They're All In Love With Dying

She called late night to tell me he died. I was at a stoplight, three in the morning, zero degrees, and there was a man in shorts and a t-shirt trying to sell his guitar on the corner. She’d gone to the big city for a job interview and when she came back he was dead in the bathroom. Just when they’d both gotten jobs on the slope and things were looking up for them. He wasn’t old enough to die. He’d had the flu for a couple days. No doctor, because there was no health insurance and plus he was too tough for stuff like that.

Last week a woman froze to death waiting for a cab that she had sent away. A few days ago some people shot each other over a drunken arguement about family honor. Then a couple weeks back a guy passed out drunk and froze to death on the sidewalk. It happens a lot, drinking in the cold. My best friend in high school’s mother had died that way, passed out drunk in a snow bank. One time a woman passed out drunk in the street and a man, driving drunk of course, ran over her and dragged her under his car without noticing. In the morning his neighbor almost stepped on the dead body smooshed up under the car.

I woke this morning when a raven landed on the roof. Plop. Skitter skitter plop. Ravens are the only big birds who hang out in parking lots. Bro crawled back to me and looked warily up at the ceiling. “Hey,” I heard outside the van, just a couple feet from me, “look there’s a raven on that van.”

“Where raven?” a little kids voice answered.

I waited for the raven watchers to leave before I climbed out of bed. After Bro peed in a snow bank, I went into the little strip mall to use the bathroom. The bathroom is down a long, ominous hallway. A strange couple sat on the bench by the bathroom door. They looked so happy, so calm, like they didn’t belong together at all. I looked down as I walked past and she was flashing him a pregnancy test.

People are so beautiful sometimes.

Tonight the club was dead. I sat at the bar ignoring the two assholes who were there and concentrating on exactly the sort of customer I’d like to dance for. I could almost see his face on the napkin in front of me when he tapped me on the shoulder and asked for a dance. We did six. Which was very lucky because there were barely any other customers the rest of the night, except for a big group that came in after a funeral. They pushed a bunch of tables together and drank jack and cokes in honor of their dead friend and requested sad Creed songs. They tipped us on stage, they cried, and some of them passed out. I’m sure it was a fitting farewell to the guy who died.

I’ll drive south tomorrow morning to be with my friend. I’m trying to time it so that I miss any violence (she had the good sense and foresight to remove all the guns from the house, but some people have their own) and get there just about the time people start to fall apart so I can be useful.