Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

He paused and while we were standing, at a stoplight in a large intersection, a car flew by, there was yelling, and someone threw a half-empty plastic bottle of Sprite. It grazed my leg.

"What'd they say?" I asked.

"Something nasty, I think. Anti-French. Maybe we should go."

"Yeah. We're not moving fast enough. And we haven't gotten rid of much. How much you think?"

"Maybe $8,200 or so."

"We have to be quicker."

We walked toward the hotel, planning to pack and leave.

We passed a woman, a baby in her arms and toddler sleeping on her lap, sitting in front of a movie theater offering Schwarzenegger in End of Days. Above the entrance was a huge poster of Casablanca, the first sign of that movie we'd seen in the entire town. The woman held out her hand and we passed. I hated mothers who brought their children to the streets.

– You should not bring them here.

– What would you have us do?

– There must be homes. What did you do to your family that they won't bring you in?

– You will not know.

– You are using these children.

– You are ignorant.

– Then I will walk by.

– But I need what you are giving away.

– I don't trust you.

– But anyone who asks for money needs it.

– Really? I -

– Your mother said that. Your mother said anyone who begs must need. That is why there is the word beg.

– At least wash their faces somewhere.

– I will try.

I ran back and gave her all the American cash I had – maybe $350 – though I couldn't look at her as I did it. I leaned down to her and her baby wrapped in brown plaid, and found her hand and stuffed the money in, my eyes closed as if reaching into a crevice to catch a salamander. I jogged back to Hand.

"Let's get off this street," I said.

"Why?"

"She can still see us."

He looked at me and squinted.

"Please. Hand. I want to walk away and turn the corner somewhere. I don't want her coming after me, saying thanks or being confused or anything. Run with me."

We ran a block and turned down a quieter street.

"That was so hard," I said. I was leaning my back against a window. I looked back to make sure she wasn't following us.

"The giving it away?"

"Yeah. God was that hard."

"I know," he said.

"It's shaming, don't you think?"

"Why?"

"I don't know."

– When you give them the bills, Hand, you feel so filthy for having it in the first place.

– I guess.

– It's like returning something you've stolen.

"You think she's okay?" I asked. "I was afraid someone would see me give her the money and then come and take it from her."

"I'm sure she's fine."

"Someone's going to take it from her," I said.

"She's smart."

"We should stay with her."

"She looked tough," Hand said.

"I'm so confused," I said.

"I know."

"Why the fuck is that so weird? Why is it so hard?" We had no idea.

We walked to the hotel and knew I was getting close. We'd promised not to sleep but here we were. I feared the bed. The bed tonight would break me.

– Hand let's not sleep.

I could drink to pass out and keep from thinking. That would be the plan. I could make it sound fun, have Hand and I drink from the minibar, if there was one, or buy a bottle of something on the way home, act like it was part of the trip's grand design. The grand design was movement and the opposition of time, not drinking, hiding, sleeping. Too late. I haven't won yet. You won't win. I don't want even two minutes with my head. I don't know where it would go tonight but knew that the funeral home fucker was there somewhere. He was getting closer, he was somewhere in the basement of my mind and he was pacing and getting ready to climb my hollow stairs -

"We could go to the mosque," Hand offered. I loved him for taking me back into the air.

"Which?" I asked.

"That one there."

"That's not a mosque. Look at it. It's a church."

We walked closer to the huge white structure, ghostly in the dark shooting upward. A sign gripped the wrought-iron fence separating the park from the sidewalk: Cathédrale du Sacré Coeur.

"That's odd," Hand said.

"Let's get something to drink and head back to the hotel," I said.

"Boring. You tired?"

"Yes."

Jack's mom asked us to come to the service early. She and Jack's dad, who could barely stand and had spent the day before the service in a wheelchair, weak beyond hope, hadn't settled on whether it would be an open or closed casket, and wanted us to help decide, once we saw Jack.

"Then we'll sleep tonight but not again," he said.

"Good. Fine."

We got to the church at two for the three o'clock service, and waited, in the lobby, fanning ourselves with paperback psalm books. It was almost one hundred degrees, and the church wouldn't turn on the air conditioning until ten minutes before three. Jack's dad was outside, on the bright bleached patio between the church and the rectory, in his wheelchair, staring at the flowerbed, full of cheap daisies and dying groundcover. I hadn't had that much to say to him for ten years or so, since he sent Jack to Culver Military Academy for a year. He'd been caught stealing a six-pack of Coors from their basement fridge and that was that. Jack's sister Molly wasn't there, hadn't been heard from in three years; there'd been the distant fear she would show up, but it was not to be.

Jack's mom left to get candles; the priest had realized they were short on white ones and was about to use red. Jack's mom wailed No and, out of something like madness, insisted on white, hissed to the priest that it had to be white, and drove off to find two tall slender white candles.

She asked us to stay, to look first at Jack, and if he looked okay, she and her husband would then decide.

The funeral home man, Nigel, emerged from the back twenty minutes before three. He was only a few years older than us, with glasses held within thick black rims. His eyes were vibrating and his heavily gelled hair thrust from his head with cold competence, like dewy plastic grass.

"He's ready, if you want to take a look," he said. We hated him. We followed him into the church and from the back I knew it was wrong. The casket was half-open and it was wrong. From so far away Jack was grey, or blue. The color was wrong.

"Jesus," I said, and stopped.

"What?" Hand said. "You don't know yet."

"I do know."

"I know he looks bad from here but it's the light, probably. These people know what they're doing."

"Who says?"

"People do this all the time. Everyone has open caskets."

"It's so wrong."

"We have to get closer."

Nigel was waiting for us, a few feet down the aisle, his head slightly bowed, deferential to our discussion. Hearing that we would get closer, he lifted his chin, gave a tight smile and nodded. We followed him. My legs felt asleep. They felt so light. They were hollow and being moved by someone else.

Ten steps further it was obvious. They'd fucked it all up. Jesus Christ. He was grey. His face was huge and wide. They'd added feet of flesh to his face. There was too much flesh. It flowed down from his nose like drapery. There was no color on his skin – there was a dull hue, like house paint, and there was blush on the hollows of his cheeks, as if applied by young girls with paintbrushes. He looked fifty. His hair was parted, but on the wrong side.

"So fucked up," I said.

"I know," Hand whispered.

We'd stopped again, about twenty feet from the casket. The lining of the casket was silver and was too shiny. He looked sixty.

"Please," Nigel said, with his arm extended toward Jack's body, hand open, asking us to get closer.