Extract of a novel.

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Five Million People...

'Five million people
Propelled by beliefs
That can't all be right.'

November 6th: The snow came again, insistent this time. First with sleet then two nights of freezing, like the layering of a meticulously prepared cake. I was waking later every day, suffering vast heavy nights with no dreams. Hours unmoving like a brick thenwaking imprinted with sheets. Was it an illusion? mysterious paranoia brought on by the change in the weather? the current predicament with the foot? or some other mysterious force at play? I felt in danger to myself, from myself! I phased to and said 'Stop! Is this really the way I want to be carry on with my time?' Here I was dreaming the days away on painkillers whilst there was a city out there, a city as good as any city! 'Well what's up with it I thought? Nobody asks to be born but the least you can do is live!' I should have been out there throwing my money all around. I owed it to myself. I thanked God for winter, my favorite season, and asked if he wished me to believe in him today. The kitchen stayed silent. I fastened my coat tightly, put three socks on the bad foot and headed out for the first time in eight days.

A morning of haze had crystallized into a brilliant winter afternoon. A few people hurried in silence, drunks sat in doorways pale as ghosts. I felt like an astronaut who missed the parade.
When I first came to the city I scrutinized every passerby, what story they carried deep inside. What kept them able to hold it in? I wasn't too fussed by that now. Conclusions and question marks were everywhere, not just on peoples faces but newspapers stands, bill boards and in every window. An avalanche of information all buried in syntax and coding.
I stood watching a television in the furniture shop window, blowing into my hands thinking how some people feared television as you might fear a medieval disease, it's effects yet unknown. Other people didn't seem to care. Still it certainly was a big noise. I carried on careful over the slippery pavement, my foot shuddering in fear of every landing step. I could see her in my minds eye, sitting down on the beds end, the rising of the pleated skirt. The giddiness. I knew how nights like that begin, the tangle everything gets in, the heart and the desire, the mind to drowned to think. I felt a chill as I skated over the weird earth. The worlds weight is unrequited love over desire. Dragged like a ball and chain. No rest without it, no contented sleep. And still it goes ignored. Men joke about women to keep from their loneliness, women pass by men without a blink.

I arrived at Valerie's coffee shop. A favorite afternoon haunt before work took away freedom like a hooded assailant in the night. I met Christopher on his lunch break, he was sat blowing into his hands at a table in the window, “Your late.”
“I can't hurry with this foot, I'm liable to kill myself!”
“Alright.”
We sat in the window drinking small strong cups of black coffee, mulling over the passing women like reconnoitering bank robbers. It was all too tough, I just couldn't see how it could be done. “Can't be done!” I said to Christopher,
“Nonsense.” He said, “Claudette has many beautiful friends.”
“I have no doubt. It's me I worry about.”
“You shall meet them and they'll love your weakness.”
“I like your fresh approach. But I'm not strong enough for the chase.”
“Listen to you! Marianne has rotted your brain. You can't let a woman kill you.”
I didn't know the answer to that. After awhile he got up and said he was leaving.
“Where are you going?”
“Work.”
“Oh yes.” I'd almost forgotten that was something people did.

Christopher had tried setting me up with a women before. Just after the episode with Edith I'd agreed to go on a date to the theater with him and Claudette and one of Claudette's, friends Maria. It never happened though. I'd grown so anxious with the thought of it during the day I left work early and went drinking. Some hours later I went home to ready myself and fell asleep on the bed. I woke late and had to sprint all the way there. I arrived late, sweating and smelling. The three of them had already gone in and in all the rush I'd forgotten my ticket too. I walked back alone in the rain, got home, threw up and then began drinking again. Then I got into bed and thought about Marianne. It was as though she was the default canvas in my head, the test screen, whenever I relaxed there she was. I turned out the lights and cursed whatever hex she had on me.
Christopher never let me forget about that, “Do you remember Maria?” He'd say.
“Yes.” I'd say. And then he'd laugh his head off.