He shouldn’t be. It feels frivolous, and wrong, inconsequential now, but the hunger is swift and deep, and with its arrival, the clock begins to tick.
He can’t hold time at bay.
It is racing forward now, rushing away.
And Addie looks at him as if she can read his mind, see the storm building in his head. But she is sunshine. She is clear skies.
She draws him out of bed, and into the kitchen, and Henry sits on a stool and listens as she makes an omelet and tells him about the first time she flew a plane, heard a song on the radio, saw a moving picture.
This is the last gift she can give him, these moments he will never have.
And this is the last gift he can give her, the listening.
And he wishes they could climb back into bed with Book, but they both know there’s no going back. And now that he’s up, he cannot bear the stillness. He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be.
That time always ends a second before you’re ready.
That life is the minutes you want minus one.
And so they get dressed, and they go out, and walk, wearing circles into the block as the panic begins to win. It is a hand pressing against weakened glass, a steady pressure on spreading cracks, but Addie is there, her fingers laced through his.
“Do you know how you live three hundred years?” she says.
And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”
And eventually his legs are tired, and the restlessness recedes, doesn’t vanish but dulls to a manageable degree, and they go to the Merchant, and order food they do not eat, and order beers they do not drink because he cannot bear to dull these last few hours, as frightening as it is to face them sober.
And he makes some comment about his last meal, laughs at the morbid thought of it, and Addie’s smile falters, for just a second, and then he is apologizing, he is sorry, and she is folding herself around him, and the panic has its claws in him.
The storm is brewing in his head, churning the sky on the horizon, but he doesn’t fight it.
He lets it come.
Only when it starts raining does he realize the storm is real.
He tips his head back, and feels the drip of rain on his cheeks, and thinks of the night they went to the Fourth Rail, the downpour that caught them breathless when they reached the street. He thinks of that before he thinks of the rooftop, and that is something.
He feels so far from the Henry who climbed up there a year ago—or perhaps he’s not that far at all. It is only a matter of steps, after all, from the street to the edge.
But what he would give to go back down.
God, what he would give for just another day.
The sun is gone now, the light going thin, and he will never see it again, and the fear crashes into him, sudden and traitorous. It is a gust of wind, cutting through a too-still scene. He fights it back, not yet, not yet, not yet, and Addie squeezes his hand, so he won’t blow away.
“Stay with me,” she says, and he answers, “I’m here.”
His fingers tighten on hers.
He doesn’t have to ask, she doesn’t have to answer.
There is an unspoken agreement that she will be there, with him, until the very end.
That this time, he won’t be alone.
And he is okay.
It is okay.
It will be okay.
XVIII
It is almost time, and they are on the roof.
The same roof he nearly stepped off a year before, the same one where he stood with the devil and made his deal. It is a full-circle moment, and he doesn’t know if it has to be here, if he has to be here, but it feels right.
Addie’s hand is linked in his, and that feels right, too.
A grounding force against a rising storm.
There is still a little time, the hand on the watch a fraction of a fraction of a fraction from midnight, and he can hear Bea’s voice in his head.
Only you would arrive early to your own death.
And Henry smiles, despite himself, and wishes he had said more to Bea, and Robbie, but the simple fact is he didn’t trust himself. He has made his good-byes, though they will not know it until he’s gone, and he is sorry for that, for them, for whatever pain he might cause. He is glad they have each other.
Addie’s hand tightens in his.
It is almost time, and he wonders what it will feel like, to lose a soul.
If it will be like a heart attack, sudden and violent, or as easy as falling asleep. Death takes so many forms. Perhaps this does, too. Will the darkness appear and reach a hand into his chest, and pull his soul out between his ribs like a magic trick? Or will some force compel him to finish what he started? To walk to the edge of the roof, and step off? Will he be found on the street below, as if he’d jumped?
Or will they find him up here, on the roof?
He does not know.
He does not need to know.
He is ready.
He is not ready.
He wasn’t ready last year on the roof, when the stranger held out his hand. He wasn’t ready then, and he isn’t ready now, and he is beginning to suspect no one is ever ready, not when the moment comes, not when the darkness reaches out to claim its prize.
Music streams, thin and tinny, through a neighbor’s open window, and Henry pulls his thoughts back from death, and the edge of the roof, to the girl with her hand in his, the one telling him to dance with her.
He pulls her close, and she smells of summer, she smells of time, she smells of home.
“I’m here,” she says.
Addie has promised to stay with him until the end.
The end. The end. The end.
It echoes through his head like the striking of a clock, but it’s not time, he still has time, though it is vanishing so fast.
They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time—angry, lonely, content—but he’s never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid.
But he is not alone.
It is beginning to rain again, the air gone damp with the metallic scent of storms in the city, and Henry doesn’t care, thinks there is something to be said for symmetry.
They turn in a slow circle on the roof.
He has not slept well in days, and it has made his legs heavy, his mind too slow, the minutes speeding up around him, and he wishes the music were louder, wishes the sky were lighter, wishes he had just a little more time.
No one is ever ready to die.
Even when they think they want to.
No one is ready.
He isn’t ready.
But it is time.
It is time.
Addie is saying something, but the watch has stopped moving, it hangs weightless on him now, and it is time, and he can feel himself slipping, can feel the edges of his mind going soft, the night heavy, and any moment the stranger will step out of the dark.
Addie is guiding his face to hers, she is saying something, and he doesn’t want to listen, he’s afraid it’s a good-bye, he just wants to hold on to this moment, to make it last, to will it still, turn the film into a freeze frame, let that be the end, not darkness, not nothing, just a permanent moment. A memory, trapped in amber, in glass, in time.
But she is still speaking.
“You promised you would listen,” she says, “you promised you would write it down.”
He doesn’t understand. The journals are on the shelf. He has written her story—every part.
“I did,” he says. “I did.”
But Addie is shaking her head.
“Henry,” she says. “I haven’t told you how it ends.”