While I was at Dave’s wake, all I could think about was the last time he got laid. Since graduation, he’d been on three or four dates, but none of them really went anywhere. This thought just cropped up in my mind, not that it brought me any particular joy, but seeing that it wasn’t going anywhere, I remembered the sound of his raspy voice.
“This is where the magic happened.”
There was a pensive note in it as he stood over his stained mattress. It rested alone on his dusty floor, the one article of furniture left in his entire room. From it, I caught a whiff of expired beer or God knows what. To celebrate the end of our lease, he invited his on-and-off situationship over for one last time. Suddenly, I realized that this too was the last time I saw him in person.
I blurted out loud, “You guys remember when Dave fucked Stacey Gallagher?”
“Jesus Christ, Charlie.” Morgan shot her eyes towards Dave’s mom, who was chatting with his older siblings. Dave happened to look a lot like her, especially in recent years.
“I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Oscar gaped at me with a mouthful of shrimp cocktail. “You did not just fucking say that.”
“You think I want to remember it any more than you do?”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
“Guys, shut up. Dave’s mom is coming.”
As Dave’s mom approached, she waved delicately at us, the comic trio huddled in the corner at her son’s wake. Morgan clenched her teeth as Dave’s mom swept her into a warm embrace.
“Thank you all so much for coming.” She turned towards me. “I hope the last-minute flight from D.C. wasn’t too expensive, Charlie.”
I felt guilty, not because I travelled the furthest out of us, but because there was doubt whether I’d make it to Dave’s funeral.
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Dave’s mom held my hand. “I know you wouldn’t, honey. You were the best friends David ever had. He loved you all so, so much.”
Morgan, Oscar, and I fell silent. How could we have been Dave’s best friends? Sure, here we were at his wake, shooting the breeze and breathing in clean air. Meanwhile, Dave lay stiff cold some ten yards away from us in his coffin—his skin probably lathered in shiny embalming fluid to prevent rot and decay—like a repurposed doll in plastic casing. Had we actually been his best friends and not splintered off to pursue our careers, there was a chance he would still be alive.
Dave’s mom said, “There are beers in the cooler if you want to help yourselves.”
…
By the time we got to the hotel, the thermostat sank to twelve below zero and the liquor started to flow. While I sat at the bar hiccupping, I couldn’t make out what was weirder: the signed photograph of Barack Obama holding a slain moose by the antlers, or the fact that the Super Bowl was on the television. How could either of these details belong to the night before Dave’s funeral? I wondered. I had never been to rural New Hampshire before, especially in the winter.
At the bar, Oscar was doing Dave’s impression of Donald Trump. Just like Dave, Oscar squeezed his eyes, wrinkled his lips, and pinched his fingers.
“I’m not saying all Mexicans are bad, but they’re definitely not sending us their best.”
I drained my glass of bourbon. “As terrible as it was, I have to admit that was Dave’s best impression.”
“Actually,” Morgan said, “Dave’s best impression was of you, Charlie.”
“Yeah!” Oscar chimed in. “He had your laugh nailed. Just like Goofy. He even did the hiccups you get when you drink whiskey.”
I suppressed the urge to hiccup and instead croaked like a frog. “Bullshit.”
Morgan waved at me to hush. In one motion, she rolled her eyes, palmed her face, and sighed. “Don’t people know words have meaning? Does anyone know anything? Guess it’s time to write a short story about my high school girlfriend.” Morgan rattled her fingers madly along the bar counter.
A week before college, my first-ever girlfriend dumped me, and the breakup triggered in me the need to write. For months, it was the only thing I could do. I would hang up all my stories by strips of packaging tape to the walls, and soon enough, my bedroom looked as though it belonged to a serial killer. It was only after Dave used half my stories to wipe up spilled beer that I threw out the rest. We hadn’t known each other well then, even though we were roommates. He grew close to Morgan and Oscar long before he grew close to me. I shunned him for a week or two. Then we became friends.
I slammed down my glass. “That doesn’t sound like me at all!”
I raised my glass but stopped short. “Okay, fine. He had a point. But did that asshole really have to die for me to find out that his best impression was of me?”
At the opposite end of the bar, several members of Dave’s family booed at the television as the referee overturned a fumble recovery.
Morgan said, “When was the last time you talked to him?”
I thought it over. “A week or two ago. He went on a date and called to tell me. You?”
She bit her lips. “Two or three months. I don’t even remember what we talked about.”
“You keep in touch with anyone else from college?”
Morgan shook her head. “You?”
“No, not really.”
Just then, Oscar stood up and left. I went to go after him, but Morgan held me back.
“Oscar hasn’t seen or talked to Dave since graduation.”
Dave and Oscar lived less than fifteen minutes apart in Boston, just two stops away on the Green Line.
After I ordered and drained my re-fill, I said, “Did something happen?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Anything at all? Like an argument, a falling out, something?”
“As far as I know, they got along all right. I think Oscar just got busy with work.”
“That’s it?”
I watched a set of first downs on the television while I waited for her response. When none came, I looked over and saw that she was crying. She was silent at first but then let out a long, low moan.
When Dave’s family looked at us, I tried pulling Morgan away. “It’s all right. No one’s gonna judge you here.”
“Don’t touch me.” She shoved me, then hissed, “Ever since Dave died, you’ve been acting like you can solve his death like some fucking puzzle. You can’t. Picking apart the details of his death, re-arranging them like little fucking pieces …”
She stood up slowly. I reached for her hand.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Oscar.”
She let go and disappeared around the corner of the bar.
…
When I first heard that Dave died, I was convinced that in some way I already knew. I wondered a lot about where my thoughts came from, how they strung themselves together, and why I thought the way I did. I think more than anything I feared my own death. If I could unearth the secret to Dave’s, then by some sort of telepathic osmosis I could prevent my own.
The night he passed, he’d gone out with his coworkers. The toxicology report showed alcohol in his system, but the quantity wasn’t anywhere near fatal, nor did he have any drugs. Then, at some point in the night, Dave died. His roommates had left town for the weekend. When they arrived home on Sunday evening, they found him lying in his bed as though he were sleeping.
Unless his family was hiding something, no one knew why, but by that point, it didn’t really matter. He was gone, and no amount of finger-pointing would bring him back.
Why did we lose touch after graduation? It wasn’t as if we took off to different countries, met our soulmates, or found our dream jobs, let alone jobs we even liked. Dave and Oscar stayed in Boston. Morgan moved to New York, and I went to D.C., where I worked for a lobbyist as a human sign in Congress. In all the days I spent twirling that fucking cardboard around, it never occurred to me how small my problems were. Not once. And even if some days were so bad, were they bad enough for me to forget my friend?
I could’ve just sent, “Hey! How are you?”
A single text message. That’s all it takes to stay in touch, and it’s the one thing I didn’t do.
Neither Oscar, Morgan, nor I said anything that night, but later on we partied with Dave’s extended family in a school bus. After we got kicked out of the bar and hotel altogether, we found it outside in the parking lot. It had been abandoned for the winter season. Once we pried open its rusty doors, three dozen of us piled inside to sing and drink together. That night, the night before Dave’s funeral, was the most fun I had since college. It seemed like the perfect way to remember him.
…
The Synagogue was along Interstate 93. No one in Dave’s family spoke about him, which is something I think about whenever I go to a dark place. I didn’t understand any of the readings, either, since they were in Hebrew. But the rabbi said something that has never left me since.
“I would like to remember every face I see. After all, there really aren’t many Jews living in New Hampshire, but I didn’t know David Hanselman really at all. For those of you who did, I am sure he did beautiful things that you will never forget. I wrote down a loose quote from the poet Maya Angelou if you’d like me to read it. Okay, it says, ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel.’
“Baruch dayan emet,” he said. “Go in peace, David.”
…
After the service, we had Italian catered food in the basement. I forget who exactly told me, an aunt or uncle, that Dave’s body wasn’t embalmed as I thought it would be. According to Jewish law, it is forbidden to tamper with the body in any way at death to facilitate one’s journey into the afterlife. You let it take its natural course. I decided that’s the way I would go out.
Eventually, I went over to Dave’s mom. “I just wanted to apologize for everything.”
She scrunched her eyebrows. “Apologize for what?”
I began to stutter until she candidly said, “I had a close friend from college who died.”
These were just about the last words I expected to leave her lips, so I listened.
“She collided with an eighteen-wheeler head-on. Died on impact. It was so random. We had just graduated three weeks prior. My friends and I made promises to always stay in touch.” Dave’s mom looked over to Morgan and Oscar. “But time passes on. I met my husband, fell in love, and had my kids.” She held my hand. “Don’t be afraid to forget David.”
…
Before I left, I grabbed a plate of food for the long journey home. Oscar hitched a ride with one of Dave’s hot cousins back to Boston, but flights from Logan were expensive, so I carpooled with Morgan to New York City to catch a train back to DC. I was set to return to work the next day.
About two hours into our ride, Morgan broke the silence.
“They haven’t buried him yet.”
I was surprised by how quickly I grew furious.
“Why do you say that?”
“The ground is frozen solid. They can’t bury him until spring.”
Griffin Gudaitis is an MPhil student in English Studies (Medieval Period) at Oxford University. He is the publishing director at the Oxford Writers’ House and was shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford-BNU Creative Writing Award. He is currently at work on his first novel.
Euphony Journal 