When it is time to plant, plant. When it is time to eat, eat. Whatever you are doing … just do it. If it’s raining, you can worry about the rain all day or you can plant and make money. The rain will pass and then it will be dinner and then it will be time to go to sleep. And like the rain, the night will pass too, so better that you just shut up and sleep. As for tomorrow … Tomorrow, read Stephanie, doesn’t even enter into it.
Gradually, the wishes became, as dying wishes go, more and more peculiar. “Please buy me some of those French chocolates when you are in Paris next.”
“Send three of the cotton undershirts they have at Marks & Spencer. It is my dying wish.”
Eugene shuffled unwaveringly across the room and picked up the telephone. Eugene, who had never once in his life incurred long-distance charges on his own telephone—not once, not ever—Eugene, who won’t even talk to his son when Thomas phones home, because he can hear the money being spent with every word—that Eugene, picked up the phone and dialed Thomas direct in London,
Thomas said, “Someone else must have had the same dream as him. Someone else must have found the chest first and got all the gold.” And Thomas laughed and
She said, “That’s what your uncle said.” “What happened to the chest?” asked Thomas. Michelina shook her head. “He put a hundred lira inside and buried it for the next person who had the dream.”
“I don’t drink,” said Sam the first time that happened. “Too bad,” said Eugene. “I am not going to be around to make it forever. It’s good stuff. You might want to hurry up about changing your mind. You miss it … it’s your loss.”
Sam has tried smoking, although not one of Eugene’s cigars. It was at a party, and it took an older woman to weaken his resolve. Sam was eleven. The seductress was a twelve-year-old girl from Saskatchewan. Sam left the party early, feeling sick. He quit smoking the next morning. “It’s not as hard as they say,” he told his friend Murphy. “Whenever I feel like a cigarette, I eat candy.”
Unlike endings, beginnings are often foggy affairs.
When Sam’s predicting had started, it had been fun. It had been the summer, and it was just Sam and Ben, and it was something to do. Then it had gotten serious, making Sam feel full of power and promise. But now he wasn’t feeling powerful; he was feeling overwhelmed. Things were getting out of control. He had barely escaped being kissed.
He remembered the greatest afternoon of his life—the afternoon his father had appeared at his classroom and said, “Sam has to be excused from school. Sam has a doctor’s appointment.” Sam was nervous because he didn’t know about the doctor. He thought maybe he was so sick that his parents hadn’t wanted to tell him. But instead of driving to the doctor, his dad winked and headed downtown. He was taking Sam to his first-ever ball game.
“What if everything doesn’t work out well in the end?” asked Sam. “Ah,” said Madame Nina. “That’s easy. If it doesn’t work out well in the end, that means it’s not the end.”
After all these years, after all the close calls, all the near misses, is this how he was going to die? Ripped apart by a set of false teeth?
By the time Sam and his friend Murphy yawped down the alley like a pair of crows, Eugene had his head in the wine press and had the press screwed down as tight as he could get it.
“I don’t smoke,” Sam will say. Eugene will shrug. “I forgot,” he will say. And then he will hold the package out again and say, “It’s never too soon to start.”
opposite poles—like, say, an electromagnet and a belt buckle. Dave’s