“So what do you intend to do?”

“We have to wean people off their addiction, or else there’ll be hell to pay.”

“We.”

“Yes, Jasper.”

I looked at the drunk in the alley to make sure I wasn’t imagining all this. Did I want to help Anouk in her plan? Sure, I could take control of the newspapers and put in fun headlines like “This Newspaper Makes Independent Thinking Impossible” and pursue Anouk’s aim of combating this addiction to “news” by making news dry and boring- limiting broadcasts and reporting banal and positive events (grandmothers planting new gardens, football stars eating dinner with their families) and not allowing mass murderers their turn on the celebrity wonder wheel.

However, the last thing I wanted was to take on a public role doing anything. The general public was still apt to turn apoplectic with rage at the mention of my father, and thus people would hate me for whatever I did. All I wanted was to melt into vast crowds of non-English-speaking people and taste the many flavors of women filling tight-fitting T-shirts in all the cities of the globe. And Anouk wanted the news division to be under my control?

“Anouk, I’ll tell you what. You start without me. I’ll give you a call in six months, see how you’re getting along, and then maybe I’ll come and help you out. But it’s a big maybe.”

She made a weird sound in her throat and started breathing hard. Her eyes somehow got rounder. I almost weakened. It’s hard enough to go through life disappointing yourself every second day, but disappointing others takes it out of you too. That’s why you should never answer the phone or the door. So you don’t have to say no to whoever’s on the other side.

“OK, Jasper. But I want you to do one thing before you leave.”

“What’s that?”

“Write an obituary for your dad that I can print in the paper.”

“What for? People don’t care.”

“I care. And so do you. And I know you- you probably haven’t let yourself grieve in any way for your father. I know he was a pain in the arse, but he did love you and he made you what you are and you owe it to him and to yourself to write something about him. Doesn’t matter if what you write is flattering or insulting. As long as it’s true and it comes from the heart and not from the brain.”

“OK.”

We climbed back into the car, and the homeless man watched us with smiling eyes that said in no uncertain terms that he had just overheard a conversation between two people who took themselves too seriously.

The car pulled up outside my building and we sat in the backseat facing each other, with barely a blink between us, barely the slightest movement.

“Sure I can’t convince you to stay in Australia for a few months?”

It was obvious that what she needed more than anything was to have a friendly face around, and I felt bad because I was taking mine to Europe.

“Sorry, Anouk. This is something I have to do.”

She nodded, then wrote me a check for $25,000. I was eternally grateful, but not so grateful I didn’t wish it were more.

We kissed goodbye, and I almost fell to pieces watching the black Mercedes disappear from sight, but I pulled myself together, out of habit. I walked to the bank and put the check in my account. I would have to wait three days before I could access the money to buy myself a one-way ticket to somewhere else. Three days seemed too long.

When I got home, I lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about the fact that there were cat hairs on the couch that weren’t there yesterday. Not having a cat, I had no explanation for it. Just another of life’s inscrutable and pointless mysteries.

I tried to go to sleep, and when I couldn’t go there, I tried to get sleep to come to me. That didn’t work either. I got up and drank two beers and lay down on the couch again. My mind took over and dug up a few fragile images that seemed ready to crack if I thought about them hard enough. I decided to think about the future instead. In three days I would be on a plane to Europe, just as my father had once been, at roughly the same age, when almost everyone he knew was dead. Well, you have to follow in people’s footsteps sometimes. You can’t expect every cough, scratch, and sneeze to be your own.

Around midnight I started working on the obituary for my father that Anouk could print in the paper. After staring at a blank page for two days, I began.

Martin Dean, 1956-2001

Who was my father?

The offal of the universe.

The fatty rind.

An ulcer on the mouth of time.

He was sorry he never had a great historical name like Pope Innocent VIII or Lorenzo the Magnificent.

He was the man who first told me that no one would buy life insurance if it was called death insurance.

He thought the best definition of thoroughness is having your ashes buried.

He thought that people who don’t read books don’t know that any number of dead geniuses are waiting for their call.

He thought that there seems to be no passion for life, only for lifestyle.

About God- he thought that if you live in a house, it’s of only nominal interest to know the name of the architect who designed it.

About evolution- he thought it was unfair that man is at the top of the food chain when he still believes the newspaper headlines.

About pain and suffering- he thought that you can bear it all. It’s only the fear of pain and suffering that is unbearable.

I took a break and read over what I’d written. All true. Not bad. This was coming along nicely. But I should be more personal. After all, he wasn’t just a brain in a jar spitting out ideas, he was also a human being with emotions that made him sick.

He never achieved unlonely aloneness. His aloneness was terrible for him.

He could not hear a mother calling for her child in the park without calling out too, sick with the ominous feeling that something awful had happened to little Hugo (or whoever).

He was always proud of things that shamed others.

He had a fairly complex Christ complex.

His worldview seemed to be something like “This place sucks. Let’s refurbish.”

He was impossibly energetic but lacked the kind of hobbies that actually required energy, which is why he often read books while walking and watched TV while pacing back and forth between rooms.

He could empathize with anyone, and if he found out someone in the world was suffering, Dad had to go home and lie down.

OK. What else?

I looked over what I had written and decided it was time to get to the heart of the man.

The concept of Dad’s death ruined his whole life. The very thought of it struck him down like some toxic jungle fever.

My God. This topic made my whole body feel heavy. Just as Terry had realized that the terror of death had almost killed him, Dad had often repeated his conviction that it was the base cause of all human beliefs. I saw now that I had developed a nasty mutation of this disease, namely, the terror of the terror of death. Yes, unlike Dad and unlike Terry, I don’t fear death so much as I fear the fear of it. The fear that makes people believe, and kill each other, and kill themselves; I am afraid of this fear that could make me unconsciously manufacture a comforting or confusing lie that I might base my life on.

Wasn’t I going off to chase the face from my nightmares?

Wasn’t I going on a journey to learn more about the face? And about my mother? And about myself?

Or was I?

Dad always maintained that people don’t go on journeys at all but spend a lifetime searching for and gathering evidence to rationalize the beliefs they’ve held in their hearts since day one. They have new revelations, certainly, but these rarely shatter their core belief structure- they just build on it. He believed that if the base remains intact, it doesn’t matter what you build on it, it is not a journey at all. It is just layering. He didn’t believe that anyone ever started from scratch. “People aren’t looking for answers,” he often said. “They’re looking for facts to prove their case.”