I don’t know how old Ben is. I’ve never asked. He feels forty, his hair is flecked with grey, but I know his dad is only sixty-three. He does odd jobs for me and yesterday he came by for the first time In a year.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said.

“I have, thanks for noticing.”

“How have you been?”

“Good. I’m getting married.”

“First time?”

“First time. We’ve been together for thirteen years.”

“And you think it’s about time? Or someone thinks it’s about time. Diane and I were together thirteen years before we got married.”

“Isadora’s dad died last Christmas. That woke us up. We’re going to be married in Spain, where she’s from. My two brothers will be there and a few family members, but that’s about it.”

“And you’ll go back to Hudson? Isn’t that where you live?”

“I want to but Isadora doesn’t. A close friend killed himself in the apartment below me. She hates the memories.”

“Killed himself?”

“He hung himself. I should have seen the signs. I should have done something.”

“Tell me more.”

“I saw the rope he used, it was on his couch. I said, “Bill, you’re not going to do anything with this are you?”

“Wait, a minute. What kind of rope? Like you see in Western’s on TV? What alerted you?”

“No, no, one of those yellow narrow nylon ropes you can buy at The Dollar Store. He’d hinted around about it early in the week, but when I’d confront him he’d laugh it off. The day before he tried to give me some of his furniture.”

“Still, to hang yourself you really have to want to do yourself in. People who hang themselves in closets usually suffocate. From what I know, you have to position the knot, you have to add weight, but not too much or you’ll pull your head off.”

“He broke his neck. He had it all planned. I think he wanted to me to find him. We were going out for coffee that morning. We arranged it the night before. The movers were coming and he said he wanted to get out of their way. We had the kind of relationship where I could knock on his door and if he didn’t answer I could walk right in.”

“And you knocked and found him?”

“No, not exactly. I knocked the next morning and he said, ‘Give me half an hour.’ ”

“Ah Jesus, Ben. This is brutal. I mean, I understand why but when you do something like that you lay waste to the people around you.”

“The movers got there before I did. They knocked and got no answer, and then they knocked on my door and asked where he was. I knew he was there; I’d just talked to him. I said try the basement. Four big guys from Giant Moving came running, nearly screaming, out of his place.”

“This is the worst story I’ve heard in years. This is like something you read in a book.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t be sorry for me. It’s you who lived through this.”

“I was so glad I didn’t go down there. I was told by the guys who reconstructed it that Ben smoked one last cigarette, and then he took his glasses off and placed them on his workbench. He stood on a chair holding a suitcase full of magazines. That’s how he broke his neck.”

************

So, you’re thinking how could he write this? And I’m thinking, how could I not? In the past, both Diane and Pesky Godson have encouraged me to post these kinds of semi-stories. I usually add more than a descriptive phrase or two, but this conversation drives itself.  It’s pretty close to verbatim, however,  it’s much less powerful than hearing it first hand.  Something about the way it unraveled as we talked about his brother’s teaching job, his upcoming wedding and his feelings about his father.