“Matthias—”
I stared at my phone, a faint glow in the oncoming night, and then with my forefinger I pressed End, cutting off the call. I could only imagine Abby’s reaction right now, wherever she was. But she knew something wasn’t right. My hanging up on her would only confirm her suspicions. And so I’d kept my promise to Fritz while indirectly goading Abby toward the truth. Yet I hesitated in the dark outside of the tent. Was this how I was going to leave things with her? Some cryptic clues, a hang-up, and a vague hope that all would be well?
“Fuck it,” I said aloud, and I opened up Facebook on my phone. Then I typed and sent Abby a message—Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia:
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
Then I shut off my phone and stuck it back in my pocket.
I wandered back into the tent out of an essential need for light and company, and the first person I ran into was Diamond. Unable to help myself, I glanced down at his leg, but all I could see was a khaki pant leg with a bayonet-sharp crease. I looked up to see Diamond smiling. “Yeah, it’s still fake,” he said. “Wanna race?”
“I need a drink first. And a head start. And a new Achilles.”
Diamond held up two beers and then took one step back. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
The crowd around my classmates’ table had grown a bit, but Diamond managed to wrangle two empty seats next to Trip, who looked at me, concerned. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Abby called,” I said. “Her uncle.”
Max Goren leaned forward. “Hey, I just heard about that—Trip was telling us.” He shook his head. “That poor family. I guess you never . . . heard anything else, about Fritz?”
Others leaned in now, too, lured by the fateful name, the tragic story of our class. I hesitated. Then I shook my head. “No,” I said, glancing at Trip, who said nothing. “No, I didn’t.”
A hush settled on us, each seeming to bow his head before the unlaid ghost. Then Trip raised his beer. “To Fritz Davenport,” he said, “wherever he may be. I wish he were here.”
“To Fritz,” Diamond said.
Two dozen drinks were raised up, mine included. “To Fritz,” we echoed, and we drank. It was a balm, an acknowledgment of a missing comrade. My eyes stung, and I was surprised to see one or two other classmates wipe a finger across their eyes, too.
“So,” Roger Bloom said after a few moments, “are you writing anything new, Matthias?”
Fletcher Dupree smiled. “Drug dealers, arrests, guess you have a lot to write about, huh?” he said.
“Yeah, but not that,” I said. “I’ve got a new novel in mind.” It was true, inasmuch as I had just that moment thought of it.
“No shit,” Max Goren said. “What’s it about?”
“A cowboy,” I heard myself say. “Modern day, though, not the Wild West.”
There were several ohs and hmms of polite acknowledgment. Fletcher, though, looked disappointed. “How did you pick that?” he asked. “You know a lot about cowboys?”
I paused in my reply, letting the moment spin out. Someone coughed nervously. Slowly, Fletcher began to smile in anticipation. I grinned back at him. The hell with it. “Oh, I don’t know, Fletcher,” I said good-naturedly, looking him dead-on. “I’m a novelist. It interests me, and what I don’t know I’ll make up as I go along. Good enough for you?”
There was an awkward moment or two, the tension coiled around us. Fletcher frowned, and then Diamond grinned and said, “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!” and everyone laughed, the world righted again. Then we all drank and proposed other toasts: to Blackburne, to Sam Hodges, to the lions. As we laughed and remembered, I thought of Kevin Kelly and his angry rant against the school, how Blackburne held out a false promise of success. But as I looked around at my classmates, I saw that each of them had made his own way—Trip to the Washington Post, Diamond to the Marines, Max to real estate. Even Fritz, I realized. And me, too. I had found my way back to this group, these guys I had thought were lost to me, only to find they had been here all along. I had avoided them for so long because I’d felt damaged, sullied, not deserving of a place at the table. But Fritz had felt that way, too, through no fault of his own. And no matter what we had done, or what had happened to us, our places at this table had been set long ago, waiting for us to return.
I sat there among my classmates, my friends, and let their talk flow over me like clear water, this charmed circle of men with its missing brother who was not forgotten—who might yet be returned to us. Until then, we would go on, his absence a ghostly echo in our hearts that would cease when he appeared and we could welcome him back into the fold, letting the lion’s share of loss and grief slip away.