"To be honest with you, I am not an envious man; I've never had any reason really... Why would I want to trade places with a stranger and feel what they feel or do what they do? It would be such a violation of my own intimacy. I believe that envy is a sin of the grotesque man, a simpleness of the spirit on which the gregarious mentality is built."
"Rudy, that's such bullshit...
If your personal evolution is possible it is only because you imagine yourself as being better. If you can imagine yourself a better man, it means you are envious... you envy the very man you could become.
And even without any better humans around, you'd ultimately envy God, the Beast or any other almighty and everlasting being which you'll end up trying to personify. You're bound to envy by your own limitations!"
"Gill. you're taking this to a level where there's no way for me to argue, but I still hold my own, personal truth"
"Well, I believe that this arrogance of yours is closer to gross hypocrisy than to an elegant separation from the throng of the masses..." A long silence ensued; at the end of it, Gill continued :
"Sorry Rudy, but I'm just going through a phase where I need to figure out the essence of things! I can't stand this inebriation of words, still I'd hate for us to fight over...", but before Gill could finish, his phone rang and he went outside Rudy's apartment to answer the call and have a cigarette while at it.
When he came back, Rudy did not open the door for him and Gill only stood there for a minute before he realized that he would not be let in anymore. He turned away from the door and a couple of days later, he left the city as well.
For the next 2 weeks, Gill had been travelling by train and bus to the neighboring country and the most powerful memory that would stick to him from those 2 days was bumping against the cold, skinny ass of an ugly girl whom he offered a cigarette right next to the disgusting toilet he had just used.
Without his antagonist, Rudy had time to re-read those three books which made him who he was. He found no reason to doubt a single word he was reading and at times, even believed that he had thought of some of those things before he had read them in those books.
One month later, Gill returned to the city and visited the same pub where he used to hang out with Rudy. After all this time, he was surprised to hear himself order the exact same drinks as he would always order. That evening, he got really drunk all by himself, had a few chats at the bar, even a small fight, but could not remember with whom or why. When it was closing time, it was the bartender who shook his shoulder and asked him to leave after he had let him sleep for almost an hour with his head on the bar.
The next morning he woke up at the usual time and he was struck by a strange, inflexible desire to tie his shoes, button his shirt, comb his hair, brush his teeth, make coffee and fry three eggs in the exact same manner in which he used to, before he had left the city. He felt so desperately lonely that he resorted to calling Rudy and asking him to have lunch together.
It was during that lunch meeting that Gill dared Rudy to actually witness him become a completely different man every week, just so that he can prove to him that some of the roles he was intending to play would be much better than Rudy's real life.
After several roles, including volunteer, daredevil, sociopath and reporter, Gill dies on the Saturday of the week in which he was trying to impress 10 girls /day.
Rudy feels so guilty for the accident, that he starts writing letters addressed to his deceased friend Gill, asking him for forgiveness. He later becomes schizophrenic and starts receiving answers to his letters from Gill of the Underworld, both reproachful as well as kind and forgiving.
