I have this director of a PetWorld company friend—name is Sam, a real talker, cannot get a word in edgewise, if you know what I mean—who decided at age forty-seven he was going to die. He said he had done everything he wanted to, so he figured it was a waste of time hanging around waiting for his bones to melt. When I asked him what he had done, he got a little huffy like I was undervaluing his worldly accomplishments. Said I was just like somebody else he knew talking like he was a bum, not understanding how hard it was nowadays just making ends meet. Never mind that he had two cars in the garage still under warranty with flashy hood ornaments, and a five-bedroom house, nearly paid off, with a basement and an attic full of technological junk that you have to speak a foreign language to operate; a girl and a boy, in that order, that he does not understand; a wife that does not understand him; and a mynah bird that he would like to feed to the cat that refuses to understand anything anybody says. He told me he had set them up with insurance to see the kids through college—assuming they would get in because all they did was lock themselves in their rooms and text-message their friends—and a diversified portfolio to keep the wife in Gucci bags and spas the rest of her days.
So then, after he had gotten both cars detailed and gone around the house to make sure there were no rotting eaves he had overlooked, he checked into a hotel room. Once there, he drew the curtains, showered, shaved, put on a clean shirt, and then lay down to die.
And die he did, he told me. When I asked him how he knew, he said because he had seen himself elevated off the bed and transported out the window past the Burger King and the strip malls and over his house until he could see the city far below and the river winding north, where it split like a snake’s tongue before the light got so bright he had to close his eyes and just feel himself floating higher and higher until he couldn’t breathe anymore. When he opened his eyes again, he said everything was pitch-black around him, he could not even make out any stars except for this one straight ahead. At the time he thought it must be the North Star, which he figured was as good a place as any since he didn’t exactly have reservations anywhere else that he knew. When he got closer to that light, he said he realized it was not a star at all. It was like a light at the end of a long tunnel he had been traveling through, and that when he got there, it opened into this beautiful landscape with soft colors that shifted and changed like some kind of kaleidoscope. Only, it was off-limits. There was a barred gate that kept him from going further, he said, which really surprised him because he figured he had been pretty good all his life, meaning, as he explained, he had never cheated on his income tax forms or on his wife, for that matter. And, yeah, okay, there was the time he had thrown the cat out the upstairs window for having whizzed on his new bathrobe. So why the gate?
