This begins a series posts from a work in progress: The Forty-Nine, an upcoming novel in letters. Excerpts of each letter will be posted in sequence. To browse them in order from the beginning, jump to Letter #1. In the lower right of each post, you can then advance to the next.
Hello Friend…
Hello Friend…
So Elliot… what’s the slipperiest thing in the world?
You’ll say BAM! Aluminum Magnesium Boride, but if your coefficient of friction isn’t feeling all that scientific today, you might vote for super slippery options like a fish out of water or prison soap or truth, but of course the answer is slopes and I’m sliding fast down one right now. My status? Depressivo. Miguel’s death. Seems obvious, but as a newbie to the topic of grief, I’m discovering death really does suck. The other night, a dream-thought drifted into my skull: Perhaps you, Mister Elliot Anderson, I mean Mister Elliot Alderson, Neo the One, AKA Mr. Robot, AKA my BFF, could hack death. Doable? I mean, we always say that nothing is fully secure. In any system, there is always a door left open or a closed door that isn’t locked, or a locked door that can be picked. It just takes patience. Lots of it. Hacking death—I think it’s worth a shot and it beats curling up in corners for days, crying. How is it that you can cry? You’re so elusive, yet your interiority sneaks its way to the surface. You cry, sob even. I simply cannot. I wrote Joan about this, this painful inability to cry since my husband died, to ooze out one single tiny lachrymose droplet. I asked her to go to Iceland with me. Shockingly, she agreed saying it would do us both good, fresh air and moonscapes. She also suggested I spill my guts to you seeing that you’re my best friend, the best man at my wedding, best man in life, so you should be well-suited for intimacy, except that… both of us are… not. But I’ll give it a shot.
Here I am in a full-blown pandemic and a widower. A widower, really? At 32? Widowers are supposed to be, like 50-60-70, but here I am in a house alone in the dead of winter and a widower. Call me Miss Havisham.
