When she was in college, Cindy had a kitten. She named it
"Death".
She did it because you never know when or where
you will encounter Death, and because she was preoccupied with the subject. She
was not afraid of death, though. In fact, she rather liked the idea of lives ending at
one neat moment rather than being messily immortal.
One Friday, she fed Death in the usual fashion, by setting her food on the kitchen floor
and calling her name. Death emerged from the microwave. While the kitten ate,
Cindy left for the college dorm. On Fridays, a Red Cross station wagon arrived at the dorm and took students
to the Psychiatric Center to cheer up the teenaged patients.
At first the patients had scared Cindy. But then she had started bringing
her guitar along and singing folksongs. Today, as she sang, Cindy watched one
particular boy out of the corner of her eye. For over an hour now, he had been
frozen in a awkward position against the wall. But as she sang, "Where Have
All the Flowers Gone," the boy let his arm relax by his side. Minute by
minute he moved closer, keeping his eyes on Cindy, until he was smiling on the edge of
the group of listeners.
Simeon, who drove the Red Cross station wagon and tried to sing along, told
Cindy that her music had brought back the boy's will to live. But most of her
songs were about death! Maybe, if you feel as if your life is hopeless, thinking
about its immanent end can cheer you up.
"You're not a student, are you?" Cindy said to Simeon during a
break in the singing.
"How could you tell?"
"You look as if you could be 30."
"29, to be exact. I'm a registrar at the university. I
moved up here from Alabama after my divorce."
"I'm sorry to hear about your divorce," Cindy said.
"Why did you pick this city?"
"Why not?"
"C'mon, Simeon. You could have gotten a registrar job
anywhere! Why here?"
He shrugged.
Most Sundays, Simeon called and invited Cindy over to his place for dinner. She
would summon Death from inside the guitar, the microwave, or wherever, feed her, and
go.
Simeon confused her. Most people don't cook dinner for somebody unless
they like them. But Simeon otherwise never indicated that he had any affection
for her -- not a kiss, not a sweet word, not even a smile.
He moved so slowly!
Cindy thought that he must be depressed. She was sure that his thoughts about
death were similar to hers, if only he would spit them out.
Then, for no apparent reason, Simeon stopped calling her. For about a
month, she wondered what had happened. One night, she went to a frat
party, one of those really crowded ones in a student's house. There, in an armchair in a back room, barely visible for all
the college guys milling around him, sat Simeon.
Cindy's first instinct was to walk over and ask him why he had
disappeared. But the angry look in Simeon's eyes stopped her. And he seemed to
be drunk; he didn't recognize her. Cindy decided that she had better ignore him.
But, afterward, she could not stop thinking about him. She
realized why he had not recognized her.
She knew firsthand what it was like to withdraw from life because you just
wanted to die and get it over with.
Finally, in order to stop thinking about Simeon, she did
something strange. She killed herself noncorporally; that is, she killed all of herself except her body. She killed
her likes and dislikes, her morals and inhibitions, and as many of her old
habits and fears as she could. (Although she decided to keep Death who, at this
moment, looked warm and cozy in a fur-lined boot.)
Then Cindy felt much better -- free, unrestrained. Now she could
do anything she wanted; the possibilities were endless. She started dating guys
she never would have looked at before, telling taller tales and funnier jokes, and
learning all sorts of new things.
She renamed her kitten "Fuzzy".
About nine months after Cindy last saw Simeon, she saw a small article in the Sunday paper. It read:
Will I Go
Crazy?