The Goodbye Man
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #2
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53597-3
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Goodbye Man». Краткое содержание книги:
“I turned my life around. I graduated from high school in three years, valedictorian. I was captain of all sorts of clubs and teams. Football. You like football? I see the men out there, I’m looking at some players, aren’t I? I can spot you. And I’ll bet you ladies like to go to a game too now and then, right? Sure you do. That was my sport, football. Quarterback. Track and field too. I have a hundred trophies.
“I got a business degree from one of the best colleges in the country, graduated at the top of my class. Summa cum laude. I started companies, a dozen of them. They all did great. I made a ton of money, hired a ton of employees. Successful! All my companies. They were perfect, they were gorgeous! I made money hand over fist!”
Shaw scanned the crowd. Mostly adoring faces. But some perplexed expressions too, among the Novices. Shaw finally spotted Victoria, in the back. Like everyone else, her notebook was tucked under her arm, freeing her hands for the clapping. Her face gazed at Eli with adoration.
“But all the time I was leading the team to championships, a dozen championships, two dozen, all the time I was running my companies, the loneliness and depression were always there.
“My life was loneliness, sadness. Missing my parents, missing my fellow foster brothers and sisters — I’d bond with them and then I’d be taken away from them. You know what that’s like, don’t you? Losing someone? Sure you do. You know how that stays with you, like a headache that just won’t quit. Like that splinter in your finger you just can’t get out.
“And it wasn’t just me in pain. It was everywhere: people being discontented. In business, in their marriages. I didn’t know what to do about it. I tried that therapy stuff. You ever try that?”
Bobbing heads.
“Doesn’t work so great, does it?”
Mutterings of agreement.
“Like everybody else, I muddled along. I did the best I could. I made money. And I kept thinking I’ll just have to live with it. But I felt so helpless, right? You know that, don’t you? Of course you do.”
“But then...” Eli eased closer to the edge of the stage. He looked his parishioners over, catching one Companion’s eye, pausing, then another’s. His next words were whispered. “But then something happened. Something big. It was a day in June. Very much like today. I can picture it now. I can see it perfectly. I was with some business associates driving to a meeting at one of my factories in the countryside.” He held his right hand up, palm out. “And in a flash...”
Of the hundred people in the Square, not a soul made a single decibel of sound.
“In a flash... an oncoming car crossed the centerline and rammed us. Head-on.”
Gasps. Cries of “No!”
“Three people died.” He shook his head. “Three people... And I was one of them.”
29
“You’ve heard of near-death experiences, right? Sure you have. You read about them all the time. See them on TV. Don’t you?”
More nods, whispers of “Yes.”
“The doctors told me later that what I experienced wasn’t near-death. It was death itself. I actually died.”
This stirred up hushed buzzing from the crowd.
“They’d never seen anything like it before. Well, naturally.” A broad smile. “I’ve got to do things different. Anybody can get near death. But I was the real deal. That’s me. I don’t fool around. The docs, they’d given up on me. Then what happened?”
A Companion near Shaw whispered, “I came back.”
Eli: “I came back.”
The man beside Shaw, a Journeyman, knew Eli’s Discourse so well he could recite it. He wasn’t alone. The audience contained a dozen other lip-synchers.
“Those doctors, they told me later they’d never seen anyone fight so hard to come back to life. I was one for the textbooks, they said. Some of them wrote about me. I’m in famous medical journals. Oh, they changed my name, of course, so I wouldn’t be mobbed, but I’m there.
“And do you know why I fought so hard?”
“Tell us!”
“Why, Master Eli?”
Many of these responses seemed to be coming from the Inner Circle Companions. Premeditated, of course, though they gave the impression of spontaneity.
“Why did I fight so hard?” A whisper once more: “Why did I come back?” Pointing now to the Companions in a slow sweep. “For you. Because I had learned something in that terrible experience. I had learned how to bring an end to your unhappiness.
“Right then, coming out of the anesthetic, staring at the light above the operating table” — he lifted his hands high above his head — “I knew what I had to do. I had to give up pursuing money and success. I would use all my talents from school, from sports, from business and turn them to a new life goal. To eliminating the sorrow and mourning and the loneliness that I saw all around me. And it doesn’t matter how successful you are. In Hollywood. On Wall Street.”
Eli fired a smile toward Shaw.
“In the forestry business.”
Slick...
“So I sold my companies — at huge profits, by the way. I got every last penny, so I could fund this place. I traveled the world to study philosophy...”
Another voice near Shaw was speaking simultaneously with Eli: “...religion and science and medicine. I worked day and night...”
“I once worked twenty-six hours in one day! How did I do that? Can you imagine how I did that?”
Whispers, “The time zone.”
Eli laughed. “The time zone. I gained two hours flying east to west. I studied all the time. Study, study, study. Some of the beliefs I rejected, some I liked. Everywhere I went I looked for people who were happy and those who weren’t. And finally... finally I learned the secret to overcoming depression and anxiety and that feeling of loss. And I created the Osiris Foundation.”
A wave of clapping, begun by the well-oiled Inner Circle, as coordinated as the Rockettes at Rockefeller Center.
Lifting both his arms, quieting the audience. “Do you know why I’ve named our group after Osiris?”
“Tell us!” came a shout.
“We love you, Master Eli!”
“Ancient Egypt, 2500 B.C., Osiris was a god, murdered by his brother, who cut the body into pieces and scattered them over Egypt.”
Shaw half-expected the audience to start booing Osiris’s evil brother but they remained silent.
“Now, get this. Are you ready? Osiris’s wife and her sister traveled the country, found the pieces and bound them in cloth — that’s where the practice of mummification came from, by the way. So Osiris... after the parts were put back together, he became even more powerful. He became god of fertility and of the underworld. He controlled birth and death. What a gorgeous man!
“That’s why I named our family the Osiris Foundation — because Osiris was dismantled and then reassembled into someone new. Someone stronger, more content, happier. I mean, hey, the god of fertility? He’d have to be pretty happy with that job, wouldn’t you think? Sign me up for that one!”
Eli was eating up the laughter.
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do for you. I’ve created a way to take you apart and reassemble you into the person you should be. Happy, content, productive, loving and loved. And how do I do that? Somebody tell me. I want to hear it!”