One Last Thing Before I Go

it!”
    “Casey! Get back behind the railing!” Silver shouts up to her.
    “Please honey! Stop this!”
    “I AM PREGNANT!” Casey shouts at them, her voice cracking. “I am scared and lost and fucked, and you’re both too busy fucking up your own lives to give a shit! I need my parents! Real parents! Not this goddamn freak show!”
    She’s crying now, hanging off the railing at an angle that scares the shit out of Silver.
    “You’re right, honey,” Denise says, crying too. “I’m so sorry.”
    “Get off there!” Silver shouts up at her. He can already see her falling, can hear the sickening sound she’ll make when she lands.
    “Why should I?”
    “Please!”
    “You think you’re the only one who’s allowed to play suicide games?”
    Silver turns and runs full-speed at the front door, lowering his shoulder as he hits it. The door, though, is not screwing around, and he bounces off of it and lands on his back with the breath knocked out of him.
    “Silver! What the fuck?”
    Then the door flies open, and Rich is standing there.
    “Rich,” Denise says.
    “Rich,” Silver says, getting gingerly to his feet.
    “Is everyone done saying my name?” Rich says.
    “Sorry about the door,” Silver says.
    Rich looks at the utterly undamaged door, then at Silver, as if to say,
You’re kidding, right?
Then he nods, and then he charges.
    * * *
    What happens next isn’t very pretty: two inexperienced, middle-aged combatants, both of whom rely on their hands to make a living and so are unwilling to throw closed-fist punches. Instead, they circle each other, slapping, shoving, and briefly grappling. Rich takes a running start and kicks at Silver’s legs. Silver raises his front leg defensively, so Rich ends up kicking Silver’s foot. Silver swings at Rich’s face, but Rich is too tall and too far away and so he misses, his momentum spinning him around so his back is to Rich, who gets in a kick to Silver’s ass. Silver manages to grab his foot on the way back, and the two of them spin around, Rich hopping as Silver clutches his other foot to his chest. They make their way across the driveway like that, and then onto the dirt in front of the lake, until Silver loses his footing and they both go down in a tangle of flailing arms and legs.
    They roll down the small knoll and into the edge of the lake, kicking up water and dark scum as they wrestle. Finally, Silver manages to slip out of Rich’s grip and get to his feet, ankle-deep in the frigid lake water. Rich gets up a moment later and they square off, winded and panting heavily. Silver is vaguely aware of Denise and Casey standing together at the top of the knoll, screaming at them, and is relieved that Casey came down off the porch deck.
    “Can we just call it a draw?” Silver says.
    “You fucked my wife,” Rich snarls at him. He tries to kick at Silver again, but the earth beneath the lake is slick and soft, and both feet fly out from under him. He lands on his back with a splash. Silver steps over to him, and offers him a hand.
    “Come on,” he says. “I’m not the one you’re really angry at.”
    Rich takes his hand and pulls himself to his feet. “No, you actually are the one I’m angry at,” Rich says. Then he turns around and throws a punch straight into the center of Silver’s face. Silver goes down hard, stunned and tasting blood. Rich stands over him, grimacing as he shakes off his hand.
    “Rich!” Denise shouts at him.
    “I’ll be right there,” he says, all traces of his rage gone.
    Silver lies back in the water, resting on his elbows. The world has taken on an otherworldly orange glow, and a chilling breeze blows over him. This is death, he thinks. It actually seems perfectly manageable to him. But then he realizes, with something akin to disappointment, that the orange glow isn’t death but only the sunset. It would have been a strategically good place to die. He’d been thinking that every time Denise and Casey came up here with Rich, they would look out at the lake and feel him close by, maybe tell each other funny stories about him. He rinses the blood oozing from his nose with some lake water and then gets to his feet next to Rich, who is flexing the fingers of his right hand one by one, studying them.
    “How’s the hand?” Silver says.
    “Looks all right.”
    “You want to do it again?”
    “No. I’m good.”
    “OK then,” Silver says, turning back toward the house. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
    He