Everything Beautiful Began After (21 page)

After almost a year in the air, the communication problem was solved. From a catalog in your seat pocket en route to Shanghai, you read about (and then purchased) two minisatellite fax machines. Both were sent to your hotel upon landing. After making a note of both fax numbers, you asked the hotel concierge to send the other machine (with your fax number written on the box) to George’s address in Sicily.

Two weeks later in the Hotel Amsterdam, your fax machine started buzzing. Green lights flashed. You found a blank piece of paper in a desk drawer and fed it into the machine as demonstrated by a beaver on page 732 of the instruction book.

Dear Henry

Are you reading this? Does this little machine work? Something tells me it’s a gimmick. Will you please fax me back if it does? If you are reading this, then I can finally breathe a sigh of relief because we can talk again.

I also wanted to ask why you are flying around the world endlessly. I know it’s how you are coping with what happened—the same way I drank to blur my childhood. Please come to Sicily and stay with me. I’ll make a home here for you. I know it won’t be like before, but at least you’ll have a friend. I won’t write anymore until I know this little gadget works. Professor Peterson keeps writing to me wanting to know where you are.

I miss our hospital book club.

Love,

George

P.S. If you ARE reading this—thanks for the mini-satellite fax machine, and I’m still not drinking in case you were wondering.

Dear Henry,

Try and look forward to something positive in the future.

What I mean to say is, give yourself something to look forward to. You’ve got to go on, we’ve got most of our lives still ahead of us. I’ve been going to church, which I know sounds stupid, but just being there with a giant wooden corpse nailed to a cross helps. I don’t even understand what the priest is saying.

I’m learning to deal with this. I’ve also met someone who is helping.

Always yours,

George