Until next time.

I asked him once what drives him. W hat attracts him about making all  his stunts, those death-defying feats he undertakes. He  didn’t  answer for a  while. For a  minute, I thought he  never would. At the core, he  is a  very private man. Ask him about tricks, illusions or magic, he’ll talk for hours. But ask him something personal, and chances are he’ll get up and leave. Not this time. He looks at me with his penetrating  eyes, as if  he’s judging whether I really care about the question I’ve just  asked.

‘Some  people are driven towards something. Some  people look ahead and see the destination. And when they catch a glimpse of it, they are propelled forward.  I was never like that.  I  never had a  master  plan.  Never  had  any  clear objectives,  really.’   He   pauses  as  if   he’s   weighing  the ramifications of what he’s just said.

He started performing on the sidewalks when he  was 12, gaining instant popularity with people of all  ages. W hen he was 15,  a  talent scout from  New   York  spotted him and suggested to his grandmother  (his  mother had died the year before) that he  start performing  in the big  city. ‘That kid  had magic coming out of his eyes,’ noted Samuel Hunt, former program director at Radio City. ‘He  would stand in front of you and do  one of his tricks, never taking his eyes off  of  you. W hen he  was done, you’d  feel  as if  it wasn’t  a human performing the trick. He was that good. But then he would show you how he  did  the trick, and would then do it again, and you still wouldn’t have a clue how he’d done it. That’s when you knew you were in the presence of greatness. Or the devil.’

His stage career was a short-lived one, however, ending after only two shows. Something about his magnetism, his electrifying presence, didn’t quite transpire  on stage. The crowd felt it, the promoters felt it, but most of all, he  felt it. He  took a year off magic, refusing all  requests to return to his street performances.  ‘He  would sit in his room all  day and do nothing,’ his grandmother said once in an interview.
‘I  would go  up to him and say – kid, you’ve  got a  special talent, and if God  gave  you this gift, you need to use it. But I was better off talking to the walls. Nothing would change his mind. Nothing, of course, but that little girl.’

On December  14, 1992,  Stacy Connolly  was waiting for her mother to pick her up from  school. When  30 minutes had passed and the mother hadn’t arrived yet, Stacy decided to make the three mile walk back home on foot. It was a cold winter day  and heav y snow had fallen the night before. In one  of  those  freak  accidents  life   deals us  sometimes, a speeding pickup truck failed to stop at a stop sign. To avoid colliding with a passing car, the driver swerved violently to the right, leaped onto the sidewalk and ran over Stacy. The driver was none other than Megan Connolly, Stacy’s mother, who was rushing to pick up her daughter from school. Stacy lay in a coma for the better part of that winter. The Connolly’s tried  everything, from  experimental  medical treatments through blessings from various religious figures, but Stacy would not  wake. Behind closed doors, the  doctors began talking about pulling the plug. On a bright morning in April, Stacy’s  mother made a  trip three blocks down from  their house. It would be  her third visit to a  young man whom Stacy had spoken highly of. A year earlier she had seen him perform some magic tricks and could not stop raving for days.  Megan Connolly  had  no idea whether  magic could help her daughter, but when your child is lying in a coma, you don’t rule out any thing.

All this happened such a long time ago, that hearing him recount this story, this miracle of how a young girl woke up from a coma after receiving a visit from a young man who simply lay   his hand on her forehead,  could lead you to underestimate the importance of this event in his life. But after  the Connolly  incident, he   returned  to the  world of magic and never looked back.

And now he’s been locked in a Perspex cube for 30 days. Without food, without human interaction, without radio or television.

Most people, when  asked  for their  opinion  about  his stunts, tend to fall  into two camps. Those who think  he’s insane and those who think he’s crazy. A fter all, why lock yourself in a cube for 44 days when modern life is as lonely and alienated as it is? But there is a third camp. A group of people who, like  him, are not driven by some guiding light, some set of lofty goals, but something else altogether. You can spot those people amongst the crowd. They  look at his box  and wait to catch his eyes. W hen they do, they don’t wave or shout any thing, but simply nod.

In the last interview he granted me before leaving for his self-induced exile, the one where I asked him about what drives him, he  said something I hadn’t quite understood at the time, but now suddenly makes so much sense. ‘Sometimes it’s not about where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Sometimes it’s about where you’re coming from and how fast you need to run away from it.’

‘Miss  Chilan,  thank  you for joining us  in  the  studio tonight. Could you tell us  a  bit about the origins of  your movement?’

‘Good  evening, Charles. It is a  true pleasure to be  here tonight. This “movement” as you call it, is as old as mankind, or shall I say, womankind. Hugging is one of  the oldest, innate forms of human communication. It is cross-cultural, cross-racial and is not limited by geographical boundaries. So one could say that it is the oldest form of social behaviour in the world.’

‘Last year you and your followers organized a 20 country tour  across A frica.  In  the  process,  you  claim  to  have personally hugged over a million people. W hat’s it like  to be so close to people you’ve never met, and will  probably never meet again?’

‘It’s like  being in a dream state, Charles. It’s as if there is a  wave of energ y flowing from  you to all  these people. An endless wave of energ y. And with each person you hug, with each person who is courageous enough to shed behind their social misconceptions and basic mistrust of strangers, with each new hug I feel  recharged again and again. It is truly one of God’s wonders.’

‘In   doing   research   for   our   program   tonight,   we interviewed  numerous  people who received  one  of  your hugs.  All   of   them  describe   it  as  a   life-transforming experience. Let’s take a look at some scenes from your recent visit in Ghana.’

NARRATOR: ‘They stand silently in line, in perfect order. To a bystander they simply seem as if they’re waiting to buy supplies, or receive  medical treatment.  But their eyes are what make them stand out. It is the look of people who have nothing to lose. People whose life, in one way  or another, let them down. And now they are here to receive a blessing, an infusion of hope. Watching these people emerge from Mother Earth’s embrace is like  watching a set of “Before and A fter” pictures. Some  of them look so different, even their relatives find it hard to recognise them. Others are so moved by the experience they have to lie down to recover.’

‘Miss Chilan, it’s clear that your hugs have an intense impact on people, but I wonder if it lasts?’

‘What lasts, Charles?  Does  life  last?  Does death  last? W hen a loved one dies, how long does that last? One person would say it takes a few seconds for a person to die. Another would say that dealing with the death of  a  loved one can last a lifetime.’

‘I understand that, but some of your critics say that your hugs simply provide a  “Quick Fix”; that  they  don’t really solve the significant problems that people, such as those we saw a few minutes ago, really need to deal with.’

‘Charles, some people in the West find it hard to believe, to believe in any thing really. If something takes too long then it’s not worth the effort. If it doesn’t take long enough then they label it quackery. I am  not omnipotent, I don’t know if what I do has any lasting effect or not. I’m a normal woman who gives hugs in a world where we  find it hard to talk to family members we’ve  known all our life. If my hugs make someone happy for only one minute,  helping them forget  their  hardships  and sorrows for only a  blink of  an eye, then I have done my  work.’

‘Tell  me  a  bit about how you got started. I read in my production notes that  you grew  up in a  small  village in Bihar, the poorest state in India. Your parents were farmers and did  not have enough money to pay  for your education. In fact, I believe that you never even learned how to read and write. How   do  you explain that  a  woman from such humble beginnings becomes what Time  Magazine calls in a recent cover story, “Our Hero”?’

‘It is true, Charles, that I never knew how to read a book or write on paper. But my  parents, my  mother especially, taught me  something far  more valuable. W hen I was six, Bihar experienced one of the worst floods in its history. A year of  crops was rendered  useless. Most of  our livestock had  drowned.  Two   of   my   brothers had disappeared. I remember the family gathering around a makeshift fire my father made after the water had settled. We were all  silent, too stunned and tired to talk. Suddenly,  my  father,  who I had never seen express any emotion of  any kind, began crying, in front of us all. Here was a  man who never had much, but took great pride in his ability to provide for his family. And now  he   had lost even that.  My  mother said nothing. She  simply knelt beside him and hugged him. She hugged him as if nothing else mattered.

‘My  father never talked about what happened that day again. But from then onwards, he  looked differently at that woman. She  had saved his and our lives on that day.

‘Sometimes,  Charles,  all  we  need to keep going on is a little hug.’

I’m standing in the doorway, looking at her, amazed at so many things, that I feel  overwhelmed. Amazed that this girl, this  wonderful,  smart, funny  little four-year-old  is actually my girl. That something this good  could have come out of me. Amazed how she was the one who kept Mitch and I together, against all  odds. Amazed at how bright she is, ordering her little dolls around the miniature dining table we got her after Molly  died.

Her teacher asked to speak with me  today after  school.
‘The  kids are making fun of her, Mrs. Li. She’s the only one in class that can’t hold a  pencil correctly. She  can’t even draw like  the other kids. She… she just scribbles.’

I wanted to slap her teacher there and then. Instead I promised we’d  look into it and left with my tail between my legs.

‘Can’t  draw, my  ass!’  I shout later, telling Mitch on the phone what had happened. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mitch, she’s barely four. W hat did  we know when we were four?!’

Mitch tells me  to calm down. Mitch always tells me  to calm down. W hen my  Mom  called to tell me  that my  Dad had left her  after 30 years of  marriage to shack up with some bimbo from headquarters, and I told my Mom  I would kill  him next time I saw him, Mitch told me  to calm down. W hen our neighbour took down a  fifty-year-old  tree that was making too much shade on his side of the lawn and I threatened to sue, Mitch told me  to calm down. W hen Molly was killed after  a  car slammed into the car that  I was driving, and I couldn’t  stop tearing hair out of  my  head, Mitch told me  to calm down.

I’m tired of calming down. That’s what’s always been the trouble with us. Mitch needs to control, even when all  I want him to do is let me  cry and act like  a lunatic and hold me  and tell me  that every thing is gonna be all  right. But he doesn’t, and so it never will  be all  right.

Emily knows that.  She  was only three when her baby sister died, but already then she knew that ‘Mommy and Daddy are feeling bad’. God  bless her soul, that little angel. If not for her, I’m not sure which one of us, Mitch or I, would have left. Left, or worse.

And now she’s sitting on the floor, playing with her dolls, locked in her  imaginary world. She   looks at me   in that funny look of hers. It’s as if she’s looking through me, seeing what’s  really inside me  and reacting to what I really feel. She  predicts me, this girl.

‘Mommy?’

‘Yes, angel?’

‘Are  you and  Daddy going to  bring  me   another baby sister?’

‘I don’t know honey,’ I answer, more to blurt out a quick response that would precede  the tears I can feel  buildingdown my  throat, than any thing else. ‘It  depends on the storks.’

I can see she doesn’t  appreciate my  attempt at humour. She’s organizing the main course on her little dinner table. She’s doing an excellent job of laying out the dishes, and an equally excellent job  of  disregarding  me. There  are four plates  on  the  table.  One on  each  side.  Next to each  pink plate are matching forks and knives. Tiny pieces of Kleenex have been cut out to serve as napkins. There’s a salt shaker and  two  bottles.  One apparently  for water,  the  other  for wine. Askew, on chairs too small to fit them, sit four dolls. Two big dolls and two little ones. W here she got the smallest doll, the one dressed up in diapers, I do not know.

‘Tonight we’ll  be  having beef  stew with potatoes. Daddy, I want you to serve the wine. Mommy, I want you to serve the water. Emily, if you run out of wine, look to the right and borrow from the person to your left. And if you run out of  water, look to the left and borrow from  the person on your right.’

It’s only now that I notice what she said.

She’s four. She’s only four.

Twenty four hours later, I’m still trying to recover from the worst hangover ever. They say that after you hit 18 your brain cells start dying. I’m 17, but after last night, I feel like I’ve started the process prematurely.

Josh and Teddy and Lisa and Alice  and me  were  all  at the Barge  by the Canal.  By beer standards, the Barge  isn’t the best pub in the world. But it does have something going for it that always wins me  over. Clean, nice smelling toilets. Small, but clean. Did  I say they smell great? Yeah, I know I’m a  bit anal in that department (pardon the pun), but a girl’s gotta have at least one quirky thing about her.

So there we  were at the Barge, playing  Devil’s Six. For those of you foreign to the drinking games of the North, the objective of  Devil’s Six  is to get up on a  chair and sing a popular Irish song. Last night it was the Pogue’s ‘Dirty Old Town’. Whoever gives the worst performance loses.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that you have to do  it after drinking a bit, which, where I come from, means quite a lot more than in most places. The  version of Devil’s Six we play involves consumption of the following liquids:

6 shots of Vodka

6 shots of Tequila

6 Pints of Guinness

6 glasses of water (optional)

The  glasses of water were introduced by Lisa last month after her liver had collapsed. Or so she says. My suspicion is that it’s just an excuse to reduce the amount of alcohol in her blood, thus increasing her chances of winning. In any case, by  the end of the first round, when all  the drinking had been done and Josh and Teddy performed  Dirty  Old Town to standing  ovations, it was my  turn. I got up on a stool, supported by Lisa, who claimed that she didn’t trust me  enough not to fall  off the chair and bust my  head as a cheap way  to disqualify myself, and started to sing:

I met my  laaaav by de gaaaaaaas works waaaaall

Dreamed a dream by de ol’ caaaaaanaaaaaal

Kissed a gal  by the factory waaaaall Dirty ol’ town!

Dirdy old  town.

Any way, that’s  as long as I lasted. The   crowd  booed widely and when a can of Heineken hit my  head I knew it was all  over.

And so, five  minutes later, there was no option but to obey  Josh’s command. Josh, who lost last week, was this week’s Devil and was allowed complete freedom to humiliate me. Given the fact that  last week his task was to French kiss the ugliest, drunkest bastard at the Barge (which was my idea), letting me run naked down the most famous street in Dublin only seemed fair.  My own hunch was that more than humiliate me, Josh just wanted to see me  without my clothes. But that’s another story altogether.

I can take off my clothes real quick. That didn’t come out right. I can disrobe really quickly. And so by the time Josh and the others spill out of the pub, I’m  already running.  I pass the taxi stand and get wild cheers from  the red-eyed cabbies. One of them actually tries to outrun me, at which point I make a break to the left, running into the concierge at the Best Western.  He’s  trying to order a  cab  for an old Japanese couple and I slam right into him and he drops to the ground. The cabby running behind me  is in such shock that  he  stumbles  and  falls as  well. At  which point  the Japanese  couple, jumping up and down in glee, ask me  if they can take a picture with me. We help the cabby up, give him the camera, and I pose, naked, in between two Japanese who could be my grandparents’ age. The concierge is now on his feet so it’s time to dash back to the Barge. I’m running like  a mad woman. It’s cold  and freezing and I don’t feel any part of my  body  expect my  nipples which feel  as if they’re about to pop  off.

And then I spot Josh, who’s running towards me  ahead of the group. Could it be  he’s  trying to cover  me  with his long coat before the others see me  in my  birthday suit? Or maybe he  just wants to have a  better look? Josh puts his coat around me  as I shiver, breathless. He takes my  face  in his hands and looks in my  eyes. I smile a  stupid  smile of someone who’s just done something really foolish. He smiles back and says, ‘I love  you.’

That   was  definitely  a  bad   idea. I  can  see the  smile disappear from her face  as fast as lightning.

‘No, no, baby, I didn’t mean it that way, it’s just that…’

‘Don’t you baby  me! I work my butt off all week and come Saturday  I don’t  want to stay in this ugly apartment and watch TV! I want to go out! I want to have fun! I want to meet people!  And I want YOU to get off your ass and treat me  right!’

‘Treat  you right?  Sugar,  you know I always treat  you right…’

‘Don’t you sugar me! You never treat me right! You never buy me  things! You never take me  places! W hy can’t you be more like  Lashanda’s man?’

‘Baby, Lashanda’s husband owns a record label. I own a few records. Come  on, you know that I ain’t got that kind of money. This ain’t fair.’

‘Ain’t fair?!  Ain’t  fair?!  Let me  tell you what ain’t  fair. W hat ain’t fair is you spending all  that money on the ugly bitch you was seeing before  you wised up and moved in with me. You want fair? Fair is treating me  like  the woman I am.’

And with this she turns and marches to the other end of the living room.

That little scene, that little 60-second drama, that just cost me mucho bucks. And all because of what? Because last night that evil  friend of hers, Janelle, told her that she saw me  in a  bar with another  woman. I swear to God, these women must have some kind of intelligence agency working for them. This city is big. There must be three, maybe four thousand bars in it. So how come I get spotted on the one time I’m having drinks with another woman?

She’s  still standing in the corner, her arms wrapped around  her.  From behind it looks as if  someone  else is hugging her. My blood is rushing. Damn, that girl has a fine ass. A big  fine ass. God  I love  that ass of hers. So why do  I gotta fool around with other women? Man, sometimes I feel so stupid  I’m  surprised  my   mother  didn’t  leave  me   on someone else’s doorstep.

‘Baby?’

She  cringes as I try to put my  hands on her shoulders. This is gonna be a tough one.

‘Sugar?  You know I only care about you… sugar.  You know that you’re the only one who rocks my  world… Baby? Baby, look at me. Baby, don’t  be  angry with me  no more. I couldn’t live  with myself if you were angry with me, baby. Baby?’

‘W hat?’

‘Come  on, baby, let’s kiss and make up.’

‘W hy don’t you go kiss your girlfriend’s ass?’

‘Baby, you know I ain’t got no one but you.’

‘Did you tell that to the bitch from last night?’

‘Baby, that woman ain’t  mean nothin’  to me. I was just thirsty, so I stop on my  way  home for a quick beer. She  just sat next to me. I swear, I don’t know that woman.’

We’re  making  progress  here.  I’m  holding her  from behind. At least she didn’t smack me again on my face. Man, that hurt. The  woman’s  arm has the velocity of  a  football making its way  to the end zone. I need to figure out what to do next. If I kiss her on the neck she might think I’m trying to seduce her. If I flick my  tongue over her ear, she’ll think the same. It’s a lose-lose situation.

‘I got a surprise for you, baby.’ Now  why did  I say that?
She  turns around and looks at me, her face  is still angry, but her eyes are considering forgiveness. IF…

‘Did you get me  something?’

No.

‘Yes, baby. I got you something real special.’

‘W hat? W hat is it?’

Now  she’s getting excited. Damn, I am  such a fool. Now what?

‘It’s a necklace.’ A necklace?
‘A necklace? W hat kind of necklace?’

‘A diamond necklace, baby. From diamonds.’

A diamond necklace, from diamonds. Nice  move, genius. And what do  you do  when she asks you where the necklace you never bought her is?

Her eyes are glimmering now.

‘Baby!’  she holds my  head in her hands, kissing me. ‘A diamond necklace?! For me?! Oh, baby, I knew you had a surprise for me. Oh baby, I’m so excited. I can’t wait to see it. W here, where is it?’

W here is it? Now  that’s a good  question.

‘It’s… It’s at the shop, baby…’

‘W hat shop?’

‘Tiffany’s.’

TIFFANY’S?!  ARE  YOU  MAD?!  W hat  has gotten into your head? There ain’t no way  I can afford that necklace.

‘BABY!!!  You  remembered!  You remembered I  showed you that necklace when we  walked down on Fifth Avenue! Oh, my  God!  I’m so happy! I can’t wait to see the look on Lashanda’s   face    when  she  sees  me    in  that  14  carat necklace!’

14 carat necklace? Rrrright.

She’s giving me a huge hug now, but that’s not the reason I find it hard breathing. Man, I knew I should have listened to my  dad.

‘Son,’ he  said to me  when I turned 18, ‘when it comes to women, silence is golden’.

2. ‘I wonder if s/he is cold’  (22 percent)

3. ‘W hy him/her and not me?’ (13 percent)

You gotta have a streak of masochism to do this job. A fter all, if  you’re  like  me, straight out of  college, then all  you really care about is getting laid and, well, getting laid. You live   each day   as if  so many more  will   follow.  And  why wouldn’t you? Most people my  age  have at least fifty, if not sixty  years  to  look  for.  So  I  guess it  does merit  some explaining as to why I’m doing this.

I do   field research.  I  go  and  interview people who’s significant other has just died. It’s  a  longitudinal study, which means that it’s scheduled to go on for about 20 years or  so.  My   boss,  Professor  Shenk,   runs  the  psycholog y department at North Western.  He  wants to know whether our attitudes towards losing our loved ones change across generations. Personally, I got more interesting questions bugging me. Like  whether Jana, his lab  assistant, wears any underwear. Or whether I’ll have acne till the day  I die. But I don’t judge other people, so when my  friend Tyron, who’s  in Shenk’s  seminar on Aging and  Death,  told  me about this gig, I jumped for it.

Not that I’m  into all  that morbid shit. Take  Tyron,  for example. He and I have been buddies since high school. But he’s got this thing with dying and grieving that freaks me out. I mean, it’s not as if anyone in Tyron’s family has died in the past fifty years. For Christ’s sake, the guy even has a dog  that’s  been in the family for over  two decades. So  if anyone has no justification enrolling in a seminar on Death and  Dying, it’s  my  man Tyron.  But I don’t  judge people. W hat’s good  for Tyron is good  by me. I guess someone has to support the black turtleneck sweater manufacturers.

Any way, I’m  digressing here.  The   point is that  when Tyron  told me   about  how he’s  bummed out because he doesn’t have the balls to do this field project for his professor, I said I’d  do  it. I didn’t  want to make Tyron  feel  bad   or any thing, but the pay  is good  and the hours are flexible. A fter all, people can die  at any time.

Then there are the perks. I get to carry around a beeper that can go  off  at any minute.  This used to freak out my Mom. She  was convinced I turned  into a  drug dealer or something, and it wasn’t till I showed her an official letter from Professor Shenk that she got off my  case. I also get to have a rental 24 hours a day. This has turned me  into quite an item with the ladies. The  way  it works is I made a deal with Ricky at Rent-A-Wreck.  I give  him 20% of  the daily rent, and he  hooks me  up with a  convertible, or a  beamer. Once  he  set me  up for a whole week with a limo. Mind you, it was a bit weird showing up in people’s driveways with a limo, especially considering they just lost a loved one.

Professor Shenk  and I get along well. He  took a  lot of time preparing me  for the job. Said  that it’s  important to keep talking about what you go through. At first I was like, cool, if you want to know how an interview with someone whose wife  kicked the bucket went, I’ll tell you. But Shenk started  asking me   weird shit  about my   mother and my childhood and whether  I was toilet trained  and stuff like that. That’s when I told him that if  he  wants me  to keep doing the job, we  have to stop having these talks about my ego and superego and shit.

Shenk  was right, though. Nothing really prepares you for meeting these people whose world has changed by  180 degrees in a split second. The  most difficult ones are the old people who’ve been married for fifty, sometimes sixty years. I ask them to rate ten statements  about their feelings, and put them in ascending order. Personally, I think that’s a bit crazy.  I mean, how can you ask someone who’s  just lost their wife  of fifty years whether  he  feels more alone than angry? But like  I said, I’m not judging anyone. And I guess that if  Shenk runs a  department, then he  must be  doing something right.

Take  last weekend, for example. I’m chillin’ in my  crib with Darlene, the chick with the fat ass who works at the checkout counter at Bed, Bath and Beyond. We’re watching Jackass, high as kites, when my beeper goes on. At first, we couldn’t  hear it on account of  Johnny  Knoxville getting thrown naked into this room with about a  million mouse traps. But the beeper kept on going. I’m not sure who was first, but at some point we  just started laughing our asses off. Any way, it took me  like  a whole hour to get dressed and step into the car (a Jaguar, no less). I arrived on location a good  45 minutes late, which if Shenk  knew, would nullify the interview on account that it has to happen within sixty minutes of the spouse learning about their partner’s death. That’s another thing that freaks me  out with these guys. They  use words like  ‘nullify’ and ‘zero hypothesis’ and shit no one in their right mind actually understands.

Any way, so I park my  Jag  in front  of  this shabby old house and make it through the front door, which is open. In the living room sits a woman. She  must be at least eighty if not more. She’s dressed, all  fancy, and with makeup. She’s sitting real still on the sofa, and next to her are two brown suitcases. The kind you’d imagine people from the Mayflower used when they came over from England or Amsterdam or wherever.

So I knock on the door, just because that’s  being polite. She  looks at me  and  says, ‘Oh, you must  be  the driver. I’m ready to go.’ And I’m like  just about to say to her that I’m not the driver, that I’m the field researcher. But something makes me  answer, ‘Yes.’ So I take her luggage and show her to my  Jag. I feel a bit guilty for a second, but then I remind myself that  the interview is technically nullified any way, so fuck it, right?

So we  drive around  town for like  half an hour,  all  the time she’s talking about her husband. How  Charlie did  this and Charlie did  that. And she’s all  calm and stuff, like  she didn’t hear less than three hours ago that her husband died. So  she tells me  that yesterday she and Charlie  celebrated their fifty seventh anniversary.  Fifty seventh anniversary man, did  you get that?

And I’m  thinking  to myself, shit,  I ain’t  even had a relationship with a  women for more than  fifty seven days. How   the  fuck do  they do  it? So  I ask her. I say, ‘Ma’am, pardon me  for being nosy and all that, but what’s the secret to such a long relationship?’

So she answers me. Get this, she says to me, ‘Son,  the secret to a  long-term relationship is frequent separations. Frequent separations and a growing loss of hearing.’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Is Booboo dead?’

‘No, darling, Booboo’s only sleeping.’

So much for Extra-Power Duracell batteries.

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Does Booboo love  me?’

‘Of course he   loves you, pumpkin!  Booboo’s your best friend!’

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Is Daddy your best friend?’

He’s three years old. How  can a three-year-old throw me off  balance that easily? I look at him. He’s  sitting on his little toy tractor, the one we got him for his second birthday. He played with it for three, maybe four days before it found its place in the garden shed, along with the other collection of Fisher-Price toys.

I kneel down next to him, but he   seems to be  more interested in the tractor’s dashboard and avoids my  eyes. He’s been like  that since Pete died. Reaching out, only to retract when I come close.

‘Of course  Daddy is my  best friend.  Daddy is my  best friend ever.’

I try hard to block the tears in my throat. Remind myself what my mother told me;  that I need to be strong enough for both of  us. I stand up and return  to the sink. I’m  done washing the dishes but I turn the water on again, just to engage in some kind of activity. Maybe if I let the water run long enough I won’t have to cry.

I look outside to our garden. Pete loved this garden. I used to taunt him, used to tell him he  should spend more time nurturing his son than his sunflowers. Now  all  that’s left  of  him  is  this  garden.  The   garden,  of  course,  and Timothy.

‘Mom?’

He never calls me  Mom.

I cringe, fearing what will  come next.

‘Yes, Tim?’

‘Is Daddy dead?’

My  gut reaction is to say ‘no’.  At  first because saying
‘yes’ doesn’t sound right, then because I don’t want to make him more anxious. I’ve already had numerous complaints from  his  teachers.  The   hitting,  the  refusal  to  eat,  the elaborate stories he  makes up about what ‘really’ happened to his father.

I turn around to face  him, leaning back on the kitchen sink. He’s sitting quietly on his tractor,  close to my  feet, looking into my eyes. I hold the counter with my two hands behind my  back for support. I can’t say a word, but my  lips are moving.

‘Yes, baby. Daddy’s dead.’

How  do you explain death to a three-year-old? You go to work one morning and come back in the evening and your husband’s dead. Your high-school sweetheart, the father of your only child, your best friend. Dead. The  fact that some
17-year-old  without a  licence cut him off on the interstate makes it all  the more surreal. The  younger generation is taking over by any means necessary.

Tim  gets off the tractor and puts his head on my  lap. I kneel down and hug him. Hug him harder than I should. Hug him as if he’s the last thing  I’ve got left.

I whisper in his ear. W hisper all  the lies I grew  up on. W hisper that I’ll never leave him, that Daddy’s looking over us from above, that one day  we’ll  all  be together again.

He raises his head and pushes away from my embrace as though he’s had enough of  my  attention. I stand upright, feeling his embrace  was meant more for me  than  for him. He turns around and heads towards the back door, dragging his tractor behind him with one hand. He walks over to the garden shed and emerges two minutes later, hands empty.

We’re walking downstairs, haven’t even entered the club. Sadik turns and looks at me, smirking. We pass two models on the way  down. I’m biting my  lip.

Down below it’s impossible to move. There are three girls here for each man. Most of them aren’t wearing much.

‘A hhh, the Kremlin!’  our driver commented knowingly earlier. ‘W here the money meets the honey’.

Sadik was too busy chopping up another line of cocaine in the back seat to pay  any attention to his remark. Cutting lines in transit isn’t  a wise thing to do. A sudden slam on the brakes or a tight left turn  can end with your trousers being covered by  angel dust. But when you are as rich as Sadik, that really doesn’t mean much. A bit of  an inconvenience in having to change your pants, perhaps.

Sadik passes the silver box   to me  and I tell him I’m staying clean tonight. He  looks at me  as if I were a  small child.

‘Suit yourself, Hermano. Suit yourself,’ he  says to me  in a  fake   Spanish  accent that doesn’t  quite fit with the fact that he  is Eg yptian with a heav y accent. ‘Just don’t come to me  later begging for some.’

I don’t  respond. I’m  not sure coming here was a  good idea, but when you’re entertaining Sadik, you try not to think too hard about what you want. He  is, after  all, my most important client. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this guy happy. God  knows  I’ve done so in the past.

The  head waiter recognises us instantly. Thank God  for that. He  leads us through the impossible mass of people to the main dining room. The  place is surreal.  Rococo style architecture with the main theme being gold. It is a hideous sight to the eyes.

The  night’s already well  under way  and some girls are dancing on the  tables. Most of  them aren’t  wearing any underwear. No one seems to have any problems with that.

The  age  group, even on the female side, is too broad to make sense. There are women here who could easily be my mother’s  age, side by side with what seem to be  a group of
14-year-old nymphs. I doubt if they are actually any older than that.

Sadik and I sit down at our table. There  are six empty seats around it. These will  fill within three minutes. No one passes on an opportunity in this place, and the women here are as ruthless as the men are rich. Two  Iranian twins sit down next to me. One of them already has her hand on the back of my neck, caressing. Sadik has some young girl with endless legs sitting on his lap, opening the buttons of his shirt. She acts as if she’s known him for all her life. Though she hasn’t, it makes not much difference to Sadik.

This is the Serengeti  of the human race. Some  are here to be eaten, some are here to eat. Sadik Maroush is here to be   fed,  and  tonight  there  seems  to  be   no  shortage  of livestock.

‘I  should see more than one Doctor,  man!  With all  the stuff that’s  in my  head, I should see two, or maybe three Doctors!’  Half   an hour  later I’m  in  the  bathroom, and there’s  a   middle-eastern  looking  guy  getting  his  hand washed by a black attendant. He  takes out a $50 bill  from his pocket and hands it over to the attendant. He grabs him by the shoulders and, lowering his voice, says: ‘I might be out of my head man, but damn do we have hot bitches at our table tonight!’

I walk out of the bathroom and decide to take a peek at the dance floor. People here are partying as if  there’s  no tomorrow. The  odd  thing is that most of them will  actually be here tomorrow, and the day  after, and the day  after. They will  party until their bodies shut down. They  will  rest for a few days, and then they will  party again. It’s their natural cycle.

I know that if I switch my brain to ‘engage’ I could have an OK time tonight. I would get laid, at least with one girl, maybe two. Possibly three. Possibly all  of them at the same time. But something  is missing tonight.  Something that’s been missing for a long time.

I return to the dining room. I could sit at the table and signal one of the waiters to do  so, but I decide to stand at the bar and order a  drink. I scan the scene around me. I don’t belong here. I want to go home. I want to call  her up and tell her I’m sorry and that I want to come back. Tell her I’m ready to leave this place and go back to the country.

‘Hermano! Que Pasa?!’

Sadik elbows me and I lose my breath for a second. I look into his empty eyes. Sadik is somewhere else. He  hugs me and gives me  a kiss on the cheek. And for a second there, I think I can make out the first signs of a teardrop forming on the corner of his eye.

How  could any thing I am  about to say seem right? You gave  me  every thing I could ever  ask for.  You brought me into your heart, and your home, without asking, even once, for any thing in exchange. But now, 12 months, three days and 22 hours later, I have to leave you, Nathan.

Do you remember the first night we  met? Not the first night we went out, but the first time we saw each other? It was at the documentary at the Lighthouse. We were both stuck in the front row, sitting next to each other. We couldn’t help but look at each other after, for about a dozen times, we started laughing at exactly the same second. It was a good movie, but  it  was  hard  to  pay   attention  to  what  was happening on the screen. I had my   left hand  locked in Jacob’s – that guy I was going out with at the time. But that didn’t  seem to bother you. I remember how, when you sat down next to me, you didn’t waste a  second. You turned around to me, looked me  in the eyes and said, ‘Hello’. It felt like  I’d known you forever.

Now  that I think of it, I should have known this would end in tears. Just look at how it all  started. On my  left, I’m holding hands with Jacob. On my  right, unbeknownst to him, I’m holding your hand. I don’t think I was ever excited like  I was that night.

And the many nights that followed.

But now, I feel  exhausted, Nathan. I feel  tired. I feel spent.

I’m stuck again.

I almost deleted this letter and started again. I wish I could tell you this face  to face, but I can’t find the courage to do  so. They  say you can’t  hear or see any thing around you.  But  knowing  you,  that’s  probably  not true. You’re probably lying there in room number nine, the life support machine pumping air into your lungs, up and down, up and down.  And all   that  while you’re  probably  playing  dead, getting everyone to believe you can’t hear a thing, so they’ll feel  comfortable to say every thing and any thing about you. All  the things you’ve  never heard. All  the things you’ve never known. And when you’ve  heard enough, you’ll  just open one eye, look at us, and grin.

W hat would be  the first thing you’d say? ‘I forgive you,’ or ‘Fuck  you all’?  Nah, knowing you, you’ll  just ask if we can turn ESPN  back on and get you some beer.

Shit. I’m crying now. How  is it that the things I hated most about you are the things I miss most now? All  your stupid little idiosyncrasies. The  way  you’d  constantly say
‘hmmm’ when someone was talking with you. The  way  your eyes would race across the room every three seconds, even when we were having the deepest conversation in the world. Those silly tiger-print underwear you’d take with you on a trip.

I stop and read what I wrote. It’s a crap obituary, Nathan. It’s a crap goodbye letter too. It’s crap by any standard and measure. But then any thing I’d  produce would always be crap compared to you. You wrote better than me, expressed yourself better than me, cooked better than me. Heck, you even looked better than I do. But now all that doesn’t matter. Now  all  you can do  is, well, crap. Hah hah. Such a  funny girl I am.

Any way,  I’m   ditching this  letter.  This  won’t   be   the version that I’ll  leave under your pillow. This one’s  going straight for recycling. Not that it matters. It’s not as if you’ll be reading any letters soon. You’re almost dead, aren’t you? Nathan? W here are you, Nathan? Are you still with us, just taking a  bit of a  snooze in that hospital bed? Or  have you left a  long time ago, letting us make fools of  ourselves by waiting for you to reappear?

I’m going now. For real. I won’t come and visit you again. I won’t  write, I won’t  call  your mother and ask how your day  was. I won’t even think about you.

Yeah, right.

I just want you to know, Nathan, that I’ll  never forget. I’ll  never forget  that first time you looked at me  and said hello. I’ll never forget how I cried that night, in bed  with Jacob, thinking about you, knowing that one day  I would have to lose you.

So this is it, Nathan. Goodbye.

‘Be  like  what?’ he  answers, though I have a  feeling he knows exactly what she means.

‘You know what  I mean,’ she says.

‘Us. Will we always be like  this?’

‘Be like  what?’ he  asks.

She   gets up  from  her  chair  and  walks towards the bathroom. He  turns  around,  following her  with his eyes. It’s the first time he’s noticed me. He  looks at me  for a split second, comparing me  with some profiling system he’s got in his head. I guess my  profile matches because now he’s giving me  the ‘can’t live  with them, can’t live  without them’ look. I nod back.

‘I used to be  sensitive,’ he  says, turning his chair a  bit closer to me. ‘I used to put all  my  cards on the table, you know, say every thing I felt and that shit. God, what a fool I was,’ he says after a brief pause between sentences. ‘But you know what they say.’

I don’t, but we’re doing this male instant-bonding thing, so I nod my  head as if I do.

‘She’s a cute girl, she really is. Great in bed as well. Really gives it all she’s got. But I know that if I let her get too close, she’ll freak out and run away.

‘Take  yesterday, for example. She  comes back from the hairdresser.  Looks  like    she  stepped  out  of   Vogue   or something. I mean, I could hardly breathe when I saw her coming in. Do  you think I said any thing about her new hairdo?’ He looks at me, waiting for an answer. I shake my head. ‘Of course not,’ he  says.

He picks up a pack of cigarettes and taps it on the table a few  times. Before he  takes one out he  gestures towards me.
‘No thanks, I’m trying to quit,’ I lie. I’ve never smoked in my life.

‘She  gave  me  hell for two hours.  You know, the silent treatment. But then I came up to her from behind, cupped her breasts in my  hands and told her that if she keeps on avoiding me  I’ll  hang myself in the basement. Then  I told her she’s got the best pair of tits in the world.’

He  sits back in his chair and blows three perfect smoke rings.

‘So I’m massaging her from behind and she’s not saying a word. Not stopping me or any thing, but not saying a word. Finally, she speaks. “W hat about my  hair?” she asks me.’

A tall blond just entered the bar and my new-found friend is scanning her, no doubt comparing her to another, albeit different, profiling system.

‘Your hair is great, baby,’ he  says to me, catching me  off guard, till I realize he’s talking about his girlfriend.

‘“You’ve got the best hair in the world,” I tell her. She turns around to me  and says, “you really think so?” I tell her that I don’t only think so, I know so. And that’s it, man.

I’m home-free.’

I contemplate asking him how long they’ve been together, or where they met, but the guy is on a roll, and I don’t think he  needs my  encouragement to keep talking.

‘Best sex we ever had,’ he  blurts. ‘Fucked like  rabbits,’ he says. ‘Like rabbits I tell you,’ and with this he  looks into my eyes, ensuring  I  understood  the  full  magnitude  of  his metaphor.

‘The   first  rule  with  women is  not  to  pay   too  much attention to what they say.’

His girlfriend is back from the bathroom. She  returns to her seat and he  adjusts his to face  her.

‘I want a divorce,’ she says.

‘I’m sorry, what did  you say?’ he  asks.

‘You heard me. I want a divorce.’

He chuckles once, twice, then turns silent again.

‘YOU want to divorce ME?!’

‘Yes.’

‘And when  did  you come up with this… this crazy idea?’

‘In the bathroom.’

‘In the bathroom. In the bathroom. W hat? Just now?’

‘Yes. Just now.’

‘And what do you expect me  to do?’  he  asks her, in a tone that was meant to be forceful, but lost steam somewhere on the way.

‘You can do whatever you want. I’m getting a divorce.’

‘You can’t get a divorce!’ he  says, raising his voice  high enough to grab the attention of the adjacent tables.

She  stretches her long white arm and takes the cigarette pack in her hand. She  pulls one out and lights it. She  leans back in her  chair,  blows a  long stream  of  smoke in his direction and says, ‘W hy not?’

‘Because…  because… you can’t.  Because I love  you.’  At this she lets out a short laugh.

‘Johnny,  the only person you ever  loved was yourself. You don’t  love  me. You’re  afraid  of  me. Don’t  confuse the two.’

He takes a final puff from his cigarette, examines it and flicks it out on the floor. He turns around to me, winks, and says, ‘The  second rule with women is not to pay  too much attention to what they say.’