The Disintegrations: A Novel by Alistair McCartney

Author:Alistair McCartney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, General, Lgbt, Gay
ISBN: 9780299314781
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:43:15.397000+00:00

It’s interesting how in this life you meet so many people only once. The encounter is brief and you immediately forget them. I feel like most individuals fall into this category.

But there is a second category, composed of those individuals you encounter and forget, and then, something terrible befalls them, and you hear about it and suddenly you remember and say, oh yes, I met him.

About six months ago, I ran into Richard at the local farmers market, which is held in the library parking lot every Friday morning. I don’t go there much anymore, either; it closes at eleven and it’s hard to get out of the house at that hour.

Richard was wheeling his bike through the market and we walked together for a few minutes. When I asked him how he had been, his face kind of crumpled. He told me that he was at the bar the night before and had heard that a friend of his, Chris, had died.

As soon as Richard said the name, I knew whom he meant. I hardly ever remember the name of someone the first time, especially a human as average as Chris. I guess under certain conditions humans are compelled to remember.

“Is that the chef?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Richard said, “how did you know?”

I reminded him that he had introduced me to Chris.

“I’m sorry to hear about that,” I said as we navigated our way through the crowd and their bundles of organic produce. This was an appropriate response, one we feel obligated to say. Then I posed that question, the one we cannot help but ask, “So how did he die?”

Richard’s face got all creased again. He informed me that Chris had died in a car accident. Although Chris was in his midforties, he had just obtained his first driver’s license. He finally decided to learn how to drive, after years of resisting. He only had the license a few days, when he entered the off-ramp of a freeway (or did Richard say he exited the on-ramp? Is that even possible?). In any case, he made a fatal error, screwed up some of the ground rules of road safety. Chris’s death was the mistake of an inexperienced driver and could have easily been avoided.

“I had seen him at the bar only a couple nights ago,” Richard said. “He took me outside and showed me his car, this beautiful pale-blue Cadillac. I heard the car was totaled.”

“Wow,” I said. I don’t believe that’s an appropriate idiom to use in this circumstance, but it’s a convenient term when faced with death.

Richard’s face was still creased. I looked off . . . in the distance? Into empty space? I don’t like being near other humans when their bodies are blurting out their emotions. Corpses are easier to be around; they’re so calm. I glanced down at his hands and noticed they were trembling; he clutched the handlebars of his bicycle to still them.

It was clear that Richard was shaken up by the incident. Even his hands gave him away.

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