THE EMPIRE ROOM

Dale Chase

I look past the buffet table, out onto Jack London Square where tourists and pigeons wander. The scene offers escape from the mourners behind me. They’re seated at large round tables and standing in little groups because Richie Knox, who was just thirty-six, killed himself a week ago and they’re here to share a collective guilt. Mine’s a tad worse because something untoward has begun.

I’m fixed on the Barnes & Noble across the square when he steps into view: Frank Bremer, Richie’s friend. I met him an hour ago at the memorial service when Lisa, Richie’s sister, introduced us. It began then, one of those moments that define life, make it worthwhile, or in this case, impossible.

He’s gone outside for a cigarette. I watch him light up, tell myself that’s reason enough to resist. I can’t stand smoking. He paces while he drags on the thing. Clad not in a suit like the rest of us, he’s chosen navy slacks, white shirt, and blue patterned vest. Too casual but on him it works. He’s imposing, good looking, intensely masculine. Everything will depend on what he does with the cigarette butt. If he tosses it with no concern about litter, it’s over. I wait while he paces and puffs, note his brown hair is a shade lighter in the sun. At last he turns, flicks the butt into a clump of shrubs where there are probably countless others, and I relax for a second because it’s done. But then he comes back into the Empire Room and I know that’s not the case.

We avoid each other. Like married people who know they’re going to have an affair, we maintain a distance. He’s gone over to Estelle, Richie’s mother, my aunt, and is kneeling before her. Lisa comes up with a guy she introduces as Phil, Richie’s business partner. I know from her call last week that Phil found Richie splayed in a living room chair, gun on the floor, brains all over. I shake Phil’s hand, we speak, and I try to give myself to the moment but it doesn’t work because I can look over Phil’s shoulder and see Frank. The vest accentuates his build. It’s tight, like maybe he’s gained a few pounds. I look at his butt, then back at Phil; try to concentrate, do penance for impure thoughts. I work at listening but when Phil pauses I’m lost because I’m not taking in what he’s saying. I’m in a kind of pleasure hell, like getting an erection in church. I excuse myself, hurry to the men’s room, find only on reaching it that I do have to pee.

Who is Frank really? I wonder as I go. We’d spoken briefly but you don’t get details with the casket ten feet away. Awful. Terrible. But in with such things the unmistakable energy. I remember my amazement that it was happening there, disgusting arousal. God help me.

I’m left to speculate, which is not good right now. There’s enough of that going on about the suicide, how we could have missed it coming. We. I live four hundred miles away in L.A. but still apparently bear a portion of responsibility, even though Richie and I seldom talked anymore. Close as kids, our connection failed with distance and other priorities. I saw him holidays when the family gathered at Estelle’s, if I chose to come north. I know he’d had a partner for several years, Tony, but they broke up. Tony’s here. The question is how did Frank know Richie? So many degrees of friendship. Friend. Fuckbuddy. Lover. Former lover. Is he the reason? Part of the reason? Suicide is often about an accumulation of causes with one trigger, literally in this case. Was it Frank? He looks like someone you could die over but how am I to know? Not here. Not here.

As I leave the bathroom I almost run into him. “Sorry,” I say automatically, then feel the rush he brings on. I let it run through me, familiar ache in with the unfamiliar. The worst kind of mix.

“Listen,” he says but there is nothing more. Prelude going nowhere.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” I tell him. I look down as if even that much is wrong, shake my head because we’re already into familiarity even when we’re trying not to go there. Nature doesn’t listen, does she?

We stand there because proximity feels good and we are both in need of feeling good but we catch it before it gets a grip. He sighs, moves past. I stand in the hallway, stunned all over again.

Leaving would solve it but it’s too early. Nobody is leaving yet. I have to talk and eat and commiserate. Back in the Empire Room I listen to the hum of conversation, amazed at the quiet voices when we’re all so pissed at Richie for doing what he did. Didn’t he know the hole he’d leave? I watch Lisa coax her mother to eat. Estelle shakes her head. She lost her husband a year ago, now her son. Thank god for Lisa.

Frank gets a drink, goes out into the restaurant where a patio leads to the waterfront. I get as far as the door before stopping myself. I’m watching him when Ray, another friend of Richie’s, comes up alongside, suggests we go out there. “Fresh air,” he says, but I can’t go because if I do I’ll want to be alone with Frank so we can say what we know, act on it or make plans to act.

“No thanks,” I tell Ray and he moves past. I see him talking to Frank, wonder if they have a history. I don’t know enough about Richie anymore. It makes things worse, not having kept up. Funny because he pegged me early on when we were kids in Berkeley. Even at fourteen he was sharp, managed to start a conversation about girls, turn it to boys, and out first me, then himself. I’d told nobody but I told him everything and from then on, for two years at least, we were incredibly close. But then college and L.A. and life got between us and even the emails eventually thinned. Caught up in ourselves, we let the bond fray. Cousins was all that was left.

I cannot imagine him doing what he has done. They say he poured a drink and sat in his favorite chair, then put a bullet into his temple. Only Lisa knew he was depressed. He made her promise to tell no one and she kept that promise. He didn’t want us to worry. He was seeing a shrink, was on meds, had a raft of people who loved him, none of it enough. I can’t imagine letting go like that after all the fight we had in us.

Back inside I see Ted Quinn, the family dentist who came onto the scene two years ago when old Doc Felcher retired and sold him the practice. I saw him professionally last Thanksgiving thanks to a walnut shell in Aunt Estelle’s special apple-walnut stuffing. He’d fixed me up with a temporary crown and we’d had sex that night. I’d lied to the family, said I had to get back to L.A. when all I did was spend the long weekend at Ted’s house high in the Berkeley hills. I hadn’t seen him since.

As he makes his way toward me everything falls into place. He got involved with Richie, threw him over and caused the suicide. Ted’s a powerhouse but it’s all on his terms. Richie wouldn’t have had a chance.

“Carl, good to see you,” he says, extending a hand. “Awful about Richie. I’m so sorry.”

I know it’s the usual line but I take it otherwise. He’s sorry he killed him. Fury rises but gets sidetracked when he asks me how long I’ll be in town. I consider making the date because fucking sounds good right now and having a history makes it not so wrong. “I’m flying out tomorrow morning,” I tell him.

“Any plans for later?”

I smile, shake my head, look away.

“Okay,” he says, “so maybe this isn’t the appropriate time to ask, but I’d really like to see you. We had a great time last year.”

Do it, I tell myself. Go fuck ’til you drop. It’ll make you forget Richie. I’m ready to concede but when I look up I see Frank coming back in and everything else disappears. Even Richie. Ted for sure. “I don’t think so,” I say, looking past him.

“Your loss,” he snaps before moving on.

Frank has caught me looking and comes over. I allow it because Ted got something started.

“This is so awkward,” Frank says. I’m near the buffet. He picks up a cracker, turns it over, examines the back, picks at it with his thumbnail. His discomfort mirrors mine and I almost laugh when that hits me. We are not going to win. When I look into his eyes I see the invitation and in my hesitation he has to see acceptance. Let’s go get a room. But we stand paralyzed.

“Shit,” he says, tossing the cracker onto the table before walking away. I think I’ve lost him then, endure an anguish until Marie, Lisa’s best friend, catches him by the arm and starts to talk. She’s single and hasn’t a clue about Frank. She slips her arm through his, guides him to the bar where I watch the buy-me-a-drink routine.

I haven’t cried for Richie, and wonder if I ever will. I spoke at the service, told how we were as kids, but unlike Tony and Lisa and Phil, never shed a tear. Suddenly I feel it come up, a rift tearing through me like some rupturing fault line. Jagged edges, plates misaligned; I see us as kids with our dicks out. We sucked each other, a first for both. I can’t believe he’s dead. I look for a place to look, find a basket on the buffet table, silverware inside a cloth-lined dark brown weave. I concentrate on the folds in the fabric, the way it lies askew, and I decide that’s how everything is now, off kilter. Tears are on my cheeks, my throat tightening. God, Richie, how could you do such a thing? How could life be that bad?

My stomach starts to churn and I flee, out of the Empire Room, out the front door, through the square, down alongside the boats. Cold air slaps me and I suck in a chest full. People are here, happy people gawking at the water, and I hate them because they keep on when it all should stop. I hurry along the quay toward container cranes that loom like giant four-legged beasts and only when I stop do I realize Frank has followed me. He touches my sleeve and I start to cry, fall into his arms. “Let it go,” he soothes. “Let it go.”

I do just that, shudder and sob as he holds me. “Tighter,” I tell him and he adjusts his grip, holds on until I start to hiccup. “Oh, god,” I say, pulling back. He hands me a handkerchief. I mop up.

We stand side by side looking at the ocean. “He took part of me with him,” I say when the hiccups stop. “I didn’t know it until just now. There’s a history only he knew and in a way that’s gone too. How could he do it?” My voice escalates in volume, my hands shake as they grip the iron railing. “How could he?” I demand.

“He made a choice and we have to respect it,” Frank says. “An awful choice but it was his to make.”

“And nobody else matters.”

“I doubt he thought of it that way. He had to have been in a lot of pain to do what he did. It was bigger than all of us put together.”

“Self-centered little shit.”

Frank chuckles. “You know better than that.”

He’s right of course but instead of getting me refocused on Richie, he’s made me wonder about him. “How did you know him?”

“We met two years ago when his company came in to fix our computer problems. You know how he was, personable, absolute genius with computers, great listener. Everyone loved him and he did a great job. We hit it off right away, found we both liked mountain biking. For the last two years we’ve biked up Mount Diablo every Saturday morning, rain or shine.”

“I hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving,” I offer. “He seemed fine then, just bought the condo, was hiring more employees, totally up.”

“Depression isn’t a constant,” Frank replies. “Every time I saw him he seemed happy, full of energy. Even with the biking he still went to the gym three times a week.”

Memories of now push me back to memories of then. I go all the way back. “I remember being six, in a wading pool with him, trying to sink toy trucks.”

Frank sighs, looks up at the idle cranes. A couple of inches taller than me, heavier but solid. Attractive. And he knows what’s going on in me because he says, “We weren’t involved, it didn’t work that way between us. We were just good friends.”

I nod because this clears the way, or at least it’s supposed to. I start to cry again. “I can’t do this,” I tell him. “But god I want to.”

“I know.”

“Okay, then,” I say and I walk away because that’s all that’s left. Back inside I feel suddenly exhausted. I’d gotten the call Monday, was told about services on Thursday, flew up Friday. It’s Saturday now, one week to the day since Richie did it. It’s been him all week and the vise that clamped onto my gut when I got the news hasn’t let go. I nibble a bit of cheese from the buffet. It is tasteless. I chew and swallow, get a glass of wine at the bar.

People are starting to leave. I see them talking to Estelle who barely speaks. Her gray curls nod. She wants this done more than any of us. I want to leave but can’t bring myself to do the necessary good-byes so I sit at an unoccupied table, allow the fatigue to wash over me. I think about later, back at Lisa’s, wish I’d gotten a hotel room. I think about the plane tomorrow, how I’ll remain silent for the one-hour flight.

Tony comes over, sits down. His eyes are red and puffy. “I’ll never get over him,” he tells me with a heaviness I understand. Tony is younger, maybe twenty-five. I know it was hot and heavy between them for several years. Richie wouldn’t talk about the breakup.

“What happened with you guys?” I ask. My tone is accusatory. I don’t care.

“I wanted to be exclusive and he didn’t. The whole time we were together he saw other people. I finally couldn’t stand it.”

I think of Frank. Was he “other people”? I can see them going up Mount Diablo on their bikes, sweaty after the ride, getting it on at the summit then riding back down and life goes on. It makes me hate the arrangements of life, the need to take up with people on different levels.

“I was so in love with him,” Tony says when I offer no comment. “God, this is agony.”

Part of me wants to offer consolation but it’s too small a part, buried under everything else. Frank is at the bar talking to people I don’t know. I stare openly at the back of him, not listening to Tony anymore. I gulp my wine, hope it will loosen something in me, anything in me. Tony gets up, walks out of my periphery.

Andy, Lisa’s husband, sits down beside me. “You okay?”

“I have no idea.”

“Yeah, it’s rough. If there’s anything we can do or if you just want to talk, we’re here for you.”

“Thanks.” I’ve heard this line from everyone I know and for a second they all run together and I’m back in my life in L.A. and Tim and Mark and Paul and Marcy are all saying it over and over. It bounces off me, rolls down my sleeve. Andy pats me, gets up, moves on. I look down as if there will be residue. Then movement catches my eye. It’s Frank shaking hands, making the rounds as he prepares to leave. I feel numb as I see him talk to Lisa, Andy, Phil, Estelle. He’s wonderful with my aunt. His hand on her cheek pierces me, lets my last breath escape. I sit absolutely deflated, watch as he rises from her and turns to go.

I wait for him to look at me but he doesn’t. He strides out the door into the main hall and I feel a hundred things, urgency and desperation uppermost. But I also feel paralyzed, weighted. He disappears and I let the loss roll over me, feel my bones crunch. But when I finally raise my head I catch sight of him out front lighting a cigarette and I let out an involuntary cry. And I get up and without saying good-bye to anyone I go out to him.