Read Online How Best to Avoid Dying by Owen Egerton - Free Book Online Page A

four months my life was two shifts and an empty third. My father died in his sleep.
    One day the afternoon woman came in crying. I told her she could go, I’d cover her shift. My first consecutive twenty-four hours in the Stop&Shop. Sometimes you see the change your life can be. You see it right before you. When the afternoon woman came in again the next day I handed her five hundred dollars and told her to find a good man.
    Then it was just me. That was half a year ago.
    I lost the apartment, I’m sure. I’m sure they raised voices and taped warnings to my door.
    I think about my cat—I liked the cat. But the cat never liked me. It only came for food and water. That’s all gone.
    Stop paying rent. No home.
    Stop feeding the cat. No cat.
    These are the bonds we build a life on.
    But you see, I am doing something here. You smile, but listen.
    This used to be a job. My hours had a price tag and it was small. I was as bad as the cat that stayed for food. Now I burn my paychecks in a metal trashcan. All my needs are met. Slim Jims and powdered-sugar donuts and sugar-free Rockstar Energy Drink. I eat in the quiet hours. When I’m alone and the ice machine hums.
    Sleep? No, not really. I don’t lie down, that would be inappropriate.
    I used to take quick naps behind the counter. But that was silly. Shameful.
    With discipline, the mind can do amazing things. Don’t smile. Really. Let me explain.
    My father owned a book, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints . He loved the saints. Do you know St. Simeon the Stylite? He was apillar hermit. He lived on the top of a forty-foot-high column in the middle of a city for thirty-seven years straight. Had a platform up there, about the size of this countertop.
    They called him holy. Bishops and emperors visited him. They’d yell up questions to him—bishops and emperors! And at Lent, just to make it harder, he would spend weeks without sitting or lying down. Just standing up there, praying. This is real. Documented history. The book said he “provided a spectacle at once challenging, repulsive, and awesome.”
    And I know how he did it.
    Like sleep. I’ve split my head in two and allow one half of my brain to sleep while the other half works. I’m getting so good at it that some of the regulars think I’m two twin brothers running the store. One brother is logical, no nonsense, good with numbers. The other brother is dazed, but friendlier and kind of artsy. He gives back the wrong change but in beautiful designs, little silver constellations of nickels and dimes in your palm.
    I’m touching your hand. That’s probably inappropriate.
    I should tell you, I am peeing right now. It’s okay. I am wearing an adult diaper, aisle two. Still, it takes a certain amount of effort. I try not to leave the store unattended. I do not go outside. Ever. That’s why my skin looks bad. But what’s skin compared to all this?
    Why? It’s not clear?
    Well, if my left brain were on duty, I would simply point to the O PEN 24 HOURS sign and inform you that I am the sole employee. My right brain might answer with some poetic quip, like, “May my reason be free of reason. Fa la la.” But the both brain truth of it is: “Challenging, repulsive, and awesome.” How could you want more than that? And know, you must know, Simeon didn’t live on a column because he was a saint. He became a saint up there, somewhere along the way.
    My cat had been my father’s before he went to the nursing home. He always had a cat. One would die and he’d replace it with a new one. We can’t go out, he’d say, the cat needs to be fed. Can’t play music too loud—the cat. Can’t travel. Must work. Must feed the cat. He thought his life meant something because he fed a cat.
    Hush.
    Cats feed themselves.
    You—you are unnecessary to your own life.
    I—I’m doing something. I’m doing something here.