And the date on the first article was tomorrow . . . no. We weren’t in the middle of Thorsday Night any more. We’d slipped into plain old Friday morning. The paper’s date was today. The headline readWOMAN SLAIN BY INTRUDER IN HOME INVASION. The photo Tyler had badgered me into getting identified me as “woman slain”.
I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself. “I should have let Tyler take me home,” I said.
“No,” Per said. “You did the right thing. Just keep skimming.”
There was an article where Tyler said my murder was a huge tragedy, that I’d just sold my first novel, that we were engaged, that I had no one else in the world. That we’d been so happy together. The bit about me having no one else in the world was true enough. But everything else was a lie.
Through newspaper articles, videos (also on the amazing paper, with sound included) and copies of legal documents dated well into the future, I discovered that Tyler had somehow had himself designated the executor of my estate. He’d managed my first novel sale into a bestseller by playing heavily on my emerging talent cut short by the tragedy of my brutal murder. I tried hard not to think too much about the “brutal” part.
It didn’t hurt that the books had been good. But the promotion had been . . . well . . . inspired.
I looked up at Per.
“I’ve loved you . . . your work . . . since I found the first book by you,” he said. He put his hand on mine and said, “You are a brilliant writer. And I lo—” He shook his head.
I couldn’t catch my breath. “I . . . you . . .”
He touched a finger to my lips and said, “You have to understand the situation – quickly – because there are some choices you must make. I need to know what you want. Your work has become classic in my time. Millions of people have read you, have had their lives changed and made better by your stories. You’re famous,you’re beloved.” He took a deep breath, and continued, “But all the probabilities suggest that your work only found its audience because you died so horribly – and because Tyler Boothe Mayall jumped in to market your just-sold book on your death. The odds are that if you had lived, all seven of your novels would have stayed in the trunk in your bedroom, along with any others that you might have written, and neither I nor anyone else would have ever heard of you.”
So.
If I died later this morning, I could be famous. Big-time famous. My words would live on long past my final breath. I would achieve the sort of literary immortality most writers dream of – and almost none get.
If I lived, odds were good that when I was dead no one would know I’d been here.
He was watching my eyes, looking for answers there. I doubted he could find any.
I buried my face in my hands.
I loved writing. And I loved the stories I told, the characters I created, the themes I explored and pursued and eventually pinned down and answered. Iwantedpeople to read what I’d done, to love it as much as I did. And I wanted to leave something of me behind when I was gone.
But I loved breathing, too. I loved waking up in the morning to the sunlight falling across my face. I loved walking the block to work, where I was a copywriter for a small ad agency. I loved the taste of cherries in summer and apples in autumn, the way my muscles burned when I stretched, and the way my heart pounded in rhythm with my feet when I ran.
I could be immortal if I died today.
I could be nobody at all if I lived tomorrow.
But the odds were I couldn’t have both my life and my fame.
“Writers dream about reaching millions,” I said. “But we also dream about being around to enjoy it.”
He nodded. “I know. And I can’t know how long you will live if you don’t die today, or how much more you will write. There are no odds for that, no way to predict, no way to track what didn’t happen. But I can tell you . . . having heard the first chapter of your new book, I would giveanythingto read the rest of it.”
I frowned. “Only . . . whether I live or die, you never will. Because either I won’t live to write it . . . or I won’t manage to publish it.”
“Those aren’t exactly the options. Don’t worry about what comes next. Or about me. Tell me what you want now. Do you want to become as famous as . . . well, not Shakespeare, but as famous as Tolkien? If you have to die today to do it? I know some writers would give anything for that guarantee.” He took a deep breath, and said, “Or would you want to live, knowing that if you do, odds are no one will ever know who you were?”
I drank the last of my diet soda and put my hand over his. “How long do I have to make up my mind?”
“Your murder happens at 7.24 a.m.”
I looked at my watch. It was 4.10 a.m.
I put my hand on his and said, “I have to go home. I want you to come with me.”
“I . . .” He looked away and blinked and swallowed, and I saw one tear slide down the side of his nose.
Without another word, he went to the counter and paid the bill, and we walked out together.
