by Brad Oates
"Duncan's unnecessary. Good old Emmy here provides all the doubt and judgment needed for any one man's ethereal paradise." Edgar finished his drink, chucked the glass away behind him, and held his hand out expectantly to the empty air.
With hardly a moments passing, a fresh glass of scotch was placed in his outstretched hand. Taking it, he turned to follow the thin white arm of his salvation to the narrow shoulders, long neck, and scarlet smile of Tyra.
"There you go, baby," she purred, playfully tossing her auburn hair from side to side. "Anything else you...desire?"
"Not unless you can tell me how I died," Edgar answered testily.
"Sorry sweet stuff, but that's a little beyond my realm." The articulate cadence of Tyra's speech seemed entirely out of place as she wavered drunkenly on her high heels. Her mouth gaped wide and welcoming as she gave her lollipop an exaggerated bit of attention. Then, taking the empty seat at the end of the table beside Edgar, she leaned in close, her hot breath teasing his ear as she spoke, "but if you're ready to live again..."
The sight of her by his side made Edgar's blood run cold, and he fought to conceal the shiver crawling up the length of his spine.
"Alright then, smart man," Jake started his challenge before fully swallowing the mouthful of beer which clearly demanded his full attention, sending a long trickle down his chin to mix amid the existing stains on his formerly white wife-beater. "How do you think you died?"
Edgar considered for a moment. "That's what doesn't make sense. Everything was in control. My career was going well, I had a fitting friend for every possible situation...my love life was obviously great."
"And yet death took none of that into account." If Alex's comment was meant to be mocking, the effect was lost entirely in his breathy, speculative tone.
Either way, Edgar took no notice. "I seldom get so blackout drunk beyond the company of you louts, and these days it's rare that we all get to hang out together—present circumstances notwithstanding. So, the question becomes," he continued, puffing on his cigarette like a drunken iteration of Sherlock Holmes, "what could have gone wrong with one of you, to result in my death?"
Emeric and Alex gaped incredulously as Edgar spoke. Jake finished yet another beer, belched, and shared his theory with the table. "I'll bet you anything Emeric killed you."
Edgar laughed. "Well, that's one possibility. Dirty Emmy was always the shady sort, if not quite homicidal. But if it was you I was out with Jake, the cause couldn't be more obvious."
It's actually a wonder he didn't get me killed years ago, Edgar admitted to himself. The rest of his friends had begun to age and slow down as their tenure at university ran its course, but the younger man had always managed to keep pace with Edgar's more Dionysian proclivities.
"Remember our little 'business trip' to LA?" Edgar prompted with a nostalgic chuckle.
"Our bold business adventure? Oh, I remember...parts of it at least." Jake beamed with pride at his inclusion. He struggled, however, to find the relevance. "Why?"
Edgar laughed, "I was lucky to survive that weekend. Who knows what we might have gotten up to if I was out with you on my last night?"
In point of fact, they had both gotten off easy that weekend.
"What trip to LA?" asked Alex. Death, as Edgar was dolefully learning, left him quite out of the loop.
"Oh yeah." Jake swung his thick arm off the scholar's shoulder and leaned forward to regale the group with his most delicious story. "We went to LA once, just me and Edgar. We got totally wasted!"
After a respectful pause, the table realized that the story, in Jake's mind, had been told to the fullest.
"So, what happened?" Tyra broke the silence, leaning towards Edgar as her eager eyes traced the muscular contours of his body.
Forget hedonistic failings, it's amazing that Jake has remembered to breathe for as long as he has, thought Edgar.
"Well," he was happy enough to take up the tale, "it was all pretty last minute, and we didn't have time to book anything besides the plane. So, I had some business cards printed up at the shop before we left, and we caught our flight with nothing but the clothes on our backs, our tickets, a camcorder, and a pocketful of these business cards."
"Business cards?" Tyra asked around the long straw connecting her lips to her cherry-rimmed glass.
Emeric shook his head and fixed his eyes on the scarred surface of the table.
"Domingo Media Division," Edgar beamed. "We posed as casting agents!"
"Lucky people didn't think we were some fucking foreign news crew," Jake mumbled around the lip of a fresh mug.
"I maintain that Jake'z Bitchez would have been far less effective." "Effective?" Tyra asked, pointedly adjusting her ample bosom in her less than ample top.
"Yes, effective." Edgar adored few things so much as relating stories of his hijinks. None perhaps, beyond their actual creation. "We spent all our funds renting out a little closet to call our office, then hit up the Hollywood clubs. We told all the burgeoning starlets we were casting for an upcoming film and invited a select handful each night back to our 'office' for 'open auditions.'"
"You should have seen some of these broads," declared Jake. In an attempt to help the table grasp his meaning, he pressed his palms flat against his chest. Then, "Vavoom!" he shouted, pushing his arms out in a wide arc, which managed to send the entire contents of the table spilling all over Tyra and Alex.
Tyra screeched, her layered makeup running down her face as if the booze were water to her witch. Alex moaned, staring forlornly at his now soggy cigarette. He cast a needy gaze over at Edgar as Tyra scampered off into the neon-lit corners of the bar to fix herself up.
I could sit here the rest of eternity and not even scratch the surface of all the potential ways this moron could have gotten me killed, Edgar realized.
"Stop looking to everyone else for your answers Edgar, it's unbecoming of you." The voice was Duncan's, creeping again into Edgar's mind. He shuddered.
Taking a moment to clear his head, Edgar passed yet another smoke to Alex as he lit one for himself. Glancing down, he gawked at the gaping black void in his packet. Has it grown? he wondered.
"Anyway," Edgar continued once the table had settled down and the drinks had been replaced. "Needless to say, we didn't pay for a single drink the entire weekend and managed to return with a video that made old Emmy's face match his hair!"
The friends—save poor Emeric—shared a great laugh at this. Edgar had since maintained that Jake also returned with an itch for a special new prescription shampoo, but Jake had never caught the implication, and thus the story remained unsubstantiated.
Jake nodded and smiled, soaking up the laughs like the adulation of an adoring crowd. Edgar had always held that Jake was among the most excessive and dangerously reckless people he'd ever known.
Helpless to the point of handicapped, he reflected. Still, Jake's unflinching loyalty to those who could tolerate him, combined with his borderline hero-worship of Edgar, made it hard to believe he'd allow his friend to die on his watch.
"Of course, as hazardous as Jake can be, Emeric is by far the more insidious danger," Edgar declared with a provocative smirk.
"Now Edgar, don't talk like that," Emeric spoke in a pleading tone, taking a sheepish sip from his new rum and coke.
"And he's the only guy I know with his own Chinese beef dish named after him," Jake grinned as he spoke.
Alex doubled over the table, slapping the back of the over-tolerant and under-maintained scholar, and lost himself in a fit of giggles through which he barely managed to articulate his appreciation. "It's true...ginger beef!"
"Don't be so defensive, Emmy. If we're going to get to the bottom of my death—and we are—we need to consider all the possibilities. And you are, as we all know, the very reason for my ongoing love of spirits."
"Like a barstool evangelist," said Alex listlessly, his pinprick pupils focused on the orange ember of his cigarette.
"It's true." Edgar
raised his glass to Emeric, drained it, and placed it in front of his blushing friend. "I was a full month off the sauce when I made the mistake of visiting Emeric at his lovely family home."
"Now that's not fair. You know I didn't have anything to do with..." "Quiet Emmy, you're being rude. Jake didn't deny the inherent risks he places on those in his company, and neither should you."
Jake leaned back in his chair, interlacing his hands behind his head, proudly, while wearing a shining, shit-eating grin.
Emeric just shook his head silently, picking at a dry stain on the table. "So, I went over to visit my dear friend and his lovely wife..."
"Yeah," Jake interjected, "she's real..."
"Enough!" Emeric shouted, glaring across the table at the bulky buffoon. Alex continued to chuckle like a hyena on laughing gas.
Jake moved again to rise, caught an authoritative glare from Edgar, and resumed his seat quietly. While Edgar had always reveled in the borderline abuse of Emeric, he viewed his friend like a harmless little brother and seldom allowed anyone else to mess with him. Along with this "protection", Emeric was afforded an open ticket to some of the most interesting and outrageous scenes he could ever hope to imagine, but could never access alone. Admittedly, and much to Edgar's chagrin, these perceived benefits had begun to diminish once school had ended and Emeric turned his ambitions to more adult pursuits.
How will these dysfunctional idiots ever carry on without me? Edgar mused.
"The question here is more how you're going to carry on, Edgar." It was Duncan's voice again—bleeding into his brain like the ethereal result of some mad moral osmosis. Edgar shook his head and took a long swallow of scotch before proceeding.
"So, I thought I'd visit my dear friend, maybe chat about old times, maybe share a few sentimental stories, perhaps even a few laughs. But that sure wasn't old Emeric's plan. No," he continued, "Emeric felt it would be better to bore me into catatonia. The rat bastard took in a sober man, and inside of an hour, dragged me kicking and screaming right off the wagon."
It was at least partially true. When Edgar had shown up to meet his friend, the mood of the get-together leaned distinctly more towards Emeric's tastes. "A straight hour of nagging and boredom: 'Look at my pretty new duvet.' 'Don't you want to settle down with a nice woman?' 'Do you notice the hint of chamomile in the tea?' 'Have you ever considered relocating to a more family-friendly neighbourhood?' I swear he wouldn't have been happy short of me dying my hair red and developing a penchant for tweed jackets."
"But it wasn't really the boredom that bothered you, was it, Edgar?" Edgar's hands clenched beneath the table, and his head quivered with rage at the grating intrusions of his absent friend.
Edgar had always considered himself an unwavering rebel, a man simply born to live faster and harder than other men. He'd always known his natural talents and charisma were destined to bring him both adoration and fame, but it had taken a bit longer for him to perceive how they also ensured his lifelong independence.
It's not that those things aren't enticing: a wife, a family...a bit of peace now and again, he admitted. It's just...
"All that other stuff will come in due time," he'd once told Duncan.
"So, what happened?" asked Alex.
"Well," Edgar shook himself from his reverie to answer. "Once Emeric saw that he'd sufficiently broken my spirit, he directed me straight back onto my road of ruin."
"You broke into my cabinet and stole a 50-year-old bottle of champagne. My mother gave it to me at my wedding!"
Edgar shrugged his complacent agreement. "I also left a fresh stain on your new carpet for good measure, if I recall correctly."
"You do." Emeric frowned, his sad face illuminated in alternating colours by the flashing neon lights of the bar.
Edgar knew he was often too hard on Emeric. It bothered him more than he cared to admit that Emeric had so easily managed to accomplish all of his goals. Even greater was his annoyance when Emmy presumed to offer him advice on his own life; as if the two could ever be compared.
Still, he had trouble convincing himself that Emeric would ever be party to anything that might truly hurt him. The poor bastard really is harmless, he accepted.
"Emeric just never understood that I was working towards those things, even if my path was occasionally somewhat—meandering," Edgar spoke as if to himself.
"I only wanted what's best for you, Edgar. You must know that. I just worry about your priorities sometimes," Emeric encouraged, wringing his hands above his diminishing highball glass.
"Where's Duncan?" Alex wondered aloud.
"I threw him out," Edgar answered, his back sliding slowly down his chair as he sipped on his drink and listened nervously for Duncan's invasive voice to press the issue. "He was giving me a hard time about Bev." He cast a sidelong glance at the freshly vacated chair beside him.
"Who the fuck is Bev?" Jake asked.
"No one," Edgar blurted before anyone else could interject. "It's not important. I just wish there was some way to figure out how all this happened."
"Edgar," Emeric placed a delicate hand on his friend's shoulder as he spoke. "Don't you think we've already got a pretty clear picture of what led to your death?"
"What are you saying exactly?" Edgar turned to face his mousey friend, shrugging the hand off his shoulder as he did so.
Emeric's mouth hung open a minute, and his lip trembled as he gazed back into Edgar's stern face. Then his eyes turned downward, and his head sank.
"He's saying it's your own fault—that you need to stop blaming everyone else," Duncan's voice played through his mind, and Edgar looked feverishly about the bar in a fruitless attempt to locate the sanctimonious specter.
"Get out of my head," he grumbled. Around the table, his friends answered only with quizzical stares. Emeric slid his chair back slightly.
"That's it, I'm going out for a toke," said Alex, excusing himself from the table and slipping out the front door.
"Just listen to the stories you're telling Edgar, think about your choices," the haughty bastard in his head was on a tear now and didn't seem ready to stop.
"Hell Edgar, look around you! You can do, go, see anything—anyone you want. You can explore your entire life, revisit your past—and what have you done? You've surrounded yourself with an endless ocean of alcohol and wallowed in your own misery."
"And here I thought I'd surrounded myself with friends." Edgar's voice was venomous.
Emeric swallowed nervously, rattling the melting ice-cubes in his empty cup.
"You're such an asshole Emer-prick," Jake slurred, his bulky frame slowly folding over the rough wooden table under the crippling weight of his inebriation.
Edgar finished his drink and shook his head.
His body still rigid with tension, Emeric leaned in somewhat, his eyes searching Edgar's. "C'mon Edgar, just tell me what you need."
Edgar needed friends and comfort. He needed time and understanding. He needed some indication that despite all evidence to the contrary, things would be alright.
"You need to stop lying to yourself, Edgar," Duncan's even, confident tone came softly, just for Edgar.
"I need a fucking exorcism!" Edgar screamed.
Without thinking, he flipped the table over in a fury, scattering his remaining friends and the surrounding angels.
Struggling out of his seat, Edgar stumbled, sending his chair tumbling over backwards. He wheeled his hands around frantically, catching the edge of the table behind him as he fell.
His back hit the ground hard, knocking the wind from his lungs as the table, still held firmly in his grasp, tipped on its base, bringing glass after glass of brandy tumbling down over him.
It came as a tempest; an unceasing shower of the pungent bronze liquor staining his shirt, soaking his jacket, and burning his eyes. It spread out all around him, dark and fragrant as he lay still on the hard, damp floor.
All was quiet.
Dead quiet.
Edgar open
ed his eyes, and above him shone the stars; cold and uncaring.
The silence was all-consuming. The bar was gone. The angels were gone. His friends were gone.
He remembered the night of his death; the dizziness, the uncertainty. He recalled again the strange motivation to push onward, the doubt as to where he would end up. Again, he could see the tall, foreboding building looming just out of reach. Lying on his back, he felt once more the sudden surge of terror, the maddening thrill as his desperately precarious sense of balance had failed him.
He looked around: one side, then the other. Nothing answered his gaze but the murky fog of the unknown and the infinitely patient stars above. Sitting up slowly, he marshaled his focus on the faint echoes of the night he'd died.
I was alone, he knew.
"They never tell you how lonely it is, do they?" The hoarse voice, punctuated by a series of rough coughs, belonged to Alex. He stood next to Edgar now, the two of them lost together in the void. A long, hand-rolled joint hung fuming between his lips.
"They tried," Edgar groaned, rising from the puddle of brandy still spreading across the empty, ethereal planes of his afterlife.
Alex grimaced, but offered no response.
Taking the joint from his friend, Edgar pulled on it long and hard, promptly erupting into a violent coughing fit. "Still getting the good shit up here, I see. So, how is everyone doing down there, anyway? In real life, I mean."
"Well," replied Alex, "how do you imagine they're doing?"
"We both know that's all that's really happening here," Edgar answered, taking a second puff before passing the joint back to Alex. "So skip the niceties and make with my speculations."
"They miss you, Edgar."
Edgar nodded, crushing his eyelids together tightly to deny the truth. He had nothing to say.
"You know," Alex broke the silence, his goofy face wreathed in a thick billow of smoke, "you told stories about everyone at the table...everyone but me."