- 14 -
"Shopping for food again seems
impossible."
"I put a copy of my novel,
which I have upstairs, Black Forest, on every bedside table in every
furniture store bedroom display in Burlington, Vt. One bed I actually
laid down on and took a nap. Well I mean pretending to take a nap, with
one eye open, until--"
"I fell asleep during a job
interview. It's true. Put my head down on the desk right in front of
me. At least I remember doing that"
" But! Does anyone actually
remember dying? Because if no one does then maybe--"
"Did you notice there weren't
any flies at the buffet? Is it possible there are no flies, in the afterlife?"
"Frankly, I'm surprised there
is anything in the afterlife."
"A buffet! Truly I find it
difficult to spread the mustard and take a bite out of a hot dog, in
this situation. It seems to me eating--"
"Is something only mortal beings
relish, or reluctantly partake of."
"Relish! At the Country Club
big picnic on Memorial Day, why the flies would have been all over the
relish. And at the beach, why--"
"I can't understand how there
can be some things, and not others. Is this meant to suggest that what
is missing is . . . or was, trivial. Or that what is missing is, or
was . . . most important after all?"
"After all is said and done."
"Me too. I thought it would
be totally different."
"I still feel very . . . mortal.
Frankly."
"Insofar as you really gave
it any thought."
"This is what gets me, always
got me, about people. They're in their life and they don't even notice
that it's a totality. That was my first motivating profound observation
about life. That it was not for lack of imagination that I couldn't
imagine anything else."
"Which is why there still isn't
anything else."
"Exactly."
"If there were flies they would
have been all over the corn, the relish they left right out in the open,
the potatoľ salad."
"They always said about Bertha:
She makes a mean potato salad!"
"Where did that outburst come
from?"
"This beer is not cold enough."
"What do you expect?"
"You never made your demands
known. If you had stood on the point, and demanded that the beer be
cold, it would be. This is the afterlife, and you get just what you
deserve, chump!"
"Holy cow. You mean there was
more then, than now?"
"Looks that way."
"Maybe no flies, but there
is a Rite Aid Pharmacy. I've done some wandering. I don't just stay
in all day, but I scour the landscape. Good word that: scour. A brand
new Rite Aid Pharmacy, over on Lot 51, right next to a McDonald's. A
goddamned McDonalds! Right next to a --"
"Who cares? My soul is on trial."
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray my soul the Lord to take."
"You mock?"
"So what? It's the indifferent
times now, fool."
"These are prototypes, obviously.
It's the model for the new installation, obviously. Not actually in
use, except by the model employees and model customers, obviously, who
are either doubles awaiting their final orders or people in purgatory."
"Damn! There's a summary."
"How come you know so much?"
"Because this is exactly, or
for the most part, just like I imagined it would be."
"Ah, the prophet sits amongst
us!"
"A prophet is one who knows
the past, Which is threatening. I only have pitiful information about
the future, which is easy to get."
"You just have to drive down
Monroe Avenue."
"Exactly."
"Rite Aid is not just a pharmacy,
we know. One out of a hundred people who go into a Rite Aid doesn't
come out. It is one of the exit points, where people are taken."
"Do you want to expand on that
idea?"
"Did you find that out since,
or before?"
"I suppose you even made a
draft of this hunch, or maybe a bunch of hunches while you were . .
. thus employed."
"Sometimes the person goes
in and just doesn't come out--this would happen with people who no one
would' miss (sad as that seems), but if you look at the people in Rite
Aid alot of them do seem to be on their last legs. As if hoping to be
taken, right about as they stand despondently before all the types of
mouthwash! Or wire-bound notebooks in the latest sizes, if you prefer.
And sometimes a perfect replica of the person who went in comes out,
and then of course is run over in the parking lot, or dies in some other
sudden way within the hour."
"Before coming into contact
with anyone they know, who might detect something subtly wrong with
them?"
"Exactly."
"This really is the way. People
exit in most unusual modes. People do die. You hardly ever see it, but
they escape. Not always willingly, but if you think back on it you can
understand now that many of those strangers did have the aspect of one
waiting to be taken. Like--"
"Trying to find where to stand
so as to be in the line of fire."
"Exactly."
"Painlessly!"
"It is life that is painful,
not death, dummy."
"Well pardon me."
"I will eat, if they serve
me. Though not whatever they . . ."
