Free The Failure by James Greer Page B

Zaroastin.
    -Means nothing to me.
    -Okay. Good.
    -You’re not going to explain it?
    -No, I’m not, Billy. Life is already too long as it is. I don’t want to make it any longer.
    -Name of the driver.
    -I said I wasn’t going to …
    -No, not in the joke. The man you met at the party.
    -Oh. Right. His name is Sven.

25. THE TRUTH ABOUT VIOLET, AS RELUCTANTLY DISCLOSED BY THE NOT ENTIRELY OMNISCIENT BUT VERY RELIABLE NARRATOR, STEPPING OUT OF THE FRAME OF THE STORY FOR AN INSTANT

    I n India, women of a certain caste whose husbands die are forced to remain in mourning for the rest of their lives. They’re no longer allowed to wear makeup or jewelry. They’re made to shave their heads and wear only white. Their shadows are considered bad luck. Eventually, many of them end up in a particular city—whose name I forget since having read the CNN article—where they can at least congregate and take comfort from their own accursed kind. This place is called the City of Widows.
    Violet is a widow. True, she killed her husband, but it was an accident, and though she did not love him she was sorry for having caused his death. Most of her actions in the five years since can be seen as a kind of American version of the City of Widows. Call it the City of Windows: Violet became a flagrant and habitual exhibitionist, a willing slave to the erotic whimsies of the Nation of Men, not because she enjoyed it, but because she decided—whether consciously or subconsciously is not the issue—that if she were not to be paired with one man only she would be paired with all men generally. She decided that she would, in the words of one of her favorite pop songs, fuck the pain away.
    You can’t fuck the pain away, of course. Like all successful pop songs, the central conceit is a beautiful lie. But you can try, and Violet tried. She had been married for five years, and unmarried now for the same, but in her mind still married, still unable to sleep in a shared bed unshared. Five years of practice had unprepared Violet for solitude.
    Her old apartment too, impossible. Every inch imprinted with the presence of the dead man, corners of rooms and even cobwebs brushed with faint breath. It can all go to hell. The plants can die from neglect, now. Framed photos smothered under dust. Now. What energy’s left she summoned to wake, and walk, and fuck. All else is definition of useless. Scrape remains of food into crammed trashcan, pile dish onto pile of dishes in sink. She used to be tidy. Now she’s only ever tired. Any help sleep provides removed by the reeling void of waking up alone, without light or heat or right, in darkness made still darker by indifferent empty space. The void, of course, merely Violet’s stomach grumbling from hunger. Empty is as empty does.
    Shame. What you feel when you’re not afraid. Rare’s the peace that preempts either, rarer still the feathery tickle of contentment (that is to say happiness, Violet, don’t be shy, a thing does not disappear from earth just because it disappears from your own little life). We ought to be better learned of the selfishness of gentlemen: the oblique glances, the question-mark eyebrows, appetites to sate, egos to salve: enervation itself.
    The last thing dies in a woman is hope. Even unreasonable fancy, in place of hope. One jar in the back of the malodorous fridge, never opened. A token but of what. Symbolic but of what. The jar labeled Jam , the label handlettered, unspecified as to flavor or provenance or date of purchase. As long as she can remember, that jar has sat. Absorbed the passing of time as a process of refilling. Violet likes to think that sealed in the jar are the years. Time itself, gone bad.

26. BILLY, STRANDED ON A HILL-SIDE BY GUY, HAS AN UNFORTUNATE ENCOUNTER, LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO

    B illy stood for a few moments staring in disbelief at the top of the hillside where Guy had just gotten into his stolen Mini Cooper and sped off at