How to Talk to a Widower

we’re done adapting, we’re better equipped to survive.”
    “He doesn’t deserve to live,” Dave says, and now there are tears in his eyes, and the gun is starting to shake in his hand.
    “That’s not for you to decide,” my father says. “You have much more important things to worry about. You have a family? Children?”
    “Yes,” Dave says, and now his whole body is shaking with tension. But the gun is still up there, still aimed at my face.
    “Then you worry about them first,” my father says firmly. “And then you worry about yourself, about the changes you’re going to make to survive this. Because you will survive this. But you pull that trigger, and survival is no longer an option. The only move left after that is putting that gun in your own mouth. Are you prepared to do that?”
    Dave stares at me, trembling and sweating, and at that moment I wish he would pull the trigger, just so I won’t have to see the anguish distorting his face like a stocking mask, the pain I caused because I was too consumed with my own to care. “Doug,” he says, and now his voice is more of a whimper.
    “It’s okay, Dave,” I say, meeting his gaze. “I understand. I’m ready.”
    “Shut the fuck up, Doug! You are not!” Claire shouts at me, crying. “He is not!”
    Dave looks at me for a long moment, and then, impossibly, his face relaxes into a sad little smile. “This is not how I pictured the day going when I woke up this morning.”
    “That makes two of us,” I say.
    And then, just as he’s lowering the gun, Russ suddenly materializes from the darkness of the parking lot and hurls himself at Dave, his outstretched arms reaching for the gun, and in the instant before his momentum knocks them both over, there is a deafening roar that blows every other sound in the world out of existence, and a brief muzzle flash like a magnesium flare, and then Russ and Dave are rolling on the floor in a sailor’s knot of limbs, and I can see the gun clattering across the cobblestone driveway, can see that Claire is shrieking, and my father is yelling and pointing, but there is no sound, everything has been silenced, and I’m wondering where the bullet went, and Russ is lying on the ground and he isn’t moving, and Claire is still screaming and my father is looking around, bewildered, and Dave is climbing to his feet with a dazed look on his face, and Russ is not getting up, oh Jesus, he is not getting up, and I can feel the scream building in my throat, and he needs to move, he can’t be shot, that can’t be how this ends, and I can feel the brick wall against my back, tearing into my suit jacket, and please move, Russ, just get off the fucking floor and show me something, I will buy you a car, I will buy you a fucking Ferrari if you would just move, and then, incredibly, he does, he rolls onto his stomach and pushes himself up to his feet and looks at me, his eyes bulging with alarm, and I’m so relieved, so fucking happy, that for a moment nothing else matters, not a single other thing in the world matters, because Russ is okay, and then he starts to rise, floating up above me, and Claire and my father are rising too, like helium balloons, getting higher and higher, and it’s the strangest, most magical thing I’ve ever seen, my family rising up and hovering high above me, and then, just as the sound comes back in a loud rush of confusion, I feel the hot wetness spreading out from my side, radiating across my belly and up my chest, and I realize that I’m lying on the cobblestone driveway, staring up at the metal skeleton of the club’s white awning.
    “Doug!” Claire screams, falling beside me, her hands on my shoulders, and I want to tell her to calm down, that I actually feel strangely fine, comfortably numb, that it feels okay, that it feels like two Vil Pills washed down with a bottle of wine and three puffs on a water bong all wrapped into one, that I can see her hair actually growing in its follicles, can see the sweat emerging and spilling out of my father’s pores as he gets on his knees to lean over me, can see the vein in Russ’s temple throbbing to the beat of his heart, and it’s all okay.
    I’m dimly aware of new people, of a crowd forming around us on the driveway. “Call nine-one-one,” my father says to Russ, who is staring down at me, frozen in place. “Russ!” my father shouts at him, and this time Russ blinks and then reaches into his suit pocket for his cell