30

Impersonating the dead is easy. It comes as naturally as sleep, and is as nourishing.

I feel him in me some nights, a quick, dancing figure, a flame. By day he is always gone.

This is something I cannot master; the living. They are hard to impersonate: their faith, their ability to get up in the morning and go to bed at night and remain always exactly who they are.

I learn slowly. Sometimes at night, I feel myself gliding over the bottom of a pool, my shadow far below me, changing shape with the curve of the pool. And the shape is not mine, it is Mead’s. He is with me, but I cannot beckon to him or turn myself into him at will, because he is separate, with his own life, his own time and place.

In my secret way, I am learning to swim from one day to another. I am not what I pretend to be, with my smile, but I am not Mead. I am something else, someone not here yet.

I am no one, then. Just a living person. I lie still, listening to the city cough awake outside. I am not afraid. Somewhere out there is a future, hanging like an invisible suit of clothes, warm, poised, and waiting to gather me in, naked and shivering from the dawn.