Page 5 of A Boy Called Lovesong

Just… numb.

Just sitting there, staring at my cell phone on the coffee table.

When I did start thinking again, I thought about playing the message once more.

I knew it by heart now, yet every time I listened to it, I heard something different; some new little noise in the background or a certain inflection on a word that I hadn’t noticed before. From the sound of passing cars, it was clear he had been walking home, although this was something I knew from the police report anyway. But the report didn’t detail the little things I now heard in the background; things that painted a broader picture of Joel’s last moments, putting me in the moment, almost as though I had been standing there on the street watching himleave that message as he headed toward the mailbox… toward his collision with eternity.

I heard the ring of a bicycle bell. I could only guess now that it belonged to the courier who was one of the witnesses interviewed by police.

I heard a baby screaming and a mother trying to calm the child. She too was mentioned in the report, her recollection of events being the most crucial, besides the bus driver’s account of course. She saw it all happen. Just before Joel could mail the letter, the wind caught it. It blew onto the street. Without looking, Joel stepped onto the street to catch it.

I saw the woman’s name in the report, but hers—like all the names mentioned—were instantly lost in the sticky blackness of my shock and grief.

But the background sound that would stay with me forever was the huff and squeak of a bus braking.

The bus had stopped to let passengers off no more than a hundred feet before the mailbox on the corner, before continuing on its ill-fated way.

It was the same bus that had now been examined by forensics and decommissioned for the next month to make repairs. Not that the damage had been extensive. From what I understood, the impact had barely left a dent. But I suppose when something like this happens, they take the vehicle off the streets for longer than necessary.

To allow the stigma of death to dissipate.

To let the traces of tragedy fade away.

To prevent anyone from getting the idea of bad omens in their heads, and give the staff at the bus company enough time to forget what happened and get on with the job of driving buses.

I caught my breath at the thought of someone pigeon-holing Joel’s death as a bad omen.

It was bad timing.

It was a misjudged step.

It was the calculations of the universe gone wrong.

But it was not a bad omen… just a bad, bad outcome… an unraveling of events that should never have happened… events which I now feared would be my own unraveling.

Yes, I was chillingly aware that Joel’s death might well lead tomyundoing.

Yet now that he was gone, part of me embraced the notion that his untimely death would lead to my own end. Part of me was ready for it, even longed for it.

Of course, my own demise was not something that had even entered my consciousness three days ago.

We were happy three days ago.

I was standing in a jewelry store making the final payment on his engagement ring three days ago.

But now here I was, sitting on the couch in track shorts and a T-shirt that I hadn’t changed out of in twenty-four hours, staring at a phone on the coffee table while the dog hid under the bed.

I’m not quite sure when it was that I noticed the smell.

It might have been five minutes later, it might have been five hours.

But the smell of poop slowly wafted down the stairs.

Not my poop, of course.

It could only have been—“Chet.”

Finally, I pulled myself off the couch and staggered up the stairs.

---