The woman handed back his ID and over-enunciated a gate number, pointing to where it was printed on the pass, lest remembering the number thirty-two overload his cognitive abilities and doom him to wandering the airport aimlessly in search of a flight that had left without him.
Why so negative and judgmental? he wondered to himself, and realized that it was his brain’s way of dodging the image of his brother’s final moments, combined with a healthy dose of self-loathing for not having tried harder, not having spent more time with him or called more often.
There’s no rewind in life. That had been one of his brother’s pet sayings, and it sprang to mind as he followed the crowd to the TSA checkpoint on the way to the gates. Indeed not. The problem with reality was that it was for keeps. As his brother knew.
The line was moving at a snail’s pace, the passengers coagulated in a clump where a humorless security worker checked ID and boarding passes before the travelers sent their bags, jackets, and shoes through the X-ray machine and waited their turn to be irradiated by scanning systems that a child could defeat. Jeffrey watched as a rotund officer stood by observing one of the security team pulling a sixty-year-old Vietnamese woman aside for a more intrusive search, and bit his tongue rather than ask whether anyone really believed that going through her belongings like honey badgers after grubs would keep the skies safer.
The internal dialogue was unlike him, and once he was through he stopped at the bar and paid twelve dollars for twenty cents’ worth of slightly flat draft beer, seeking the relief it would bring with a greedy, bottomless thirst. Ten minutes later he was feeling less anxious, less like he was a spectator at a bad version of the film rendition of his life, and he left a generous tip as he slid off the bar stool and went in search of his flight.
Once on board, he watched as his fellow passengers wedged their belongings in overhead bins and then closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to interact with his seat mate, a nervous-looking man with a bad oily-black comb-over who smelled vaguely of onions and peat.
As the plane gathered speed and launched up into the sky, the vision of his brother’s mangled body falling into the Atlantic sprang fresh into his mind’s eye, and for the rest of the five-hour flight he gladly paid a small fortune for the slim respite promised by sparkling mini-bottles of vodka, delivered by an unsmiling stewardess who clearly wished she was anywhere on the planet but tending to him.
FIVE
In Memoriam
When Jeffrey arrived at his hotel, ten minutes from the funeral home in Georgetown where the memorial service would take place the following morning, his breath smelled tainted to him, a sticky film of impending hangover coating his mouth like rancid oil. The clerk didn’t seem to notice, processing his credit card with one eye on the ball game playing on an oversized flat screen monitor in the bar at the far end of the lobby. Jeffrey declined the offer of assistance with his bags, found his room on his own, and barely got his suit hung up before collapsing on the bed, the alcohol and plastic airplane food having taken their toll.
Two hours later he cracked an eye open and glared at the overhead lamp, and then rolled over and willed himself to his feet, his head pounding from the unaccustomed chemical bludgeoning he’d dealt it on the plane. He checked the time and saw that it was almost midnight, and reconciled himself to ordering room service at nosebleed prices.
After a seemingly endless wait his meal turned up, an omelet that would have been an embarrassment at any fast food restaurant, and he chewed the soggy tasteless mess with sedulous resignation, the fitting end to the worst day of his life. He set the alarm clock for eight before going into the cheerless bathroom and brushing his teeth, and then spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, each dream worse than the last.
The following morning he awoke before the buzzer went off. He took his time showering, hoping that the tepid stream would both revive him and wash his hopelessness away. Coffee in the lobby helped some, but when he caught sight of his reflection in one of the decorative mirrors by the front desk he almost didn’t recognize the haunted figure staring back at him. He looked like complete shit, the travel and bad night compounding the grief etched into his young face like war wounds.
He decided to walk to the funeral home, figuring the exercise would do him good. When he stepped out into the crisp spring morning air, the chill pinched at his skin, and he pulled his overcoat tighter around him. He had an hour to get to the service, which would be just about right if he hurried, he thought. More importantly than taking his mind off his grim destination, it would ensure that he didn’t have scads of extra time where he’d have to greet his brother’s entourage, none of whom he knew, other than Becky.
An occasional gust of wind blew harsh against him, chilling him to the bone, unaccustomed as he was to weather this cold. His breath steamed in front of his nose in curt pants as he pushed himself to move faster, stoking his internal furnace to stave off the creeping dread that flowered at every pause. He was one of the only idiots walking, most preferring to be insulated from the elements by their cars, cocooned in privileged comfort while morning shock jocks bayed mean laughter at their own jokes. As one block became ten, the sense of heightened surrealism he’d felt at the hotel increased. Was he really on his way to his brother’s funeral?
Memorial service, a voice in his head reminded. There wasn’t so much as a fingernail to bury — a certainty now, judging by the morning TV reports on the search results, or more accurately, non-results. Any vestiges of the unlucky passengers had been consumed by the Atlantic, swallowed up as though they’d never existed. An image of a shark shaking a torso in its clenched jaws flitted through his thoughts and he pushed it aside, preferring a vision of his brother, smiling, sitting by the fireplace in his apartment, cradling Becky from behind, a decent budget-Bordeaux only half-finished in his Costco goblet. A shock of his usually unruly hair hung roguishly across Keith’s brow, giving him an air of nonconformity he studiously cultivated — his differentiator in a gray city of cookie-cutter bureaucratic wonks. It had always amazed Jeffrey that Keith had taken a government job. With his skills and brain he could have done virtually anything, gone anywhere.
None of which ultimately mattered. Not now.
He rounded a corner and saw the red brick façade of the funeral home, an unctuous affair with colonial pretensions that was slightly wrong in the neighborhood — the brickwork too even, the wood accents on the windows and above the doors too clean, too precisely milled, too freshly painted, an artifice of antiquity created to lend an air of solemnity to an always-unpleasant farewell. Several tinted-windowed Lincoln sedans were parked nearby. Another pulled up as he approached and disgorged a couple about Keith’s age clad in expensive black, the woman’s face haughty and pale, the man’s puffy with the tell-tale effects of frequent debauchery.
Jeffrey waited until they entered the building and glanced at the time — he was five minutes late, which was close enough. Hopefully he could get in and out with a minimum of fuss, saying his last words and slipping away like a phantom before anyone could smother him with sorrow and pity. He’d come up with a fitting eulogy on the plane and committed it to memory. Short and sweet, and if he garbled any of it, it wasn’t like he would ever see any of the attendees again.