The End Specialist. Drew Magary
It would be like watching someone try to inflate a balloon without bothering to pinch the end between breaths. You’d see the history. You would get at least some semblance of the life he’s led and what’s he’s been dealing with. But you can’t see that with me. There’s no story. You can’t tell a damn thing.
Happy tenth cure day to me.
Date Modified: 6/20/2029, 12:14PM
“You Said You’d Love Me Forever”
Sonia wanted to get married. The issue had come up in the past, but I had managed to stave it off for as long as I possibly could. I have found in my life, though, that once a woman introduces the idea of something to you, she’ll never let it go until you finally relent. I don’t mean this as a criticism of women. They’re all so admirably tenacious, whereas I am the exact opposite. I’ll let go of anything if holding onto it comes to require too much effort.
She broke one of the long silences that tended to overpopulate our most serious arguments. “I don’t understand what you’re so afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” I told her.
“Yes, you are.”
“You’re not going to get me to marry you simply by challenging my manhood. I already know I don’t stack up to most men. The Cap’n Crunch boxes in the kitchen are proof alone of that.”
“This isn’t funny, John. I’ve invested four years of my life in this. There comes a point when it’s fair for a woman to ask what a man’s intentions are. Don’t you think that’s fair?”
“I do. I think it’s more than fair. And I am committed to you. I’ve never cheated. I’ve always been there to support you.”
“And you say you love me, right?”
“I do. I love the hell out of you.”
“You said you’d love me forever.”
“I did. And I meant it.”
Sonia sat down. She didn’t look upset. She looked more as if she was trying to solve a math proof whose solution eluded her. That’s what I always liked about her. She was never unreasonable. If she had an argument with anything, it was backed up by sound logic and analysis. Not everyone I know acts in similar manner. I know I don’t.
“Then I don’t understand,” she said. “You know I’m not a needy person. I can take care of myself. But the reason I’m talking to you about this is because I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to build something with you. More importantly, I don’t want to have this conversation with you every four months. I want this settled.”
“I understand all that. But look out there. Do you see anyone getting married? At all?”
“What does that have to do with us? Are you telling me it’s peer pressure that’s holding you back?”
“No.”
“Because I know what’s going on these days. A man in my office got engaged three months ago and all the other men laughed at him. They laughed right in his face. Every guy is supposed to be some macho, shit-kicking eternal bachelor now.”
I sat next to her on the couch. She had a glass of wine on the coffee table, but she hadn’t bothered to touch it.
“It’s not just a guy thing,” I said. “I’m going to be as honest as I possibly can about this, because you deserve the unvarnished truth. I don’t have the capacity to commit to something—anything—for five hundred years, or however long we’ll both live now. I don’t have the knowledge and foresight to say to you, ‘Yes. I will stick with you no matter what occurs from now until the end of time.’”
“But you could commit to me if you hadn’t taken the cure? That makes no sense.”
“Yes, it does. I could commit to you if we knew our lives were finite. But they aren’t. I have no earthly idea what’s coming next, and it’s not fair to you to promise that from now until the end of time I’ll always be by your side. I can’t promise that, because I don’t know. And you can’t promise that either, because you don’t know.”
“But that’s what marriage is. It’s two people saying we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we promise we’ll get through it together. Being married means there’s one thing you can always count on.”
“I don’t know if I want that. I’m sorry. People got married before because they knew, deep down, that there would come a time in their lives when they would become too old, too ugly and too infirm to have anyone care about them except their spouse. You needed someone to change your bedpan in the hospital and help tie your shoes and all of that. That’s all gone now, Sonia. All of that fear is gone. And whatever urge there is for people to find some lifetime companion… I don’t have that anymore. Every guy I know feels the same way. You want something concrete from me? I love you, but I don’t want to get married, and I don’t know if I ever do. I’m pretty sure I won’t.”
Her eyes tightened, like she was about to swing at a baseball. “I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“How long?”
“Ten weeks. I just found out this morning.”
“You spring this on me now?”
“I’m not afraid to raise our child alone, John. I’m not. I’m a strong woman and I know I can do that. But I’d like you to be there. I’d like to raise him with you as your wife. It wouldn’t be a chore. It would be wonderful. Indelible. It would be fifty times more rewarding than spending the next three decades getting blasted and watching football with your friends or whatever.”
“I don’t know. I like football quite a bit.”
“Don’t be a wiseass. Not now.”
“I’m not being a wiseass. This is just… more seriousness than I want. This is more responsibility than I want.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you grew up?”
“No. See, that’s what I dislike. I dislike that, just because I reach a certain age, I’m supposed to hunker down and stop enjoying my life. That I’m supposed to leave all the fun for the younger generation. I’m not buying into that anymore, and no one I know is. This is liberation, Sonia. Honestly, why have this child now? Don’t you want to enjoy your life a little bit more before you weigh yourself down with all this?”
“It’s not a weight. It’s something I want. I’m not having this child as some sort of self-punishment. Just because I can have a child a hundred years from now doesn’t mean I want to wait that long. I’m still a woman. I still have the urge to be a mother, and to be a wife. I still have that drive. You’re telling me about liberation. I am free. I don’t have to worry about growing old and never finding a man, like every goddamn magazine used to tell me. I have the freedom now to marry whom I want when I want, and to have children when I want. And I want this child today, and I want to raise it with you. Not because I’m some wet blanket. But because I know life is going to be better with the three of us together. I want something in my life that means something. Don’t you see that? It’s not some invisible cultural force driving all this, John. It’s just me, telling you that I love you very much and want to be with you. You tell me that isn’t what you want. But is that really true? Are you really that scared you’ll miss out on partying and hooking up other women down the line? Why did you go out with me this long if that was what you really wanted?”
“Because I love you.”
“Then tell me how tomorrow will be any different.”
I had no answer. Three weeks ago, I helped our firm devise a lucrative new type of prenuptial agreement between a banker and his fiancée. It’s a forty-year marriage. Set in stone. No divorcing allowed without significant penalties. The