Dearly Departed Friend
Dan and Maria share a meal to mourn their friend.
The funeral was over and Larry’s grave was fully covered.
Maria and Dan met at the diner where they and Larry had spent countless nights, good and bad, over coffee and pancakes.
Maria swirled a spoon in her coffee; she didn’t add milk or sugar, but the motion eased her mind. She and Larry became friends as children. She had been scared to pick a daffodil that was surrounded by bees. Fearless as he ever would be, Larry walked straight through the bees and brought her three flowers.
He was the first to comfort her when she came out as gay to her parents, who received it without the love and care she needed. She was the rock when Larry’s marriage deteriorated into divorce. They were the friends they each needed when expected love failed them.
Dan struggled with the small milk container. The light stress felt like the straw on top of this day.
Dan met Larry and Maria in college when they came to his table in the dining hall. They recognized him as the sad-looking one always sitting by himself. Dan insisted he was fine, but they invited themselves to his dorm where they spent the next nine hours talking about books, movies, life, and family. Dan brought a new life to the group that brought everyone closer. For the next ten years, they were inseparable.
“Here,” Maria said as she took the milk from Dan. She opened it and poured it into his coffee. “It’s okay.”
“I know,” Dan said with a hushed voice, “thank you.”
They sat together, drank their coffee, and stared at the cars passing by.
The waitress came over and started to refill Maria’s coffee. “I heard about your friend,” she said as she checked Dan’s cup. ”It’s a terrible thing to happen. I remember he was always a sweet man. I was sad not seeing you three here in so long.” She finished pouring the coffee and started walking back, but stopped after a few steps. “Frank’s in the back right now. He said this one’s on the house.”
“Thank you, Belle,” Dan said with an attempted smile. “We’re glad we’re here now.”
They drank their coffees together. It had been almost six months since the three of them had shared a meal. Six months since they had felt like a family.
“We were here,” Maria started as she set her coffee down, “when Larry told us he was going to Argentina. I was so happy for him. He’d talked about that trip for years.”
“That was when you brought the whiskey that you put in our coffee,” Dan said, laughing softly. “I think,” Dan looked down at his coffee now, “that was the happiest I had seen him in years.”
“Same,” Maria said as she picked up her cup in both hands. “To be honest, there’s whiskey in this coffee. I snuck it in while Belle was telling us the meal was free. You want some?”
“What the hell,” Dan said as he offered his mug for the additional ingredient. After she added the secret whiskey, Dan raised it above the middle of the table. “To Larry.”
“To Larry,” Maria agreed. “He better be sharing this toast with us. Up wherever he is.”
They both took a deep drink from their mugs. Belle returned and set pancakes down in front of each of them.
“Made with love,” she said and returned behind the counter.
“Do you think he is?” Dan asked not yet touching the food.
“Think he’s what?” Maria asked.
“Up… anywhere,” Dan said and gestured upward with his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Maria said. She started spreading the butter on her pancakes.
They both continued to prepare their food. They each remembered the unhealthy amount of syrup Larry would use on each pancake. They could never convince him to use less. The shared memory went unspoken.
“I never thought about it much,” Maria said after taking the first bite. Talking over food made it easier to work through hard conversations. “I don’t know. I hope there’s something. Something after this. I need the hope right now.”
“Yeah,” Dan agreed. “I just don’t want to think about whether there’s an up there or a…” he paused to set his cup down, “… a down there.”
“Why?” Maria asked.
“You know why,” Dan said. Maria understood.
They resumed eating. Dan and Maria had routinely shared meals without Larry, but this first meal they shared without him was different. There would never be another meal with Larry. They were both struggling to accept his permanent absence.
“I haven’t forgiven him,” Maria broke the silence.
“I don’t think we could,” Dan agreed. He felt a guilty pain at how easy it was to say that. “I mean, he—“
Maria interrupted, “we don’t need to get into it again.”
“We’ve never gotten into it,” Dan replied.
“Great, then why start now,” Maria said as she cut her pancakes through to the plate, the knife screeching against the ceramic.
This isn’t right, Dan thought. They had always been able to speak candidly. Their whole adult lives, opening up had been so easy. But when it came to Larry in the past few months, they couldn’t bring themselves to bring it up. They could hardly get past his name. It had been six months since the three of them could be honest with each other. Maybe if they had spoken sooner, things would be different.
They let the silence settle over the next few minutes. They slowly ate their food and drank their coffee. It was a beautiful day outside. It was warm and sunny at the funeral; over a hundred people showed up for Larry.
“Do you think he’s happy?” Maria broke the silence. She knew she’d been harsh to Dan and she knew he didn’t deserve it. “You know, whichever way he went?”
“I hope so,” Dan answered hopefully. “We know which direction he went. So I think we can be sure he’s happy.” He continued to feel guilty at how easy it was to be angry at Larry.
“We don’t know for sure which direction,” Maria disagreed. She knew that this would open the box. But she owed it to Dan—and to Larry—to have this conversation.
“Look,” Dan said while chewing, “if you spend your whole life feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and whatever other holy things you can do, you’re going to go up. Up there.”
“Obviously,” Maria said impatiently.
“But Larry didn’t do that,” Dan knew he had to say it. To say the words that would condemn their best friend.
When Larry confessed it to them, it left them speechless. They begged him to reconsider and it exploded into an argument. They finished their meal, split the check, and left barely saying goodbye to each other. Dan and Maria had spoken several times since then, but never once mentioned Larry.
They didn’t know Larry would be dead in six months. They should have known. If they had been honest with each other, they would have known.
“Larry…” Dan started, but still struggled to say it. “Larry—“
“He fucked a—,” Maria blurted.
“We don’t know that,” Dan suddenly yelled, “all we know is that he was dating—“
“Grow up, Dan,” Maria chastised him. “Do you really think he would be in an abstinent relationship with it?”
“More coffee?” Belle interrupted nervously. It was obvious she had been standing nearby for several moments before speaking.
They both sheepishly nodded their heads and sat in silence while Belle poured coffee into each of their cups. Dan and Maria locked eyes. The subject had been broached and there was no turning back.
“Let me know if you need anything, loves,” Belle walked away. Dan and Maria waited, halting the conversation until she disappeared into the kitchen.
“I’m just saying,” Dan said in a constrained tone, “we don’t know for sure what they did. It’s not like they could—“
“Dammit, Dan,” Maria said rolling her eyes, “I don’t want to talk about the mechanics here.”
“I’m just saying,” Dan repeated, “he just said that they were dating. We don’t know any more than that.”
“I think we heard enough to make the assumption. Anyway, that’s not important. We told him it was a bad idea and he told us that he’d rather be dead than hear our concerns. You were there, Dan. I was there. He looked us both in the eye and told us to go fuck ourselves. That’s our last memory with him, Dan, and I need to live with the fact that I’ll never have a different last memory with my oldest friend. He told us he’d rather be dead and now he is,“ Maria’s voice was getting louder and she looked out the window to hold back her frustration.
“It’s just that maybe…” Dan paused for a moment, “maybe we should have heard him through.”
“Do you think I haven’t thought about that every second this week?” Maria buried her hands into her eyes, trying to wipe away the building stress. “It shouldn’t have ended like this.”
“I know,” Dan said.
“It’s just that, I thought it was just like a joke at first,” Maria said, a tear only now starting to fall from her eye.
“We couldn’t have known he was being serious at the time,” Dan reassured her.
“I mean… a demon? I didn’t think they were real.”
“That’s what we were told.”
“That’s what everyone said,” Maria picked her coffee in both hands again, the truth starting to come easier. “I just assumed that when he said a met a tourist at Argentina… I mean, how the fuck could we have been prepared to hear that it was a demon. I didn’t even know what he meant.”
“It was so new at the time,” Dan said. “It was before the Times article about the increase in emigration from the Underworld. Somehow, like always, Larry was ahead of us.”
Maria allowed a small laugh. “We couldn’t keep up with him. I remember he was telling everyone about Donnie Darko before anyone had even heard about it. He just had a way of knowing about things before everyone else.”
“We tried to tell him,” Dan said, returning to his grief.
“I know,” Maria was crying now.
“He must have known that he wouldn’t be able to breathe down there. We told him it’d be too hot. We told him that there wouldn’t be food or water. He just kept shaking his head like we didn’t understand. With that stupid fucking grin of his whenever he thought he knew better.”
“I know.”
“We fucking told him,” Dan was crying now too.
“I know,” Maria reached out and held Dan’s hand. “It was weird that he wanted to move in with it after just a month,” she said, “it was weird that it lived a thousand miles under sea level and wouldn’t give him the name of the city or the address. And it was weird that it wouldn’t tell him how they were going to get there. We tried, Dan, we tried to tell him.”
“Maybe, we should have known that it was going to kill him. I mean, it’s a demon,” Dan said, wiping his eyes with a napkin. “We should’ve known that it was going to do something terrible.”
“We didn’t know. They didn’t seem bad at the time,” Maria said, “It was just like we didn’t understand their culture. We didn’t know why they were here. We couldn’t know what they were going to do.”
Maria shut her eyes thinking about the news coverage of the disappearances over the last month. Before she could call, she got a text from Dan saying that Larry was missing.
“I reached out once,” Dan started, “I wanted to try again with him. But when I called, it answered the phone.”
“You never told me that,” Maria said while putting down her cup.
“It told me that Larry didn’t want to talk to us anymore. That we had our chance to apologize to them.”
“To them?” Maria said in disbelief. “We didn’t have anything to say to that… to that thing.”
“I know,” Dan said.
They finished their meal and left a generous tip for Belle and Frank in gratitude. They walked out of the diner toward their cars.
“What are you up to for the rest of the day?” Dan asked, stalling as he knew the conversation was ending.
“I don’t know. Probably just go to sleep,” Maria said while fidgeting with her keys. “ I just… wish there was a body. I wish we could’ve had that closure.”
“I know,” Dan said for the last time. “But at least there’s a place now. A place where we can go see him.”
They shared a final hug and left to return to their homes.
Maria turned in to her driveway and picked up the mail on her porch. She saw a small envelope with her name and address handwritten on the front. There was dirt on the edges and in the creases. She sat on the bench next to the front door and opened it. She saw the name and her hand flew to her mouth. She read the letter.
Hey, Maria!
I know it’s been a long time. The wi-fi and cell service on the trip are non-existent. It took a few weeks to get down here with the weird mining cart system they have going on, but it was totally an underrated experience. You and Dan should try it and visit me soon.
You were right about Calvin… I don’t know how else to say it. He was an asshole the whole trip here and we broke up a week ago. So I’m sorry for the way I blew up at you both. I met a new demon. Her name’s kind of impossible to write in letters but you’ll meet her when you come down.
The addresses are a little weird around here, but there’s a big hole in Poland where you can ask to be taken to Mantle Level 3 and you’ll get here. You can get your mail here that way too.
I’ll write again soon!
Love,
Larry