Book: I Am the Messenger
Quotes of Book: I Am the Messenger
What do I do now?" I ask desperately. "Tell me! What do I do now?"
He remains calm. He looks at me closely and says, "Keep living, Ed…. It's only the pages that stop here." He stays perhaps another ten minutes, probably due to the trauma that has strapped itself to me. I remain standing, trying to contemplate and recover from what's transpired. "I really think I'd better go," he says again, this item with more finality. With difficulty, I walk him to the door. We say goodbye on the front porch, and he walks back up the street.
I wonder about his name, but I'm sure I'll earn it soon enough.
He's written about this, I'm sure, the bastard. All of it.
As he walks up the street he pulls a small notebook from his pocket and writes a few things down.
It makes me think maybe I should write about all this myself. After all, I;m the one who did all the work. I'd start with the bank robbery.
Something like, "The gunman is useless."
The odds are, however, that he's beaten me to it already
It'll be his name on the cover of all these words, not mine.
He'll get all the credit.
Or the crap, if her does a shit job.
But I just remembered the I was the one- not him- who gave life to these pages. I was the one who-
I tell me to stop.
It's an inner voice and it's loud. All day, I think about many things, though I try not to. I look through the folder and find everything as he said. All the ideas are written in and people are sketched. Scratchy excerpts are stapled together. Beginnings and endings merge and bend. Hours wander past.
Days follow them. I don't leave the shack, and I don't answer the phone. I barely even eat. The Doorman sits with me as the minutes pass by. For a long time, I wonder what I'm waiting for, but I understand it's just like he said.
I guess it's for life beyond these pages. book-quoteloverealizationmessengerGetting back to Audrey, though, I should really feel complimented that she won't ever touch me because she likes me more than anyone else. It makes perfect sense, really, doesn't it?If she ever gets down or depressed, i can make out the figure of her through the front window of the shack. She comes in and we drink cheap beer or wine and watch a movie or all three. Something old and long like Ben-Hur that stretches into the night. She'll be next to me on the couch in her flannel shirt and jeans that have been cut into shorts,and eventually, when she's asleep, I'll bring a blanket out and cover her up. I kiss her cheek.I stroke her hair.I think of how she lives alone, just like me, and how she never had any real family, and how she only has sex with people. She never lets any love get in the way. I think she had a family once, but it was one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other situations. There's no shortage of them around here. I think she loved them and all she ever did was hurt her. That's why she refuses to love.Anybody.I guess she feels better off that way, and who can blame her? When she sleeps on my couch, I think about all that. Everytime. I cover her up, then go to the bed and dream. With my eyes open. book-quotelovelonging
