There’s a warm puffy blanket over me when I wake up.
I’m sweating.
The lights are off and the curtains have been pulled, but the glow of the city creeps in from under the heavy cloth and illuminates the outside rectangle of the windows.
It takes me a second to remember where I am and how I got here on my Holocaust teacher’s couch, but once I do, I feel a rush of adrenaline course through my veins.
I sit up and think, What the hell happened yesterday?
Then I replay it all in my mind, remembering. When I get to the part about Asher Beal, I feel like maybe I shouldn’t have told Herr Silverman about what happened—like it was a horrible mistake. I trust him, but I also know he has to tell other people to get me help, and what if those other people think I’m a pervert, and do things to me that will fuck my head up even worse? How can I trust people I don’t know? I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that makes me feel like I’m covered in super-pissed-off scorpions and spiders. I didn’t really think my confession to Herr Silverman through. It just sort of happened.
Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I really should have killed myself.
I also start to worry that Herr Silverman went through my cell phone photos and found the one of Asher jerking off—which would really make him think I’m a pervert—so I grab my cell off the coffee table, hit the camera button, and see what was recorded.
It’s just the flash reflected in the glass of Asher’s bedroom window, so I delete it and feel a little relieved, but not completely.
I wish I could delete the past twenty-four hours.
I check my history and there are no calls from Linda, and I don’t know how to feel about that.
Part of me is relieved, part of me is disappointed, which is confusing.
I reach into my pocket to make sure I have the massive six-figure check I tried to give Baback and I rip it up into a million tiny pieces, although I’m not quite sure why, and the pieces land all over Herr Silverman’s floor and are hard to clean up because there are so many.
I’m not thinking straight.
I’m not sure I can trust myself.
I look at Herr Silverman’s closed bedroom door and think about him sleeping in the same bed as Julius, how they have this life together in the city that has nothing to do with me or my shitty high school or Herr Silverman’s teaching—and how I invaded their world last night, crossed all sorts of lines. I can understand why Julius was so pissed at me, because I was acting like a psychopath, and it sort of makes me feel horrible, because Herr Silverman was only trying to do the right thing, which is amazing, because no one ever does the right thing, but I should be with Linda and my dad right now. And because they blow as parents, I’m fucked up and Herr Silverman has to deal with my shit, which isn’t fair to him and maybe will lead to bad things for me in the end. It’s weird, because I really love Herr Silverman, and the fact that he cares so much about fucked-up kids—enough to meet me under a bridge in the middle of a school night. But I shouldn’t be here. This was all a mistake. My fault. I know that. And he probably shouldn’t have come to rescue me either. He’s too nice for his own good maybe. And I hope I don’t get him into trouble.
I wonder if he talked to Linda after I passed out and what the hell he said to her.
If he was able to make her feel even the slightest bit of guilt for being so oblivious—if he could get through all that makeup and high fashion.
How much he told her about what happened.
If she even gave a shit.
I’m pretty sure that Herr Silverman is going to get my high school involved now and the school psychologist will evaluate me to figure out whether I’m truly a risk to myself or others and then when they discover how unbalanced I am, they’ll pump me full of drugs and lock me away, and I start to worry about where that will be and what it will be like. What if it’s worse than my current life?
Whatif HerrSilverman iswrongaboutmyfuture?
All of a sudden—I have to take off before he wakes up.
Leaving immediately—just getting far away from Herr Silverman and the talk we had last night—is the most important thing in the world.
I’m imposing.
I shouldn’t be here.
Maybe I shouldn’t even be alive.
Maybe I just want to enjoy my last few hours of freedom before they lock me up in some psych ward.
Maybe I just need some space.
Regardless, I stand slowly and tiptoe into the kitchen, past the closed bedroom door, and then find a pad of paper stuck to the refrigerator.
I write:
Herr Silverman,
Don’t worry; I’m okay. Needed to be by myself.
Going home. Danger has passed.
Nothing to worry about. NOTHING.
I’m sorry.
Thank you.
LP
P.S. Sorry also to Julius. I won’t do this again.
Promise.
I tiptoe through the living room and I’m relieved when the front door doesn’t squeak or squeal.
I’m gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
I take the stairs down to the ground floor and then I’m on the predawn streets of Philadelphia.
No one is around, and I imagine this whole city is under ocean water—I imagine I’m scuba diving, and it’s not really all that hard to do because it’s dark and desolate and my skin is kind of wet from sleeping under the down comforter Herr Silverman threw over me and also from freaking out, which maybe I’m still doing, although I’m trying not to think about yesterday—how choosing life might have been a mistake.
Underground, I crawl below the subway turnstile—feeling the disgusting city grime on the palms of my hands—because I have no money on me, and I wait in the trash-ridden piss-smelling underbelly of Philadelphia, imagining myself scuba diving with a huge light, swimming through subway tunnels with Horatio and maybe even showing S the graffiti when she is old enough to scuba dive in such dangerous enclosed waters.
The train comes after what feels like hours of waiting, and I’m the only passenger on the car.
When we burst out from under Philly and up onto the Ben Franklin Bridge the sun is just coming up over the eastern horizon and I blink at it.
When my town is called, I stand and hold on as the train slows to a stop.
It’s too early for the zombie-faced suits, although I know they’ll flock here soon enough.
There’s a rent-a-cop at the turnstiles and so I have to make a decision because I don’t have the ticket I need to get through the machines.
I’m just about to make a run for it when I see an old ticket on the ground.
I pick it up and insert it into the machine.
It doesn’t work, of course.
“Officer,” I say, and hold up the rectangle of paper. “My ticket’s not working.”
“Just go under,” he says, and then takes a slurp from his bucket-sized Styrofoam coffee cup and turns his back.
I crawl under the turnstile and walk out into the early-morning sunshine.
I’m not really sure what my plan is, but somehow I wind up walking past Lauren’s house, which is right next door to her father’s church.
Standing across the street looking at the house, I sort of feel like the house is looking back at me—like the two second-floor windows are eyes and the row of downstairs windows is a mouth. Kind of like what you see in old horror movies—the house coming to life like a face.
I have this stupid fantasy where I ring the doorbell and Lauren answers in a white bathrobe—which gives me a nice V-shot of her chest—and wearing the silver cross I gave her. We talk and I thank her for praying for me and she says it’s great that I’m still alive and we both agree that kissing was a mistake, before we shake hands and wish each other well—like everything is forgiven. But it’s all just bullshit and I know I messed up with Lauren in a way that can’t be fixed easily, which is so unbearably depressing.
“Fuck,” I say in real life, standing on the sidewalk across the street from Lauren’s house, shaking my head.
I know I’m an asshole for forcing Lauren to kiss me—a hypocrite even.
A bad person.
I walk away.
I’ll probably never talk to Lauren again and I’m okay with that.
It’s best.
Maybe I only pursued her because I knew a relationship between us was impossible. Like she was a safe test for me, because she had so much religion crammed into her brain that things would never go too far. But I ended up failing the test, so what does that mean?
I don’t know.
It’s kind of horrible that she’s the first girl I ever kissed, because I’ll always remember her as my first girl kiss, which will remind me of everything else that happened afterward. And I start to worry that every single time I kiss a girl from now on will trigger a flood of memories that will take me back to last night. Like maybe I’ll never be able to enjoy kissing at all.
All that gets me feeling depressed again, so I head over to Walt’s and key in.
THIRTY-SIX
I hear the TV blaring.
Walt sometimes has trouble hearing, so I’m not surprised by the volume.
What surprises me is this: He’s watching Bogart films this early in the morning.
I hear Katharine Hepburn’s uppity voice and know he’s watching The African Queen again.
“HELLO?” I say as loud as possible as I walk under the chandelier.
Walt doesn’t answer, and when he sees me standing in the room’s entranceway, he sort of jumps in his recliner, looks at me for a few seconds, turns off the movie with the remote, and says, “Leonard?”
“It’s me. In the flesh.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Been watching Bogie all night. I was really worried about you. I thought that—I called your home, but no one answered and—”
We just look at each other for a long time because he doesn’t want to say what he’s thinking and I don’t want to talk about last night.
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