A Brilliant Novel in the Works (20 page)

“Thanks for sticking around,” I say to Shmen. He is waiting on
the sidewalk by our house.

“Took you long enough,” he says. “I worried that you were
waiting for the messiah to arrive.”

I point the pack of cigarettes in his direction and he shakes
his head.

“No thanks,” he says. “Those things will kill you.”

“I know.”

“You’ll be a fabulous father,” he says. He gives me a thumbs-up
and a wink. It’s an odd gesture that would look insincere coming
from anyone else, and maybe it’s because of the odd state he is in,
but it’s so sweet that it momentarily alleviates my terror of parenting.

“How did you know?”

“I know things,” he says. He looks past me, as if he expected
me to bring a group of people. “So how does this go exactly?”

I sit down on the curb, spit out the disgusting cigarette,
and put my face in my hands. “This is wrong,” I say.

“It’s the right way.” Shmen pats me on the head. “You know it.”

I stand up and grab my brother-in-law. I hug him. He is thicker
and more muscular than I expected. I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer
to anyone. He grabs me so tightly that it makes it hard to breathe.

When he pulls out of the hug, he says, “Do you have all the
details worked out for Maddy and Ally?”

“Yes,” I say, giving myself a moment of peace while thinking
about Maddy. “They’ll be millionaires from this.”

“Good,” he says. “So what did you bring with you? A gun?
A knife? An axe? A rectal probe? A bomb?”

I reach into my pockets and grab the napkin and the pen
and hand them to him. “Make it good,” I say.

My brother-in-law smiles with even his ears rising from
the way it pleases him. I’ll never forget that look. “Brilliant,”
he says.

He sits on the curb and writes something on the napkin
and hands it back to me. It says: a banished typo.

“What the hell does this mean?”

“You’ll figure it out,” he says. And he kisses me on the lips.
His lips are warm and taste like vodka and tangerines.

The ground starts to shake. A rumbling builds in the
distance.

Shmen runs out into the street. He runs so easily, his joints
as limber as ever, all of his diseases momentarily gone. He
stands in the middle of the street. He shakes both his hands
quickly as he prepares himself. I hear him repeating the phrase
“A banished typo” over and over again.

He gives me one last look.

Winks, even.

I say, “Stop!” But it’s only a whisper. And of course my one
powerless little word can’t save him.

A dozen pianos—Steinway grands, this time—race down
the street. Shmen looks them straight on, without a hint of
fear. The brass wheels of the pianos squeal against the asphalt
as they get close to him, like they are trying to stop. But it’s
too late.

And then a dozen 750-pound pianos hit my brother, one
after another, each exploding into its 12,000 pieces as it hits him.
He stands there, solid, like a stone wall. And the piano
pieces, the thick mahogany legs, the flailing steel strings, the
felt-covered hammers, the brass pedals, the enormous lids,
the drizzle of black and white keys, the whole musical disaster
flies up in the air and hangs up there with a kind of silence,
until all the pieces crash to the ground with a beautiful,
horrible noise. When the last of the pieces falls to the earth,
my brother falls too. He falls like all the bones inside of him
have been sucked out.

Piles of piano pieces all around. Not a drop of blood
coming from his body. He never was a bleeder.

I sit next to my brother amidst the mess of pianos in the
middle of the street, holding his hand, which has grown cold
by the time the ambulance arrives.

I honestly don’t know how any of us will make it through a
world without Shmen. He was the strongest one.

But also, all my terrors seem a bit pointless now. They’re
still there. But they just don’t have the same power. I have to
take care of more serious matters. For Maddy, and Ally, and
for Julia, and that maybe kid that I’m maybe going to have.

I let go of Shmen’s hand and stand up to greet the man who
has just jumped from the ambulance. I lick my lips and taste
the vodka tangerine flavor of Shmen’s kiss.

The emergency men don’t ask me much. They know what’s
happened here. It’s the same old story. So they focus on
Shmen and his body. And I watch them carefully: even after
they know it’s hopeless, they do everything in their power to
save him.

When I finally climb into bed, it’s almost morning, and Julia
is asleep, curled up in the opposite direction. I don’t bother
taking off my clothes. I pull the napkin message out of my
pocket and look at it for a few more seconds. I miss Shmen
terribly but I also know it’s too soon to feel the real ache. The
earth is still shaking. I place the napkin on the nightstand and
then curl up around my wife. I put my arm around her.

And that’s when I realize that she is crying so hard that the
entire bed is bouncing from her sobs. I squeeze her tight and
she keeps crying and we grieve together in the dark.

When I wake up the next morning, the sun is shockingly
bright and my wife is no longer in the bed. I get this sudden
relief that maybe it was all a dream.

But then I see that fucking napkin on the nightstand.

The napkin is marked up, covered in my wife’s notes. She
has scribbled all over the thing and it takes me a while to
realize that she has solved Shmendrick’s anagram.

A BANISHED TYPO — DEATH BY PIANOS

I stand up quickly. There’s so much that needs to be done.

Good thing I kept my pants on.