‘They don’t have nice restaurants in Melbourne?’ Sue had commented when Ruby asked to be reminded what arugula was. Ruby soon learns this seemingly taciturn woman is an avid solo traveller, considers Melbourne to be one of her favourite culinary cities, and was merely teasing her. Never sure how to respond to ribbing （she has often wondered if there isn’t a touch of casual cruelty in it）， Ruby was grateful when Lennie suddenly tapped on her glass with a fork, making a show of calling the meeting to order.
Death Club, it turns out, is surprisingly easy to navigate. Once you get past the awkwardness of hellos, where to sit, what seasonal salad to order. Though Lennie was the official host, their newest member was granted the opening question of the night.
‘Any question about death you want to ask, it’s yours, Ruby.’
Nervous as she was, she immediately knew what she wanted to discuss.
Do you think people know when they die? As it happens. Are they aware?
（What she’s really asking: Do those of us who die so violently get spared the knowing of it? This is something she can’t stop thinking about.）
As soon as Ruby set down her question, something changed in the others, an immediate orientation toward her. Josh responded first, admitting his own experiences had made him wonder about this very thing. Did he die that night in the park, when his bike hit a tree root, and his neck broke as he hit the ground? Or did he nearly die, which isn’t the same thing at all. When he thinks back, he can only remember the nothingness of those hours he lay broken and bloody in the dirt. There was no light to walk toward, no grandfather telling him it wasn’t his time. No tunnels or feelings of peace, just a silent, black expanse he felt tethered to. A dark place to which he often, inadvertently, returns.
‘The thing is, once you start losing blood supply to the brain,’ he is saying now, ‘whether through shock, which is what happened to me, or strangulation’—he looks straight at Ruby when he says this—‘everything short circuits pretty quickly. Our most human characteristics are the first to go, apparently. Sense of self, awareness of time. Memory centres, language. Essentially, you reduce, getting more and more primal as things shut down. In that way, I’d say we might know when we’re in the process of dying. But by the time we get to death itself, we don’t know that we were ever alive.’
‘Although studies have shown,’ Sue picks up the thread, ‘that some people experience a surge of brain activity at the point of death. The complete opposite of an unconscious state. There was a moment, in the car with Lisa, where she came to, opened her eyes, looked straight at me. It was like she came back, like she was completely fine. And then, in a second, she was gone.’
‘You never told me that part,’ Lennie says softly, reaching over and squeezing Sue’s hand.
‘About what happened before they got me out of the car? No, I suppose I haven’t. I don’t, as you might imagine, like going over the specifics. At any rate,’ Sue dabs at her eyes with the corner of a napkin, ‘I don’t want to get too fanciful about it. An unexpected burst of brain activity right before death seems to be quite common. A last human flare sent out into the world, if you will.’
Ruby soon understands that emotions move like water when Death Club gets going; sometimes there is a steady stream of words and ideas, sometimes a touched nerve blocks the flow. Even then, with a little pressure, something true and honest cracks through. Sue’s soft smile for Lennie now, Josh’s sheepish grin when the latter suggests the story of his accident seems to have gotten a little more dramatic tonight. Then, it’s like everyone is propelled by the same questions and anxieties, the same need to move past their current limitations. Ruby has never participated in a conversation that feels so raw and honest. Her friends back home are great, they’re funny and kind and smart, but they mostly talk about work and weekends. They plan parties, and group holidays to Thailand, and when they meet on someone’s couch, or in the dark corner of a city bar, they talk about everyday, ordinary things. Sometimes they argue about each other’s political leanings, or attend a march for this, against that. But for the most part, her Australian friends have an unspoken agreement to glide across the surface of things. None more so than Ash.
‘We don’t have to talk about everything,’ he once said.
As if the little she said was too much.
Ever since her seemingly unfounded panic the morning after the vigil, Ruby has been careful with Ash. While they still text most days, the majority of their messages have become generic, polite in the way of people who are busy thinking more about what they don’t say than what they do. After holding back so much from Ash—from everyone back home—it is exhilarating for Ruby to find herself in the middle of such rich, meaningful conversation, something she would have never thought possible with people she barely knows. Though, to be sure, this evening has given Ruby a chance to get to know her table-mates better, to catch pieces of them in the light, in a way she wasn’t afforded at brunch. For instance, she quickly comes to understand that Sue, with her cropped white hair and jutting cheekbones, projects a quiet, enviable confidence, whether choosing a wine, or setting down an opinion. She has travelled the world on her own, doesn’t find Ruby’s current isolation odd at all, and is only concerned for what she suggests might be a tendency toward aimlessness in her new acquaintance.