Suddenly it feels like my mouth has jumped off my face, abandoning me, so I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to.
“Hello?” Herr Silverman says.
It’s definitely his voice.
I attempt to throw my cell phone into the river, but it seems to have become a part of my ear.
“Hello?” Herr Silverman says a little more forcefully this time.
I’m waiting for him to hang up, thinking it’s a wrong number or a perverted heavy breather.
“Is this Leonard?” Herr Silverman says in this softer voice, and he doesn’t sound like he’s pissed that I called. It almost sounds like he’s honored. Like he could have said, “Did I really win teacher of the year?” in the same voice.
Still, I can’t speak.
“Are you okay?” When I don’t answer, he says, “Leonard, don’t hang up. Stay on the line. I want to tell you why I don’t roll up my sleeves, like I promised. Since you’re calling me at this number, I assume that you need to know the answer. I’m happy to tell you. But the problem is that I need to show you. So where are you? Tell me and I’ll come to you. But I want to keep you on the line while I take a cab. We can chat about anything you want and then when I arrive at wherever you are, I’ll roll up my sleeves and explain the mystery to you. I really think you’ll find my story worthwhile if you can just hold on until I get there. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”
I don’t say anything, although I want to.
My mouth is still missing.
I wasn’t expecting this.
I wonder why Herr Silverman is being so nice to me—if he’s done this sort of thing with other students. It doesn’t seem right to make him come out on a school night when he probably has a million other things to do and therefore doesn’t really need this sort of extra above-and-beyond hassle. It would be easier for everyone if I just pulled the trigger and ended this now. But I can’t for some reason. I just can’t.
“Okay, Leonard. Just make a noise if it’s really you. Just grunt or something to let me know. Let’s start there. So is it you?”
Even though I tell myself to remain quiet, that I shouldn’t be putting Herr Silverman out, that I should just hang up before this gets any more complicated, an “Um-hmmm” rises up from somewhere inside me and makes my lips vibrate.
I’m shaking now, really hard.
“Are you at home?”
I don’t say anything.
“Okay, you’re not at your house. So where are you?”
I don’t say anything.
“Are you alone?”
I don’t say anything.
“Just tell me where you are, Leonard. I’ll come to you. We can talk. I’ll tell you my secret. I’ll roll up my sleeves for you.”
I don’t know why I can suddenly speak, but even though I want to hang up and let Herr Silverman enjoy his night, my lungs and tongue and lips betray me.
“It’s my birthday today. No one remembered.”
It sounds so stupid and pathetic and little-kid whiny that I push the P-38’s barrel into my temple again.
End this.
Just pull the trigger.
Make it easier for everyone.
There’s a long pause, and I can tell that Herr Silverman is trying to decide what to say.
“Happy birthday, Leonard. Are you eighteen today?”
Hearing someone say “happy birthday”—I know it seems so f**king stupid, but it sort of makes me feel better all of a sudden.
Just two words.
Happy birthday.
It makes me feel like I’m not already gone.
Like I’m still here.
“Leonard?” Herr Silverman says.
I’m sort of staring out across the river at the Philadelphia skyline in the distance. The lights of the skyscrapers shimmy across the water and dance with moonbeams.
I wonder if it’s anyone else’s birthday in Philadelphia.
How those other people are celebrating.
If any of them feel the way I do right now.
“Leonard, please. Just tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.”
I can’t believe how much I want to see Herr Silverman right now.
I don’t even really understand why.
I lower the P-38 and tell him where I am.
“Don’t move,” Herr Silverman says. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. And don’t hang up. I’m going to stay on the phone with you. I just have to tell my roommate where I’m going.”
I hear him talking to someone, but I don’t catch exactly what’s being said.
Another man says something in response—it sounds like they are arguing—then there’s a rustling noise, and Herr Silverman says, “You still there, Leonard?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m walking down the stairs in my apartment building, getting closer to you. Okay, now I’m on Walnut Street looking for a cab. Here’s one now. I’ve got my hand in the air. He sees me. He’s pulling over. I’m getting into the cab.” I hear him tell the driver where I am. “We’re driving now, headed for the bridge.”
Herr Silverman narrates his whole trip for me like that and I listen to the sound of his voice and think that his words are the only thing keeping me tethered to this world right now—that his words are literally keeping me alive—and if he hadn’t picked up I really might have blown my brains out.
I’m wondering again what might be under his shirtsleeves—if knowing will be worth sticking around.
Or will it be just another in a long list of disappointments?
You still have the gun. You can still check out if you need to, fall into the water, sink… sink… sink into oblivion, I tell myself and that also helps, because it means I have options.
Options are important.
So is an exit plan.
“Okay,” Herr Silverman says, “I’m in New Jersey. About five minutes away from you now.”
The lights reflected on the river look so beautiful, I think. They almost make me want to go swimming.
“I can see the bridge now,” Herr Silverman says, and then I hear him ask the taxi driver to leave the meter running and wait for us.
The taxi driver says something and the tone of his voice makes me think he won’t wait.
“This is serious—an emergency,” Herr Silverman tells him. “I will tip you well. I promise.”
I realize that Herr Silverman is willing to spend his own money to save me68 and my throat constricts as I hear the taxi come to a stop above me on the bridge.
“I’m leaving the taxi, Leonard. I’m here. I just have to find a way down to you.”
I want to tell him there’s a little dirt path worn into the hill by drunken high school students, but my mouth has jumped off my face again.
“Here’s a path,” Herr Silverman says, and then I hear rocks and loose dirt rolling down the hill.
“Leonard?” he says, only this time he’s not in my phone.
I hang up.
THIRTY-TWO
“Is that a gun in your hand, Leonard?” Herr Silverman says, and his voice sounds a little shakier than usual—like maybe he’s more freaked than he’s letting on.
“Nazi P-38,” I say, and my voice sounds hard.
“Your grandfather’s war trophy?”
I nod.
He’s still a few feet away from me, but I feel sort of boxed in a little, so I take a step back.
“You wanna give that to me?” he says, and takes a step toward me with his palm outstretched. I can tell he’s really freaked now, because his hand is shaking, although he’s trying hard to steady it.
“Did they teach you how to deal with an armed student when you attended teacher school?” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “Was there a class on this?”
“No, they certainly didn’t—and there definitely wasn’t,” he says. “Maybe there should have been. Is it loaded?”
“Yep. And the safety’s off,” I say, hearing the edge in my voice.
Herr Silverman lowers his hand and stiffens a bit.
I don’t really understand why I’m speaking to Herr Silverman this way.
I mean—he came to save me, right?
I called him on the phone because I wanted him to come.
But it’s like I can’t help myself.
It’s like I’m too f**ked-up to be nice and appreciative.
“Just give me the gun and everything will be okay.”
“No it won’t. That’s such a f**king lie! You don’t lie, Herr Silverman. You’re better than the rest. You’re the only adult I really trust and look up to. So tell me something else, okay? Try again.”
“Okay. Did you write the letters from the people in the future?” Herr Silverman asks.
His asking that kind of surprises me, and invokes all these intense feelings I don’t want to feel. “Yes. Yes, I did,” I say in this defiant, almost yelling voice.
“What did they tell you? What did they say?”
“They said a nuclear holocaust is coming. The future world is covered with water, like Al Gore predicted. People kill each other for the little land left. Millions die.”
“Interesting. But I’m sure they said other things too, because you’re not all gloom and doom, Leonard. I’ve seen the light in your eyes too many times. What else did they say?”
His saying that bit about there being light in my eyes makes my throat constrict even more and my eyes start to feel tight. “It doesn’t f**king matter, because those people don’t exist.”
“Yes, they do, Leonard,” he says, taking another cautious step toward me. “They really do. If you believe hard enough—and if you hold on. Okay—maybe you won’t find those exact people, but friends will arrive at some point. You’ll find others like you.”
“How do you know? How can you be so sure?”
“Because I used to write letters to myself from the future when I was your age and it helped me a great deal.”
“But did you meet the people you imagined in the future?”
“I did.”
I’m kind of caught off guard by this information, and suddenly I’m truly curious about Herr Silverman’s life.
Who are the people he wrote to?
“How did you find them?”
“Writing those letters helped me figure out who I was and what I wanted. Once I knew that, I could send out a clear message so that others could respond appropriately.”
I think about it and say, “In the future I man a lighthouse with my wife, daughter, and father-in-law. We send out a great beam of light every night even though no one ever sees it.”
“That’s beautiful,” he says. “You see?”
But I don’t see, so I say, “Writing those letters made me feel even more f**ked-up.”
“Why?”
“I got to thinking that I wanted to live in that fictional world now—that the better world in the letters made me want to exit this world. That’s probably what led to me being here with a gun in my hand.”
Herr Silverman winces almost unnoticeably, but I see it. Then he says, “You ever feel like you’re sending out a light but no one sees it?”