The Waiting Room Read Online Free
wouldn't be the first time!" then careened down East 42nd Street.
~ * ~
Let me tell you what I used to believe about death before  I went to Nam and while Abner and I were sitting in the Hammet Mausoleum twenty years ago, with Flora's bleached white skull between us, the yellow-orange light of six candles flickering on the walls, and both of us on the verge of being terminally spooked:
I believed that death was it! The end. Zilch. Limboland. I believed that if a truck fell over on meâ splat! âthen maybe I'd feel a second's worth of incredible pain, but I wouldn't feel anything else because suddenly I'd be beyond pain and feeling. There'd be a stinking, gooey mess on the sidewalk that some poor slob would have to scrape up and shuffle onto a stretcher, but "Sam Feary" would be nothing but a name that someone, a couple of years down the line, would have trouble remembering.
Sometimes I think how really pleasant it would be if all of that dreck had turned out to be what really happens when the curtain comes down.
~ * ~
Abner was never a classic nerd. Even in high school he knew enough not to wear white socks with black shoes, slide rules baffled him, and he wasn't abysmally clumsy, although, after gym class when he was putting his jeans on, they usually had a hole in the knee that he'd get his foot stuck in and he'd hop about, on the verge of a fall, until he found a wall to steady himself against. But at heart, he was a nerd. His view of the world was nerdish. He was convinced that as complex as it was, as baffling and unfair and unjust as it seemed to be, there was a niche somewhere in it for him, and because it was his right âas a creature of the universeâhe would find that niche and fill it. And once he'd filled it, the world and its complexity and injustice could pass him by and that would be all right. He'd be comfortable, he'd be set.
I believe that he still thinks that way, though he's not so passionate about it. He used to be a photographer, for instance, which was why he came to New York several years ago, to do a big photo book on all that was wonderful about Manhattan. Now he shrugs and says, "Hell, there's just too much to photograph, Sam."
~ * ~
The tumbledown beach house on Long Island, where Abner is now, was owned by Art DeGraff. Art went to school with Abner and me in Bangor, twenty years ago, and I thought he was a slime-ball right from the start. He was a great actor and had lots of charm, but he smiled too much, as if some invisible layer of mud had made his smile stick on his face.
Art married Abner's cousin Stacy in 1975. It broke Abner's heart, and nearly killed Stacy because, after they were married, she learned that beneath his stiffly smiling exterior, Art liked to beat people up, women especially. Abner said that Stacy called it a "character flaw," which made him smile sadly and made my blood boil. Whatever it was, it gave Stacy a lot of pain.
The beach house on Long Island has fifteen rooms, five on the first floor, seven on the second, and three in the attic. It's a very big place, at least one hundred years old, and when the wind off the ocean is strong enough, it shimmers and shakes and complains so loudly that you have to shout to be heard above it.
For a while, Abner lived there. Madeline, too. You'll meet Madeline by and by.
There have been several fires in the house. One, in 1943, was started by a hobo who broke in one frigid winter night and tried to keep warm by building a campfire in the middle of the living room floor. It killed him and blackened the ceiling, but the house survived. In 1962 a family of four who'd driven up from North Carolina and had no place to stay broke into the house and set up housekeeping. It was late fall, and they were sure that no one was going to be using the house for a whileâall its doors and shutters were locked, a thick tangle of dead weeds surrounded it, and the nearest neighbors were a good mile off, blocked by a
~ * ~
Let me tell you what I used to believe about death before  I went to Nam and while Abner and I were sitting in the Hammet Mausoleum twenty years ago, with Flora's bleached white skull between us, the yellow-orange light of six candles flickering on the walls, and both of us on the verge of being terminally spooked:
I believed that death was it! The end. Zilch. Limboland. I believed that if a truck fell over on meâ splat! âthen maybe I'd feel a second's worth of incredible pain, but I wouldn't feel anything else because suddenly I'd be beyond pain and feeling. There'd be a stinking, gooey mess on the sidewalk that some poor slob would have to scrape up and shuffle onto a stretcher, but "Sam Feary" would be nothing but a name that someone, a couple of years down the line, would have trouble remembering.
Sometimes I think how really pleasant it would be if all of that dreck had turned out to be what really happens when the curtain comes down.
~ * ~
Abner was never a classic nerd. Even in high school he knew enough not to wear white socks with black shoes, slide rules baffled him, and he wasn't abysmally clumsy, although, after gym class when he was putting his jeans on, they usually had a hole in the knee that he'd get his foot stuck in and he'd hop about, on the verge of a fall, until he found a wall to steady himself against. But at heart, he was a nerd. His view of the world was nerdish. He was convinced that as complex as it was, as baffling and unfair and unjust as it seemed to be, there was a niche somewhere in it for him, and because it was his right âas a creature of the universeâhe would find that niche and fill it. And once he'd filled it, the world and its complexity and injustice could pass him by and that would be all right. He'd be comfortable, he'd be set.
I believe that he still thinks that way, though he's not so passionate about it. He used to be a photographer, for instance, which was why he came to New York several years ago, to do a big photo book on all that was wonderful about Manhattan. Now he shrugs and says, "Hell, there's just too much to photograph, Sam."
~ * ~
The tumbledown beach house on Long Island, where Abner is now, was owned by Art DeGraff. Art went to school with Abner and me in Bangor, twenty years ago, and I thought he was a slime-ball right from the start. He was a great actor and had lots of charm, but he smiled too much, as if some invisible layer of mud had made his smile stick on his face.
Art married Abner's cousin Stacy in 1975. It broke Abner's heart, and nearly killed Stacy because, after they were married, she learned that beneath his stiffly smiling exterior, Art liked to beat people up, women especially. Abner said that Stacy called it a "character flaw," which made him smile sadly and made my blood boil. Whatever it was, it gave Stacy a lot of pain.
The beach house on Long Island has fifteen rooms, five on the first floor, seven on the second, and three in the attic. It's a very big place, at least one hundred years old, and when the wind off the ocean is strong enough, it shimmers and shakes and complains so loudly that you have to shout to be heard above it.
For a while, Abner lived there. Madeline, too. You'll meet Madeline by and by.
There have been several fires in the house. One, in 1943, was started by a hobo who broke in one frigid winter night and tried to keep warm by building a campfire in the middle of the living room floor. It killed him and blackened the ceiling, but the house survived. In 1962 a family of four who'd driven up from North Carolina and had no place to stay broke into the house and set up housekeeping. It was late fall, and they were sure that no one was going to be using the house for a whileâall its doors and shutters were locked, a thick tangle of dead weeds surrounded it, and the nearest neighbors were a good mile off, blocked by a
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