“Marti, hey.” I rake a hand over my disheveled hair in an effort to tame the unruly beast. She peers at me with her clear green eyes, a smile filling her full face. Marti’s the yin to my yang, short and squat where I’m tall and rangy.
“No use, my friend.” She laughs hoarsely, reaching onto my dresser and tossing me Alex’s antique comb. I never use it because it’s like some holy relic, an artifact left by my dead lover, but she doesn’t know that. I reach for where it rests on the handmade quilt, lifting the silver spine gingerly between my fingertips. She stares for a long moment, and I feel exposed, treating such a commonplace object with undisguised reverence. So I do what I haven’t done in nearly twelve months, and use the damn thing.
Of course it catches and knots through my short, unmanageable hair as she settles cross-legged on the bed next to me. “How you feeling?”
“Great.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” She seizes the comb from my hand. “Faker.”
“About what?” I collapse back onto the pillows, and the feel of cool cotton against my cheek instantly soothes me.
“Everything.” She leans back with me, crossing her stubby bare feet as she settles on Alex’s old side of the bed. “The hangover, the comb, our breakfast date.”
“The comb?” I’m pure innocence, and she props her head on one elbow, staring at me.
“That Alex’s mother gave him when he went to college,” she clicks off easily. “Had been part of her father’s set. You haven’t used it a single time since he died.”
“And you know this because?”
“It had dust on it.”
“Damn, girl, you’re good.”
“No, I’m just a good accountant. It’s my job to follow a trail.” She reaches for my clammy hand, squeezing it in her warmer one, planting a gentle kiss on my knuckles. “Well, and I also know you very well, my friend.”
“Did Alex pay you to do this, Marti?” I sigh. “Did I miss that in the will or something? I mean, you and Casey are tag-teaming these days.”
“He’s out back, actually. Trying to salvage what’s left of your garden.”
Casey’s a landscape architect who runs several crews around the exclusive parts of the city, and my yard’s just a charity project.
“Y’all are relentless lately.”
“Because you’re starting to get scary, Michael. To all of us.” I think of Andrea in the next room and how strained things are. Am I scaring her, too? Marti seems to read my thoughts. “Andrea’s already had breakfast,” she says. “We let you sleep in.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Seemed like a great idea when I tripped over the pizza box and garbage bag full of empty beer bottles.”
I rub my eyes with a repressed groan, wondering if Andrea saw them when she woke.
“Casey took care of them discreetly. But you’ve got to pull it together, Michael,” she admonishes gently.
“Don’t worry, this hangover pretty much guarantees that I will.”
“I’m not just talking about the drinking, even though I know it’s a lot more than last night.” It’s true, so I don’t make any further lame arguments. I simply wait for the rest, because with Marti, there’s always more.
“You know Alex wouldn’t want you hurting this way,” she continues. “Bleeding along like this.” I flash on a wounded whale, banking through the water, trailing a ribbon of blood—not quite dead, but not living either. “You do realize that, don’t you?” she says, her forehead furrowing into creases of concern.
I turn away from her. “Alex loved life,” I say flatly, watching the ceiling fan’s soundless rotations and fighting a fresh wave of nausea. I can’t do this now, can’t have the big talk that she’s been bucking for lately.
“Alex loved you.” She sits up in bed, staring down at me for emphasis. “Okay? We both know how much he loved his family. But he’d want you to get on with living, Michael, not mourn him forever like this.”
“Come on, Marti, he hasn’t even been gone a year yet.”
“But you’re getting worse every day.”
“What? You don’t think that sackcloth and ashes is a sexy look on me?” I joke with a bitter laugh, and earn a terrible Marti-sized scowl in return; it fills her whole moon-shaped face.
“I’m not laughing,” she says.
“I can see that.”
“Life is for the living, you know.” She turns Alex’s comb within her hands, gazing at it like some divine instrument of guidance until she taps the silver handle against her lips with a sigh. “Look, Michael, you’ve got to do whatever it takes,” she says soberly. “Because you’re fading fast, and if something doesn’t change, it’ll be more than Alex that we’ve lost. This grief is going to kill you, too.”
With that sinister prophecy, she slides off the end of the bed and out of my room without another glance.