Before I can second-guess myself, I type: WHO IS THIS? I stare at the screen, arms crossed, as if I’ll just sit here and wait for a reply. I refresh the page. Stare at the screen.
There’s a knock at the door. I slap my laptop shut, as if I’ve been caught spying. Slowly making my way down the hall, I strain to hear voices. I don’t have any deliveries. I’m not expecting anyone. Before I peer through the peephole, I hesitate. In that breath, I feel a slight flutter of hope, a hummingbird within my ribcage. What if it’s…? I look through and find…
Tobias. I notice the six-pack tucked under his arm: India pale ale. Silas’s favorite, now Tobias’s. It’s not like Tobias to show up out of the blue, alone, with no advance warning. He’s still in his suit from the service—starched collared shirt unbuttoned at the top, tie loosened like a noose around his neck. I wouldn’t have given him a second glance if we passed each other on the street. Then again, it’s tough to spot Toby even when he’s standing three inches in front of you.
I open the door with the chain lock in place. He holds the six-pack up as an offering. “You gonna make me drink this alone?”
Sweet, gawky Tobias. He spent years lingering in Silas’s shadow. He was Silas’s shadow. Somehow Silas convinced him that there was a novel somewhere inside him. There’s a fabled seven-hundred-page manuscript buried under Tobias’s bed that he only shared with Silas; his magnum opus. Silas told me it was terrible.
Now Tobias photocopies files for minimum wage. His days are spent tracking the same green light as it passes across page after page, wincing with each sheet as if he’s Un Chien Andaloued his eyeballs over and over. I imagine it’s pretty lonely to be Tobias these days.
I slide the chain lock, letting the links drop. “Come on in.”
“You going out?”
I look down and discover I’m still wearing my job interview dress turned funeral dress. “No. Staying in.”
“Long time—”
“No see.”
“I figured we could drink to the Man.” Chitchat’s never been one of Tobias’s strengths. In college, it literally took him weeks to work up the courage to talk to me when Silas wasn’t around. Even so, he’d habitually slip off his glasses to clean them with his shirt. Anything to avoid eye contact.
“Sure. Let’s pour one out for him.”
We bring the six-pack to the fire escape and watch the RCU kids drunkenly stumbling around below. I spot a cluster of dusty gutter punks squatting on the sidewalk, their ratty camp set up in front of the café across the street. There’s a couple huddled into one another on a sleeping bag, unzipped and spread out over the pavement. She leans on him and flicks a lighter while he strums an acoustic guitar for change. A cardboard sign in front of them reads: SILAS HATES ME. Sorry. Scratch that. It actually says: SONGS FOR FREE.
“Cheers.” Tobias clinks his bottle against mine, eyes elsewhere.
“Eye contact,” I say. “Bad luck otherwise.”
“Sorry.” He brings his beer back for a second time, his eyes on me.
We don’t say much for a while. Typical Tobias. Clearly there’s something on his mind. He came here for a reason, but whatever his agenda is, he can’t come right out and say it.
“You haven’t hacked Silas’s Facebook account, have you?” I have to fill the silence with something. “Somebody’s responding to people’s posts like it’s him. Fucking creep show.”
“Maybe it’s Silas,” Tobias mumbles.
“Yeah. Like his ghost would go on Facebook. That’d be hell for him.” I leave it at that, listening to the disembodied voices of a couple bickering on the sidewalk below.
Richmond Commonwealth University has been a slow-moving cancer on the downtown scene, its campus spreading another few blocks every year. Before long it’ll take over all of Richmond. A lot of the buildings that once belonged to the wealthy gentility have been renovated into offices for professors or student affairs spaces, most of them haunted.
Grace Street is where the student body bleeds into the bars. In high school, everyone wants to live on Grace. Teens from the Southside break curfew to sneak into the all-ages shows at the Metro, then grab a meal from the vegan buffet at Panda Express. Definitely not my parents’ first choice of domestic bliss, but they were happy that campus security has their office across the street. It’s hard not to look down the sidewalk and remember Silas and me shuffling back to my apartment to crack open another beer right here.
“So…what gives?” Tobias asks, snapping me out of it. “You lying low? Hiding out?”
“No,” I lie as I light a cigarette with Silas’s lighter—REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS—which I’ve somehow inherited.
“It’s pretty messed up that you weren’t there today.”
“Don’t. I’ve already been chewed out about it.”
“Where were you?”
“Here.”
“Why?”
There’s no answer to give. No explanation matters. They’re just excuses: because I’m scared, because I’m not ready to let go, because if I saw his body, open casket or not, there’d be no denying the truth. He’s dead. Because I can pretend—believe—that he’s still alive.
Silas is here. With me. I feel him.
“It sucked, if you’re curious.” Tobias sips, swallows. “Gloomy as shit. If I die—”
“If?”
“When I die, promise me I get a better sendoff.”
“Deal.”
“His sister was just…just bawling all over the place. Some cousin had to hold her up.”
I imagine mascara running down her cheeks. The black holes of her eyes. The low moan escaping her mouth while her brother molders in his casket. A month ago, Callie was asking me for advice on which classes to enroll in and which gropey professors to avoid at RCU. Silas always said she looked up to me. She’d spit in my face now, if she could.
“Who spoke?”
“Amara read a poem she wrote for him,” he says, then adds, “It sucked.”
I can’t help but laugh. Amara’s poetry does suck. “You?”
“Speak? Yeah, right…”
The argument between the bickering couple below us escalates, their voices echoing down the block. They have no idea that I am listening in on them, totally unaware of my ringside seat to their drunken squabble. I can’t see them, but I sure can hear them.
Death hasn’t touched you yet.
You’re making grief sound like it’s some kind of medal of honor. A Red Badge of Bereavement. Something about this argument echoes in my mind, faint but familiar.
You don’t even know what it’s like to lose someone.
I do, too! My grandparents died…
Grandparents don’t count.
I know this argument. I’ve heard it before. I lean over and glance down at the street. The couple below—that’s me and Silas. Jesus, I’m looping an old squabble we had years ago.
“I keep seeing him,” I say. “He’s come back to haunt me for skipping his funeral.”
Tobias doesn’t say anything at first. He take another sip, then, “What if he was?”
“What? Haunting me?” I let out a hollow laugh.
“Don’t put it past him.”
“I’m thinking of commissioning some street artist to throw up a mural for him.”
“For Silas?”
“Yeah. Under the overpass. Where they…”
Found him.
“Nothing huge. Just a memorial. There are some old classmates who’d do it for cheap. His name, his face. Maybe you can help me pick out a photo of him to use?” Truth is, I’ll never visit his grave. I’ll go to the spot where Silas died when I’m ready. If I’m ever ready. That patch of asphalt beneath the overpass is where his spirit lies; his true tomb. What will it look like a year from now? Ten years? A hundred? Will it crack and crumble apart? Will the weeds weave through the fractures in the concrete? Will it return to dirt when we’re all dead and gone? Will his last words fade away? Silas and Erin are here. Spray-painted on the concrete. For me.
“I dunno,” Tobias says.
“What? I’ll pay for it. It’s something I want to do. For him.”
Tobias finishes his liquid courage. For what, though? “There’s something I want to show you. Promise not to tell Amara, okay? Not yet.”
“Why not?”