Chapter 1
When I got home, I poured a shot of tequila to revive the margarita’s I’d had at lunch. I sipped it as I replayed Virginia’s last message. Her third one.
The machine chirped the date, April 10, 2009, and then Virginia’s strained voice said again she’d gotten my number and email address from the college website, and that she sent me an email over three weeks ago. I’m sure she did, but I probably deleted it by mistake. I’m not exactly what they call tech-savvy these days. I have a cell phone, sure, not that anyone calls me on it, but at least it keeps accurate time. Satellites I guess.
I wrote her number down this time, grabbed the kitchen phone and dialed quickly before I lost my nerve again. As her phone rang on and on, I nearly hung up. Then she answered.
Her voice was shaky, and beneath it I could still detect the bristling edge of anger. It’s funny how bitterness lasts through the years, a sharp razor when everything else dulls.
I apologized for not getting back to her sooner, saying I was out of town, which I’m sure she knew was a lie since the college website clearly shows school is in session. My suspicions, or fears, about why she was calling we’re right. Dave was dying. Lung cancer. “End-stage,” she called it.
“I’m so sorry,” I heard myself saying, sounding shallow and feeling empty while an ugliness gathered in the hum of the phone connection.
“He needs to talk to you.”
Her tone made me feel as if I were being sent to the principal’s office. I wanted to ask her what he had in mind, but instead I asked when I should get there.
“As soon as possible, Chris.” She said the words slowly to rein in her emotions, which gave my name a nasty little hiss, Chrisss. She took a breath, softened a little, “Dave has missed you a lot through the years.”
I hope she said that to suggest we could start somewhere other than where we’d left off; yet even if that were true, it was heart crushing to think it might take the end of Dave’s life for us to begin again.
He was once my best friend. But what were we now? Acquaintances? Strangers? Yeah, okay, strangers who’d once been as close as brothers. Too close in fact.
I wrote down their address. They’d moved a couple times since the old days, but never out of the Valley, the San Fernando Valley. I told her I’d drive down on Saturday, a couple days away.
“Fine,” she said, hanging up without a good-bye.
I poured another tequila and shot this one back fast.
