Trust No One Read Free Page B

morning knowing you get to fall asleep with her that night, the woman who can always see the other side of the argument, the woman who teaches you more about life every day. You have the daughter with an old soul, the traveler, the girl who wants people to be happy, the girl taking on the world. You have the nice house on the nice street, you sold a lot of books and you entertained a lot of people. Truthfully, F.J., you always thought there would be a trade-off, that the Universe would somehow balance things out. It turns out you were right. Most of all, this journal is a map to the person you used to be. It will help you get back to the times you can’t remember, and when there is a cure, this journal will help restore anything you have lost.
    The best thing to do first is explain how we got here. Thankfully, you’ll still have all your memories tomorrow and you’ll still be you, and the next day, and the next, but those next days are running out the same way authors have a final book. We all have a last thought, a last hope, a last breath, and it’s important to get all this down for you, Jerry.
    You’ve got the badly written book this year and, spoiler alert, Jerry, last year’s novel didn’t review that well. But hey—you still read the reviews, is that another effect of the dementia? You told yourself years ago not to read them, but you do anyway. You usually don’t because of the occasional blogger calling you a This is Henry Cutter’s most disappointing novel yet hack. It’s the way of the world, my friend, and just part of the job. But perhaps one you don’t have to worry about where you are now. It’s hard to pinpoint when it started. You forgot Sandra’s birthday last year. That was tough. But there’s more. However, right now . . . right now exhaustion is setting in, you’re feeling a little too all over the place, and . . . well, you’re actually drinking a gin and tonic as you’re writing this. It’s your first of the evening. Okay, that’s another joke, it’s your second, and the world is starting to lose its sharp edges. What you really want to do now is just sleep.
    You’re a good news, bad news kind of guy, F.J. You like good news, and you don’t like bad news. Hah—thanks G&T number three for giving you Captain Obvious as another narrative point of view. The bad news is that you’re dying. Not dying in the traditional sense—you might still have a lot of years ahead of you—but you’re going to be a shell of a man and the Jerry you were. The Jerry I am right now, that you are as of this writing, is going to leave, sorry to tell you. The good news is—soon you’re not even going to know. There’ll be moments—of course there will be. You can already imagine Sandra sitting beside you and you won’t recognize her, and maybe you’ll have just wet yourself and maybe you’ll be telling her to leave you the hell alone, but there’ll be these moments—these patches of blue sky on a dark day where you’ll know what’s going on, and it will break your heart.
    It will break your fucking heart.

The officer leads Jerry and Eva through the fourth floor of the police department. Most people stop what they’re doing to look over. Jerry wonders if he knows any of them. He seems to remember there was somebody he’d used for the books—a cop, maybe, who he could ask how does this work or how does that work, would a bullet do this, would a cop do that, talk me through the loopholes. If he’s here Jerry doesn’t recognize him, then remembers that it’s not a police officer he got help from, but a friend of his, a guy by the name of Hans. He still has the photograph Eva gave him in his hand, and he can remember when it was taken. Things are coming back to him, but not everything.
    Eva has to sign something and then speaks to the officer again while Jerry stares at one of the walls where there’s a flyer for the police rugby team that has six names on it, the last one being Uncle