Sudden Visits

By Todd Sullivan

Disappointing.

The word whispered through Thomas’ thoughts, leaving him tense. He sat in Heaven’s Gate Pub in Flushing across from an old friend, Lane. Dusk had just settled over New York, and except for the two of them and the bartender, the establishment was empty.

“He’d been complaining lately about feeling ill,” Lane said. “But no one thought it would end like this.”

Thomas read grief in the lines of his friend’s face. He tried to conjure an appropriate emotion to the sudden news, the most obvious being sympathy. But memories of contentious encounters with Derrick kept intruding into his thoughts. The accusation that seared the most: being called a sellout for the choice of subjects he pursued.

Feeling that he should say something, Thomas asked, “Do you know how he passed?”

“Bad health choices.” Lane picked up the mug of cold beer on the table, condensation crying down the thick glass. “High blood pressure ran in his family, but he didn’t like exercise, and if you remember, he enjoyed his meals.”

Thomas cast his gaze back down the corridors of time to when the three of them first met as freshmen twenty years ago. They’d attended Morehouse, a HBCU in Atlanta. Derrick had lived off-campus with his older brother in the West End. Thomas remembered fast food wrappers stuffed in trash bags, soda bottles lining the counter, beer cans in recycle bins, popular balcony barbecues featuring thick cuts of pork ribs, beef burgers, and mystery-meat hotdogs. The sins of your 20s definitely catch up with you in your 40s.

“He left two daughters behind.” Lane sighed. “It’s going to be rough on them.”

Thomas nodded, though again, the requisite empathy didn’t grow from the seeds of another’s loss. He hadn’t spoken to Derrick since they graduated from university. What he remembered of their late-night conversations echoed through time into the present moment. Derrick had never thought Thomas acted black enough, throwing scorn upon the fencing he took up, the western philosophy he consumed, the dream pop he listened to, the fantasy novels he read. To Derrick, there was no African-American culture in those pursuits, and he always harangued Thomas for indulging in Euro-centric interests.

“You should come to the funeral,” Lane said. “A lot of the guys from our graduating class will be there.”

Thomas placed his fingers on his beer mug and spun it around. Taking off from work, flying to Atlanta to be around people he kept in contact with only on social media, mourning a person he had never been close to. All of this seemed a high cost for someone he never truly saw as a friend.

“When is the funeral going to be held?” Thomas asked.

“Wednesday.”

Thomas bit back a scowl. Death, life’s most rude visitor. Last minute plane ticket, taking off at least two days from the limited vacation his lecturing job gave him. What were the rules in situations like this? Thomas felt sure that he could make an excuse. Lane was Derrick’s close friend, not his. Lane had slept on the couch in Derrick’s home junior year when he couldn’t afford to pay rent for an apartment of his own.

“He used to ask about you all the time,” Lane said. “Wondered if I was showing you the good life in my old stomping grounds.”

Originally from New York, Lane had suggested to Thomas the best neighborhood with affordable apartments when he first moved to Queens. They’d gone out to Korean restaurants and karaoke bars together. Lane had introduced him to several high school friends working in the CUNY system, which is how Thomas started teaching poetry to undergraduates. It was even through Lane that Thomas met Kim So-Yi, the girl he eventually married.

New York was the only thing he and Derrick shared common interest in during university. They’d agreed how cool it would be to run the streets depicted in the movies they’d grown up watching. New Jack City. Basquiat. Do the Right Thing. Coming to America. Thomas craved the vibrant art scene of the five boroughs and dreamed of intellectual discussions with the artists infesting the Big Apple. Derrick dreamed of living in Harlem and soaking up the black history of resistance that once was prevalent in the neighborhood, though he would have probably been disappointed at how gentrified it became over the last two decades.

Thomas had made the move, but Derrick had chosen to stay near family in Atlanta. He had at least five siblings, who had all eventually married and sired kids, giving him a plethora of in-laws, nieces and nephews. Moving too far from his roots simply wasn’t in his DNA.

“I’m trying to get everyone to speak a few words at the service,” Lane said. “A sort of send off to an old friend.” He paused. “So you going to attend?”

Thomas couldn’t feel much for Derrick, but Lane had done too much for him over the years to reject this request. Picking up the mug, he swigged a mouthful of beer and settled it back on the table.

“Sure, I’ll be there,” he finally said, to which Lane smiled. Ultimately, Thomas could imagine Derrick doing the same for him, even though he currently lived a lifestyle Derrick would have found a betrayal to the black cause. He could only picture the chagrin on Derrick’s face if he knew Thomas had memorized William Blake but couldn’t throw down a Tupac song if his life depended on it.

No, the old arguments would surface if Derrick was here in Heaven’s Pub today. But he would travel back to Atlanta regardless. Thomas had heard once that funerals weren’t for the dead, but for the people still living, grieving. He’d make an appearance for Lane’s sake, wear a polite mask of sympathy, put his mind in the heads of others to garner the right level of empathy.

Death and its sudden visits. What memories down forgotten lanes did it bring back when it came knocking.