No longer worried she might see the tears in my eyes I looked at her and realized she was trying to comfort me, trying to be there for me, doing her best.
Her brown, doe-like eyes blinked, cleared. “You going to be OK?”
I touched her shoulder, so delicate beneath a plaid flannel nightshirt. Reminded of the nightmare Donald’s phone call had interrupted—one horror replaced with another—I drew a deep breath and tried to sort my thoughts. Bernard was dead and the world hadn’t even noticed. We hadn’t even noticed. “I have to meet Donald and Rick in an hour.”
She padded silently to the bed, plucked her cigarette from an ashtray on the nightstand and took a final drag before slipping her feet into a pair of slippers shaped like floppy-eared bunny rabbits.
I wanted to turn back to the window. I wanted to watch the sun come up, to wander into the living room, to slip the stereo headphones on and listen to The Mamas & The Papas sing about California and dreams and dancing in the streets while a thick and sloppy rain bled from gray skies. I wanted to forget the whole goddamn thing.
“You were having a nightmare,” Toni said suddenly, as if she’d just remembered. “I was about to wake you when the phone rang.”
I clenched shut my eyes. In those few short and blurred seconds before I’d escaped sleep and answered the phone, I’d already known Bernard was dead.
“He’s been dead for five days.” I focused on the slush sluicing along the window, rain becoming snow, night becoming day. “He didn’t even leave a note.”
“Come on,” she said, gently taking my hand, “I’ll make some coffee.”
On our way down the hallway, Toni promised everything would be all right.
She lied.
CHAPTER 2
We stood near the tracks talking; the whistle from an approaching train blaring in the distance as an icy wind blew through the tall grass surrounding us. The snow had again become a light though slushy rain.
Nothing seemed real.
Donald flashed an annoyed look through bloodshot eyes. “Is there some point to being out here?”
“Privacy.” Rick gazed through the grass, across the parking lot separating us from the diner, then considered his watch. “Besides, they don’t open for a couple minutes anyway.”
Fumbling through the pockets of his raincoat for cigarettes and a lighter, Donald rolled his eyes and sighed, his breath already converted to smoky plumes wafting about and tangling with ours like warring apparitions. “For Christ’s sake, it’s freezing out here.”
“Don’t be such a pussy, Donny.” Rick puffed his chest up like a rooster and folded his arms across it. “So what did his cousin say, exactly?”
I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket, shuffled my feet, and exchanged glances with Rick, who seemed unaffected by the weather. Our individuality was more evident at that moment somehow, and I found myself wondering how we had managed to stay so close despite our glaring differences.
Pieces of the whole, Tommy had said back in high school. Our original leader, long dead now, at some point replaced by Rick, the ultimate Alpha Male, always so happy to remind the rest of us how inadequate we were, how we were half the men we’d once been, yet always there to save us, to defend us if need be.
Donald struggled to light the cigarette against a mounting breeze. His eyes, saddled with heavy black bags, seemed more sunken than usual; his complexion more pallid, his frame thinner, bordering on emaciated. “I called him about ten o’clock.” He finally got the cigarette going. “I’d had a few drinks and I didn’t realize it was quite so late. I think I woke his cousin up, he sounded groggy when he answered. Bernard had called me a few times, left messages on my machine, but I hadn’t had the chance to get back to him and I wanted to see how he was.”
The train interrupted him, rushing past, its whistle deafening. We turned and watched the seemingly endless procession of boxcars until they had snaked off around a bend in the tracks. “Trash train,” Rick announced, as if this common knowledge was something only he possessed.
Donald’s wiry frame swayed with the wind as he smoothed his thinning hair with long, narrow fingers. “When I asked for Bernard,” he continued, “his cousin didn’t answer, and I thought for a moment maybe the line had gone dead. But then I could hear him breathing and I knew—I knew something was wrong. He finally said he was sorry and that Bernard had passed away. Those were the words he used, passed away.”
“I still can’t believe it.” Rick shook his head, drawing attention to the blue bandana covering it and the small gold cross dangling from his ear. With his swarthy good looks and athletic, muscular build, he looked younger and better than Donald and I did, and he knew it. He’d stayed in shape playing various sports and lifting weights, still had all his hair, didn’t smoke and rarely drank. Vanity, competition, sex with young women—those were Rick’s vices, and his job as a bouncer at a local club gave him the opportunity to pursue all three.
“I asked what happened,” Donald said flatly, smoking his cigarette with mechanical repetition. “He said he found Bernard Tuesday afternoon.”
“Jesus,” Rick sighed. “He was dead since then and we didn’t even know.”
Donald looked away. “When he didn’t offer anything more, I asked again what had happened. That’s when he said Bernard had hanged himself.”
I ignored the vision of a limp body suspended from rafters as it flashed across my mind’s eye. I considered mentioning the nightmare I’d had, but decided against it.
“It’s state law that an autopsy be performed in all cases of unattended death,” Donald explained. “Of course, Bernard’s death was ruled a suicide, but apparently his cousin didn’t have the funds to provide for funeral arrangements and Bernard was broke, so—”
“Why didn’t this asshole call one of us?” Rick snapped. “Did you ask him that?”
Donald dropped his cigarette, crushed it beneath the sole of his shoe then hugged himself and shook his head in the negative. “I was in shock, I—I just wanted to get off the phone. I didn’t want to hear anymore.”
“So where is he?” I asked.
“The state covered the cost of his burial. Absolute minimum, I’m sure. His cousin said they have a section of one of the public cemeteries in the city for this kind of thing, and that’s where Bernard was buried. He doesn’t even have a headstone.”
Rick put hands on hips and assumed an unintentional heroic-like pose that would have been comical under different circumstances. “We’ll take care of that down the road. I know a guy. Now, what about his things?”
“I don’t imagine Bernard had much left.” Donald motioned with his chin to the diner. The lights had come on. “Let’s get out of the rain.”
Normally the diner was hopping first thing in the morning, but since most of the clientele didn’t work weekends, Saturdays got off to a slower start. But for two elderly and grizzled regulars already slumped on stools at the counter, swapping stories and sipping coffee, we were alone.
Donald and I slipped into a booth near the back while Rick grabbed a toothpick from a cup on the counter, rolled it into the corner of his mouth and chatted briefly with the waitress. He ambled down the aisle separating the rows of booths and joined us a moment later. “Ordered some coffees,” he said, dropping across from me, next to Donald. “I worked last night, haven’t been to bed yet, but I’m too wired to sleep now anyway. I say we take a ride to New Bedford and have a talk with Bernard’s cousin.”