Excuse Me While I Disappear: Stories

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I only call it a book because he called it that. He said it was the greatest book ever written, and he was sorely sorry he didn’t have a copy to share with me.

He was the old man who had taken up residence in an abandoned encampment alongside the tracks. How long he’d been there, no one could say. Sanitation workers found him one morning after a night of heavy snow. With his eyes hidden behind the frosted glass of his Wellsworth spectacles, his arms rigid on the chair rests, he gave the appearance that he would never move again. One of the workmen reached out and poked the figure, producing from him a sharp inhalation. Startled by this unexpected evidence of life, the men reacted by lurching backward, tripping over the gravel ballast, and falling into a heap, one on top of the other.

The stranger, obviously alive, said nothing. He didn’t need to speak. He presided over the workmen like a judge, giving them the impression that within the span of a few seconds they had been found guilty and just as promptly pardoned, leaving them forever beholden to the stranger for their freedom.

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