The Identity Man by Andrew Klavan Page A

If anyone had been around while he was watching it, he would've said it was kind of stupid. But since it was just him sitting there, he had to admit, secretly he thought it was pretty good. It was a story about a guy who wanted to kill himself because his life sucked. He lived in this small town in the middle of nowhere. He was one of these guys who was always sacrificing himself for other people. Every time he tried to get out of this town and get a better job or get some excitement, someone would need something, and he'd have to stay and help them. Finally, time passed, and there he was, just this nobody in the middle of nowhere. That was his whole life. On top of that, his crazy uncle lost some money and the hero got framed for stealing it. So now the police were after him, too. Shannon knew what that was like. He felt for the guy. Finally, the poor bastard decided to throw himself off a bridge. But before he did, he said a prayer for help. The angels heard him in heaven and one of them came down to lend a hand. It was that kind of story. This angel showed the hero what the world would be like if the hero had never been born. It was a pretty bad place because the hero had helped a lot of people who now never would have been helped because he wasn't born. Anyway, this made the hero realize what a good guy he was and so he was happy after that, even though his life pretty much still sucked.
    When the movie was over, Shannon looked inside the tomato can carton just to make sure and, yeah, there were no more DVDs. That was the last of them. The white room was silent around him, the way it had been before. He knew he could watch one of the movies over if he wanted to, and he fi gured he probably would if he didn't get out of here soon. But for now, he just sat in his chair, thinking about the last one.
    It was sort of depressing to think about it. Because if an angel ever came down to show Shannon what the world would be like if
he'd
never been born, the world would be more or less the same as it was now, maybe even better, because there were some bad things Shannon had done that wouldn't have been done. Well—he argued in his own defense—probably somebody else would've done them if he hadn't. And what about that girl at the Whittaker Center? Benny would've left her in absolute pieces if Shannon hadn't been around to help her out. But then, if there'd been no Shannon, maybe Benny wouldn't even have been there in the first place. So that was sort of a wash. In any case, the point was, if he'd never been born, it wouldn't really matter much at all. Which was a depressing thought. He had to tell himself, hey, that guy in the movie, he could afford to be a good guy, he had a lot of advantages. He had a father for one thing. And a mother who was really nice to him. And that small town was boring maybe, but it looked like a nice place to live and not like the places Shannon had grown up in. Plus, later on in the movie, the guy had this dynamite wife, the kind of wife who really did things for him, made his house nice and kept the kids out of the way so when he came home from his crap job he could at least relax a little. Because, let's face it, Shannon could miss Karen all he wanted, but she was nothing like that. First of all, she was half in the bag most of the time. She had a reefer lit and a beer popped almost the second she walked through the door. The wife in the movie was always working on the house or making dinner, where if you asked Karen to get off her ass and get you a drink, it was a two-day negotiation, you never heard the end of it. The guy in the movie just had advantages, that's all Shannon was getting at. It was easier for him to be nice to people and always doing things for them. He had a reason to be that way.
    Shannon slouched in the chair with his legs splayed out in front of him, absent-mindedly rubbing the place on his arm where those little round scars used to be. He felt nostalgic. He missed the past, the