Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
We’ve been looking all morning for a Clocker, and we finally found one. Lucky for us, not so lucky for them.
“Aw man, her?” Peter says, looking across the street at an older woman sitting on the edge of a little retaining wall, reading a book.
“Yeah, so?”
“I don’t know. She looks nice.”
“Oh my god, Peter, you say that about literally everyone. She could be an actual axe murderer. That book could be Mein Kampf.”
Peter frowns at me. “It’s not Mein Kampf.”
“You don’t know.” The woman is wearing a baggy shirt with a cat on it and cargo shorts, and she’s got super-short gray hair that probably makes her look ten years older than she is. It’s not exactly the uniform of a neo-Nazi, but you never know these days.
She leans back and lets a sliver of sun slide onto her face. And then she closes her eyes and just sits there, her hands in her lap, her book against her chest, not smiling but also not not smiling.
“Oh shit,” I say. “She knows.”
“Knows what?”
“She’s going to die.”
“Really?” Peter says, glancing back at the woman. “How can you tell?”
“I just can. I mean, look at her. She’s like, forcing herself to appreciate the sun and shit. She knows.”
“Damn,” Peter says. He looks at her for another minute before he asks the inevitable Would You Rather question. “Is it better or worse to know?”
“I have no idea,” I say. And I really don’t.
“I think sometimes it can make it better—like you get a chance to tell your mom you love them one last time or whatever, all that Lifetime movie shit. But sometimes—a lot of the time—it would just make it worse. Like Liam. He had a fucking good time at that party. Who knows what he would’ve been doing if he’d known he was going to die?
He’d probably have been at home paralyzed by the impending agony of nonexistence.
Or maybe he would’ve done something cool, like cliff jumping or something. ”
“From what I heard at the funeral, that sounds like Liam.”
“Yeah, but you never know. How people live doesn’t always give you a clue as to how they’ll deal with dying. People get fucking weird.”
“Maybe it would’ve changed things,” Peter says. “If he knew. Maybe if he hadn’t been at that party—”
“That’s not how it works. I told you. Death doesn’t let go. Ever.”
“Right. Sorry,” Peter says. He looks back at the sun-facing woman. “There’s a used-book store across the street. I’ll go in and find something for her real quick. You just … keep an eye on her.”
“Like a stakeout.”
“Yeah,” Peter says, unironically. “Exactly.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, just hurry up. She might decide she needs to go to Coney Island and stare into the ocean or something.”
“Roger that,” Peter says, hustling over to the little brown shop.
While Peter’s in there getting whatever he’s getting (I’m kind of hoping he comes back out with something ridiculous like Oh, the Places You’ll Go!), I let myself watch the Clocker.
She doesn’t get out a phone or even open her eyes for a while.
She keeps sitting there. Just keeps being, while she can, I guess.
There’s something sort of nice about it.
I haven’t actually seen that many people who were okay with dying.
I’ve seen people trying to pretend like they were.
But if you looked hard enough, you could see all that smiling and peaceful sighing was bullshit.
The illusion of contentment, when really they were ready to claw at the walls.
But this Clocker doesn’t know anyone’s watching her.
And she looks okay. Maybe she really is.
Peter comes back, holding up a white plastic bag. He looks excessively pleased with himself. I peek inside the bag. A Kit Kat bar and a collection of Frost’s poems.
“Uh … why?” I say.
“Well, a Kit Kat is the friendliest candy bar and—”
“Is it, though?”
“Yeah. And poems are easy. And fast. I didn’t want to get a novel because …”
“Yeah. Well, I’m sure she’ll like the poems. Everyone likes Frost.”
“I guess you’ll find out,” Peter says, holding the bag up to me.
“Me? Wait. Hold on. You want me to give it to her?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, “I think it’s better if you take this one.”
I haven’t actually “taken” any of them, now that I think about it. I’ve kind of let Peter do the actual speaking to people and handing out of stuff while I just hang back and nod encouragingly. Or maybe not even encouragingly.
“I don’t know …” I say.
“I don’t mind doing it,” Peter says. “But I really think you should.” And then he keeps looking at me.
“Oh fuck it, whatever,” I say, snatching the bag from him. “I’m sure we’ll have a great time discussing German exceptionalism.”
“It’s not Mein Kampf.”
I wave him off and walk across the street. Toward the pink light. So I have to go hand a rando Clocker a book and a candy bar. How bad could that be?