Now a man named Lazarus was
sick – John 11:1
1. Aaron
Servi had become as transparent as a lacy veil, as insubstantial as a ghost, as
wispy as morning haze. He flitted beyond
the realm of sense-perception. He slid
spoons across the kitchen floor. He
upset a chair in the enclosed patio, cascading wicker to the floor, crenelated
pillows to the deck. He was there, but he
was harmless. He was present but distant
-- the annoying, perennial pest. His
parents continued to write him. His
twilight existence should have expunged the need for family
reconciliation. But there were rituals
to enact.
Servi moved about
for six months, attempting to find traction in the context of no traction, and
their letters arrived at various pensiones,
youth hostels and single rooms, haphazardly and without apparent
chronology. It was as if some capricious
ghoul had ripped the chapters of a book from the binding and heaved them pell-mell
to the four winds. Servi tried to write
back, but it appeared that his letters did not reach his parents. Or when they did, their response revealed
that they had received an alternate version, like an outtake which should have
ended on the cutting room floor. Oddest
of all: sometimes they answered letters that Servi had yet to write, as if
something was cracked in the very fabric of time.
Dear Aaron, his
father wrote, Why don’t you come back to New York? Maybe this whole Italy experience is a mistake. A dead issue.
This city has seven million people.
There are millions of opportunities for you. But first you must come home to us and start
over again in America…
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