Chương 107: Mike Napa —1979 Intoxication

Surveying the past unfold is both beautiful and terrible. Ryan thinks. It is watching the flower bud, blossom and fade in a single instant. It is seeing the skull beneath the skin. It is knowing the accident will happen, as it does, as it must, and being unable to prevent it. Perhaps that is why the living can only view the present. If they saw the end, they could not bear it. But now that I am free of the slow pace of existence, watching the past, observing the future divide and multiply and begin again, I begin to understand its terrible beauty and its glorious symmetry.

Keith is drunk with the joy of being seventeen and having a car. He celebrates by downing a six-pack, cashing them with a few tequila shots. Then he carelessly wraps his car around a large oak.