This Is How It Ends Read Online Free PDF

hears and feels all of this, but he can’t move.
    When he does manage to drag himself out of this strange nonsleep, he finds he’s shivering and his circulation is sluggish. He’s cold from the inside out, like someone who’s been involved in a scientific experiment. He has to haul himself down to the village for another cup of coffee before he can even begin to feel normal again. He sleeps, and when he wakes up he goes back for more coffee and then he wonders why he’s having trouble sleeping at night.
    It could be jet lag, he’s thinking, it could be the time difference. He could be depressed. He could be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Only he doesn’t feel depressed. He doesn’t feel anything except plain old tired.
     
    A LOT HAS HAPPENED , he tells himself.
    Just three weeks ago he was walking out the door of the Lehman building with a cardboard box in his arms, all his stuff packed into it. Out on the sidewalk, the tourists were stopping to take photographs, the cops trying to keep them back behind the crash barriers. There’s nothing to see here, they were saying, you’re not gonna see anyone famous. Just folks who’ve lost their jobs.
    Across the street, television reporters were lined up in a wide arc, their satellite vans humming. As he walked by, Bruno wondered to himself why they’d all arranged themselves in formation, like a flock of birds following some unspoken rule of the universe. It was only when he got home and surfed the networks that he worked it out. They were all positioned so you could see the bank’s logo behind them, there it was, just over the reporter’s shoulder. As they were talking, they would move to the edge of the screen, angling themselves a little to the side. “Behind me you can see the bank’s employees leaving with their belongings. Many of them have spent most of the weekend inside the building, waiting for news. I’ve been talking to some of them this morning and they’ve described themselves as shell-shocked. What they’re saying is, this is a financial tsunami.”
    The others took themselves off to Bobby Van’s to drown their sorrows. They tried to persuade him to come but Bruno had no stomach for it. He went home, sat on his couch, and watched his life fall apart on live television. He hopped from channel to channel, digesting the sound bites, letting the stock phrases roll over him hour after hour. There was a script to this, maybe if he heard it often enough it would make some sense.
    It wasn’t just the job that was gone, most of his savings had disappeared with it. Half his pay going back almost six years, instantly and irretrievably gone. The funny thing was, he felt quite detached from it all. There was even a strange elation, an adrenaline rush. He was like a guy who comes home to find his house burning down, and all he can think is, I never wanted any of that stuff in the first place.
     
    HARD TO BELIEVE that it was only three weeks ago. Thinking about it now, it seems like someone else’s life.
    He sees himself through a stranger’s eyes. A clean-shaven man in expensive clothes, he’s walking up the steps from the subway. He’s coming out onto Seventh Avenue, stopping to buy a coffee from the Iranian guy on the corner. He has the exact change ready. They toss a bit of loose banter back and forth. Then Bruno turns and disappears in through the doors of his office, coffee cup in hand.
    Above his head, a map of the world is moving across the glass face of the building like a cloud across the sky. Islands and sea gliding silently over the surface, the Lehman Brothers logo crawling after them in a massive bold font. Magnificent, he used to think it was. It used to make his heart swell in his chest as he walked through the doors. Now it seems a lot like hubris, that gloating display of global supremacy.
    He sees himself at his desk on the second floor, multiple screens in front of him. He’s tracking airline shares. He’s