An online novel by Gillette Edmunds

She’s a horrid bitch, Michael thought. I can’t feel guilty about making money, maybe hitting it bigger than some of the other guys. And I do feel guilty.

Feeling a cool evening breeze through the window, Michael remembered being hot and sticky all day. When I was asleep before, he thought, I was rolling around, sweating. The covers are in a pile on the floor. Look at that. Now it’s cool. It feels like death. Not the room. The coolness. Death isn’t a place you go to. It’s a feeling. It is cool silence like the touch of that white marble today. And that’s good. No clients to worry about. No regrets that Barbara’s gone back to Charlie; that I didn’t say the right things to her when I had a chance. No hope of Sonya’s return. No guilt about making too much money. Not lonely for lost friends. This is much closer to death than when Barbara and I chased that yellow man through the subway. This room, silence, clanging, then silence, death. Grandpa is there now. He sat me on his knee in the bar and drank whiskey with his friends all afternoon, and then one day he’s floating out there in cool silence.

Michael sat up. He listened for what he would think next. He was scared. He remembered laying in bed as a child, his room glowing with darkness, afraid to contemplate his grandfather’s death, unwilling to visualize what had happened to him, where he had gone.

Michael stepped off the bed and went to the window. He looked out at the harbor, the lights lining the shore and the sailless boats rocking and clanging.