Page 22 of After His Eulogy
“Yes.”
“That is what the program told you.”
“Yes.”
“And the program told you the version where I was told you were dead was the version where I was safer.”
“Yes.”
“Because if I was visibly grieving I was credible. As a person who actually thought you were dead.”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t say anything. The radiator has been hissing all evening; I hear it now. The silence is the kind where you start to hear radiators. I sit on the couch and don’t move. Neither does he. The radiator hisses for what feels like a long time.
“Did they,” he says, “did they give you any way.”
“Any way what.”
“To tell me. Even, even one piece of information. To leave a note. To… anything.”
“No.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“You did not…“
“Griffin.”
“You did not even try.”
I look at him.
“There was… I almost…“
“Almost what.”
“I had… there was a window. Before the second meeting. Before the apartment. There was a window where I had been told the version where I came back in six months. In that window… there was a night where I almost wrote you a letter. I sat at the kitchen table at three in the morning and I wrote the letter. I wrote it twice. I crossed both out. I…“
“You did not send it.”
“No.”
“Right. Reed. I get it. I get the math.”
“Okay.”
He looks at the floor, and looks at it for a long time. I sit on the couch. The light from the desk lamp is on the side of his face and on the back of his hand on the arm of the chair and on the half-glass of water on the desk with the thumbprint. I am looking at the thumbprint because I cannot look at his face. Whatever his face is doing I do not get to see, and I do not get to ask.
“Okay,” he says.
He says it quiet.
“Okay,” he says again. “Okay. Reed.”
“Yeah.”
