Brad Listi - Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

a novel

To my parents, Frank and Peggy Listi

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

—SEXTUS PROPERTIUS

Familiarity breeds contempt.

—SYRUS

A penny saved is a penny earned.

—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

You can’t take it with you.

—MOSS HART AND GEORGE S. KAUFMAN

God must love the common man, he made so many of them.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

God must hate the common man, he made him so common.

—PHILIP WYLIE

I’ve steered clear of God. He was an incredible sadist.

—JOHN COLLIER

There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.

—FRANCIS BACON

There’s a sucker born every minute.

—P. T. BARNUM

Man is a social animal.

—BARUCH SPINOZA

Man is a political animal.

—ARISTOTLE

Man is the measure of all things.

—PROTAGORAS

Man is a blind, witless, low-brow anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth.

—IAN MCHARG

The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence…and it can be fostered by education.

—BERTRAND RUSSELL

Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.

—JAMES NORTHCOTE

All paid employments absorb and degrade the mind.

—ARISTOTLE

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

—DALAI LAMA

Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.

—ALBERT SCHWEITZER

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.

—GEORGE ORWELL

Sisyphus was basically a happy man.

—ALBERT CAMUS

Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

What do I care about the law? Hain’t I got the power?

—CORNELIUS VANDERBILT

Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.

—LILY TOMLIN

Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.

—JIMI HENDRIX

There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

—ALFRED KORZYBSKI

The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things.

—BUDDHA

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

—CESARE PAVESE

Always be sincere, even when you don’t mean it.

—IRENE PETER

When a man has pity on all living creatures, then only is he noble.

—BUDDHA

I tend to be suspicious of people whose love of animals is exaggerated; they are often frustrated in their relationships with humans.

—YLLA

He gave her a look you could have poured on a waffle.

—RING LARDNER

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

—H. L. MENCKEN

The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet.

—AULUS VITELLIUS

Rubble is trouble.

—MUHAMMAD ALI

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

—PAUL VALÉRY

A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.

—MARTIN H. FISCHER

A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.

—CHARLES F. KETTERING

The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

—R. H. TAWNEY

This is my death…and it will profit me to understand it.

—ANNE SEXTON

I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

—WOODY ALLEN

The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.

—THOMAS CARLYLE

Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd.

—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.

—SIR JAMES JEANS

When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Cover Page

Title Page Attention. Deficit. Disorder. a novel

Dedication To my parents, Frank and Peggy Listi

Epigraph

Part I

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Part II

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Part III

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Part IV

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Part V

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Epilogue

Copyright

About the Publisher

I was at Horvak’s apartment in the Haight, a coupleof blocks from Golden Gate Park, on Waller. It was late, and I was there alone. Everything was quiet.

Horvak had caught a flight to Aspen a few hours earlier. We’d passed each other in the sky. Horvak was in an idyllic mountain paradise, celebrating the holidays with family and friends. I was alone in San Francisco, waiting for a funeral. A defeated brand of envy was the only natural response.

Horvak didn’t really know Amanda. He knew her peripherally through me, but he didn’t know her well enough to mourn her. Nothing about her death was debilitating to him; none of it really affected him. Beyond the kind of standard empathy that occurs in decent people, nothing much would transpire within him on account of her passing. There would be no resonant impact. He would escape unharmed.

I’d arrived in town late that afternoon. Rented a car at SFO and followed Horvak’s instructions door to door. He’d left a key in the mailbox. I walked inside and planted myself on the couch and sat there for hours in silence. Flipping channels. Smoking cigarettes. Tending to my confusion. The television was on, but the volume was all the way down. There was a stack of bad magazines on the coffee table, and sleep wasn’t really an option. My head was swimming. I’d come to the conclusion that I had very little understanding of what anything actually meant. That right there was the extent of my knowledge.

Sometime after midnight, I stubbed out another cigarette and rose from the couch. I walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Down below, life was happening. Cars were rolling by, rattling and coughing exhaust. Christmas trees and menorahs were glowing in windows. Streetlights were shining. The fog was moving in. People were walking along the sidewalks, wrapped in hats and scarves. I wondered who they were, where they were going, what they did. I wondered what their stories were. I wondered what would happen to them. I watched them disappearing, one by one and two by two, lost in the direction of wherever it was that they were headed. And none of them even knew I was there.

The ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Theytreated their corpses with spices, herbs, and chemicals, and then they wrapped them in cotton cloth and stuffed them inside of a wooden case. Then they put that wooden case inside of another case. Then they decorated the outer case with information about the life of the wealthy dead person. Then they painted it and adorned it with jewels. The entire contraption was then stuffed inside a coffin, which was then stuffed inside a sarcophagus.