The Silver Linings Playbook - By Matthew Quick Page 0,36
running again.
I weave through the crowds of people, across streets, around cars, and through horns blaring and cursing drivers screaming at me. I feel a bubbly feeling in my midsection, and then I am puking my guts out onto the sidewalk - eggs, sausage, beer - and so many people are yelling at me, calling me a drunk, saying that I'm an asshole; and then I'm running again as fast as I can, down the street away from the stadiums.
When I feel as though I am going to throw up again, I stop and realize I'm alone - no more Eagles fans anywhere. A chain-link fence, beyond it a warehouse that looks abandoned.
I vomit again.
On the sidewalk, outside of the puddle I am making, pieces of broken glass glint and sparkle in the sun.
I cry.
I feel awful.
I realize that I have once again failed to be kind; that I lost control in a big way; that I seriously injured another person, and therefore I'm never going to get Nikki back now. Apart time is going to last forever because my wife is a pacifist who would never want me to hit anyone under any circumstance, and both God and Jesus were obviously rooting for me to turn the other cheek, so I know I really shouldn't have hit that Giants fan, and now I'm crying again because I'm such a fucking waste - such a fucking non-person.
I walk another half block, my chest heaving wildly, and then I stop.
"Dear God," I pray. "Please don't send me back to the bad place. Please!"
I look up at the sky.
I see a cloud passing just under the sun.
The top is all electric white.
I remind myself.
Don't give up, I think. Not just yet.
"Pat! Pat! Wait up!"
I look back toward the stadiums, and my brother is running toward me. Over the next minute or so, Jake gets bigger and bigger, and then he is right in front of me, bent over, huffing and puffing.
"I'm sorry," I say. I'm so, so sorry."
"For what?" Jake laughs, pulls out his cell phone, dials a number, and holds the small phone up to his ear.
"I found him," Jake says into the phone. "Yeah, tell him."
Jake hands me the phone. I put it up to my ear.
"Is this Rocky Balboa?"
I recognize the voice as Scott's.
"Listen, the asshole you knocked out - well, he woke up and is super pissed. Better not come back to the tent."
"Is he okay?" I ask.
"You should be more worried about yourself."
"Why?"
"We played dumb when the cops showed up, and no one was able to identify you or your brother - but ever since five-o left, the big guy's been searching the parking lot, looking for you. Whatever you do, don't come back here, because this Giants fan's hellbent on revenge."
I hand the phone back to Jake, feeling somewhat relieved to know I did not seriously hurt Steve, but also feeling numb - because I lost control again. Plus, I'm a little afraid of the Giants fan.
"So, are we going home now?" I ask Jake when he finishes talking to Scott.
"Home? Are you kiddin' me?" he says, and we start walking back toward the Linc.
When I don't say anything for a long time, my brother asks if I'm okay.
I'm not okay, but I don't say so.
"Listen, that asshole attacked you and threw me to the ground. You only defended your family," Jake says. "You should be proud. You were the hero."
Even though I was defending my brother, even though I did not seriously hurt the Giants fan, I don't feel proud at all. I feel guilty. I should be locked up again in the bad place. I feel as though Dr. Timbers was right about me - that I don't belong in the real world, because I am uncontrollable and dangerous. But of course I do not say this to Jake, mostly because he has never been locked up and doesn't understand what it feels like to lose control, and he only wants to watch the football game now, and none of this means anything to him, because he has never been married and he has never lost someone like Nikki and he is not trying to improve his life at all, because he doesn't ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day - the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and ...