Adverbs by Daniel Handler Read Free Book Online Page A

the sun. Love is this sudden crash in your path, quick and to the point, and nearly always it leaves someone slain on the green. I killed the bird and I never saw Keith again and so I am alone this morning with blood on my shoe.
    You won’t believe how I love this guy. I can’t believe it either. Is it possible to love someone forever but not thinkof him for years? Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Is it possible to lose someone who only stepped in front of you once in a towel? Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Grant me this, this brief murdered moment, and then I will bury it sadly and go on with my game.

soundly
    L et me explain what is happening to the Jewish people,” the guy said. He had just come out of the lounge, and had spilled maybe coffee all over his vest, so recently that it still glittered and beaded on the ugly puffy fabric of it. He was speaking very loudly over music coming from his headphones, and this did not make him the best spokesperson as to what was happening to the Jewish people. We listened anyway. Lila and I had been Jewish all our lives and we were curious about what would happen to us.
    “They want the money, right?” the guy said. “Let me explain it. They want all the world’s money, right?”
    “Right,” we said. I was almost out of money myself and soon would be chained to a student loan. All the world’s money was something I wanted, come to think of it.
    “And the world’s money is down in San Francisco,” the guy said, “or San Fran, as everybody says. I’m going down there myself as sort of a freelance guard. Something terrible is going to happen down there that the Jews will use as an excuse. Maybe a building, like with terrorists, will…” The guy plucked his earphones from his ears and dropped them around his neck like one of those stupid pillows people wear on airplanes, and thenspread his arms out like he was tossing handfuls of flour. He made a noise like a ten-year-old boy pretending to blow things up which is always the trouble. It was very pretty to look at, but then again I was drunk. I don’t know why Lila was listening but she has always been kind.
    “It’ll either be guys with bombs or a volcano is my theory,” the guy said. From his earphones we could hear an old song sung enthusiastically by the original artist. “You know how I know it?”
    “I’m guessing a pamphlet you read,” I said.
    “I’m going to go with the Internet,” Lila said. We turned to see if there’d be a guess from the only other person in the lounge, but the bartender was still cranky at the both of us and he stacked napkins to show us it was so.
    “Both of you big-breasted girls are wrong,” the guy said. “I did it by reading birds. They behave badly when disaster is going to strike. You know, like with earthquakes.”
    “Wouldn’t an earthquake be more likely,” Lila said, “in San Francisco?”
    “Not in my theory,” the guy said proudly.
    “Well, that’s a great theory,” Lila said. She made a gesture like she might put her hand on the guy’s stainy vest, if she weren’t all the way across the lounge.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Go tell someone that theory and they’ll interrupt the Super Bowl.”
    “You think I’m hilarious and crazy,” the guy said, in that sudden spooky clarity only exhibited by crazy people. He walked backward toward a pair of swinging doors. “I’m justwrecked up. I’ve been beaten down by the knowledge of all the terrible things happening, and my theory is to tell my fellow man. In San Francisco my fellow man will see how wrecked I am and he’ll treasure all the time he has before the Jews take over. So you’re welcome, even if you don’t love me and never will.”
    He put his tunes back on his head and left us there. We shifted in the booth of the lounge and I raised my finger to the bartender, who brought me another bourbon. “San Francisco,” he said, shaking his head. “And I was just going down there to work in my brother’s bar with