French Movie
I was in a French movie and had only nine hours to live and I knew it not because I planned to take my life or swallowed a lethal but slow-working potion meant for a juror in a mob-related murder trial, nor did I expect to be assassinated like a chemical engineer mistaken for someone important in Milan or a Jew journalist kidnapped in Pakistan; no, none of that; no grounds for suspicion, no murderous plots centering on me with cryptic phone messages and clues like a scarf or lipstick left in the front seat of a car; and yet I knew I would die by the end of that day and I knew it with a dreadful certainty, and when I walked in the street and looked in the eyes of the woman walking toward me I knew that she knew it, too, and though I had never seen her before, I knew she would spend the rest of that day with me, those nine hours walking, searching, going into a bookstore in Rome, smoking a Gitane, and walking, walking in London, taking the train to Oxford from Paddington or Cambridge from Liverpool Street and walking along the river and across the bridges, walking, talking, until my nine hours were up and the black-and-white movie ended with the single word FIN in big white letters on a bare black screen.
Credit
From Yeshiva Boys by David Lehman. Copyright © 2010 by David Lehman. Used by permission of Scribner.
Date Published
01/01/2010