Trust No One Read Free Page A

not the pages going up in flames, but the mind that created them. Funny how you could remember that sentiment from a book you read more than ten years ago, but can’t find your car keys.
    Writing in this journal is the first time in years you’ve handwritten anything longer than a grocery list. The computer’s word processor has been your medium ever since the day you wrote the words Chapter One of your first book, but using the computer for this . . . well, it feels too impersonal, for one, and too impractical for another. The journal is more authentic, and much easier to carry around than a laptop. It’s actually a journal Eva gave you for Christmas back when she was eleven. She drew a big smiley face on the cover and glued a pair of googly eyes to it. From the face she drew a thought bubble, and inside that she wrote Dad’s coolest ideas. The pages have always remained blank, because your ideas tend to get scribbled down on Post-it notes and stuck around the sides of the computer monitor, but the notebook (now to be a journal) has always remained in the top drawer of your desk, and every now and then you’ll take it out and run your thumb over the cover and remember when she gave it to you. Hopefully your handwriting is better than when you get an idea during the night and scrawl it down only to find you can’t read your own words the following morning.
    There is so much to tell you, but let me begin by being blunt. You’re heading into Batshit County. “We’re all batshit crazy in Batshit County”—that’s a line from your latest work. You’re a crime writer—now’s as good a time as any to mention that. You write under a pen name, that of Henry Cutter, and over the years have been given the nickname The Cutting Man by fans and the media, not just because of your pen name, but because many of your bad guys use knives. You’ve written twelve books, and number thirteen, The Man Goes Burning, is with your editor at the moment. She’s struggling with it. She struggled with number twelve too—and that should have been a warning flag there, right? Here’s what you should do—get this put on a T-shirt: People with Dementia Don’t Make Great Authors. When you’re losing your marbles a plot is hard to construct. There were bits that made no sense and bits that made even less sense, but you got there, and you felt embarrassed and you apologized a dozen times and put it down to stress. After all, you’d been touring a lot that year so it made sense you were going to make some mistakes. But The Man G oes Burning is a mess. Tomorrow or the next day, you’ll call your editor and tell her about the Big A. Every author eventually has a last book—you just didn’t think you were there yet, and you didn’t think it would be a journal.
    Your last book, this journal, will be your descent into madness. Wait—better make that the journey into madness. Don’t mix that up. Sure, you’re going to forget your wife’s name, but let’s not forget what we’re calling this—it’s a journey, not a descent. And yes, that’s a joke. An angry joke because, let’s face it, Future Jerry, you are exceptionally angry. This is a journey into madness because you are mad. What isn’t there to be mad about? You are only forty-nine years old, my friend, and you are staring down the barrel of insanity. Madness Journal is the perfect name. . . .
    But no, that’s not what this is about. This isn’t about writing up a memorial for your anger, this is a journal to let you know about your life before the disease dug in its claws and ripped your memories to shreds. This journal is about your life, about how blessed you’ve been. You, Future Jerry, you got to be the very thing you’d always dreamed of becoming—a writer. You got the amazing wife, a woman who can put her hand in yours and make you feel whatever it is you need to feel, whether it’s comfort or warmth or excitement or lust, the woman who you wake up to every