Dead Anyway Read Online Free PDF Page B

was disappointing, but not as startling as the dyscalculia. I’d had no reason to use any sort of math in the process of recovery, so it was surprising to be unable to add five and five. I laughed, assuming it was a fluke of the moment, and tried other combinations, all completely impenetrable. I told the doctor I’d pulled an 800 on my math SAT’s and wrestled with esoteric calculations for a living. He said the part of my brain that did all that had apparently been mashed into glop by the bullet passing through.
    The musculoskeletal guy said I’d never run the New York City Marathon, but I’d achieve a reasonable gait over time, until arthritis hit, which could be severely disabling, depending on genetic factors. I liked him the best because he was harshly direct and to the point, which I noticed despite my apparently diminished social affect.
    Meanwhile, my personal appearance had been totally transformed. The severe weight loss had altered my morphology, and with my new glasses, shaved head (a custom maintained after the operations), lost moustache, and the downward curve of my dreary, depressed expression, I didn’t look anything like the me that was.
    This would have been disturbing, if not so strategically helpful.
    Strategic is too big a word. It was much more of an outline of a direction with only the initial stages laid out in order. This wasn’t my preferred approach. I’m a person who likes to have every inch of a journey determined before I take the first step. But I was weak from injury and the struggle with my altered circumstances. And, worst of all, there was that blanket of grief enveloping my mind, like an evil drug, clouding my judgment and threatening my sanity.
    I’d never practiced TM, or Zen meditation, or any other mental discipline that might have trained me to control my emotional state. Instead, I merely immersed myself in the task. I became literally single-minded. Focused and impossible to distract, consumed by an unwavering obsession.
    This is what I knew how to do.
    I T WASN ’ T perfect, but moving into Gerry’s shop apartment would get me away from Evelyn and provide an ideal staging area for the next phase. All I needed was to learn to walk farther than down the hall or two miles on the treadmill.
    So I kept practicing, pushing my endurance to the limit, which grew greater every day.
    I wasn’t ready, but almost, which I decided was close enough. My first trip outside was in the dark. It was early in the evening, but the sky was moonless and overcast. I wore a long overcoat and my L.L. Bean washed canvas trekking hat to cover the bald head, surgical scars and bullet holes—now little pink craters, the most conspicuous of which was on the left side of my forehead near where my hairline used to be. I used my rehab-issue cane, an aluminum number with a fat rubber tip and form-fitting grip, that had become a natural extension of my being.
    I walked about a block and caught a bus into town, where I got off and walked another block to an Internet café run by a young anarchist whose only restriction was pornography.
    “Can’t have people just using the place to get a stiffy,” is how he explained it to me. He also claimed to have ways around being traced through IP and MAC addresses, though I knew that to be essentially impossible. For my purposes, however, his relative untrackability was good enough.
    I paid cash for two hours of computer time, which I spent scanning obituaries. I set these basic parameters: males within four years of my age; born in Connecticut; died in a distant state; minimum survivors; ethnically compatible with my new appearance; uneventful lives.
    The same criteria used by identity thieves, which I hoped to successfully emulate.
    One of the more interesting assignments I’d had was to test an identity theft protection product marketed by one of my insurance clients. I’d been asked to assess the product’s various features and benefits, so in the process I