Free The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken Page B

theater. Instead, a tumor grew in you, and expanded until it took your life. Sixty years from now, who will think of you, who will talk about you? We are truly dead when there is no one left to remember us, when our children and grandchildren are gone as well. We who are childless die sooner than the others.
    You had a best friend when you were ten or eleven. Her name was Susan. You’d become friends at school when you’d discovered that you were born on the same day. For a few months, you’d done everything together. You used to pretend you were twins. Then summer came, and your friend’s family went upstate on vacation. They rented a house on a lake. You were going to join them in the second week. But before you could get there, your friend had gone out on the lake in a canoe, without telling anyone. The canoe had overturned and your friend had drowned. You only told me this story once. It was when you were about to visit her parents. They’d never gotten over the death of their daughter. You visited them out of pity, but only infrequently. They saw you as a continuation of their daughter, which made you uncomfortable. Once, her father had even accidently called you Susan, which had spooked you. You’d felt like a ghost, you’d said.
    It had all come out in an easy flow, when normally writing was a stuttering, painful business. I stopped suddenly. It struck me that I was writing in the second person, and Iwondered why. The thought interrupted my flow, and I knew I’d never get it back again. I looked up from the notepad. The woman was on the balcony. She was smoking, as usual, but instead of staring out into the city, she was looking in my direction. She’d been watching me writing. I felt transfixed as my eyes locked into her gaze. Eventually she brought a hand up to her forehead, as if to brush something away, or pat down her hair. She turned, momentarily contemplated a streetscape I couldn’t see from my angle, then went back inside. It had all taken place in the space of thirty seconds at most.
    I waited for my muscles to relax again. I continued to stare through the window. She’d left the door onto the balcony slightly ajar, even though it must be chilly outside now, with fall well underway; it felt like a strange sort of invitation. The moment was barely over, but I was already reliving it in my mind. My looking up to see her eyes, boring into mine. I wondered whether perhaps I served the same function in her life that she served in mine. Was it me she came out on the balcony to see? Was she making up stories about me? She sees a youngish man lying on a hospital bed, half of his face bandaged, always staring out the window. He’s there, day and night, always gazing out. It would be natural to wonder what had brought him there, wouldn’t it? It would be a mystery, perfect material for fantasy.
    The next day, the doctor was back as usual. I handed him the pages I’d written about Abby. He looked over them briefly, not long enough to read them properly, then gave them back to me. Whatever the purpose of getting me to write something, it patently wasn’t so that he could read it. He leaned over, gently unwrapped the bandage on my head, examined the wound.
    “The staples will have to come out. I’ll get someone to see you about that.”
    “Okay.”
    “Do you remember how you got it, this wound? Do you remember anything?”
    I’d seen it coming, this discussion about my injury and the “accident,” as I termed it in my mind, even though it had been no accident at all. I knew that broaching the subject of Abby had been a harbinger, clearing the way.
    “Yes, I do remember. I was on the subway platform. The station was …”
    “Lexington and Fifty-Ninth.”
    “That’s right. It was morning, peak hour. Very crowded. As I was going down the stairs, I noticed someone. I’d seen him before. He’d been following me, at least I thought so. Then I was down on the platform. The train was coming. I could