We’ve started a new book. Maryann has already finished it. I’ll be reading mine on the way to New York this weekend. Go out and get yourself and copy and let us know what you think. Here’s the first page. H

All right, so I listened to my wife. After all, I’ve been doing it for nearly forty years, I should have stopped now? Boy, is she going to feel guilty.

            So there I was standing at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Park Avenue, minding my own business, waiting for the light to change. My mission was to buy blue shirts, Jane insisted that I buy more blue shirts, they bring out the color of my eyes, she said, they give me a little color. My luck, there was a sale at a fancy store on Fifty-seventh, go there, she said. So I was waiting at the corner, to my left a great-looking woman in her fifties, a real Manhattan type, all dolled up, loaded with jewelry, great body, great legs. To my right, a handsome young fellow wearing a sport shirt and the tightest jeans I ever saw; I noticed the lady glancing at him approvingly. Me, she didn’t seem to notice. At sixty-four, I’m much more age-appropriate for her than he is but, hey, looking is free, let her look. And that was my last relaxed thought on earth because that’s when I noticed the car coming straight at us, right onto the sidewalk. An old man was slumped down at the wheel, eyes closed. His was the last face I ever saw in my life.

Excerpted from I Never Saw Paris: A Novel of the Afterlife by Harry I. Freund. (Carroll & Graf 978-0-78672-054-5)