This morning I picked up the April issue of Harper's Magazine, because its cover promised a Roberto Bolaño story within. I started to read and felt a mild dread when the unnamed protagonist said "What happened next was like what you sometimes see in movies, and that's something I'd like to say a few words about." Oh, no, I thought, he's going to say what happened was nothing like the movies, delivering the realist's slap on the wrist, the least-promising side of the cliché.

Like just about everyone else, I went to see Ghost, I don't know if you remember it, a box-office hit, with Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, the one where Patrick Swayze gets killed and his body is left lying on a Manhattan street, or in an alley, maybe, on dirty pavement, anyway, while in a special effects extravaganza (special for the time, anyway) his soul comes out of his body and stares at it in astonishment. Well, apart from the special effects, I thought it was idiotic. A typical Hollywod cop-out, inane and unbelievable.

But when my turn came, that was exactly how it happened. I was stunned. First, because I had died, which always comes as a surprise, except, I guess, in some cases of suicide, and then because I was unwillingly acting out one of the worst scenes in Ghost.

I knew it would be alright when I read "or in an alley, maybe."

The story, "The Return," was translated by Chris Andrews and is included in a collection under the same title to be published in July by New Directions.