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"Who are--"
"Hi, Ed," he says. "I'm glad to finally meet you."
"Are you--"
He nods.
"You sent--"
He nods again.
When he stands up, he says, "I came to this town a year ago, Ed." He has fairly short brown hair, stands a bit smaller than medium height, and wears a shirt, black jeans, and blue athletic shoes. As each minute passes he looks more like a boy than a man, although when he speaks, his voice is not a boy's at all.
"Yeah, it was about a year ago, and I saw your father buried. I saw you and your card games and your dog and your ma. I just kept coming back, watching, the same way you did at all those addresses...." He turns away for a moment, almost ashamed. "I killed your father, Ed. I organized the bungled bank robbery for a time when you were there. I instructed that man to brutalize his wife. I made Daryl and Keith do all those things to you, and your mate who took you to the stones...." He looks down, then up. "I did it all to you. I made you a less-than-competent taxi driver and got you to do all those things you thought you couldn't." We stand now, staring. Waiting for more words. "And why?" He pauses, but he doesn't move back. "I did it because you are the epitome of ordinariness, Ed." He looks at me seriously. "And if a guy like you can stand up and do what you did for all those people, well, maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of." He becomes intense now. Emotional. This is everything. "Maybe even I can...."
He sits back down on the couch.
I recall the sensation of the town feeling painted around me and of feeling invented. Is this happening?
It is, and the young man sits there rinsing his hand through his hair.
Quietly, he stands up and looks back at the couch. There's a faded yellow folder sitting on a cushion. "It's all in there," he says. "Everything. Everything I wrote for you. Every idea I scratched around with. Every person you helped, hurt, or ran into."
"But"--my words feel smeared--"how?"
"Even this," he answers, "is in there--this discussion."
Shocked, amazed, dumbfounded, I stand.
Eventually, I manage to speak again. "Am I real?"
He barely even thinks about it. He doesn't need to. "Look in the folder," he says. "At the end. See it?"
In large scrawled letters on the blank side of a cardboard beer coaster, it's written. His answer is written there in black ink. It says, Of course you're real--like any thought or any story. It's real when you're in it.
He says, "I'd better go now. You probably want to go through that folder and check for consistency. It's all there."
For a moment, I panic. It's that feeling of falling when you know without question that you've lost control of your car or made a mistake that's beyond repair.
"What do I do now?" I ask desperately. "Tell me! What do I do now?"
He remains calm.
He looks at me closely and says, "Keep living, Ed.... It's only the pages that stop here."
He stays for perhaps another ten minutes, probably due to the trauma that has strapped itself to me. I remain standing, trying to contemplate and recover from what's just transpired.
"I really think I'd better go," he says again, this time with more finality.
With difficulty, I walk him to the door.
We say goodbye on the front porch, and he walks back up the street.
I wonder about his name, but I'm sure I'll learn it soon enough.
He's written about this, I'm sure, the bastard. All of it.
As he walks up the street he pulls a small notebook from his pocket and writes a few things down.
