rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Chapter Twenty Three
Part Two: Tourism Is Storytelling
About the Author
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, TO
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
Four hours after his failed suicide attempt, he descended toward Aerodrom Ljubljana. A tone sounded, and above his head the seat belt sign glowed. Beside him, a Swiss businesswoman buckled her belt and gazed out the window at the clear Slovenian sky—all it had taken was one initial rebuff to convince her that the twitching American she’d been seated next to had no interest in conversation.
The American closed his eyes, thinking about the morning’s failure in Amsterdam—gunfire, shattering glass and splintered wood, sirens.
If suicide is sin, he thought, then what is it to someone who doesn’t believe in sin? What is it then? An abomination of nature? Probably, because the one immutable law of nature is to continue existing. Witness: weeds, cockroaches, ants, and pigeons. All of nature’s creatures work to a single, unified purpose: to stay alive. It’s the one indisputable theory of everything.
He’d dwelled on suicide so much over the last months, had examined the act from so many angles, that it had lost its punch. The infinitive clause “to commit suicide” was no more tragic than “to eat breakfast”
