The Book of Joe

flapping wings.
    “I’m tired, man,” Wayne says. “I’m so fucking tired of getting up every day and putting on a brave face, trying to make it okay for everyone else that I’m dying.” He grinds out his cigarette violently, his eyes welling up with angry tears, his dry lips trembling as he struggles to swallow the rage and terror frothing inside him like a witches’ brew. It seems somehow incongruous that someone so near death, so desiccated, should still produce so many tears. “I’m fucking dying, man, and you know what? It is not okay. It’s a fucking tragedy. I’m way too young to die. And I just can’t keep cracking wise and acting like I’ve made my peace with the whole damn thing.”
    “Who says you have to?” I say just to say something.
    Wayne fixes me with a droll look. “Come on, Joe. It’s in the manual. Young people with terminal illnesses develop a whimsical, slightly sarcastic sense of humor about it to put everyone else at ease and to serve as shining examples of grace in the face of colossally fucked-up events. Don’t you ever watch Lifetime, man?”
    “Not really.” I point to myself. “Not gay, remember?”
    Wayne laughs. “Sorry. I forgot.” He flicks his butt between his feet and over the ledge and we watch it fall. “I guess you could say I’m having a mid-death crisis. I mean, what the hell will my death actually mean? I was born, I got older, and now I’m going to die, and what the hell do I have to show for it?
    No kids, no significant other, no people I’ve enriched, no accomplishments. What am I leaving behind? I’m scared of dying, I won’t bullshit you about that, but more than that, I’m immensely pissed at the realization that my entire existence has actually had no real purpose except maybe to serve as some sort of cautionary tale to others.”
    “Well, there are two possibilities,” I say thoughtfully. “Either there is an afterlife, or there isn’t.”
    “How profound.”
    “Fuck you. If you wanted a priest, you should have climbed up onto the church.”
    “Touché,” Wayne says with a grin. “Please go on. I’m dying to hear this.”
    “As I was saying, if there is an afterlife and this world is but a waiting room, then the fact that you feel like you haven’t done anything is really irrelevant, since there’s more living to be done, albeit in a state we can’t comprehend.”
    “And if there’s no afterlife?”
    “Then we’re all headed underground anyway, just on different schedules, so what does anything matter?”
    Wayne gives me a bemused look. “So what you’re saying is, if there is an afterlife, then nothing here mattered, and if there isn’t an afterlife, nothing here mattered.”
    “That’s a gross oversimplification of a complexly stratified theological treatise.”
    “But that’s it in a nutshell.”
    “I guess so. In a nutshell.”
    “So what does matter?”
    “The little things,” I say. “All that stuff you said to me the other day about me and you and Carly. Those moments are what matter. Don’t you even listen to yourself when you speak?”
    “I was stoned,” Wayne says with a shrug.
    He lights up another cigarette, nodding thoughtfully. We sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the ebb and flow of the swirling crowd below. From our vantage point, we can see drivers stopping their cars to gawk and people walking briskly through the streets toward the school. Nothing much ever happens in the Falls, and when it does, no one likes to miss it. More news vans arrive, as well as a handful of photographers. The quick flickering of flashbulbs makes the crowd sparkle like a diamond. I look for Carly, but we’re too high up for me to spot her. I feel immensely sad, but also strangely liberated, as if I’ve been trying to feel sad for a long time but haven’t been able to until now. “So,” I say. “Are you going to jump, or what?”
    “Nah.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’m just not the jumping type.”
    “I agree. Can I help you down now?”
    Wayne leans back and looks down at the crowd. “A few more minutes, okay?”
    “Sure.”
    “Is Carly down there?”
    “Somewhere.”
    “Joe?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I don’t want to go to a hospice.”
    “So don’t.”
    “I was thinking maybe I should move in with you. You know, into your dad’s place.”
    “That’s a great idea.”
    Wayne nods. “I don’t want my friends wiping my ass and stuff. I don’t need to be remembered that way.”
    “I hope you