My friend Sue told me that John had died and I tried to look shocked and sad but all the while I was frantically wracking my brain thinking "John? Who's John?"
The way Sue said it, the look on her face, the fact that she told me at all—these were all indications that not only should I know who John was but that his passing should naturally be of importance to me.
We were having coffee at an outdoor cafe. It was 10 a.m., a cool morning, early spring, everything smelling green. Around the base of a tree at the curb I saw tulip blades twisting out of the hard littered soil.
I meditatively nibbled the end of my hazelnut biscotti without thinking and when I realized what I was doing I quickly put it down again. Should I even be eating at a time like this? I mean, John was dead. Dead!
Had John been ill? Had we suspected this was coming? Or did it come a bolt out of the blue? Were we shocked? How was his wife taking it? Was it a shame about the kids? Was he even married? Did he have kids? Had he been taken from us too soon?
Sue was offering no clues and I seemed at a loss how to prod one loose from her.
On the street a large refrigerated truck rumbled passed. It was emblazoned with a smiling pig head in a chef's hat and bore the slogan "Purveyor of Quality Meats" on a shining gold-leaf banner.
"When is the service?" I could think of nothing else to say.
"Tuesday. I'll email you with the details."
I nodded. I stared down at the biscotti on my plate. My hand. The coffee cup. "John is dead," I said to myself. "John is dead." I recited it like I learned to recite lines in an acting class I once took in school, varying the cadence, the emphasis, the tone. I said it first like a child, then like a wife, then an ex-wife, a mother, an estranged sister. I said it like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. I said it with a comic faux British accent. I said it like a cartoon duck. I said it a half-dozen other ways.
Tears came suddenly. Can't say why.
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