I was in the rest room at Penn Station in New York, ears ringing with the PA announcing my train, when I heard a gunshot behind me. I turned around, slowly, but nothing was there. Maybe the shot came from one of the stalls facing the wall of urinals. A few seconds earlier I had seen two people in front of the mirror, to my right: a black guy with a garbage man jacket and a blond kid with hair gel. But now there was nobody, and the only certainty came from below: I had pissed on my trousers and shoes.
I kept still for a few minutes, really scared, wanting to run far away, unable to move. Then, when I saw that nothing was happening, I got up my courage and slowly opened all the doors of the stalls. I don’t know why I didn’t just get out of there. I felt a strange confidence. I proceeded cautiously, as in a film: I leaned against the partition between the stalls, shoved the door open hard and then pulled back, out of visual range. Useless precautions. If someone had wanted to eliminate me they could have done so very easily already. As I was thinking these right things and doing the wrong ones, at the fifth door I suddenly found myself looking at a man who had just blown his brains out. I don’t know how much time had passed between the shot and my absurd actions, I only know that when I left the rest room to look for help Pennsylvania Station was empty, yes, empty, unbelievable. Completely deserted, like a dream. I remembered a Terry Gilliam film where everyone suddenly starts waltzing, and that would have been OK: with Tom Waits playing the hobo, too. But an empty Penn station was not OK. Either I was in the worst of all nightmares or something outrageous was happening. I went back to the rest room, and when I looked in the mirror I didn’t recognize myself: wasted, frightened, lost. And all around: silence. One truly long instant of terror interrupted by the splash of the water I had turned on to stick my head under the flow. Don’t ask me how much time had passed, I don’t know, I heard no noises, just emptiness. When I surfaced I tore some paper off the towel dispenser on the wall and, drying my head, I went back over to the guy who had shot himself. He was still there. Blood on the tiles, face in a grimace, hole in the temple. Like a painting by Bacon, I stupidly commented out loud, before taking a closer look at the guy. Shoes, jeans, jacket, sweater. Pretty posh. The face had something familiar about it. Maybe he was famous? When I looked away, ready to leave, I almost closed the door, as if to conceal the scene. Did I want to protect my discovery, or just protect the intimacy of that man, a bit longer, from prying eyes? I did it without thinking, the door barely ajar as I left. Someone who decides to end it all at Penn Station wasn’t all that concerned about privacy. At least I wouldn’t think so. At this time of day the station should be packed with people, the rest room swallowing and vomiting men, instead there is just silence, the station is still empty. Trains standing still, PA silent, and I am plunged back into my worst nightmare. What is happening in New York? I even took a furtive peek into the ladies’ room, in front: but nothing. Incredible. I saw a man in a uniform, in the distance, heading into a corridor. I took off after him, and no, not even then did I consider running away. I could have: I was all alone in one of the world’s biggest train stations, the cop had his back to me, he hadn’t seen me, but my eyes were still filled with the face of that man, in a pool of blood.
«Even though humanity is strange, it is ours», my mother would repeat, looking in the mirror on Sunday morning before going to church. Maybe it was just this phrase buzzing in my head that kept me from cutting and running. I caught up with the cop and convinced him to follow me. And no, I didn’t listen to his voice, my eyes still held the explosion of the head of a man, which would be mine for the rest of time. I didn’t hear the policeman’s questions, I was thinking about what would come after. And when we reached the rest room I realized that I was much much older than my years, after that afternoon, that this was a falling point, of no return. You can’t know when you are on the wrong side of the river. I repeated to myself, before noticing the red writing on the wall: To enjoy good health. An absurd phrase, in a bathroom, without a signature, an epitaph for a suicide. I looked at the cop and with the tone of a radio announcer I told him: «don’t worry, we’ve ended up in a story by Paul Auster».