Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

anyone could have done for me. But now I think I'm finished. I hope you understand.” His hand was still open, waiting for my hand.
    I told him, “I don't understand.”
    I kicked his door and told him, “You're breaking your promise.” I pushed him and shouted, “It isn't fair!”
    I got on my tiptoes and put my mouth next to his ear and shouted, “Fuck you!”
    No. I shook his hand...
    “And then I came straight here, and now I don't know what to do.”
    As I had been telling the renter the story, he kept nodding his head and looking at my face. He stared at me so hard that I wondered if he wasn't listening to me at all, or if he was trying to hear something incredibly quiet underneath what I was saying, sort of like a metal detector, but for truth instead of metal.
    I told him, “I've been searching for more than six months, and I don't know a single thing that I didn't know six months ago. And actually I have negative knowledge, because I skipped all of those French classes with Marcel. Also I've had to tell a googolplex lies, which doesn't make me feel good about myself, and I've bothered a lot of people who I've probably ruined my chances of ever being real friends with, and I miss my dad more now than when I started, even though the whole point was to stop missing him.”
    I told him, “It's starting to hurt too much.”
    He wrote, “What is?”
    Then I did something that surprised even me. I said, “Hold on,” and I ran down the 72 stairs, across the street, right past Stan, even though he was saying “You've got mail!” and up the 105 stairs. The apartment was empty. I wanted to hear beautiful music. I wanted Dad's whistling, and the scratching sound of his red pen, and the pendulum swinging in his closet, and him tying his shoelaces. I went to my room and got the phone. I ran back down the 105 stairs, past Stan, who was still saying “You've got mail!,” back up the 72 stairs, and into Grandma's apartment. I went to the guest room. The renter was standing in exactly the same position, like I'd never left, or never been there at all. I took the phone out of the scarf that Grandma was never able to finish, plugged it in, and played those first five messages for him. He didn't show anything on his face. He just looked at me. Not even at me, but into me, like his detector sensed some enormous truth deep inside me.
    “No one else has ever heard that,” I said.
    “What about your mother?” he wrote.
    “Especially not her.”
    He crossed his arms and held his hands in his armpits, which for him was like putting his hands over his mouth. I said, “Not even Grandma,” and his hands started shaking, like birds trapped under a tablecloth. Finally he let them go. He wrote, “Maybe he saw what happened and ran in to save somebody.” “He would have. That's what he was like.” “He was a good person?” “He was the best person. But he was in the building for a meeting. And also he said he went up to the roof, so he must have been above where the plane hit, which means he didn't run in to save anyone.” “Maybe he just said he was going to the roof.” “Why would he do that?”
    “What kind of meeting was it?” “He runs the family jewelry business. He has meetings all the time.” “The family jewelry business?” “My grandpa started it.” “Who's your grandpa?” “I don't know. He left my grandma before I was born. She says he could talk to animals and make a sculpture that was more real than the real thing.” “What do you think?” “I don't think anyone can talk to animals. Except to dolphins, maybe. Or sign language to chimps.” “What do you think about your grandpa?” “I don't think about him.”
    He pressed Play and listened to the messages again, and again I pressed Stop after the fifth was finished.
    He wrote, “He sounds calm in the last message.” I told him, “I read something in National Geographic about how, when an animal thinks it's going to die, it gets panicky and starts to act crazy. But when it knows it's going to die, it gets very, very calm.” “Maybe he didn't want you to worry.” Maybe. Maybe he didn't say he loved me because he loved me. But that wasn't a good enough explanation. I said, “I need to know how he died.”
    He flipped back and pointed at, “Why?”
    “So I can stop inventing how he died. I'm always inventing.”
    He flipped back and pointed at, “I'm sorry.”
    "I found a bunch of videos on the Internet of bodies