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Chapter 1

At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afreo was the perfect job, because itpills to commit suicide I was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our phar pills were a deadly combination, and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die

It was Saturday - the Saturday I had been waiting for My parents would be away for the weekend andat a friend's Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no one there to interfere with my plan

At six o'clock, the phar time"

He had no idea how right he was It was ti with my life I kneasn't just me It was the whole country

The year was 1934, and A crisis The stock market had crashed five years before and thousands of banks had failed Businesses were folding everywhere More than thirteen es had plunged to as low as a nickel an hour Atwo hundred thousand children, were roarip of a disastrous depression For suicide, and executives were selling apples in the streets

Thewas "Gloomy Sunday" I had memorized some of the lyrics:

Gloomy is Sunday

With shadows I spend it all

My heart and I

Have decided to end it all

The world was bleak, and it fit my mood perfectly I had reached the depths of despair I could see no rhyme or reason for my existence I felt dislocated and lost I wasthat I couldn't define or name

We lived near Lake Michigan, only a few blocks froht I walked down there to try to calht, and the sky was filled with clouds

I looked up and said, "If there is a God, show yourself to me"

And as I stood there staring at the sky, the clouds e face There was a sudden flash of lightning that gave the face blazing eyes I ran all the way home in a panic

I lived with ers Park The great showman Mike Todd said that he was often broke but he never felt poor I, however, felt poor all the ti poverty where, in a freezing winter, you had to keep the radiator off to save hts out when not in use You squeezed the last drops out of the ketchup bottle and the last dab of toothpaste out of the tube But I was about to escape all that

When I arrived at our dreary apartment, it was deserted My parents had already left for the weekend and one There was no one to stop me from what I intended to do

I walked into the little bedroo of sleeping pills I had hidden under the dresser Next, I went into the kitchen, took a bottle of bourbon from the shelf where my father kept it, and carried it back to the bedroom I looked at the pills and the bourbon and I wondered how long it would take for thelass and raised it toI took a s of the whiskey, and the acrid taste of itpills and started to raise the?"

I spun around, spilling so some of the pills