Running Out of Road by Daniel Friedman

Author:Daniel Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

17

I was sitting in my easy chair, one of the few things I brought over from the old house. We’d had an estate sale when we moved in here, and got rid of most of what we owned: our wedding china, all Rose’s kitchen things, and the furniture we inherited from Mother. All told, the accumulated possessions of our long lives didn’t amount to much; the lot of it was worth less than what it cost to live in a tiny room at Valhalla for two months.

Rose was sitting across from me on the bed, looking at me like she expected me to say something.

I used to keep the chair in front of the television, but with my hearing fading and my memory going, I rarely turned that on anymore. Instead, we’d had the staff move the chair next to the window, so I could blow my cigarette smoke outside, and that was what I was doing. I had my ashtray sitting on the end table next to me, and there were four spent butts in it already, so I knew we had been here for a while.

I stubbed the fifth one out and reached for the next. This comforted me: the automatic motion of tapping the pack against the palm of my hand, plucking a cigarette between my fingers, flicking the same gold lighter I’d had for decades, inhaling. I could have been doing this in 1950 or 1970, and it would have felt the same and smelled the same and tasted the same. Everything else was falling apart or changing in incomprehensible ways. The only thing that could withstand the onslaught of time was smoke.

“How much do you remember?” she asked me.

“I always feel like I am just waking up from a bad dream,” I said. “I’ve got a sense of dread; I know something is wrong. But I can just let it fade into the background of all the things that are wrong. This place is wrong. Our lives here are wrong. It’s all wrong.”

She rested her arms on her knees, and her whole body seemed to sag and deflate. “But not wrong like this is wrong.”

I rocked back and forth in my seat. “I know that. I know that.”

“If you know, then why do you pretend not to sometimes?”

“I’m not pretending. It’s just confusing. There are so many doctors and so much to keep track of.”

“And it’s easier to forget.”

“I don’t know that it’s easier. I’m not deciding to forget anything. It’s just what happens.”

“You know, Buck, every time you would get a medal for bravery, I’d go to the ceremony, and I’d listen to them tell a story about your heroism. About how you’d chased some murderer down an alley or kicked in a door, faced down some degenerate who came at you with a knife or a gun, and got the better of him. And I always thought, ‘What happens to us if it goes the other way? What happens if one of these

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.