Zero-Hero, said Seventh. Zero my hero.
The driver behind them leaned on his horn.
Zero turned around. Asshole! she shouted. Then, to Seventh she said, See?
Out of the Shadows was published nearly a year later, the story of a young man’s struggle to escape his identity.
Mudd would have hated it.
Seventh had written it as nonfiction, as cultural history. Rosenbloom agreed to publish it as fantasy. It had been a difficult year for Rosenbloom; rather than garnering praise for publishing authors of such varied identities, he was excoriated for profiting from their stories, and vilified by the few identities he overlooked. Cannibals, he figured, were a safe political bet.
Out of the Shadows, though, was largely ignored. Its hero was a man who let his people disappear into history, who chose to define himself by what he and his fellow man had in common rather than by what made them different. Or woman.
Typical Libtard bullshit, wrote the first reviewer on Amazon. One star because I couldn’t give it none.
Replied the second: Rethuglicans only know how to hate.
Responded the first: Get used to it, Jews and homos don’t run this country anymore.
Responded the second: Go wash your Klan hood, you redneck bible-thumper.
The assholes continued this for as long as assholes continue these things for, and aside from a couple of customers who praised the fast shipping, that was the end of that.
Seventh didn’t mind; writing about his past had been a form of exorcism, and it had served its purpose. A few months later, on the snowy anniversary of Mudd’s death, Seventh went for a walk. He would have liked to bring Reese with him, but he never did tell her about her heritage; her story began with her, he had decided, and she could follow it wherever she chose.
She was her own chapter one. No prologue. Why should Adam be the only one born with no past, the only one born without the crippling defect of history? There was nothing for Reese to do but be Reese, as Reesey a Reese as she could ever be.
He walked two blocks east until he came to the large park at the edge of the city. The park was built above the FDR Drive, the busy four-lane highway that runs along the East River, from the southernmost point of Manhattan all the way up to 125th Street. The downside of this design is that at certain points of the park, one could hear the traffic racing and rumbling below. But it also allowed visitors to reach the East River without having to cross the highway.
Not that many people other than Seventh wanted to reach the East River.
The East River was a toilet. For decades, assholes have dumped their waste and sewage here. Not just asshole Americans, mind you, but the asshole British before them, and the asshole Native Americans before them. Asshole humans have dumped so much of what came out of their assholes into the East River that only a complete fucking asshole would step foot in it now.
Seventh looked out at the despoiled river.
Assholes from the very moment we form, he thought.
Finding myself quite empty, with nothing to write about, I offered myself to myself as theme and subject matter.
That was how Montaigne began his famous essays. Thousands of pages later, he had come to pretty much the same conclusion as Zero:
Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our asses.
Liberal humanist or religious conservative, Catholic or Jewish, courageous philosopher or cowardly politician, this was Montaigne’s great genius:
He knew he was an asshole.
That we are all assholes.
Perhaps, he wrote, we are right to condemn ourselves for giving birth to such an absurd thing as a man; right to call it an act of shame and the organs which serve to do it shameful.
Maybe, thought Seventh, that was the melting we needed to do, the melting that could save the world: accept that we’re all assholes. Maybe then we’d lose respect for our asshole ancestors, and give up our asshole traditions, question our asshole beliefs and asshole nationalities and asshole identities, erase our asshole borders and just live together, as best as a bunch of assholes can hope to.
Seventh lifted up the old valise and rested it on the rail. He undid the old rusted latches, and opened it one last time. He took out the dice, the Monopoly money, and the bubble gum and placed them in his pocket. He would mail them to Zero to give to Third.
And then he reached in, and he took out the Knife of Redemption, and he held it a moment in his hand, heavy and fearsome and covered in the blood of the long-since dead, and he reared back and he threw it, as Samuel the Wise so long ago commanded, as far as he could into the river below, and he watched it sink, and then he closed the old valise, and he latched the old locks, and he threw it as far as he could into the river, too, just as Father wished Julius had so long ago.
With the rest of that ancient bullshit.
About the Author
Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR's This American Life. Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin's Lament, and the novel Hope: A Tragedy. He is the creator of Showtime's Happyish. He lives in Los Angeles.
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