Мэтью Квик: Forgive me, Leonard Peacock

I’ll do the mental telepathy bit for about ten minutes or so as the target climbs out of the subway stop and navigates skyscraper shadows and finally disappears inside a building that usually has a security guard to keep crazy people like me out. [22]

So then I just go to the nearest park, sit with the pigeons, and stare at clouds until my workday is over and it’s time to ride home with all the other weary workaday Toms and Jennys, who look even more miserable on the PM return trip.

The rides home always deepen my depression, because these people are free—off work, headed back to families they chose and made themselves—and yet they still don’t look happy.

I always wonder if that’s what Linda looks like riding home from New York City in a car—so utterly miserable, zombie-faced, cheated.

Does she look like the mother of a monster?

I’ve taken dozens of practice-adulthood days, followed so many suits, but only once did anyone notice me.

It was this beautiful woman wearing huge 1970s sunglasses on the train, even though most of the ride is underground. I could see her mascara running down her cheek, but she was really beautiful otherwise. Like, I was sort of attracted to her.

Long, bright blond hair.

Red lipstick.

Black stockings.

Gray pinstriped skirt suit.

You could tell that she was an authority figure just by the way she sat and dared anyone to say anything about the runny mascara. The vibe she sent out was menacing and it definitely said, “Don’t fuck with me.”

Regardless, on that day, this woman was by far the most miserable person on the train. You could tell she was upset, but it also looked like she’d rip your face off if you said anything to her.

All the other adults pretended not to notice, which seemed cowardly.

As she was the obvious target for the day, I got off at her stop and followed.

I remember the sound of her high heels clicking on the concrete like cap guns firing.

She walked up the escalator; I did too, trying hard to keep up.

When we cleared the turnstile I started the mental telepathy, saying (or thinking?), “Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Go skydiving. Buy a star on the Internet. Adopt a cat.” And I continued with my routine for a city block or so. She turned into a back alley, and when we were halfway down it, she spun around tornadolike and pointed a can of Mace at my nose.

“Who are you and why are you following me?” she said. “I will destroy your day. This is top-grade stuff too. Illegal in the United States. I squeeze this trigger and you won’t be able to see for months. You might go blind.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I put my hands up in the air, like I’ve seen criminals do in the movies whenever they want to surrender, when some tough Bogart-type guy points a gun and says, “Reach for the sky.”

It surprised her, and she took a step back, but she didn’t spray me.

“How old are you?” she said.

I said, “I’m seventeen.”

“What’s your name?”

“Leonard Peacock.”

“That’s a fake name if I ever heard one.”

I said, “I can show you my school ID.”

She said, “Let’s see it, but real slow. If you try anything funny, I’ll shoot you in the cornea.”

I lowered my hands super slo-mo and said, “It’s in my pocket. May I reach into my jacket?”

She nodded, so I produced my school ID.

She took it, glanced at my name, and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. You really are Leonard Peacock. What a stupid name.”

I said, “Why are you crying?”

I saw her trigger finger twitch and I thought I was about to get maced, but instead she put my school ID into her purse and said, “Why are you following me, really? Did someone pay you? What do they want?”

“No. It’s nothing like that at all.”

She moved the Mace a few inches closer to my face, pointed at my left eye, and said, “Don’t fuck with me, Leonard Peacock. Did Brian put you up to this? Huh? Tell me!”

I put my hands up again and said, “I don’t know any Brian. I’m just a dumb kid. I dress up like an adult and skip school every once in a while to see what being an adult is like. Okay? I just want to know if growing up’s worth it. That’s all. And so I follow the most miserable-looking adult to work, because I just know that’s going to be me someday—the most miserable adult on the train. I need to know if I can take it.”

She said, “Take what?”

I said, “Being a miserable adult.”

She lowered her Mace. “Really?”

I nodded.

She said, “You’re absolutely crazy, aren’t you?”

I nodded again.

“But not dangerous, right? You’re a lamb.”

I shook my head no, because I wasn’t a threat back then. And then I nodded, because I wasn’t a wolf or a lion or anything predatory at the time.

She said, “Okay. Do you drink coffee?”

She took me to this coffee place close to the alley where she stole my school ID. It was mostly old people eating bagels and slurping joe.

She started talking about how stressed out she was and how there was this guy at her work named Brian whom she had screwed once and he was now using that against her because they were up for the same promotion. Her mother was dying in some hospice center in New Jersey, which was where she had spent the previous night. She had really wanted to stay with her mother because her mom was close to the end of her life, but this woman knew that—while no one would tell her she couldn’t be there for her mother’s passing—Brian would use her absence from work as a way to beat her out for the position.

Or at least that’s what I understood.

She was rambling and slurring words like she was drunk and she kept waving her hands and she wouldn’t take off her sunglasses even inside the coffee shop. She talked for an hour or so, and I was beginning to think she was a great big liar because if she left her dying mom to get ahead at work, why the hell would she waste her time with me at the coffee shop? Wouldn’t Brian use missing work—for any reason at all—against her?

I was thinking about all of this when she said, “So what have you learned following around adults? Spying on us?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me. You owe me an explanation, Leonard Peacock.”

And so I swallowed and said, “I’m not finished researching, which is why I followed you today.”

“What have you learned today from me?”

“Truthfully?”

She nodded.

So I said, “You seem really unhappy. And most of the people I follow are the same. It seems like they don’t like their jobs and yet they also don’t like going home either. It’s like they hate every aspect of their lives.”

She laughed and said, “You need to follow people on the train to figure that out?”

And I said, “I was hoping that I had it wrong.”

And she said, “Don’t all the kids in your high school seem miserable too? I hated high school. HATED it! ”

And I said, “Yeah, most of them do seem miserable. Although they try to fake it the best they can. Kids fake it better than adults, right? My theory is that we lose the ability to be happy as we age.”

She smiled. “So if you’ve got it all figured out, why follow adults like me?”

“Like I said before, I was hoping that I’m wrong, that life gets better for some people when they get older, and even the most miserable people—such as you and me—might be able to enjoy at least some aspect of adulthood. Like those ads where gay guys talk about being picked on in high school but then they grew up and discovered that adult life is like heaven. They say it gets better. I want to believe that happiness might at least be possible later on in life for people prone to sadness.”