Just That Quick (April 9, 2009. Full Pink Moon. Issue 3. )

I tell this guy sitting next to me at the bar that I'm all used up. I'm emptied out. Don't know if I wanna go on, I say. Don't know if I can. Like me, he claims to be rutted in ways he doesn't understand. He takes long moments to ponder what he wants to say. Finally, he claps me on the back and says, Buddy, not a damn thing lasts forever. Knowing he's right, I say, Well, I'm on the way out, anyway. Me too, he says. Me too. After taking a long sip from my glass, I say, Even the sun eventually burns out. He nods and we quit talking. In the silence that follows he plays with the olive floating on top of his drink. Then he stares at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He knocks back what's left of his drink, glances at his watch and says, Guess this is it, man. Gotta go. Don't go, I say. It's early yet. Stay. Let's try and drink off whatever's eating us up inside. Why? he says. What's the point? It don't work that way, buddy, he says, shaking his head. Wish it did. He slides off his stool and uses his unsteady hands to smooth the wrinkles from his shirt, his trousers. Really, he says, looking up, smiling, It's time to go. He puts a hand out. I take it, squeeze hard. See you there, I say. Doubt it, he says, gripping my hand back. Don't think it works that way, either. With his hands stuffed inside his coat pockets, he crosses the room to the exit. When the door shuts behind him something hits me. Just that quick.

Years earlier, my high school science teacher, Mr. Bolton, was found in his garage, dead behind the wheel of his Ford Escort, the engine still running. Day earlier he'd stood before the class in front of the chalkboard. He told us that some forty-three trillion miles away, maybe on the edge of the Centaurus constellation, or maybe in the center of some other cold dark spot in the vast emptiness of life, a star is dying, burning out. Hell, Mr. Bolton said, it might this very second be fizzling out. Might this very second be sputtering out the last of its fire. But of course we won't know this. Years will have to pass before anyone on this planet knows the star has died. Then one night the sky will have one less flicker. Even then, chances are the star's existence won't be missed.

I tried to think then about what Mr. Bolton was saying, but still had my sister's champagne-colored cat on my mind. That morning I found it lifeless on the road and tossed it into the trash. My sister thought it ran away. Gone is gone, right? Who needs to know how it left? Or why? When a few years later my father passed, we all saw that coming. The moment it happened my mother's own flame started to fizzle. I can still see her sitting on the living room carpet, listening while the needle rode the grooves of the Procul Harum record she played over and over. She once told me there was something meaningful in the lyrics of the haunting song 'A Whiter Shade of Pale.' The old man's gone, I told her. You don't gotta cry no more.

Like old picture slides flashing on a white screen, my world comes into focus in a discordant kind of way. Nothing lasts forever.

And now, while I trace the rim of my empty glass with a trembling finger, I think, What does it matter that I got no idea what life's all about? Every day stars flame out all around me. Other stars go on shining. So what? I raise my arm for another drink and while the bartender pours, I study the swirls and try real hard to pick the substance out, to push the fat aside, to grasp what it is -- exactly -- everyone, including myself, is trying to figure out.