I was twenty-three the second time my brother died. He was skateboarding through an intersection on Vashon Island when a drunk driver in a Dodge Ram clipped him from behind. My folks were devastated, my little sister distraught. I was a wreck, too, no pun intended, my voice pained and sigh-heavy, exactly as I'd rehearsed, and my boss, who was only a couple of years younger than my mom, sent me home halfway through my story, no questions asked. I was working for a large company at the time — you likely shop there whenever you need three dozen paper towels or ten pounds of chicken thighs — so I even got bereavement pay. A few friends and I celebrated Jeremy's life by trekking through the interior of Big Sur, eating freeze-dried lasagna for breakfast and drinking as much canned beer as we could fit in our backpacks, shitting in a hole someone dug with their hands and pondering the lengths some folks will go to get an extra week's worth of vacation.

***

The first time Jeremy died, I was twenty-one and asleep in the bed of a political science major named Leslie. Leslie was a twin, and we’d been set up by a mutual friend after I expressed a persistent interest in dating the other, less available sister. “I think you’ll like Leslie,” my friend said. It was the afternoon before our first date — the last day of Jeremy's first life — and I was getting anxious. “Raina’s been with Alan since tenth grade, and she’s a little uptight anyway.”

I never learned all that much about the twins. Blonde and sturdy through the waist, they'd been star volleyball players in high school, which was more or less all I cared to know at the time. Leslie and I spent Jeremy's final night on earth listening to karaoke down by the waterfront. We shared a basket of fries and two pitchers of Rainier, and as we stumbled up State Street toward the house she shared with our mutual friend, Leslie put her hand on my shoulder to steady my balance. Her consideration stunned me, and though I did my best to repay the intimacy as soon as we entered her room, I found myself waking up around three the next morning with my face between her thighs. I ambled into the bathroom, gargled some mouthwash, and formalized a recollection of our night together I just as quickly forgot. Then I fingered my way back through the dark hallway and collapsed, once more, on Leslie’s bed. I didn’t even bother to remove my socks.

My alarm went off a few hours later. Along with the bell was a note from a calendar app reminding me that I was supposed to be at work in forty-five minutes. I’d only been hired a week prior, and I’d already misplaced most of the particulars. Slipping out of bed and tip-toeing downstairs, I waited until I was standing on the back deck before I called my supervisor and informed her of the awful and exceedingly untimely tragedy with which my family and I were currently grappling. Jeremy, poor soul, had just that morning succumbed to a rare form of intestinal cancer, one of those afflictions as difficult to pronounce as it is to treat, and my parents, though not exactly shocked, were inconsolable. 

“Jesus,” she said. “I guess you just never know.” 

“You truly don't,” I said, before apologizing again. “I really want to make it in today, but I just don't think...”

The entire conversation lasted less than two minutes. Before hanging up, my supervisor assured me that my new job would be waiting for me next week. “Just focus on taking care of yourself,” she said. “And please give your family my best.”

***

Jeremy died a few more times before I finally laid him to rest. I've often reassured myself that this was the inevitable consequence of hard-won wisdom, though in less optimistic moments I wonder if it was merely the result of diminishing opportunities. Regardless, I hadn't much thought about him until last night, when my wife and I, in an effort to increase our daily step count, decided to walk home from our dinner date downtown. While crossing Burnside Bridge, our gloved fingers interlaced, I mentioned an old friend whose car we'd once driven to Big Sur. I'd missed a call from him earlier that afternoon, and in a spell of nostalgia I brought up an old prank we used to pull in high school. What we'd do, more or less, is follow people, folks neither of us knew. We'd skip the final period of the day and jump into his '81 Cadillac, make a whole show of it: the dramatic U-turn, the flashing high beams. Only occasionally did someone pull over and attempt to initiate a conversation. Most of the time they simply swung by the police station, at which point we'd haul ass back to my place.

It was certainly juvenile, I admitted, and more than a little crass, but in the years since I've often found myself chuckling at the memory, at the shock and pure bewilderment those strangers must have confronted. My wife finds nothing amusing about this story, however, and when she asked whether I had ever experienced fear, if I knew what genuine dread felt like, I said no. Not in the way she meant it, anyway. I reminded her, perhaps a bit too forcefully, that no one had been hurt, that our intentions, however misguided, had sprung from a place of harmlessness. 

“Fucking Christ,” I said. “I'm not some kind of monster. I was seventeen.” 

My wife fastened the top button on her windbreaker, yanked the strings until its hood obscured her face. From a certain angle she could have been anybody. 

“I don't know why you're yelling,” I said, already a few steps behind and struggling to keep pace. “What do you want me to say?” 

Nothing, as it turns out. Instead, my wife half-jogged toward the eastern head of the bridge and, once across, slowed only to take the first available turn. I leaned against the railing, my hands dangling over the Willamette, and watched the wind from Ross Island warp my breath like a smokestack. I imagined my wife with an entirely different kind of husband, and then I saw her standing in our kitchen, her reflection mirrored in the window above the faucet. Scrubbing something I'd neglected, her fingers pruned and pink.