Read Online Numb by Sean Ferrell - Free Book Online Page A

us.” Robert flashed smiles at me over his shoulder, a beacon as we wandered through a maze of halls to Michael’s office. “You know, I showed Michael the tape, and he loved it. He was shocked to find out you didn’t have an agent.” He said this as if he hadn’t told me the exact same thing when we spoke on the phone.
    â€œYeah. By the way, did you have to pay Redbach for my number?”
    â€œWell, he made us buy the tape before he’d tell us.”
    I asked what they’d seen on the tape. I had imagined it was me in Caesar’s cage. I was wrong.
    â€œIt’s you nailed to his bar. He sells them for twenty-five dollars.”
    â€œI didn’t know there was a tape of that.”
    â€œYou mean there are other tapes?”
    â€œYeah, well, it could have been the one of me in a lion’s cage.”
    Saying that brought the reaction people normally save for watching me pierce nails through my hands. Robert stopped short and a man in a much better suit than mine stood in a doorway, eyebrows arched and mouth gaping. Their excitement made me nervous. They looked at each other a moment, then Robert smiled and said, “Michael, this is him.”
    Michael smiled back at Robert. It was some sort of infection. “Let’s go into my office.”
    A window aimed up Broadway dominated the room. It was actually three windows that formed a slight arc, and the crowds on the street below flowed like a tide. The room felt like the bridge of a great ship plowing through the people. I imagined the building moving forward, the masses being left behind.
    Michael and I sat in chairs facing the windows. We looked at each other over a small table with ice water pitchers and crackers. Robert brought a couple cups of coffee, then disappeared.
    Michael reclined heavily into his chair, almost as if pushing back in order to tip it. His suit remained neat, even while sitting, and the sunlight coming through the window caught highlights in his slick hair. He treated the view as something he’d seen too many times for toomany days. A distraction. Me he watched. It wasn’t a gawk or a stare, which I normally received. Just an appraisal. I grew very aware of scabs and scars littering the skin between my fingers and thumbs. The staple holes along my neck and in my earlobes. The cuts on my lips from biting myself. The nicks on my face and neck from my razor. I could be so clumsy even while standing still. Even the cuts and punctures down my back and buttocks felt revealed. He took it all in, a judge of how I’d treated myself.
    He remained silent.
    â€œI’m not sure why I’m here,” I said.
    He grinned. “That’s okay. I do.”
    Another minute went by in silence and the chair no longer seemed as comfortable. Michael noticed my fidgeting and poured me a glass of water. “Most people would want to pitch you this or that,” he said. “I just want to tell you a story. You want to hear a story?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œIt’s your story, actually. But I don’t think you know it as I do. You know your story one way, just as you lived it. But I know it as it’s presented right now, in one shot, just from the way you sit there, looking around and nervously jiggling your knees. I know it as the image of you as you are right now.”
    He stood and removed his jacket, placed it on a hanger on the back of his door, retook his seat.
    â€œYou’re not really certain of where you’ve come fromor how you got here. Everything is a bit overwhelming, scary even. You’re uncertain of whom can be trusted because you’ve been deceived in the past. But through all this uncertainty and deception, and sometimes good times, but often hard, you’ve had one thing, a gift, a talent that you have that no one else seems to have.”
    Michael stopped to turn one of the cups of coffee into a mess. He slopped too much cream and sugar into it.