9 - The Proposal

Dog's bar was actually a pretty upmarket joint, but it was designed in the style of a low-rent dive. There were expensive wrought-iron gates, but they were painted to look rusty. There was a corrugated-iron dog house in the courtyard when you walked in, with a rusty bowl of water bolted to the ground in front of it. No dog appeared as Cammie walked through the gates and into the outdoor section where the early-evening drinking crowd was already sitting at many of the tables, great wooden discs modeled on the huge wheels that used to be found on farms. There was some seventies rock coming from the interior of the bar, maybe Bowie, maybe The Velvet Underground, Cammie wasn't sure, but it wasn't being piped out into the garden so the atmosphere was fairly subdued- colleagues or friends taking solace in a quiet pot in the evening shade.

She saw Anthony in the corner of the yard, sitting in the shade of a potted banana tree, his face partially obscured by its giant green leaves, yellowing at the edge. But she recognized his suit readily enough, the same brown compilation she had seen the last two times she had met him. The same suit he had been wearing that morning.

"You didn't come straight here from the cafe after breakfast, did you?" She said by way of greeting as she crossed the courtyard and pulled out one of the heavy wooden chairs that sat across from him and his shaded corner. She slumped into it. "Christ, I could use a drink."

Anthony stumbled over himself trying to get up. "I'll ah, thanks for coming! I'll ah, get you a drink." He moved out of her field of vision and into the main building, the music increasing in volume slightly as he opened the door, then receding as it closed behind him. Definitely Bowie, she thought. Across the table from her, Anthony had again been arranging piles of papers about himself again. His briefcase was open on the floor and from it he had removed three different bundles of paper. Cammie put an index finger on one of them and dragged it towards her. It appeared to be a photocopied replica of a book that had been placed face down on the copy-glass- she could see the edges of the other pages hidden behind the first, and beyond them the black border that is created when a photocopier sees nothing at all. She put her second finger down onto the paper and then spun her hand about, spinning the page about with it. The text reversed, she was able to glance over it. It read:

Dear Fanny

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart; of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend
A. Lincoln

There did not seem to be a header or a footer, or any indicator where the letter had come from, or what it was supposed to signify. She glanced over the other top pages from the two other stacks, and they seemed to be of a similar character, letters written by various personalities, some she recognized, some she did not. She saw a letter signed by Bill Hicks. She reversed the page and returned it to the pile she had dragged it from, squaring it with the other pages with her finger. She heard the music grow louder and then softer again behind her, and Anthony reappeared in her field of view, placing a pot of cold lager in front of her, where the page had just been. The glass was iced, but warming rapidly in the humid air. She took a long pull, enjoying the feeling of the cold liquid rushing through her hot chest. She closed her eyes for a moment and bathed in the sensation. It passed quickly, and she opened them again. Anthony was back in his seat, watching her.

"So," she said. "what brings me here?"

"Right." Anthony replied. "To business."

"Is this business?" Cammie asked, genuinely unsure.

"Yes." He said firmly. This did not clear things up in her mind.

"Ah. I wasn't sure, to be honest."

He smiled the same small, sad smile he had given her when they first met. An unnatural smile. "Well then, I suppose I should be flattered you showed up then, not knowing."

"Should you?"

"Well, I think so. I'm quite old."

"How old are you, Anthony?" She really didn't know.

"I'm forty-six."

"Wow. You don't look it."

"Again, I suppose I should be flattered."

"Are you?"

"No." He replied.

"You're kind of strange." She said.

"Right. I guess I must seem that way, from the outside. Or I really am."

Cammie took another pull of her beer. Not as nice as the first, but nice. She still had no idea where this was going.

"Look, Anthony, uhm, you seem nice and all, but you're not exactly getting to the point with me here, like, can we get a little exposition going here? What was your proposal?"

"Okay, it's gonna sound a little strange." He took a deep breath and spread his hands out on the desk, his fingers stretched wide. "Okay, so, in a nutshell, I'm on my way out."

"Excuse me?" She was quite shocked, and it took her a moment to even process the meaning of his words.

"I'm not long for this world. I'm going to die soon." He said all this in a monotone, as though he was reading a newspaper article to her.

"Oh." She had tried to prepare herself for as wide a range of scenarios as possible, but this was not one of them. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be, it's okay."

"Are you ill?" She said with concern.

Simply: "No."

Again, confusion reigned. "Uhm, what?"

"I am in good health."

"So ... and forgive my ignorance here, I'm clearly missing something ... but why are you on the way out?"

"I'm going to kill myself."

"What?" She said loudly, the word audible across the entire courtyard. Heads turned momentarily, but soon looked away again. Anthony waited for them to do so before continuing:

"Very soon, I am going to be taking my own life."

"Why?"

"I don't wish to be alive anymore."

"Why?" She said again.

"I'd rather not say."

To say that Cammie was nonplussed would be something of an understatement. None of this made sense. She didn't say anything for a long time. She tried to layer the situation, put it into order blocks, see how they all fit together, and find her place in it.

"Why are you telling me this?"

He seemed embarrassed. "I guess I've been putting this in the wrong order." He blushed. "I would like you to be the beneficiary of my will."

"What?"

"I would like you to be the beneficiary of my will," he repeated calmly. "and of my life insurance claim. All told, about four-hundred and forty thousand dollars."

"What? Why? Who are you?" Cammie said, unable to take this all in.

"I'm a customer in your cafe. You seem a good person. I don't want my life to count for nothing. I want my life, and death, to mean something, to someone. You seem a good person. You said yourself, money will make your life easier, make it better. This is your opportunity. Think of me as a sponsor. I want you to have a good life; I think my life will not be meaningless if you benefit from its passing."

Cammie's mind was reeling in several different directions at once. She was, or at least she certainly thought of herself as, a good person. But at the same time, when she was twenty dollars down the back of one of the couches at the cafe, she didn't turn it in to the police; she bought herself a triple-choc mindblast at Wendy's. Here she had two things in front of her, a man who obviously needed help, and a man who wanted to give her a fairly vast amount of money, more than she would make in twenty years at Juiced.

"Look," he broke into her thoughts. His face was set, solid. Hard. He spoke quickly and firmly, in a way she had not experiencing him speaking before. "I am going to do this anyway. Nothing will stop me, my mind is set. I have given it a tremendous amount of thought and it is going to happen. I am not a depressed teenager; I am not a senile old man. I am fully aware of what I am doing and saying. This is my decision, and whatever you decide, I will be going ahead with it. The only question you have to answer is: do you want to be my beneficiary? You're perfectly welcome to say no. My decision won't change. I will find another beneficiary. There's no shortage of young people who need a leg up in this world. You're the first I've asked. There is absolutely no pressure on you to say yes, or to say no. You just need to decide. You don't have to decide now. You don't even have to say anything now. But know this: Whatever you decide will only change your life- it won't change mine."

Like a stream of water that has been churned up, Cammie's mind was flowing many ways at once, but in the midst of the chaos, one thing stood out as not making sense. She grabbed onto it and hauled it out.

"Wait a second, life insurance? That doesn't pay out if you kill yourself. In fact I'm sure I don't need to tell you that suicide is a crime, and even discussing it with me could get you into loads of trouble."

"You're right; you don't need to tell me that, I am very much aware of the implications of what I am saying." He gestured at the papers all about him. "I've thought it through many times. My death will be staged in such a way that, to all outside appearances, it will look as though I suffered a natural, or at least accidental, death. Not self-inflicted."

"An how exactly will you do that?" Cammie snorted derisively.

"There are a number of suitable ways." he said. "More than you might think."

"So, let me get this straight:" Cammie said, laying the shape of her arguments out with her hands, while Anthony sat back in his chair and watched, still calm. "You fake your own suicide, making it look like an accident, after naming me as your inheritor and the beneficiary of your life insurance?"

"That's exactly right."

"And nothing I can say can stop you going through with this?"

"Nothing at all."

"So what's the catch?"

"How do you mean?"

"What do I have to do?"

"Nothing. You just ... agree."

"I just agree and the money shows up in my bank?"

"Well, obviously there'll be uhm, forms to sign, technicalities, really."

"What sort of technicalities."

"Well, my insurance policy is quite old, and it would look suspicious if I got a new one, so, in order to be the beneficiary..." his more familiar shyness had now returned as he spoke. "...we have to be sort of, well, we'll have to be married."

"We'll have to be what?"

"It's only a technicality. Its some forms. There won't be a wedding. It'll be over almost before it began. I can't exactly gift my worldly goods to a complete stranger now, can I?"

"I don't want to get married to a stranger!"

"It's just a form, a piece of paper." he continued, keeping his voice level, technical. "It won't mean anything. We will be married by law only. It won't be real. It'll be as technical as signing the form saying you'll do it, and never reveal what I've done, to anyone."

"What, like, a pre-nup?"

"Well, yes technically..."

"You want me to get married to you, and sign a pre-nup?" she gasped.

"Well it will be more of a post-nup really, but yes, in essence."

"So, it's not exactly sit back and relax then, is it?"

"Well I'll be doing all the hard work of dying, so in comparison I'd thinking signing a few forms is pretty good going for nearly half of a million dollars."

Cammie took a sharp intake of breath, and then forced herself to take a slow pull at her drink, counting to ten as she did so. It had warmed while they spoke and now its bitterness was not masked by the cold.

They sat for a minute, neither saying anything, Cammie staring at the table between them, looking at the upside-down words on his three piles of paper, seeing them but not reading them. Anthony broke the silence first.

"So ... you'll think about it?"

Cammie drew her gaze up from the papers, looked at Anthony a moment. He looked older, now that she knew his age. His suit made more sense.

"Why are you killing yourself?"

"I'd rather not say."

"I can't give you an answer until I know."

"I'm afraid you will have to."

"Then my answer is no."

Without waiting for his response, she pushed her chair back out from under her, turned, and left the cafe. It had been light when she had come in, but now the darkness was gathering.