The Book of Joe

lot.
    What makes a day like that matter so much, and why there are so many less of them as we get older.”
    “And what’s the answer?” I ask.
    “It’s simple, really. We were doing what we wanted to do, instead of what we expected ourselves to do.” He leans back in his pillows and takes a long, greedy drag on the joint, shaking off the ash into a cup by his bedside. “I’m here to tell you,” he says, his voice high and clenched from the herb,
    “that at the end of the day, which is where I currently reside, nothing else matters but the things that truly matter. This is nothing you didn’t know before, but even though you know it, it doesn’t mean you really know it. Because if you really knew it, you’d act on it, man. Shit, if I could go back now ... ”
    His voice trails off, and he’s quiet for so long that I think for a moment that he’s fallen asleep, but then he leans forward and takes a deep breath. “I am now going to invoke a cartoon character,” he announces solemnly.
    I indicate the joint. “What’s in that thing?”
    “Don’t fuck with me when I’m being wise, Joe.”
    “Sorry.”
    Wayne rolls onto his side to better face me. A smattering of gray ash falls from the tip of the joint and disappears into a fold in his comforter as he readjusts himself. “You remember the old Roadrunner cartoons, where the coyote would run off a cliff and keep going, until he looked down and happened to notice that he was running on nothing more than air?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well,” he says. “I always used to wonder what would have happened if he’d never looked down. Would the air have stayed solid under his feet until he reached the other side? I think it would have, and I think we’re all like that. We start heading out across this canyon, looking straight ahead at the thing that matters, but something, some fear or insecurity, makes us look down. And we see we’re walking on air, and we panic, and turn around and scramble like hell to get back to solid ground. And if we just wouldn’t look down, we could make it to the other side. The place where things matter.”
    “I understand what you’re saying,” I say. “But Carly and I were so long ago. People change.”
    “The things that matter don’t change,” Wayne says, turning the joint around and expertly placing its glowing tip into his mouth, what we used to call glow-worming. “The distance between you and them just gets progressively bigger.
    There’s obviously still something between you two.”
    “Is that what she said?”
    “I might be reading between the lines a little,” he admits, pinching out the joint and tossing it into the cup. “But really, Joe, what the hell do you have to lose?”
    We look at each other, and I can feel my eyes watering again, although it might be from the weed smoke, which by now has permeated every corner of the room, filling the air like sweet incense. “I saw her today,” I say. “At the hospital.”
    Wayne stares at me. “You asshole. How long were you going to let me lie here laying on all that bullshit before you told me?”
    “You were on a roll.”
    “Fuck you,” he says with a grin. “How’d it go?”
    “I’m not sure. We said we’d get together.”
    He leans back in his pillows, looking pleased. “Excellent.”
    “It doesn’t mean anything,” I say.
    “Of course not.”
    “Really.”
    “I know.”
    We smile at each other. “That was a great day, wasn’t it?”
    I say.
    “The best.” He rolls onto his back, pulling up the blankets.
    “I need to get some rest,” he says. “Come and see me tomorrow if you can.”
    “You bet,” I say, getting up to leave as I consider the merits of what Wayne has just said. Maybe there is something to it, or maybe he’s just stoned out of his gourd.
    “Joe,” he says. “Remember what happens to the coyote when he doesn’t run off the cliff.”
    “What happens?”
    Wayne’s smile is crooked and ever so slightly crazed. “A fucking piano falls on him.”
    Downstairs, I find Mrs. Hargrove waiting for me in the living room. “I want to show you something,” she says. I follow her through a set of French doors and into a den that is completely overrun with piled boxes, large and small, all unopened. A wide array of major Internet retailers is represented: The Sharper Image, Nordstrom, Amazon.com, Circuit City, Brooks Brothers, Sears, L.L. Bean, Gap, and a host of others. I turn to Mrs. Hargrove, who is peering