Page 28 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

“Because Starbucks is evil.”

“Starbucks is a barometer of the people, and the people want Christmas. Wait, do you not celebrate Christmas? I shouldn’t have assumed.”

He shakes his head, rolling up his sleeves to expose the same irritatingly impressive forearms I spotted last week. Part of me was hoping they’d deflated in our time apart like a leaky tire. He leans against the doorless top cabinet. The pose only emphasizes his height. The apartment shrinks when he stands like that. “I celebrate Christmas on Christmas. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet. Let Thanksgiving have its moment.”

“You’re not one of those anti-Christmas psychopaths, are you?”

“Depends. Are you one of those ‘War on Christmas’ fearmongers?”

I shrug. “I love Christmas. And I don’t see why I have to justify it to anyone. If you’d prefer Classic Rock Christmas or Hip-Hop Christmas or Hipster Christmas, Spotify can arrange that.”

“What’s Hipster Christmas?”

“It’s a lot of Zooey Deschanel and that one song by the Pogues over and over again.”

He waits a full minute to respond, but at the sound of his resigned breath passing through his nose, I know I’ve won. “Classic Christmas is good.”

For the rest of the morning, I sit on the floor, emptying the contents of Sam’s entertainment cabinet, soundtracked by Adam’s drill and Classic Christmas. Despite his stoic façade, Adam’s head is bobbing along about one minute into “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” We’re all helpless against the power of a Bruce Springsteen Christmas cover.

Adam gives me little more than the occasional grunt as I narrate my every movement before I eventually get lost in the rhythm of the task, sorting video games, ten-year-old Blu-rays, and several generations of gaming consoles into boxes of “Keep,” “Sell,” or “Trash,” but I never relax. After my morning message from beyond, I jump whenever my phone beeps with a push notification. I dismiss each one, attempting to calm my pulse.

“Why are you acting weird?” he asks the back of my head from his seat on the kitchen countertop.

“What do you mean by ‘weird’?” I’ve been having a one-sided conversation with him on and off for over an hour, and earlier I sang the back cover copy of Olympus Has Fallen to the tune of “Good King Wenceslas” out of sheer boredom, so when it comes to me and “weird,” he’ll have to be more specific.

“You were doing your talking thing—”

“My ‘talking thing’?” I spin around on the wood floor. “You mean my pointless attempts at conversing with you?”

“Then your phone buzzes, and you stop mid-word and do this shaky-twitchy thing. It’s alarming.”

“Stop watching me, then.”

“What am I supposed to look at?”

I gesture out at the downtown skyline real estate porn outside the wall of windows.

“What’s on your phone? It has to be something, or you wouldn’t jump five inches in the air every time it makes a noise.”

My phone chirps. I try, and fail, to keep still.

“Is someone bothering you?”

“It’s nothing,” I answer. He’s silent again, but his stare has a formidable, claustrophobic effect that would be quite useful in a government interrogation. “Fine. It’s…uh, did Sam use to leave reminders in your iCal when you left your phone unlocked?”

He freezes at the question. “You mean his ‘Messages from the Future’?” Adam asks, his voice all faux nonchalance.

“Yeah, exactly. I got one this morning.”

He tilts his head back against the cabinet. “He’s been doing it for years.” His face transforms as his mouth curves into a small but brilliant smile. “He messed with the settings in my phone, so even when I had it on silent, Doc from Back to the Future would yell, ‘Great Scott!’ It always seemed to go off in the middle of work or class or something.” He lets out a light exhalation of air resembling a laugh. “I hated it.”

But he doesn’t sound like he hates it anymore.

“Yeah.” I laugh too, because it’s nice to laugh with someone who knows. “Mine are always stuff I should be doing. That’s what I didn’t like. It pointed out my shortcomings. It still does.”

“But he was our friend, not our accountabili-buddy. Sam never understood caution or responsibilities. It was all so simple to him. You want it? Take it. Maybe it was the trust fund.”

I shake my head in bewilderment. “Sam had a trust fund?”

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