1 DENISE I TOTALLY ACTUALLY LOVED YOU [BUT YOU JUST FUCKING USED crossed out] IT KILLS ME I COULDN’T EVEN FACE THAT SO IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.
CHRYSA I’M SORRY
I CAN’T DO ANY MORE HOPELESS SHIT FOR NO REASON. I’M GOING TO DROWN MYSELF SO THAT’S WHERE TO LOOK IF I CAN EVEN MANAGE THAT.
2 “Yeah, I had a lot of shit on this tape I won’t mention. So this is like my thirtieth try to do this, and I’m almost, like, running gag territory.”
(A long space of silence. Then a match struck. A few seconds later:)
“I guess I only wanted to say I love you, Chrysalis. I mean, totally I pray I don’t get hit by a car and you listen to this while I’m still alive. But I always loved you more than anyone else, not like that’s saying much. I just kind of, I mean, this is not like every time I did this this is what I said, I’m maybe just wasted.
“Oh, fuck. I’m going to have to tape this fucking thing again.
“Oh, fuck.”
(A long space of silence. The tape breaks into the middle of “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees.)
3 When I was packing Eddie’s ashes into our bag, wrapped in a shirt for safe-keeping:
3.1 The urn rattled. I shook it and it rattled again. Because I’d already broken the wax seal the day before, when I’d had to peer in at the fine grit which meant nothing, the stopper came out easily. I carried it to the lamp.
3.2 The ashes were gone, and in their place was a stone; smooth, egg-shaped, white quartz. It had a crevice that glittered when you held the urn’s opening to the light, and could be made out to represent a rounded E.
3.3 The stone was too large to have fit through the slender neck of the urn. It was a ship-in-a-bottle puzzle.
3.4 Now that it was in, it looked completely ordinary. It didn’t look like a miraculous stone.
3.5 The whole was conveniently portable: unsettlingly like a souvenir.