A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [87]
I don’t know what you’ve heard, but probably.
I was hoping they weren’t.
Don’t know what to tell you.
I took a step backward, down another stair.
I’ll see you around?
She smiled and she nodded.
Yes.
I turned and I walked away and my legs were shaking like jelly with each step down the stairs. I knew she was watching me walk away and waiting for me to turn back for another smile and I would’ve liked another smile I would have liked the World to stop and she was waiting for it, but I didn’t turn around. I kept going, an image in my mind, Arctic and pale, locked and loaded, beautiful magnificent mysterious and wonderful. It was in my mind. I knew it wasn’t going anywhere.
I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed. It takes me the tick and it holds me and it carries and keeps me like the slow swing of a pendulum before the eyes of an idiot. The World has stopped not like before and not in a good way. It has stopped and is not going forward the same way my life has stopped and is not going forward. It is not going forward or backward or anywhere at all it has just stopped. It has just stopped.
The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I have it all of it still. I won’t have it again. This moment or this chance they are the same thing. This moment and this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don’t waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving.
The dark shifts away from itself and light invades it and conquers. The Unit is empty still but for me. I stand and I want to breathe deeply and breathe without boundary and I walk to the door and I open it and I go outside. I walk toward the Lake which is covered with a frigid mist born from the difference between inside and out. The mist hovers above the clear calm black of the water, moving up but not moving at all, changing shape but staying the same. I like the mist and I want to take it in and let it become me. I want to drink it and be full. I want to swallow it and let it make me. Make me how I should be made mist. Make me what I should be made.
I sit on the middle bench. It is cold on my legs and back, but the cold is a counterpoint to the coffee and the cigarettes and the night. I look out unmoving and strong until a bird sweeps down and sweeps through carving its way like Northern Ice drifting south. It moves up and out and above the mist and it finds a tree and it sits on the tree and it rests looking back not at me but at that which it sought. It is not there now or again so it stays the bird stays on the branch of the tree stiff and true. Looking, seeking, searching, waiting. It stays stiff and true.
There is a noise behind me and I turn to the noise. There is a Figure emerging from the reflection of the glass door. The Figure is bundled beneath layers of cotton and bright blue nylon it wears glasses and a hat. It shuts the door and it sees me and it comes toward me one step at a time purposefully through the thick shimmering dew. I do not want it, the Figure and whatever it may bring, so I turn away from it and I look out across the water, unmoving and strong. The bird is still there. Looking, seeking, searching, waiting. Sitting stiff and true.
The steps are closer and I can see the cotton and the nylon out of the corner of my eye. I try to ignore it, but there’s a voice.
Hey, Kid.
I know the voice.
Hey, Leonard.
He stands in front of me.
Mind