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“I know,” I said, although I didn’t, not really. I’d never been anything but terminal; all my treatment had been in pursuit of extending my life, not curing my cancer. Phalanxifor had introduced a measure of ambiguity to my cancer story, but I was different from A ugustus: My final chapter was written upon diagnosis. Gus, like most cancer survivors, lived with uncertainty.
“Right,” he said. “So I went through this whole thing about wanting to be ready. We bought a plot in Crown Hill, and I walked around
with my dad one day and picked out a spot. A nd I had my whole funeral pla
asked my parents if I could buy a suit, like a really nice suit, just in case I bit it. A nyway, I’ve never had occasion to wear it. Until tonight.”
“So it’s your death suit.”
“Correct. Don’t you have a death outfit?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a dress I bought for my fifteenth birthday party. But I don’t wear it on dates.”
His eyes lit up. “We’re on a date?” he asked.
I looked down, feeling bashful. “Don’t push it.”
We were both really full, but dessert—a succulently rich crémeux surrounded by passion fruit—was too good not to at least nibble, so we
lingered for a while over dessert, trying to get hungry again. The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light.
Out of nowhere, A ugustus asked, “Do you believe in an afterlife?”
“I think forever is an incorrect concept,” I answered.
He smirked. “You’re an incorrect concept.”
“I know. That’s why I’m being taken out of the rotation.”
“That’s not fu
“Come on,” I said. “That was a joke.”
“The thought of you being removed from the rotation is not fu
“No,” I said, and then revised. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t go so far as no. You?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice full of confidence. “Yes, absolutely. Not like a heaven where you ride unicorns, play harps, and live in a mansion made of clouds. But yes. I believe in Something with a capital S. A lways have.”
“Really?” I asked. I was surprised. I’d always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus
wasn’t dumb.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I believe in that line from A n Imperial A ffliction. ‘The risen sun too bright in her losing eyes.’ That’s God, I think, the rising sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren’t lost. I don’t believe we return to haunt or comfort the living or anything, but I think something becomes of us.”
“But you fear oblivion.”
“Sure, I fear earthly oblivion. But, I mean, not to sound like my parents, but I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the
conservation of souls. The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won’t be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don’t live a life in service of a greater good, you’ve gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? A nd I fear that I won’t get either a life or a death that means anything.”
I just shook my head.
“What?” he asked.
“Your obsession with, like, dying for something or leaving behind some great sign of your heroism or whatever. It’s just weird.”
“Everyone wants to lead an extraordinary life.”
“Not everyone,” I said, unable to disguise my a
“A re you mad?”
“It’s just,” I said, and then couldn’t finish my sentence. “Just,” I said again. Between us flickered the candle. “It’s really mean of you to say that the only lives that matter are the ones that are lived for something or die for something. That’s a really mean thing to say to me.”
I felt like a little kid for some reason, and I took a bite of dessert to make it appear like it was not that big of a deal to me. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was just thinking about myself.”
“Yeah, you were,” I said. I was too full to finish. I worried I might puke, actually, because I often puked after eating. (Not bulimia, just cancer.) I pushed my dessert plate toward Gus, but he shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, reaching across the table for my hand. I let him take it. “I could be worse, you know.”
“How?” I asked, teasing.
“I mean, I have a work of calligraphy over my toilet that reads, ‘Bathe Yourself Daily in the Comfort of God’s Words,’ Hazel. I could be
way worse.”
“Sounds unsanitary,” I said.
“I could be worse.”
“You could be worse.” I smiled. He really did like me. Maybe I was a narcissist or something, but when I realized it there in that moment
at Oranjee, it made me like him even more.
When our waiter appeared to take dessert away, he said, “Your meal has been paid for by Mr. Peter Van Houten.”
A ugustus smiled. “This Peter Van Houten fellow ain’t half bad.”
We walked along the canal as it got dark. A block up from Oranjee, we stopped at a park bench surrounded by old rusty bicycles locked to
bike racks and to each other. We sat down hip to hip facing the canal, and he put his arm around me.
I could see the halo of light coming from the Red Light District. Even though it was the Red Light District, the glow coming from up there
was an eerie sort of green. I imagined thousands of tourists getting drunk and stoned and pinballing around the narrow streets.
“I can’t believe he’s going to tell us tomorrow,” I said. “Peter Van Houten is going to tell us the famously unwritten end of the best book ever.”
“Plus he paid for our di
“I keep imagining that he is going to search us for recording devices before he tells us. A nd then he will sit down between us on the
couch in his living room and whisper whether A
“Don’t forget Sisyphus the Hamster,” A ugustus added.
“Right, and also of course what fate awaited Sisyphus the Hamster.” I leaned forward, to see into the canal. There were so many of those
pale elm petals in the canals, it was ridiculous. “A sequel that will exist just for us,” I said.
“So what’s your guess?” he asked.
“I really don’t know. I’ve gone back and forth like a thousand times about it all. Each time I reread it, I think something different, you
know?” He nodded. “You have a theory?”
“Yeah. I don’t think the Dutch Tulip Man is a con man, but he’s also not rich like he leads them to believe. A nd I think after A
I hadn’t realized he’d thought about the book so much, that A n Imperial A ffliction mattered to Gus independently of me mattering to him.
The water lapped quietly at the stone canal walls beneath us; a group of friends biked past in a clump, shouting over each other in rapid-
fire, guttural Dutch; the tiny boats, not much longer than me, half drowned in the canal; the smell of water that had stood too still for too long; his arm pulling me in; his real leg against my real leg all the way from hip to foot. I leaned in to his body a little. He winced. “Sorry, you okay?”
He breathed out a yeah in obvious pain.
“Sorry,” I said. “Bony shoulder.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Nice, actually.”
We sat there for a long time. Eventually his hand abandoned my shoulder and rested against the back of the park bench. Mostly we just
stared into the canal. I was thinking a lot about how they’d made this place exist even though it should’ve been underwater, and how I was
for Dr. Maria a kind of A msterdam, a half-drowned anomaly, and that made me think about dying. “Can I ask you about Caroline Mathers?”