23 May 2006

Section 6: My third year in kindergarten, I discovered magic was real.

Okay, so there are a couple things. Dag has to explain why he was in kindergarten for three years. Then he gets to talk about magic all being about the interpretation of symbols. When he learned magic it was being able to put letters together to make words, and to interpret words written by other people. He applied this logic to numbers as well, so while he is hanging from the window ledge, he sees words reflected in a window across from him. These provide the final key to where the bonds and securities are located. But to get to them he has to survive the fall from the sixth story window. Somehow he’ll make it. Then there is the race to get the dough and foil the thief.

Just as he’s finally telling the client/lover that he has found the money, he has a heart-attack and ends up in a hospital where he has one last opportunity to philosophise to himself about what his life was like. When the client/lover tells him he is in intensive care and that they are hoping for a heart for him, he tells her that there is no money for a transplant. She tells him she’ll use the money he found for her, but he smiles and says she can’t. Then he explains that when he found the money, he combined it with the revenue from his house that he sold and assigned it to a charity to pay for children’s transplants. There is nothing left.

She tells him she’ll sell the rest of her property, she’s not entirely penniless, and he touches her hand and says simply, “Don’t worry. It will be okay.” End Section 6.

The voice in the book changes and she writes that she is following his last wishes to tell people this story, and that on this first anniversary of his death, she is proud to say that four children have new hearts thanks to the donation of a Crusty old detective with a marshmallow heart. End the book.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

"But to get to them he has to survive the fall from the sixth story window. Somehow he’ll make it."

If he can find a bit of a place to stand, and something on the building to hold on to, then he might be able to grab the cable and yank it hard enough to disconnect it at the far end (at the telephone pole). Then he could somehow tie or otherwise more securely attach it to the building he's on, wrap it around his arm for some extra friction, and clumsily rappel down the building.

If he's starting out six stories up, this strategy could easily manage to leave him fifteen or twenty feet short of reaching the ground, which is a bummer of a fall but much more believable to survive.