No Score

Chapter ten

Well, what did you expect?

Blood?

Look, a guy stuck a gun in my face and pulled the trigger. Now if the gun didn’t jam then he would have blown my head off and you would be reading something else because I wouldn’t be around to write this.

I mean, I can just hear you clucking like a chicken and saying, “Now how in the hell is he going to get out of this one?” And then on the last page it said The gun jammed and you said, “Oh, shit, the gun jammed, what a cornball way to save him.”

I didn’t plan it that way, for Pete’s sake. If you want to know something, it took me a full day to write the last chapter. One stupid page with three stupid words on it and it took me all day to write it because I couldn’t figure out how to tell you that the gun jammed. And finally it came to me that there was only one way. The gun jammed. Period, end of chapter.

I’ll tell you something. I was going to make something up instead of having the gun jam. You know, to lie to you and figure out something more convincing and satisfying than a jammed gun. (I already put two things in this book that aren’t true. They’re out-and-out lies, actually. They’re both in the second chapter. If you think you know what they are, write to me. I’d be interested to see if you get it right.)

But I couldn’t think of a lie. Either I’m dictating this from the grave or the gun jammed. Well, the gun jammed and that’s all there is to it, and come to think of it, I don’t know why in the hell I’m apologizing, because what it amounts to is I’m apologizing for being alive, and that doesn’t make any sense.