The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two by Leonard Foglia, David Richards

and more comprehensive than the life he had hitherto led.
    The only blot on the euphoria was a distant planet on the fringes of his vision. At least it appeared to be a planet. Black, it was approaching at lightening speed from a point deep in the cosmos, every second getting closer, more ominous, until it virtually threatened to slam into the earth. And yet it never did. It simply got bigger and nearer, the moment of impact eternally imminent and eternally delayed at the same time. He didn’t know how to explain this sensation of suspension to his parents and had not tried. He couldn’t put it into words and the sketches he’d done in his notebook only communicated confusion.
    Yet, oddly, there had been nothing confusing about the experience itself. It seemed to clarify how he had felt most of his life. Both at one with people and apart from them. Aware of their grandeur and their squalor, as two sides of the same coin. He knew that the wailing baby would soon stop crying and forget what the tears had been all about. Just as he knew that lovers, strolling arm in arm, were experiencing the most ephemeral moments of their life. He knew that wars and conflicts would rage and subside. Today’s news would be quickly forgotten and only a few personalities would be transformed into myths. But somehow through it all the world would go on. The joy and anguish he’d known during his three days under the earth would endure, to be partaken momentarily by human beings whose lives, otherwise, had little consequence. How could he explain that he was more alive, more aware, under the ground than he had ever been above it?
    He realized that the foreign couple was still standing there, observing him. Had his mind drifted off for an hour or a second? Nothing on their faces told him which.
    “Look, was there something I could help you with?” he asked. “Directions or something?”
    “No, thank you,” replied the man. “We just wanted to know if you were the one. Not many live to tell a story like yours, you know!”
    “So they say. Well, it’s a pleasure meeting you.” He struggled to his feet.
    The man automatically reached out to assist him.
    “No, I’m okay. I’m fine. Nothing happened to me.”
    “Not even a scratch?” asked the woman, incredulously.
    “A few dirty fingernails is all,” he said, trying to make light of the situation.
    The couple failed to laugh at his joke. Instead, the woman reached for his free hand. But instead of shaking it, as he expected, she proceeded to caress it, delicately, as she might an injured bird. Her features blurred and her breathing became heavy. “It is truly a miracle.”
    “If you’ll excuse me, please.” The couple was not the first to approach him, but something about the forced intimacy they had displayed made him deeply uncomfortable. It was as if he belonged to them, and it was all because of newspapers and television. You lost something when the media talked about you. Not just privacy, either. Some part of your secret self went numb. He resolved to explore the idea in his notebook.
    Click.
    At the far end of the plaza, a photographer recorded the encounter. Even though the couple was too far away to hear the noise, the woman with the straw hat turned sharply and scanned the crowd, as if operating on a sixth sense.
    “What was that?” she asked the man angrily.
    The man turned to look, as well.
    But the photographer had inserted herself into a group of tourists, busy shooting the historic buildings, thereby making herself invisible.

2:14
     
    Sally arrived promptly at eight every morning and relieved Maria who worked the night shift at the house in Lowell. Which meant mostly that Maria watched a lot of TV, ate a lot of potato chips (Sally always found the empty bags in the trash) and spent the rest of the night sleeping in the bedroom down the hall. As usual Maria had not cleared away the dinner tray from the night before, so Sally began her day tidying up.