Suicidals Anonymous
by J. Robert King
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1: An Ending For a Beginning
In which you save our protagonist from a spectacular suicide. . . .
I stand at the end of my life. It’s a nine-inch ledge of crumbling cement on the sixth floor of a brownstone on Jackson. I suppose the literal end of my life will be the sidewalk below. It is wet. Rain lashes it and anybody who comes out on it. Nobody’s out in this cold, spitting night. Nobody but suicidals. My body will probably lie there next to the Journal-Sentinel box until morning. Then maybe I’ll make the front page one last time.
When I was twenty-six, I made the front page routinely—"Local Wunderkind Wins Pulitzer," "East-Side Novelist Goes Hollywood," "Marquette Lands Prize-Winning Professor." My first book, Metro Mythoi, was a critical and popular smash. I was everybody’s darling. My second book came out—Rachel. Then everybody dumped me. The whole world had a sleep-over to which I wasn’t invited. My name came up, and everybody found out that everybody else secretly hated me. They decided to keep it a secret no longer. A wunderkind at twenty-six, a washout at thirty-two, and soon, dead.
It’s a bad thing when you don’t live as long as Mozart.
Will they mourn me? That’s too much to ask. Will they at least stop jeering me? I’ll not even hope for that. Will they remember me? Not for long. But maybe, when they find me, and they find the satchel I clutch, and the manuscript—maybe somebody will publish my third book—Death’s Angel. And maybe it will redeem me.
Cement cracks beneath my shoe. A chunk of it bounds away. It’s happening already. I’m falling.
Jesus! I wanted a final few thoughts—wanted to control this, but—
My butt hits the ledge. I’m toppling out over Jackson. Jesus!
I lash out for a handhold. I catch a fragile round plastic thermometer by the window. It cracks loose in my hand. I’m tumbling away.
My other hand grasps the ledge—both hands now. I’m hanging by my fingers. I could never do a pull-up in my life!
That’s funny. I could never do a pull-up in my life, and this is my death. That’s funny.
What’s not funny is that I’ve dropped Death’s Angel. The cheap plastic satchel is just a brown rectangle as it spirals down to the street. Maybe it will hold together. Maybe it will be close enough to my body they won’t just throw it out. . . .
Death’s Angel never even reaches the street. A midnight bus rams it. The satchel tears. The manuscript explodes in a white flurry. Pages fly in angel choirs about the speeding bus. At each side street, more of my ideas flood away in cross breezes, irretrievable. My third novel, my only hope for redemption, is road-kill.
Well, that’s it. Anger is stronger than mortal fear. Now I could do a couple hundred God-damned pull-ups. My feet kick the brick wall, and I haul myself up. The cement is crumbling beneath my fingers, but I don’t care. I haul myself up. In moments, I’m sitting on the ledge, heels against the wall, elbows on my knees, head hanging in the cold rain.
God damn it! How could this suicide get any worse?
Then you crawl out onto a ledge across the street. Your building’s better than mine, an eighties-era thing of white plaster and Cream-City brick. You’ve got nice hair—its the first thing that shows as you climb out the window. I like your face too—as much as I can see in the spitting rain—but you’re so sad. I can see that much. And you wouldn’t be out here if you weren’t about to do what I’m about to do.
Wait a minute. How am I going to get the front page if you’re jumping too?
"Hey!" I shout, climbing to my feet on the ledge. "Hey! What are you doing!"
You look up. You see me for the first time. You’re squinting in the rain, or maybe its tears, but I can’t help thinking you don’t like what you see. "What do you think I’m doing?"
"Oh, no, you aren’t! Not here! Not now!"
You shake your head, and the wind blows your hair. "You can’t talk me down. I’m going to do it!"
"I don’t care if you do it!" I insist. "Go ahead. Kill yourself! Just not here. Get your own God-damned corner!"
"What right do you have?"
"I was here first!"
You glare at me.
"Look, I’m a broke, blackballed, alcoholic has-been whose magnum opus just took the Jackson bus downtown!"
"I don’t care!" you bellow.
"Well then, fuck you!"
"Fuck you!"
Everything has gone wrong tonight. The slip, the book, the weather, and now, you. You’re looking like you’re about ready to jump. You’re leaning out over the street, only two fingers on the casement.
"So that’s it!" I shout. "Those are your last words? Your last act is stealing my suicide from me? That’s how you’re going to leave this world?"
You draw back from the edge and look levelly at me. "Yeah, and I leave the world with you yelling at me!"
"But this is my street, my apartment," I protest. "This is the only place, the only time it makes sense for me to jump! You’re going to steal that from me?"
The rain has pasted your hair to your head and your shirt to your shoulders. You’re looking right at me, right into my eyes. Nobody’s looked into my eyes for five years. In fact, nobody’s ever really looked into my eyes, really seen the darkness there and not looked away. And I return your look. I know you. I understand your misery, your despair. We are both alone. Together, we are alone.
A decision enters your face. Your shoulders slump in resignation. "Listen, we can work this out. We can figure out how we can both go, just the way we want."
"Yes," I reply. I feel such a strong, strange connection to you. "Is there somewhere we can go, out of the rain? Someplace we can get some coffee and talk?"
"I know the perfect place. It’s open all night. Have you got a car?"
"No. Just a bus pass."
"I’ll call a cab. Get changed. Be ready in ten minutes, when the cab comes."
I start back through the window, and then jolt with sudden fear. "You’re not going to wait till I’m inside and then jump, are you?"
"Of course not," you shout, withdrawing into your casement. "Just meet me in the cab.
My heart pounds in my chest as I step into my dingy little apartment. Water puddles from my feet on scarred pine floors. It’ll seep through, and Mrs. Chez below will put in another complaint. I don’t care. I’m excited to meet you. I’m excited about something for the first time in years.
I drag the cold wet clothes off of me and fling them in the bathtub. I towel and brush my hair, yank out my jeans, a red T-shirt, socks, and worn-out tennis shoes. The laces are tied where they broke.
It suddenly occurs to me—what if this whole thing is an elaborate ploy on your part? What if you’re not really interested in killing yourself? Maybe you saw this author out on a ledge and you said, How can I talk that poor soul down? How can I stop that jumper? So you went with the story.
Well, that would be the biggest kick in the teeth yet. I don’t want a savior. I want a friend, a companion—someone as seriously interested in suicide as I am. I’ll have to grille you a little to make sure you’re that someone.
I pull on my old Member’s Only jacket and head downstairs.
The cab is waiting on your side of the street, and you are already within. I fling back the brownstone door and dart across traffic. Rain punches my jacket like little fists. I clamber into the cab. No sooner than my door is shut, the taxi pulls out amid hissing cars and heads downtown.
You look great. Your hair is wet, of course, and occasionally a drop of water slips from one combed lock to light on your forehead and trickle down. Your eyes are deep and beautiful and sad, your nose proud, your lips torn a little from worrying teeth.
No sooner have I climbed into the cab than you take and shake my hand. Your fingers are cold.
"I’m glad we’ll get to talk," you say.
Are these the words of a suicidal or a savior? I nod and smile slightly. "Yes. I’m glad." We ride down the shushing street. Buildings form deep canyons around us. "Where are we going? What’s open so late?"
You pull a card out of your jacket pocket and hand it over. It’s printed on beige parchment stock, raised letters in royal blue and a quaint little logo in one corner—a batch of lilies encircled in a noose. The text read:
Bad Credit, Low Credit, No Credit?
Want to kill yourself and don’t know how?
We can help.
Suicidals Anonymous
7112 Kilbourn Ave.
Next door to H. and R. Block
I wilt away. If this is going to be an evangelical brainwashing session, I’m jumping out of the cab and hoping for another Jackson-street bus to finish the job.
"What’s this?"
"I don’t know, exactly," you confess. "A friend gave me the card. He said it was an all-night bar that specialized in suicide counseling."
"Don’t they all," I say grimly. You laugh. I look in your eyes. It’s so nice to see you laugh. "Did your . . . friend go to this place much?"
"Three or four times, but that was almost a year ago."
"Why’d he stop going?"
"He killed himself."
"Pretty effective counseling."
You nod. "It’s worked for everybody I’ve known."
As the cab pulls up before a run-down bar in the middle of the city, I smile at you. "Well, let’s go inside. What do we have to lose?"

2: Death Be Proud
In which a new spectacular suicide looms up before our heroes. . . .
We climb the slouching cement stairs and pass through a door that can hardly keep the rain out. Beyond lies a seedy downtown tavern like any other. It has wood-grain paneling, suggestive posters, bottles of spirits ranked and underlit like trophies, and a mild-mannered barkeep who cannot resist the compulsive movement of his half-clean rag.
Unlike most seedy taverns, this one has a bouncer. She’s a strapping lass, with the Germanic constitution of a peptic donkey. "You been here before?"
I shake my head. You are shaking yours.
"I’ll have to see some ID," the bouncer says.
We dig in our pockets and surrender the cards. She looks at them critically, and then glances at the barkeep and the drinkers gathered beyond. "Announce yourself."
"What?" I ask. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a theme bar, like the Safehouse, but for manic depressives.
The woman snorts. "I’ll do it for you, this first time. Folks, this is Chris—a suicidal."
The drinkers mumble out, "Hi, Chris."
I lift my eyebrows in surprise, but already you are providing your name, and the room echoes it back to you.
As the bouncer hands us our cards, I take your arm and hiss quietly in your ear, "What kind of place have you brought us to?"
A sheepish smile crosses your face, and you walk me toward the bar. "Let’s see."
The bartender is a short, rotund man with red whiskers and eyebrows that transcend the limits of his skull. "Name your poison."
"What’ve you got?" I ask. We settle onto adjacent stools beside an old man who is getting sadly and irretrievably wasted.
"We’ve got everything—strychnine, arsenic, chloroform, carbon-monoxide—"
I laugh. It’s funny, right? "Can you make me a zombie?"
The barman laughs too. "I can make you a corpse, but not a zombie."
"What’s in a ‘corpse’?"
"Same thing as in a zombie—" the barkeep winks at the old man beside me "—but without the spirits."
The old man lets out an amused snort. I wonder if he can breathe all right.
I gesture to him. "He seems to be drinking something plenty strong. I’ll have whatever he’s having."
"No you won’t. Charlie’s on Step Eleven of this twelve-step program. You, on the other hand—I don’t even know your full name. . . ."
"I’m Chris Richford. This is—"
You say your name.
"We’ve got to go through twelve steps to get a beer?" I ask a little testily.
The barkeep grabs a couple Pilsner glasses and fills them at the tap. Beer rolls golden and beautiful into the leggy things. I watch the tiny bubbles crowd happily together like New Years revelers. "Nope. Saying your name’s enough to get a beer." He sets them before us.
We drink. Beer is one of the few things I’ll miss. It warms me, makes me feel like talking. I wipe foam from my lip. "So, what are the steps in this twelve-step program?"
Red whiskers bristle. "Step One—admit you’ve got a problem—"
"Admit I want to kill myself?"
"That’s not your problem. That’s your solution. Why do you want to kill yourself? That’s your problem."
I tell of my best-selling first novel, my bombing second novel, and the third novel that took the Jackson bus downtown. You tell of your woes, the typical stuff—unfulfilled dreams, bad family life, tough love-life. I wonder again whether you’re serious about killing yourself or just want to save me. Whatever the reason, you’re here, and I’m glad.
"Good," the barkeep says. "Step Two is assigning blame. Who makes you want to kill yourself?"
I take a deep breath. Authors have whole litanies of blame. I launch into mine. "If my agent hadn’t sold Metro Mythoi to Barkley and Taylor, they’d not have promoted it out of all expectation. They made it into something it wasn’t. Readers fell for it, bought it, read it, got their friends to read it—and everybody secretly hated it. Then Rachel came out—a much better book—and they took out their anger, crucified it and me. . . ."
"You blame your agent, Barkley and Taylor, the readers, their friends, everybody . . . ?" the barkeep echoes.
I shake my head. "No. It’s me. The whole damned thing is me. I got what I wished for, and now I wish for death."
"Same here," you say. "I don’t blame anybody but myself."
"Excellent." The word comes through self-satisfied whiskers. "You can’t kill yourself when you blame everybody else. The healthy suicidal directs anger within. Step Three—choosing suicide. In the words of the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich—‘What is suicide? . . . Suicide is a hurried escape from danger. It is the act of a child who has been scared by life.’ Do you want to commit suicide?"
I nod vigorously. "Absolutely."
I look at you, wondering about your response. This is a critical moment for us. I want you here with me, but as an equal, a confidante, not somebody trying to keep me alive.
"I’m in," you say with a shrug.
"All right, we move to Step Four." The barkeep leans down conspiratorially, his hands resting in silverware trays beneath the counter. "Are you interested in a murder-suicide?"
I hiss. "Hell, no. People who do that are assholes. Assholes!"
"I say, if you’re going to kill yourself, kill yourself, and let everybody else go on living," you say.
A relieved sigh emerges from the barkeep’s lips. He eases up from the bar, lifts a .357, and waggles it lightly beside his ear. "I’m glad of that. If you’d answered yes, I’d’ve had to shoot you. We get a lot of funding from McDonald’s, K-Mart, and the National Association of Mall Security Guards because we kill murder-suicides before they can head for the food-court."
Our eyes are wide as we watch him deposit the gun below. I slip my hand under the bar and feel a number of splintery holes in the paneling in front of my seat.
"What’s wrong?" the barkeep asks, studying our faces. "You just said you wanted to kill yourself. If I’d’ve shot you, it would’ve been an assisted suicide. No jury in the world would—"
"What’s Step Five?" I interrupt, my voice a little tremulous.
Rubbing his hands together, the barkeep says with relish. "Now we get to the good stuff. Step Five is method—how do you want to kill yourself? It should fit with Step One—your problem. Crazy people destroy their brains. Lovesick people destroy their hearts. Ill people poison themselves. See?"
"I’m not sure I do—"
"There’s an interesting story about a family with four kids. The first one hits puberty and starts hearing terrifying voices. He realizes he’s going schitzo and drives his truck through a cornfield into a tree. His brother hits puberty next and realizes he’s going schitzo. He turns his car on in a garage. His sister goes schitzo, denies it, runs from home, stalks David Letterman, and finally lies down on a railroad track. Do you see? Each is a vehicular suicide, and in each, the vehicle represents the disease. The first kid actively kills himself with the disease. The second passively lets the disease kill him. The daughter runs until the disease is so enormous and fast and unstoppable that it roars over the top of her." He gives an appreciative sigh. "That family had a genius for suicide."
My mouth is pretty dry. The beer is draining every ounce of liquid to my bladder. "I was planning to jump with my latest manuscript—I wanted to make headlines, and get the book published—"
"Jumping, yes. That’s perfect. Falling from fame into fame. The publicity aspect is perfect," the barkeep enthuses. "Where were you jumping?"
"From my apartment, on the east side."
He clucks. "A four or five story jump? Nah. You’d’ve just broken your legs and been a laughing stock. Besides, your apartment’s where you write your books, and you’ve got no problem writing them. It’s publishing that’s the bitch. Why not jump from where your books were published—from Barkley and Taylor?"
I shrug. "I guess I could. They’ve got offices in the Sears Tower."
The barkeep beams. "Perfect! You couldn’t get a more public venue than that." He turns toward you. "What about your method?"
"Well," you say, "my biggest problem is I’ve never been able to get close to the people around me." You grab my hand. Your fingers are warm. "If I went with you to the Sears Tower, and tried to stop you and couldn’t, and then jumped with you—that would be my perfect suicide. . . ."
It sounds suspicious, like you’re just trying to save my life. There’s a real attraction between us, and I’m afraid this is turning into a love thing. It’s best left a death thing.
The barkeep seems satisfied. "Step Six—orchestration. It’s next to impossible to jump from the Sears Tower—all glass-enclosed. But if you were a couple of FCC engineers checking the broadcast towers on the roof . . ." He gestures us toward a room behind the bar. "We’ll set you up with clipboards, fake IDs, jumpsuits, hard hats—"
I rise and start to follow. "You’ve got all that stuff back here?"
"Sure. This branch of SA was founded by the Solomon Juneau Repertory Thespians—now defunct."
A great crash comes at the bar. My breath catches. I whirl.
Charlie has fallen between bar stools. He lies there as still and sloppy as a laundry sack. Two people lean over him. One man checks for a pulse.
"He’s dead!" the man wails, and then, "Hooray for Charlie!"
The other gives a whoop. They hoist the corpse and carry it about the bar. People begin singing. "Nah nah nah nah! Nah nah nah nah! Hey hey hey, go-od-bye!"
"Nice job, Charlie," the barkeep shouts. "You finally made it!" To us, he says, "Come on back. You’ll be just as dead as him, soon enough."
"But we’re only on Step Six. What about the rest?"
"Step Seven is writing your note. We’ll talk about that while you get changed. Step Eight is killing yourself. Step Nine is going back to Step One if you blow Step Eight. Step Ten—ditto Step Nine. Step Eleven is that I kill you, like I did for Charlie. After three failed attempts, it’s clear you’re just in it for the free drinks and conversation."
As he ushers us into the crowded prop closet, I ask, "What’s Step Twelve?"
"Step Twelve? If you don’t die in Step Eleven you’re an Undying One. You’ve got unfinished business, and you can’t die. They’re rare—never met one myself—but you never know." He jabs my chest. "You might be my first. Now let’s get you dressed to kill."

3: Window-Washer’s Nightmare
In which our heroes leap from the Sears Tower. . . .
You and I stand side-by-side atop the Sears Tower, ready to jump.
The city below, swathed in night, is beautiful. Windows make glowing mosaics. Buckingham Fountain whispers. Grant Park spreads its wooden arms out, holding back the black, black Lake. A cold wind comes off those waves and bustles past us.
It’s a good night to die.
I hold your hand. It’s warm. You smile sadly at me. The wind tugs at your hair, clamped beneath a hard-hat with a plastic strap. Our orange jumpsuits rustle nervously. My fake FCC ID badge makes a sharp, dry sound as it strikes the canvas breast pocket. Our disguises are completed by clipboards, which add authenticity and keep the wind from stealing our suicide notes.
I lift my clipboard and clear my throat. "Well, let’s read these and get down to business."
You give a dry laugh. "Get down to business. That’s pretty good."
"Yeah."
"And, you know, these are jumpsuits."
I’m a little unsettled. This is an important moment. You don’t seem very serious. Maybe a recitation will put you in the mood. "My note reads, ‘Good-bye, cruel world — ’ "
You laugh again.
I glare.
You wave your hand before your face. "I just thought of that old poster, with the kid sitting in the toilet, ready to flush, and the line ‘Good-bye, cruel world — ’ "
"You’re laughing at a suicide note?" I ask, incredulous. "You're laughing at a writer’s suicide note? Are you gonna still be laughing when I’m a smear on the street?"
That gets through. You straighten up. "I don’t want you to be a smear on the street."
"Oh, here we go!" I say, tossing my hands out. "I knew it! I knew you’d try to stop me!"
"Of course you knew it," you reply angrily. "You knew it because I told you as much back at Suicidals Anonymous. I said my perfect suicide was to try to convince you not to jump, to fail, and finally to jump with you."
I give a long sigh. "So, that’s all you’re doing? This is part of your perfect suicide?"
"Sure."
"It’d better be," I rumble, crossing arms over my chest. "So, get on with it. Try to convince me not to jump. I can tell you’ve been thinking about this all the way down I-94 and all the way up the elevator."
Taking a deep breath, you say, "Okay, Chris. You want to kill yourself because everybody ripped apart your second book and now you can’t get anything published — "
"That makes it sound cheap — "
"Let me finish!" you insist. "You want to kill yourself because you’re a storyteller, and nobody’s listening. You think if you kill yourself, everybody will start reading your stuff again. Isn’t that what your books are? Suicide notes. Each one, a long suicide note, telling everything that’s wrong with the world. But nobody’s reading them. You think if you kill yourself, they’ll have to read them. . . ."
I’m astonished. From that first moment above Jackson Street, you’ve stared right into my eyes, seen my soul, and not looked away. You’re seeing it right now.
"Isn’t that what you were doing when you climbed out on the windowsill of your apartment? A writer looking for a reader? Readers keep writers alive, and you found one. I’m your reader. You don’t want to kill yourself, you only want to be read, and I’m reading you."
I’m moved. You’re right. That’s why writing is so hard. Every time I write, I’m climbing out on a ledge and hoping somebody gives me a reason not to jump. You’ve given me that reason. . . . almost.
"You’re wrong about only one thing. I do want to die. I’ve always wanted to die. Suicide is the act of a child scared by life, and I’ve always been scared by it. Loving you would only make me more scared. Loving you or anyone or anything — Faulkner said the sound of a clock ticking is ‘loss, loss, loss, loss. . . .’ I’ve always known I would lose everything. If I loved you, I would have everything to lose."
Now you are moved — moved to tears. I wonder whether you cry for me or for yourself. If you cry for me it’s because you never wanted to kill yourself but were only trying to save me. If you cry for yourself, it’s because you’re about ready to jump too.
"Here," I say. "Let me read you what I wrote — but no laughing this time."
You solemnly shake your head.
" ‘Good-bye, cruel world. Yes, cruel. The one thing we all want is to live, and the one thing we are all assured is to die. Cruelty. God wishes it to be so. A child born into a prison strives to love cement and steel, but I’m done striving. There is no reason to say more. I’ve written it all before, for any who would read. . . .’ "
You’ve stopped crying. You wear a very brave face. You lift your note. "Mine says just this: ‘I knew I couldn’t stop you, so now I join you.’ "
I smile and squeeze your hand.
You squeeze back. "I really think I could fall for you."
That’s funny, right? Now I’m the one laughing.
You nervously echo the sound, but you don’t let go of my hand.
"I could fall for you too. I could love you almost as much as I hate life. I’m glad we’ll be doing this together. This suicide is going much better than the last one."
"Yeah," you say with a shrug, "there’s nothing left to do but jump." You look out at the nighttime city.
It is beautiful. The lights below seem a vast, inverted chandelier, jutting up to illuminate the black heavens. There are no stars tonight, only a woolen blanket of darkness. The myriad lights of the city turn the belly of the sky blood-red. Mists coil like figures out of Dante. In this obverse cosmology, hell fills the skies and the lights of heaven rise from below. We — you and I — our bodies will flee downward like heaven-bound souls.
I reach my clipboard around you, cup your back, and draw you into a kiss. You clutch me with your clipboard and return the kiss. Your lips are warm, the last warmth I will feel on this earth. "I am so glad you are here to share this moment with me. If there were a priest nearby, I’d want to get married before we jumped. How glorious, to consummate on the way down — and then death do us part."
You pull away. Our clipboards swing free.
There is cold wind on my lips. My eyes tear.
Yours are clear. "Let’s go."
"Let’s."
Side by side, hand in hand, we draw a deep breath, and leap.
"God! God! God! Jesus! Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh! Oh! Oh, God Jesus! Oh God!"
Glass flashes past. Steel. Windows, spinning. Not rectangles. Rhombuses. Trapezoids. Everything tilts. It’s all whirled together. A cyclone of glass. Lights. Crazy. The wind. The roaring throat of God.
"God! God! Oh, shit! Oh, Jesus God! Oh shit! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
Your hand — I hold your hand. You fall with me. We fall together. Wind beats the shit out of us.
"Shit!" We couldn’t consummate in this. "Shit!"
The wind blasts. It shoves us up against the glass. We’re thudding along the steel sills. We’re cheese on a giant cheese grater.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"
Despite a strong beginning, this suicide is going sour.
Something socks my ankle. It feels broken! Something else yanks on the crackling bone. I flip over. You hang below me.
Above, there’s a buzzing sound, like a really long zipper unzipping. My leg wobbles, an agitator on spin cycle. We’re slowing.
I look up to see what’s going on.
The hem of my pant leg is snagged on a metal jag on the side of the Sears Tower. The canvas jumpsuit is unraveling. A half-inch strip of cloth is tearing loose, right around my leg. A ribbon of fabric joins me to the fortieth floor. The rip spirals from my ankle to my knee. It’s slowing us.
Damn. Just my luck.
I look down at you. Your hair flaps about your face. We jumped with our hard-hats on. Pretty stupid. The ground is soaring up to meet us.
"Stuck!" I shout. "Stuck!
"Fuck!" you agree.
"No, stuck!" I point.
The fabric continues to uncoil. My leg is bare. The rip loops my hips. An unraveling cord of canvas trails us. It whaps against the side of the Sears Tower. Already, my orange jumpsuit spans twenty floors. There’s at least twenty more. The tear spirals around my waist. Steel sills slap my naked butt. God is spanking me.
As cloth rips free from my nipples, I realize we won’t die. No. Living would be more unbearable — humiliating. We won’t die. We’ll be Undying Ones not because we have unfinished business but because the joke is better if the butt of it lives on.
"Let go!" you shout. There’s still ten floors to hard concrete, enough to kill. "Let go!"
I realize only now that you’ve never been faking it. You’ve always wanted to kill yourself. Maybe I was the one who didn’t. . . .
"No!" I say. "We’ll try again, together!"
"Let go!" There are only eight floors left.
"Fuck you!"
Six floors.
"Fuck you!"
Four floors.
Only my collar remains.
"We’re back to that, then — !" I shout, but my protest is caught short when the last of my jumpsuit snags around my throat.
I am jerked tight, and think for a moment I’ll die by hanging. You yank to a halt, cracking the whip. The last threads tear. We’re falling, two floors to concrete.
I’m still holding your hand. I’m proud of that. Somewhere I lost my clipboard, my suicide note, my clothes, but I’m still holding onto you. I wave my free arm around and wriggle my way below.
Garbed only in a hard-hat, I hit the cement and pull you down on top of me. I break your fall. You break me. There is a smacking sound and a smell like fresh-ground chuck.
At first there is red. Then all the world goes black and silent, blissfully so.

4: Be Careful What You Wish For
In which an avid cult springs up around our heroes. . . .
I awake to the dim lights of a hospital room, hastily eclipsed by your hand.
You force my eyelids closed and hiss, "Don’t open your eyes!"
"What?"
"Don’t struggle. Don’t move your mouth. Talk like you’re mumbling in your sleep. They’re watching."
"Who’s watching?" I mutter.
"Everybody," you reply. There is a hushed excitement in your voice, and your hand is trembling as you withdraw it from my forehead. "Everybody—doctors, nurses, NBC, CNN. . . ."
"You’ve got to be kidding—"
"Don’t move your lips!" you whisper insistently. "Your followers will flood in here faster than you can imagine."
"Followers? I don’t have any followers. I don’t even have any readers."
"You’re outselling the Bible, Chris. You’ve got readers."
"I’m what?"
"It all started five years ago, when they found us lying on the sidewalk below the Sears Tower—"
"Five years ago?"
"You’ve been in coma since then. I didn’t have more than bruises, but you had multiple contusions, organ damage, and a whopper of a concussion. The hard-hat saved your life—"
"Whoopee. . . ."
"Everybody said it was a miracle, jumping from the Sears Tower and living. I told them about SA, about Undying Ones. I told them about your book, Death’s Angel, how it got flung all over the place by the Jackson-Street bus. Pages of Death’s Angel started popping up. People found them everywhere, read them avidly. Of course, they made no sense, just fragments, but people read them all the same. They seemed like prophecies that way. Soon, people had turned up thousands of pages—"
"Thousands? That book was only three hundred thirty pages long."
"Forgeries, fakes. Scholars have written dissertations on which are authentic. Four different publishers have put out definitive editions. There are thousands of Web sites claiming to have the complete, authoritative text of Death’s Angel."
I give a groan. "Why do they even care?"
"Don’t you understand, Chris? You’re a messiah now. You fell from heaven. You’re death’s poster child. You’ve blown Kevorkian off the map. Now everybody who cares about death cares about you—and that’s everybody. Right-to-Life people got you put on life-support. Right-to-Die people sued to take you off. Your followers want you to die and live on immortally. Your enemies want you to wake and face charges. . . ."
"What’s all this nonsense?"
"People around the world are leaping from buildings because of you. People are dying with Death’s Angel in their hands. Cults worship you. You mobilize people—"
"And I’m here, immobilized—"
"There have been ten separate attempts on your life, different fanatical groups who all claim you as their savior. Every time you’ve lived—the hospital has saved you. Every time your legend has only grown. You’ve been on suicide watch for five years now, even though you haven’t even been awake to kill yourself."
"Just my luck—"
"At all hours, five federal agents watch the doors and windows of this room. You are the single biggest national security risk, and you grow more dangerous every day. The only thing the government fears more than your living another day is your dying at a bad time. The nation is on the brink of civil war."
"You’ve got to be kidding."
"I’m not," you say gravely. "I wish I were. Listen. Do you hear that sound outside? Some of your followers . . ."
As your voice drops away, I hear the shush of cars passing on rainy streets, and the sound of inexpert but ardent singing: "All we are saying is give death a chance. . . ."
"I swear to you, Chris, if the surveillance cameras glimpse your eyes opening again, Feds will draw their guns, and cultists will flood the hospital. Ghettos will burn. Quebec will break from Canada—"
"Quebec!"
You sigh raggedly. "It’s what you wanted. Readers. You’ve got readers."
"But they’re not reading me. They’re reading forgeries."
"Some are reading you—"
"Even if they are, they’re completely missing the point. They’re reading their own paranoid delusions into everything."
I can feel your shrug move through the bed. "Of course. They’re readers."
Miserable, I mutter, "Why can’t I die?"
"I’ve wondered that myself for five years."
"Hey—"
You sound apologetic. "Sorry. It’s just been tough on me."
"But you did stay," I say appreciatively.
"Of course I stayed. I love you." You squeeze my hand.
I breathe deeply. "I love you too. But what are we going to do?"
"Don’t worry. I’ve got the whole thing worked out," you say. "It’s been an option for a year and a half now, but I wasn’t willing to take them up on it, not while you were in coma."
"What option? Take who up on what?"
"The NSC and Disney have worked together to create a series of animatronic Chris Richfords. They’ve even made a few me’s. They’ve offered to replace us with robotic versions of ourselves. That way, the government can keep you in coma and use you to avert civil war. They’ll let you wake up at crucial times to deliver words that will calm your followers, only then to lapse back into coma. Kind of like Lenin waving from the Kremlin. Once it’s safe, they’ll probably have both of us die—"
"They’ll need bodies for autopsies."
"Oh, we’re being cloned even as we speak. Vat-grown replacements. The NSC will have bodies for autopsies."
"So, what happens to us? Do we enter the witness protection program?"
"What?" you ask, incredulous.
"The witness protection program—they give you a new identity—"
"I know what the witness protection program is," you snap. "But that’s for people who want to live. It sounds to me like all of a sudden you don’t want to kill yourself."
"All of a sudden? It’s been five years!"
"Not for you. For you, it’s been only an instant."
"But for you it’s been five years," I point out. "If you really wanted to kill yourself, how come you didn’t do it in five years?"
"Because we were going to do it together," you say. You’re getting angry. "Because I love you. I was waiting for you this whole time. Don’t tell me you want to live after all this! Where’s the person I fell in love with?"
"Calm down. Calm down. You don’t want to give us away."
"Maybe that’s what you want," you say. "Maybe you want the world to know Chris Richford lives. Maybe you want to take command of your armies of cultists and become the king of Quebec! Maybe this is what you’ve wanted all along, not death, but fame. God damn it! I can’t believe I waited for you! All this time, I thought the cultists were the ones deluded, but it was me!"
"Calm down! I don’t know what I want. It’s been five years—"
"For me, not for you!"
"Yes. Right. Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll kill myself. If only for you."
"Oh, don’t do me any favors!"
"No, not just for you. I—I want to die. Nothing’s changed. I still want to die. I don’t care about followers and fame, power . . . wealth—"
"God damn it!"
"No, listen. You’re right. I had nothing to live for before, and even less now. I don’t want to be a cult leader. I don’t want to be an icon of death. I once wanted readers, but now I know readers are the last thing I want. There’s nothing left for me—except you."
You are silent, a grudging silence. Then you lean down and kiss me. "It’s good to have you back, Chris. It’s been a long time. Soon we’ll be out of here. Soon we’ll be dead."
You retreat across the floor and converse with someone beyond the doorway.
I sigh uneasily. It’s been five years for you. God, have you changed. I wonder about this whole thing. It’s a nightmare. A literal nightmare. It can’t be real. Animatronics, cultists, Quebec . . . it can’t be real.
Your footsteps come from the door, approaching the bed. You sit beside me and whisper. "Don’t be afraid. Don’t cry out. Don’t open your eyes. We’ll be out of here in moments—"
Sudden gunshots come from the doorway. The reports fill the room. They thud in my breastbone. Hot blood jets up through holes in my gown.
My eyes fly open. I can’t help it—
A ragged gunman stands at the door, unloading an automatic into me. More blood bounds up. I look like a crimson fountain. "Shi—"
The word is cut off as you collapse atop me.
Oh, fuck. They killed you. They’re killing me. Oh, fuck.
The gunshots stop. Men are shouting. They’ve wrestled the guy to the ground. Too late for us. White coats flap. Orderlies hoist us onto gurneys and haul us toward the hall. There’s hundreds of people around us. Everyone is shouting. Florescent lights flash past in rhombuses and trapezoids, like the windows on the Sears Tower. I reach out to grab your hand. Your fingers don’t move.
"Richford’s alive still," a doctor bellows.
"The other one too!" Thank God!
Elevator doors yawn wide. We pile in—two gurneys, two doctors, two nurses, two men in black. . . .
"Up one floor to surgery!" a doctor commands. The doors dutifully close.
We descend.
You sit up, laughing breathlessly. I blink at you. You smile, wiping the fake blood from your shirt.
"Very Hollywood," you say. "The blood capsule charges were sewn into our clothes, ready should we take this option."
"But, but . . . the assassin—"
"One of our agents," said a man in black. He had so many fillings his smile looked like a gun rack.
"And right now, gurneys with the two animatronic versions of us are going up in the adjacent elevator. They’ve even got identical bullet wounds on their rubber flesh."
"Where are we going?" I ask, my stomach sinking along with the elevator.
"To the parking garage," the G-man says. "There’s a panel van waiting there to take you anywhere you want to go."
You squeeze my hand fondly. "We know exactly where we want to go—Suicidals Anonymous. . . ."

5: A Shot of Whiskey, a Shot of Lead
In which our heroes return to Suicidals Anonymous to find that things have gotten wildly out of hand.… 
The world has changed. I see it undeniably on the way up I-94.
The back of the panel van has no windows except the two on the back door, and they're tinted and it's night. We're going about ninety. I can make out little except surging headlights and flashing street lamps—nothing in the violent nearby. Everything comes into dim focus only once we are far beyond it, like in a Faulkner novel. Still, I can see the world has changed. I can see the buildings burning. I can see the sirens flashing. I can see the police tape, yellow and sloppy, closing off sidewalks where regretful ends have come. I see people with shaved heads and black robes.
It's not just craziness in the big city. We get up to a hundred twenty along the north shore. They've repealed speed limits. Mobs with sledge hammers are knocking the guard rails down. There are no longer any helmet laws. Thrice I hear gunfire in the air. One bullet cracks through the side of the van. The men in black don't seem to care. The FDA has been disbanded. Underwriter's Laboratory is defunct. All the measures meant to keep people alive are being removed. Nobody cares about life anymore. Everybody only cares about death. I and my manuscript Death's Angel—or more properly, the apocryphal conglomerate manuscript assembled out of all human paranoid desperation and dubbed Death's Angel—are to blame.
"We're almost there," you say, cradling me in your arms. "We're almost to the headquarters of Suicidals Anonymous."
Spaghetti highways tangle around us a moment, then there's a long tunnel with flickering yellow lights, and we're out on Kilbourn. A few blocks, and the van screeches to a halt. The sliding door grates open, and we step out.
Instead of a seedy downtown bar, we stand before City Hall. The building looms red against a black night. Its windows seem chunks of darkness embedded in sandstone. Only the top floor is lit, twenty stories up. A pair of demonic radio towers blink placidly above it all.
"Why are we here?" I ask you as the panel van pulls away.
Your brow rumples. "We're going to Suicidals Anonymous—"
"This is where it is now?"
You laugh. "Yes. It's big government. It's called the Department of the Demeanor. Every major town has an office, like the FBI, and this one's a big one, since it's where you originated."
Only then do I notice the crowds milling by the side entrance. They are staring down at something. Through a forest of legs, I glimpse rumpled cloth and inert meat.
"Oh, God," I say, feeling sick. "Somebody just jumped—"
"Of course somebody just jumped," you reply. "This is Suicidals Anonymous."
Your words are hardly finished when there comes an awful scream above. Someone leaps from the rooftop beside the broadcast towers. She's wearing a knee-length dress. I can't help thinking it should have been a jumpsuit. She tumbles past the black windows, screaming, and plunges into the narrow center of the crowd.
I cringe back, turning my head.
It's a bone-shattering impact. A sudden, wet stillness follows.
A smattering of applause rises from the spectators.
"Jesus!" I say, gagging. "Jesus!"
You raise an eyebrow archly. "Isn't this what you wanted? Isn't this what you wrote about in Death's Angel—that if everyone must die, and if a meaningful death is better than a meaningless one, then better that everyone choose the place and time and manner of his or her own death? Better suicide?"
"Why did people take me seriously?" I moan in agony. "I don't know anything about life! I'm a writer! People shouldn't listen to writers. Writers shout words on the page because we're sure nobody is listening."
The next person in line between the broadcast towers steps to the edge of the building and jumps.
"Christ!"
"Come on," you say. "We've got our own date with destiny."
As the crowd applauds the next impact, you and I walk to the main door. Beside it is a neon sign flashing in feverish red. "Welcome, Suicidals!" People are streaming in around us.
We enter the building. A long shiny corridor receives us, with elevators to either side. Doors ding in constant cacophony, a sound that nearly drowns out the distant clapping. Folk crowd in and go up. We step into an elevator and the doors close. Oiled metal shifts. Blindly, we rise.
"It's quite a world you've created," you say.
"I created? I created? I was asleep when all this was going on!" I shake my head grimly. "I feel like I'm asleep now, in a nightmare. I wish I could wake up. I feel like that guy in 'Incident at Owl Creek Bridge'—the condemned man who thinks he's escaped the noose and has this whole delusion from the time the floor drops under him to the time the rope snaps tight. Maybe that's what all this is. Maybe I'm dreaming all this, from the time the window sill crumbled beneath my feet to the time I'll hit the pavement on Jackson Street. The only difference is that the guy in the short story thought he was safe. I'm looking forward to hitting the street."
You smile sweetly and caress my jaw. "I'm so glad you still want to die. I was beginning to wonder—"
"I—I—"
The door opens onto a wide, crowded, and noisy space. There is an arcade spirit to the place, with long lines, weary workers, tickets, tokens, chatter, rides, televisions flashing scenes of violence, capsules fashioned in the shape of small cars, side rooms from which come explosive sounds, sudden shouts and applause, prizes swinging from the ceiling…except they aren't prizes.
"Oh, God!"
At one end of the long room, folk line up along a short stair. One at a time they fit their heads into nooses, and with a jerk sway out into empty air. The line of nooses moves along the ceiling in a mechanical conveyer. Clients drifted along like folk on a sky-lift. By the time they reach the far stair, they are as still as a line of fish. The bodies are cut down, flung onto a conveyer, and borne to a chute in the wall.
"What is this?"
"Fast death," you say, "like fast food. It's trendy and easy. You don't have to go through the old twelve steps. You don't have to endure all the angst. Professional death. The suicide failure rate is way down now that it's done professionally, and murder-suicides are way down too. All you've got to do is provide positive ID, plunk down the body disposal fee, and tip the attendant to make sure its a quick and clean job."
The door of one of the side rooms opens, and pink smoke rolls out. Actually, the smoke is white, but the wall beyond is red-white cement with a crimson Jackson Pollack painting on it. A pair of workers drags a headless figure from the doorway and across a grate ingeniously provided for the purpose. As they reach the conveyer, the next client ambles across the grating. He waits while a woman mops up, rights the chair, and reloads the shotgun.
"Those little cars are carbon-monoxide machines. Those holes in the walls are guillotines. The crowded spiral stairs lead to the roof, where the jumpers are. In back, they've got the bar, for old time's sake. Some people still like whiskey and strychnine. Its off limit to the kids, of course—there's alcohol in there."
I say nothing. If I tried to speak, I would vomit.
The televisions here and there are monitors, showing the goings on in the side rooms.
"Why can't I wake up!" I pound my lowered head. "Why can't I wake up?"
"Special Bulletin: Chris Richford has woken up from a five-year coma."
I look up, seeing that the television monitors are all showing the same image now—me, sitting stiffly in a hospital bed. I look about a little dazedly. Flashbulbs are going off in the little room. The reporter's voice comes in a resonant whisper from speakers all around us. The suicidals quiet.
"Ironically, it was the brutal attack of an assassin on Chris Richford that allowed this resuscitation to occur. Earlier today, a terrorist identified as a former evangelist and a current Right to Life advocate sprayed the prophet's hospital room with gunfire." The scene shifts to show us, the real us, flopping on the bed as blood bursts from our bodies. "Over the last hours, those graphic images have been burned into our memories, and we have all hoped and prayed for the life or death of Chris Richford, as our own consciences dictate. Few if any of us expected this result. After two hours of surgery and five years of coma, Chris Richford at last awakens."
The shoulder camera bustles forward through a crowd of doctors and security guards, A microphone picks up the rumble of the passage. The reporter says, "Chris! Chris! You are awake after a five-year coma. What are your first words for the millions of followers you have worldwide?"
The microphone moves into the frame of the image, clenched in a trembling fist just below the animatronic lips of my double. Servos move with an almost audible buzz, lips part, and words emerge. "Greetings. I have returned from the place of death to speak with you, my people. When I leapt from the Sears Tower, I sought death, and I found it. Now, like Osiris, like Orpheus, like Jesus, I have risen from death to speak to you. Hear now what I have to say, my people!"
The silence in the headquarters of the Suicidals Anonymous is deafening. It is broken only by the long plunging wail of someone beyond the reach of television.
"Live! If there is one word I would tell you, it is this: Live! Death holds nothing but torment. Live!"
I breathe for the first time in minutes. There is audible relief in the air around me. Secretly, everyone in the room hoped to hear these words, wished for a way out of the inevitable. At last, the government has done something to save its people.
"Live! Return to your homes and families. Live! Return to your jobs, your schools. Live! Do your work, spend your money, pay your taxes. Live!"
"What is this?" I mutter, becoming unsettled.
"Help rebuild the country your folly has destroyed. Volunteer for federal work crews. Civil defense workers in every town will sign each of you up for six months of work to aid the state.…"
The suicidals' heads bow. Folk who a moment ago were marching happily to their own deaths are now weighed down with the burdens of life. Happy to die…unhappy to live.… It's no wonder the apocryphal Death's Angel had such an impact. Life sucks.
"Wait, all of you!" I shout above the crowd, above even the monotonous propaganda spilling from the TV. "Wait! That's not the real Chris Richford! That's an animatronic dummy. Don't listen to that impostor. I'm the real Chris Richford! I'm the one who leapt from the Sears Tower and survived. Listen to me! Believe me!"
You turn, astonished, and glare at me. You are about to say something, but it is too late. The suicidals press in around us, grab our arms, hoist us on their shoulders.…
"They're listening!" I shout ebulliently to you. "At, last they're listening to me!"
You only shake your head ominously.
"To the roof!" one of the suicidals shouts. "Let's see if he survives this time!"
The mob carries us toward the crowded spiral stair. They chant:
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"

6: A Beginning for an Ending
In which our heroes get one more shot at oblivion, and our story comes to its end.… 
The mob carries us along. Body passing is what they call it in stadiums. This is corpse passing. As soon as they get us to the roof, they’ll fling us off. Shoulder to shoulder—tight as sheep in slaughter channels—the Suicidals Anonymous convey us across their hands and toward the spiraling stair. We jolt along beneath the curtain of hanged bodies. We move through brimstone smoke from the shotgun rooms. Past the poison bar, past the carbon-monoxide cars, past the banks of TVs where our facsimiles preach about hard work and paying taxes and serving the state.… We are borne along on a cruel tide of clutching hands, an endless sea of suicidals.
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"
I wonder if all people everywhere have become Suicidals Anonymous.
It suddenly comes clear. Yes—all people everywhere.… Every last one of us is caught between unbearable life and unbearable death. We are bleating sheep, kept alive only because the momentum of the shouldering herd keeps us out of the jaws of the wolf. That is our terror, written across the tabula rasa of Death’s Angel.
It was written across me too. During my coma, the people made me into the Everyone, the person who seeks safe passage from life to death. They created me and followed me, they flooded across the verge in their tens of thousands.
Now, the people bear us toward that same oblivion.
"It will be over soon enough," you shout as the mob hauls us up the spiraling stair.
"Yes. Over.…" The crowded, smoky room drops away below.
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"
"Do they think we’re impostors?" I ask, "or really us?"
"Does it matter?"
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"
The mob pulls us away from each other as we round the final curve. I precede you up the slope of clutching hands. They pinch like lobster claws. Every one takes out anger on us even as they carry us toward death.
Only writers are not Suicidals Anonymous. Yes, we’re suicidals, but not anonymous. We’re equipped to write our suicide notes, and so we are known. Every time we set pen to paper, finger to key, we’re telling the world why we’re killing ourselves, we’re pleading for a reason to live. All the great American writers were that way—Poe and Parker, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, Williams and Hemingway. Every last one committed suicide by alcohol, and the latter two by drugs and shotgun too. Twain even killed himself with a comet. Everything they wrote was a suicide note. They pleaded for a reason to live and perished when none came. That’s the way they wrote…and the way I wrote too.
"How are you going to write your way out of this one?" you shout as they bear us between the broadcast towers, beneath the black sky.
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"
Poe and Parker couldn’t write their way out. Fitzgerald and Faulkner couldn’t either, and they weren’t borne to the precipice by their readers. Williams was, and he was killed by them. Melville was too, though he deserved it.
Forget the Americans. What of Rushdie—banned and banished and marked for death? He’s only gotten better, written better, and lived! What of Scheherazade—sentenced to die but commuting her sentence for a thousand and one nights? An Undying One. She was the greatest of all. She wrote not suicide notes but stories. She was greatest of all because she knew that life and death are bearable only because of stories.
"Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!"
Hands hurl us toward the edge.
"Suicide notes!" I shout, uncertain what I hope to accomplish. "Suicide notes!"
"What?" you yell. Others echo your question.
"Suicide notes!" I bellow. "WE HAVE TO WRITE SUICIDE NOTES!"
Sheer belligerence makes me heard. The unstoppable flow stops.
"Suicide notes?" asks a gaunt young man in black leather and spiky hair. He clutches my arm and holds me aloft. "We don’t do the twelve steps anymore."
"Maybe you don’t, but I do—we do!" I demand. The hands that hold me aloft are as cold and still as meat-hooks. "It’s our suicide. We have the right to choose how things will go. That’s fundamental—and you call yourselves suicidals!"
A groan of uncertainty moils through the rabble. Their previous resolve flags for a moment, until one idiot shouts—"Got no paper!" Others take up the call, which quickly becomes, "No fucking paper! No fucking paper!" They shove us toward the brink.
Desperately, I reach into my pocket and find a tiny slip of paper. I haul it out. On one side, it says, "Inspected by 8."
I hold that white slip high, waving it like a flag of surrender. "I HAVE PAPER! I HAVE PAPER!"
The hands again lose their insistence. We slump downward a bit.
Smiling, I say, "Now if someone will be kind enough to lend me a pen—" I am horrified to hear the words spill out, expecting the reply to be, No fucking pen—
Instead, I see countless young men reach into their pocket protectors to draw out the saving implements. The mob sets us down.
We stand on a nine-inch ledge of concrete, the same size as the sill above Jackson Street. A twenty-story drop hangs behind us, with a wide red spot below where others have ended their lives. Before us, the roof is crowded with suicidals. There’s no escape, only a momentary reprieve.…
You clutch my hand. I squeeze back. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’ve been with me through all this craziness.
I take a proffered pen and stare piteously at the gnawed thing. How could this be mightier than the sword? I hold the tiny slip of paper in my hand, and it suddenly seems to say, "Inspected by ¥." Ominous. I tear the paper in two, and the infinity sign becomes only a pair of zeroes. Even more ominous. I hand you your zero and keep mine.
A zero…or a cipher? A mystery? I stare at that symbol a moment before turning the paper over.
Scheherazade…Scheherazade…what would she have written? Stories. Life and death are bearable only in stories.…
Suddenly I know what I’ll write. A scant fifty words—they’ll have to be crammed on this tiny sheet. I ask the suicidal with the spiked hair if I can write on his back. His leather jacket is taut above a shoulder blade, and there, I write the most important fifty words of my life.
That’s funny. The most important fifty words of my life are a suicide note.
Not a suicide note. A story.
I finish. You’re done too.
Spike turns around, snatches our pens, gives them back to their owners, and says. "All right then. Die!" He shoves me.
I topple out over the edge. There’s nothing below but twenty stories of empty air atop a twenty-foot-wide bloodstain.
Your hand grabs mine. You crouch and lean, and haul on my arm. "Wait! Wait!"
I fall anyway, my feet slipping from the cement. I crack my elbows on it. Arms go janglingly numb.
You hold on with both hands. My note is clutched in my fist, and your note is crunched against the back of my hand. You yank me up until I’m hanging there by my armpits, like a swimmer at the edge of a pool. It’s about the tenth time you’ve saved my life. Readers keep writers alive.
"Wait?" Spike asks. "Wait for what?"
"The notes," you gasp out, panting. "Aren’t you going to read the notes?"
"We don’t hold to the twelve steps—"
"Mine says this," I volunteer, not about to let go of your hand. "Mine says, ‘I stand at the end of my life. I would not be here at all but for the pig who could whistle Die Meistersinger out his nose. There is no reason to say more. I have written it all before, for any who would read.…’ There it is. That’s my note. I can die now." I gaze levelly at you. "You can let go."
A look of deep sorrow crosses your face. Your fingers loosen.
Spike grabs my hands tightly. "What was that? What did you say?"
"I said I can die now—"
"Before that—"
" ‘I stand at the end—’ "
"After that—"
"Oh, yes. ‘I would not be here at all but for the pig who could whistle Die Meistersinger out his nose.’ "
"What are you talking about?"
"Die Meistersinger," I reply placidly. "It’s an opera by Wagner."
"No, no! I mean about the pig!"
"Oh, I didn’t even realize he was an operatic performer until I was already eating him—"
"Eating him?"
"Yes. Pork chops with a nice mushroom sauce." I smack my lips.
"You ate a pig that could sing opera?"
I shrug dismissively. "It’s a long story. I haven’t the time—"
"You can die anytime," Spike says, pulling me up to the rooftop. "First, you’ve got to tell this story."
Wincing from the long scrapes on my belly and legs, I sit down on the ledge where once I stood. You settle in place beside me. "Well, you see, animals cannot speak because they don’t have vocal cords like ours, but they can communicate. And pigs are smart creatures, especially attuned to pitch and intonation. Truffles give out a perfect A440, and that’s how the pigs find them. Natural selection has given pigs perfect pitch. It does them little good musically since they can’t sing, but once in a while, a pig is born with a deviated septum. They can flute like James Galway. Such a hog was Heimie—"
"Heimie?" the spike-headed man asks. "A Jewish pig?"
"Oh, yes, circumcised and everything," I reply. "He’d jumped off the circus caravan in a Jewish neighborhood and was rescued by a young girl, who didn’t want him eaten by Gentiles. At the circus, the pig had been called Wagner, was even dressed like the composer during his whistling demonstrations. For Anna the Jewess, though, he became Heimie—"
"You stole and ate a little girl’s pig?" Spike says, growing angry.
"Not I!" I aver. "The Nazis."
"Nazis!"
"Sure. A pig who travels through the breadbasket of the nation whistling Wagner is likely to attract Nazis. Most of them took him for a skinhead on first sight. They made him their leader. That’s why he jumped off the train. Even pigs hate Nazis. But when the pig disappeared, his followers determined to find their missing leader.…"
I have them. The roof is silent. People crane forward to hear. They’ve forgotten about my death and your death and their deaths. They’ve even forgotten about life—about hard work and taxes and service to a ravenous state. In this moment, there is only the whistling pig, the noble young Jewess, and the wicked Nazis. It’s a story full of absurdity, and so it is real. It is also full of hope and valor, and for a time, it makes all things bearable.
During the telling, I realize your note is in my hand. It had slipped there when you kept me from falling. I glance down and read it. It makes me smile. It makes all things bearable:
"I knew I couldn’t let you die, so now I join you in living."