You jump onto a step and I join you and I do what you want. I look at these fucking bunkers. “They’re still here,” I say.
“Yeah,” you say. “Bunker rhymes with hunker, you know? That’s what I thought for a long time, that I had to be like those soldiers, you know? Hunker down in the bunker in case something bad happens and well… here we are.”
I kiss you but you deflect and grab my hand like we’re in high school and you just have to show me your favorite graffiti—GOD KILLS EVERYONE—and I cringe at the big brown poop emoji and you don’t like that either and you show me what you do like, the lower levels of the bunkers, and I squeeze your hand and you squeeze right back. “I knew you’d get it.”
“Well of course I get it. I get you.”
There is no more getting Closer. Finally we are there. Here. The sidewalk ended and the pavement gave way to dirt and your hair went from a bun to a ponytail to a mane that runs down your back and you lead me down steep, deep steps into a little square cave and it’s a filthy, musty, rectangular hole in the ground and you pull off your black sweater and sigh.
“Well, City Boy, tell me there’s a blanket in that backpack.”
* * *
We did it.
Your favorite place is now my favorite place and we’ve had sex in the bunker at Fort Ward and we feasted on beef and broccoli—I came prepared—and we passed out and woke up and did it again and went back to sleep and the floor is fucking concrete and isn’t that how you know you’re in love?
“Come on,” you say. “I can play hooky but I can’t disappear.”
You want to know where I had sex in high school and I tell you about a guidance counselor and you’re mortified but I assure you she wasn’t my guidance counselor and… you’re still a little mortified and I let you take more Polaroids and I take some of you and we reach the parking lot—it’s just us—and I want to tell you this was the best day of my life.
You hand me the pictures. “You should probably hang on to these.”
I unlock my car and you unlock your car. You grab your phone and turn it on and I turn on my phone and you sigh. “I’m so glad we did this.”
“Me too.”
Your phone comes back to life and my phone comes back to life and my news is no news—Oliver wants more Eames chairs and Shortus wants beer—but your news is bad news. I know because you’re listening to a voicemail. I know because you gasp and turn away.
“Mary Kay.”
You thrash an arm at me. Bad sign. Did someone see us?
You drop your phone onto the pavement and you turn around and all the red I put into your cheeks is gone. You are white as RIP Melanda and do you know? You scream at the sky and is it your father? Did he have a stroke?
I reach for you but you crumple to the ground and your voice is a horror movie and your hands are in your hair and then you say it, barely yet loudly.
“Phil. He… he’s gone. He… I wasn’t there and he’s gone and Nomi…”
Phil. Fuck. I reach out to you and this time you don’t just flinch. You shove me away and you run to your car and you are in no condition to drive and you can’t even get the door open but you warn me to stay the fuck away from you right now—Why Phil? How?—and you are too mad for motor skills and you throw your backpack at your car and you look at that roof and all the rage transforms into sadness—you are sobbing—and then just like that, it turns back into rage.
You point a finger at me. “This day never happened. I wasn’t here.”
It’s not a request. It’s an order. It’s a sit. He’s gone—I am in shock, I didn’t do it—but the way you peel out of here and leave me in the dust, it’s like you think I did.
31
Here’s my problem with wakes. You lay out all these finger sandwiches, all these pizzas from Bene and then you glance at me as I’m biting into a tiny slice of the coppa—best on the menu—and you look away as if what I’m doing is somehow disrespectful to your dead husband because now that he’s dead, he’s THE BEST HUSBAND, THE BEST FATHER, THE BEST MAN. I’m alone at the buffet because I don’t have a date—you’re his widow—and I spit my pizza into the napkin and what a waste of food and okay, so he made your daughter a Christmas present and it took time—a whole lot of precious time—but your living room is a hotbed of lies and FUCK YOU, RIP Phil.
How could he do this to us, Mary Kay? You were doing so good—leaving him, leaving him behind—and Nomi was doing so good—she saw the divorce coming a mile away—but that rat fucker had to ruin everything. He didn’t get T-boned by a truck on his way home from “writing.” No. Your lazy, selfish （soon to be ex） husband had to go and overdose in your house. Your daughter had to come home and find him. And nobody will say what we all know: HE KNEW HIS WAY AROUND DRUGS AND HE WAS JEALOUS OF KURT COBAIN WHO DIED OF AN OVERDOSE IN HIS HOUSE. You’re a woman. So of course you feel like it’s
All. Your. Fault.
You’re wrong, Mary Kay. Dead wrong.
You should be disgusted and maybe deep down you are, but how would I know? You haven’t spoken to me since you fled from the parking lot at Fort Ward. We said I love you and we were having sex on an increasingly regular and exciting basis but now we are fucked. Nomi’s fucked. I’m fucked. You’re fucked. And lazy Phil’s dream came true. He’s a dead rock star, possibly lounging in heaven reading his obituary in Rolling Stone—remember when you asked if I believe in heaven?—and all I can do is stand here in the corner of your living room dipping a triangle of pita bread into what’s left of the garlic hummus.
Will I ever hold you again? Will you ever smile again?
I glance at you. You’re wiping your nose on a napkin while a Mothball pats your back and your dead-eyed daughter is just sitting on a chair, not touching the little sandwiches on her plate and the outlook for us is grim and fuck you, Phil DiMarco. Fuck you all the way back to the day you wormed your way into this unjust world.
You shouldn’t feel guilty and I don’t feel guilty, Mary Kay. Sure, I bought M30s for him—it was a particularly dark moment in our courtship—but Oliver took them away. And yes, I bought heroin for Phil. I put heroin in his room because heroin is （was） the devil he knows. But I am a rational person. I know that your rat didn’t die because of me. He didn’t even die from a heroin overdose. He died because he drove to that shithole in Poulsbo and picked up some of those poisonous M-fucking-30s all by himself. I didn’t kill Phil and you didn’t either, but you’re saying it again right now, telling that sympathetic Mothball that you pushed him over the edge.
I want to storm through these mourners and grab your shoulders and tell you to stop it.
People get divorced every day, Mary Kay. There’s nothing scandalous about it and your rat was a brat. He couldn’t wait until he was living in some shit box too-old-to-be-called-a-bachelor-pad to jump off that wagon? Nope! He swallowed those pills in this house. All he had to do was drive to the Grand Forest or one of the countless places on this island where people go to do bad things. It turns my stomach, Mary Kay. Even Oliver cringed and made aggressively passive-aggressive remarks about my being “the other man.” I told him to read the Basic Fucking Text and learn that recovery is an uphill battle, that no one is to blame, especially not me. He cut me off and told me that my body count on this island is up to two—BULLSHIT, I KILLED NO ONE. What Phil did to this family is terrible, Mary Kay. I could never do something like that. Neither could you. Now you pull at your hair—How did I miss it?—and I want to comfort you. I have been trying to comfort you for three days now. But you always shiver and turn away, as if you wish I were dead, me, the one who made you happy.