Furious Sorrow

Ed woke up and felt soft fur on his neck. He turned his head and was greeted by the sleepy blue blinking eyes of his kitty, El Cid the Warrior. Mary Jane, his sister, lay in a calico ball in the corner of the bed by Ed’s feet. El Cid’s eyes were cobalt blue and bluer due to his white coat splashed here and there with spots of brown.

Ed sat up and the cat spilled from a ball into a long four-legged stretch. He scratched his chest and behind his ears to the kitty’s great enjoyment. Mary Jane raised her head over her shoulder and blinked her eyes a few times in a nonchalant and slightly disturbed gesture.

“What’s up with you cat?” Ed said, “What’re you looking at, huh?” She lay her head down ignoring him. The clock that was on Miranda’s side of the bed read 9:22. From behind the closed Venetian Blinds, an unusual light illuminated the cheap white flaps in a sort of glow. It was an unusual light because it was Seattle, and the sun there was as rare as finding a virtuous Catholic priest. Ed was feeling healthy and good, not having drunk too much the night before; just a few bloodies on the little deck of their little apartment. He had slept well, without the raucous dreams that generally accompany his nightly snooze. He hadn’t even noticed Miranda waking, getting dressed, and leaving for work.

It was a Friday morning in November and Ed was feeling strangely optimistic without really recognizing it. Their two-room flat on the corner of East Lake Avenue and Roanoke Street was small but comfortable, furnished from the Good Will, the Salvation Army and a plant and coffee table from IKEA. Ed went to the loo and took a piss and brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face.

Ed and Miranda had moved to Seattle 6 weeks before, driving across country in her ‘87 BMW 3.25 with all their worldly possessions. The first month was there was rough. They didn’t know anybody and neither of them had a job lined up or any contacts at all.  But in a great testament to the will and believing in chance and following your heart, they had a fun journey through many states and found the flat within days. They spent their meager savings on a new bed and a used table and a few chairs. Home sweet home. Miranda was working as a temp in an architectural firm downtown and Ed had been catering for two different places, money was coming in, and they were a family now, with the two kitties adopted from an animal shelter 3 hours away near the Oregon border. 

Ed had to work at 4, so he had the whole day to himself to write, workout, read, walk around the neighborhood, play with the cats. I’ve got all day, he thought, and work tonight is going to be fun. He still couldn’t get over actually liking a job. The line from Gillian Welch’s song, Everything is Free, summed up Ed’s attitude towards work: “I never minded working hard, just who I’m working for…” But the people he worked with at the Fairview Club were all cool. Monica the sexy mini-skirt wearing manager, Ben the sober chef, Micah the guitar virtuoso dishwasher and the assorted servers, male and female, who worked with him on the many weddings and corporate parties, were all super chill.  Seattle was filled with people from all over the country and many parts of the world. Seattle City is in itself a revolving door. And the catering business is the ideal profession for transients. Through the years Ed had spent traveling he met many wild folk, travelers, artists, many of them the kind of people that liked the freedom of a random schedule, and the honesty and simplicity of serving food and taking the plates away. That was how Ed fell into it. He had been in the restaurant business for 7 years, during and after college, and had moved into catering a few years previous back in RI. It was honest work, paid fairly well, and had no Karmic repercussions to it.

There was something purely pleasant about Seattle. The Emerald City. There was very little apparent friction or angst. Most people Ed met had moved there for a particular reason, even if it was just a whim or simply wanting a change, or wanting to be near mountains and trees; but the level of misery and bitching was much less than in other places, especially back east. Ed and Miranda had been together for a year and had been living in Rhode Island. She was from Cranston and suggested the move. Ed, always ready to be out of Providence and somewhere new, happily agreed. Seattle, then. Who cares about rain?

On that particular Friday there was none, and the sky offered patches of robin’s egg blue and the magnanimous warmth of the sun in between roaming herds of cumulus clouds. Ed opened the blinds in the sitting room and the bright light filled the apartment.  He looked out over the bushes and the roofs of the houseboats down the hill on Lake Union. There was the Space Needle in the distance shining in the rare November sun. It still shocked him sometimes, when he caught a glimpse of the tower. It was a reminder of where he was and how far he was from where he didn’t want to be. He opened the door and it was quite warm out, the street and sidewalks still damp from an earlier rain. The kitties had not yet built up the courage to go further than the front walkway, that was up a few steps from the steeply angled street. El Cid came swaggering from the bedroom, took a few steps into the big sitting room and did his signature move. Miranda called it “the flop.” The kitty rolled over on his shoulders and back stretching his legs out and laying there, forelegs and hind-legs fully extended, looking at nothing and no one, enjoying the simple thrill of sprawling. Ed had seen other cats do this, but none with the same Zen-nature as El Cid, and this is why that cat was Ed’s confirmed hero. “Feeling good, huh, buddy?” he said. “Me too. Its gonna be a good day.”

Ed put on his black hoody and some boots over his plaid pajama pants and grabbed some change from the small china bowl on the stove. He closed the door but didn’t lock it and crossed the street in front of a big shiny Benz and walked down East Lake Ave.

“What a fuckin day,” he thought, laughing at his attitude and expressions. When he was in Rhode Island all he did was hate and try and avoid the “spacon” pseudo-gangsters with all there “how you doin, huh?” or “hey, o, what the fuck you lookin at?” But since being in the benign northwest he had begun to notice that he was now the one with the attitude. Not too much, though, Ed thought and skipped across E. Lake Ave.  There was one guy getting a cup of Joe at the coffee kiosk right outside the neighborhood market. When he was through Ed ordered a double cappuccino from the blond girl who seemed to be there everyday from 9 to 1. They chatted about the nice day as Ed put in his usual three brown sugars.

“You know what’s crazy?” she said, with pure espresso up-beat-ness ‘”this is my second winter in Seattle, and I still haven’t met one person who is originally from here. How about you?”

‘Nope, not me.” Ed said, “but I’m a citizen of the universe,” stealing a line from his buddy Jake from the hostel days in San Diego.

“I like that,” she said.

“It’s true if you believe it,” Ed said. “Thanks.”

He walked back down the same side of the street passing the park where he and Miranda played Frisbee as often as possible, and crossed over at the light, happily obeying the rules, Seattle style. In the apartment El Cid was lying on the kitchen floor, Mary Jane nowhere to be seen. Ed stepped over the kitty and took a spoon from the sink and stirred his coffee. He sat down at the small table, and flipped through the bible he had spontaneously stolen from The Good Will. He was not Christian, anymore, anymore than he was of any religion, but because of reggae, namely the musician-rebel-poet Peter Tosh, he was reviewing the psalms of David, which are often quoted in much of the good roots reggae music. “Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.” He had no idea at that precise moment, with the sun filtering through the half opened blinds in the kitchen, the sugar from the coffee sweet on his lips, how much those psalms would come to mean to him over the next few months and forever.

The enema-tic effects of the caffeine worked quickly and Ed went into the bathroom and took a seat on the old porcelain throne. The phone rang from the sitting room.

“Damn it,” he said, “always caught with my pants down.” He got up and penguin-walked into the living room and picked up the phone, pressed the talk button and waddled back to the bathroom smiling to himself realizing his state.

“Hello?’ he said.

There was a slight pause before the voice on the other side came through.

“Ed. It’s Dennis.” Ed’s younger brother, back in Rhode Island. Dennis and Ed were good friends but they rarely spoke. Dennis’ voice was flat and distant and immediately Ed had a quick intuitive recognition of something horrible.

“What’s up, dude?” Ed said.

“Ed. It’s Richard. He’s gone.”

Richard, one of his best friends and his sister’s husband, a man Ed had known for nearly twenty years. From the sound of his voice, the flatness, the emptiness, the latent strength in it to even utter those miserable words, were so clear and horrifying and devastating, Ed knew it.

“What happened?” Ed said.

“He drowned. In Tel Aviv. Last night, we think. He was out boogie boarding.”

 “Dennis.” Ed said, “I’ll call you back.”

He pressed off on the phone and dropped it as he fell to the bathroom floor, pants at his ankles, tears pouring from his eyes.

“No No No No No No…..Oh God…. No No No No No No No…” 

El Cid walked into the hall and stared at him. He sat down and licked his front paw and rubbed it behind his ear a few times.

“What is done, is what remains, and furious sorrow.”

- Inscription on wooden cross, Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, England