The Second Coming Read Online Free PDF Page B

barber’s eyes reminded her of something she had forgotten. Strangers often thought they knew her. Was it her ordinary good looks or was it a way she had of listening to people and following them like a good dancer that made her seem familiar?
    â€œYou from around here?”
    â€œNo, I’m from—” She stopped. “Oh, by the way, what is today?”
    â€œWednesday.”
    â€œOctober—”
    â€œTwenty-second.”
    She didn’t dare ask the year.
    After the shampoo she sat on the bench again. Her hair felt good, light and warm in the sun.
    From the pocket of her jacket she took out the red spiral-bound notebook and opened it. At the top of the first page was written in blue ink and in her hand the following:
    Date: October 15
    Place: Room 212, Closed Wing, Valleyhead Sanatorium
    Below, printed in capital letters and underlined, was the following:
    INSTRUCTIONS FROM MYSELF TO MYSELF
    What followed was written in her ordinary script: As I write this to you, I don’t remember everything but I remember more than you will remember when you read this. You remember nothing now, do you? I know this from experience. Electroshock knocks out memory for a while. I don’t feel bad. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure I’m sick. But they think I’m worse because I refuse to talk in group (because there is nothing to say) and won’t eat with the others, preferring to sit under the table (because a circle of knees is more interesting than a circle of faces).
    I, that is, you, but for the present as I write this, I—am scheduled to be buzzed early Wednesday morning. This is the beginning of the sixth (I think) course of electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, known hereabouts as buzzing.
    I am writing this in my room in the closed wing (you may not remember the room when you read this on October 22, but it will come back), from which there is no escape, else I’d be long gone.
    After you get buzzed Wednesday, you’ll be in recovery. The adjacent hall leads to the back door, which opens into the service yard, where the bread truck arrives about 11 a.m.
    You may not remember this when you come to (about 9 a.m.). Your jaw will hurt and your teeth will be sore from the mouthpiece. You will be conscious but still paralyzed from the Anectine (curare), lying there bright-eyed and still, like a parrot shot by the poisoned arrow of a pygmy’s blowgun (which you have been). You’ll be drowsy from the Brevital and your mouth will be dry from the atropine. You’ll be dressed in nothing but your hospital gown. But they like you to go back to your room under your own power, so you’ll wait on the stretcher until you can make it to the cubicle. You’ll have time—at least an hour. Nobody is going to bother you—they’re too busy buzzing the others. In the cubicle you’ll find your pj’s, robe, and slippers. But there will be something new. You will find this, this notebook open to this page, on top of your clothes where you can’t miss it. You will read it because there will be nothing else to do for a while and because you will not have entirely forgotten that you wrote it. There will also be the blue skirt and sweater (the only clothes thin enough to ball up and stuff into the pockets of the robe). Between the skirt and sweater you will find the wallet with four hundred dollars in fifties (a little anxiety here: somebody could swipe it while you’re buzzed).
    As you read this, it will not be entirely new to you—it will be like remembering a dream. But if you did not read it, you would not remember what you, I, had decided to do.
    You are now sitting in the cubicle and reading these words. You have time. They don’t expect you to walk back to your room for a while.
    The cubicle, you will notice, has two doors, one opening into recovery, the other opening into the hall.
    Ordinarily you leave by the hall door, turn right, and