Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,6
over a copy of War and Peace, scratching absentmindedly at the dark caramel skin of his forehead.
I clear my throat.
He looks up from the book and says, “Oh,” by which he means, “You’re here.”
I offer him his present—the Westing basketball cap I bought at the campus store—as a “token of our undying friendship.” An inside joke, seeing as how we’re both such tremendous sports buffs, he and I. Drinking five shots of vodka is an act of great endurance, right?
He laughs.
“It’s a bit sweaty,” I say, “but what’s a little exchange of bodily fluids between friends?”
He dons the cap frontward, which is ridiculous. I reach over, adjusting it so that it’s backward.
“There,” I say.
“I feel so cool,” he says.
I’m so happy I want to hug Marty. He reminds me that things don’t have to be complicated.
“I disapprove of your life choices,” I say, indicating the sandwich on his plate.
He gives me a cheeky grin. “You’ve made your feelings about sandwiches clear before.”
“That they’re culinary atrocities?”
“Uh-huh.” He takes a bite.
“That those who eat them are heretics?”
“Urh-hurh,” he says through a full mouth.
My eyes narrow. “You got it on purpose, didn’t you?”
His face lights up, and he nods enthusiastically.
“You don’t even like sandwiches, do you?” I say.
Marty swallows. “I think they’re efficient.”
I roll my eyes. “Martin, dear, please. Someone who’s worried about efficiency wouldn’t be reading War and Peace. Tolstoy should’ve edited that monster down into a short story.”
Marty pales visibly. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” he whispers.
“I tried to read it once myself. I got seven pages in before deciding war and peace were both interminably boring.”
He swallows. “It really picks up after the first four hundred pages.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well,” he starts, hesitates, before blurting: “I think Shakespeare is overrated.” He waits for my reaction.
I shake my head sadly, because there is no accounting for poor taste. “Martin, dear Martin. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’”
The words sound all wrong as they leave my lips, much sadder, more serious than I meant them to be. We’re silent for a time. He adjusts his glasses, which are thicker now than they were before, despite the drugs the doctors inject into his eyes every month. He shoots me a look of feigned reproach. He reads, “‘One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know.’” He pauses, licks his lips. “‘You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies on the other side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men.’”
He is expectant. I meet his gaze, and in his gaze I see the walls of Westing, equipped with state-of-the-art motion sensors, patrolled by guards. I see the fields and trees and roofs lit beyond the walls, the parents beyond them, parents whose letters Marty, unlike me, answers.
THE END TIME
IS YOUR TIME
MAKE IT COUNT
Start BELIEVING today.
Wake up to a new TOMORROW.
This Message Brought to You by the
WESTING BELIEVERS
Meetings Every Thursday: Bullsworth Auditorium
Join us online at AwayWeGo.com/groups/believe
WHO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE
After breakfast, I drop Marty off at the Westing Library, which looks like something out of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, all towers and parapets. Inside, urinals and books are strictly segregated.
“I’ll be in here for a while,” Marty says.
“More of the Russians?”
He gives me a sheepish shrug. “You can never have enough dead Russians in your life.”
“Got to go to work now,” I say. “Might drop in to annoy you later, Martin dear.”
I go to work in the sense that I show up three times a week for two hours a pop to get trained for a job I’ve yet to undertake. The money I make from that plus my requisite student stipend—provided by my parents—goes into an account. I can then buy foreign-made shirts and mugs with the Westing logo stamped onto their fronts—a gold W over an impressionistic rendition of Galloway Hall. Oh, yes, and alcohol, too. Alcohol most definitely. I don’t know how it gets smuggled in, but I’m sure glad someone figured