The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘It’s Andrews!’ He bellows it, surprising both of them. In a lower voice, he says, ‘If I try, really try, I’m sure I can hold onto something. Even if it’s only what happened to Mike’s finger. And one change might be enough to … I don’t know …’

To take Annmarie to a movie instead of to that fucking kegger, how about that?

Harris says, ‘There is a folk tale that before birth, every human soul knows all the secrets of life and death and the universe. But then, just before birth, an angel leans down, puts his finger to the new baby’s lips, and whispers “Shhh.”’ Harris touches his philtrum. ‘According to the story, this is the mark left by the angel’s finger. Every human being has one.’

‘Have you ever seen an angel, Mr Harris?’

‘No, but I once saw a camel. It was in the Bronx Zoo. Choose a door.’

As he considers, Bill remembers a story they had to read in junior high: ‘The Lady or the Tiger.’ This decision is nowhere near as difficult.

I must hold onto just one thing, he tells himself as he opens the door that leads back into life. Just one thing.

The white light of return envelops him.

The doctor, who will bolt the Republican party and vote for Adlai Stevenson in the fall (something his wife must never know), bends forward from the waist like a waiter presenting a tray and comes up holding a naked baby by the heels. He gives it a sharp smack and the squalling begins.

‘You have a healthy baby boy, Mrs Andrews,’ he says. ‘Looks to be about seven pounds. Congratulations.’

Mrs Andrews takes the baby. She kisses his damp cheeks and brow. They will name him William, after her paternal grandfather. When the twenty-first century comes, he’ll still be in his forties. The idea is dizzying. In her arms she holds not just a new life but a universe of possibilities. Nothing, she thinks, could be more wonderful.

Thinking of Surendra Patel

Ralph Vicinanza, a close friend who also sold the rights to publish my books in lots of foreign countries, had a way of coming to me with interesting ideas at just the right time – which is to say while I was between projects. I never talk much to people about what I’m working on, so he must have had some kind of special radar. He was the one who suggested I might like to try my hand at a serial novel, à la Charles Dickens, and that seed eventually blossomed into The Green Mile.

Ralph called not long after I finished the first draft of Lisey’s Story and while I was waiting for that book to settle a bit (translation: doing nothing). He said that Amazon was launching their second-generation Kindle, and the company was hoping that some hot-shit bestselling writer would help them out in the PR department by writing a story that used the Kindle as a plot element. (Such longish works of fiction and nonfiction later became known as Kindle Singles.) I thanked Ralph but said I had no interest, for two reasons. The first is that I’ve never been able to write stories on demand. The second is that I hadn’t lent my name to any commercial enterprise since doing an American Express ad back in the day. And Jesus Christ, how bizarre was that? Wearing a tuxedo, I posed in a drafty castle with a stuffed raven on my arm. A friend told me I looked like a blackjack dealer with a bird fetish.

‘Ralph,’ I said, ‘I enjoy my Kindle, but I have absolutely no interest in shilling for Amazon.’

Yet the idea lingered, mostly because I’ve always been fascinated by new technologies, especially those having to do with reading and writing. One day not long after Ralph’s call, the idea for this story arrived while I was taking my morning walk. It was too cool to remain unwritten. I didn’t tell Ralph, but when the story was done, I sent it to him and said Kindle was welcome to use it for their launch purposes, if they liked. I even showed up at the event and read some of it.

I took a certain amount of shit about that from portions of the literary community that saw it as selling out to the business side, but, in the words of John Lee Hooker, ‘That don’t confront me none.’ As far as I was concerned, Amazon was just another market, and one of the few that would publish a story of this length. There was no advance, but there were – and still are – royalties on each sale (or download, if you prefer). I was happy to bank those checks; there’s an old saying that the workman is worthy of his hire, and I think it’s a true saying. I write for love, but love doesn’t pay the bills.

There was one special perk, though: a one-of-a-kind pink Kindle. Ralph got a kick out of that, and I’m glad. It was our last really cool deal, because my friend died suddenly in his sleep five years ago. Boy, I miss him.