I hear that question a lot. The answer is always, "Yeah, you're right." This time it happened to be accurate.

"Every f.u.c.king night of the week we had him. And then he b.u.g.g.e.red off to the a.s.s end of s.p.a.ce or the far end of time or some d.a.m.n thing-but he came back to visit at fairly frequent intervals, partied with us for days at a time, helped us save the world once, am I right?" After the first one, a nod suffices. "And then when we all moved down here, he showed up for Opening Day, spent one whole night with us, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of the wonderful son of a b.i.t.c.h since, not him nor his whole fam damily, am I right?"

Nod. "What's your point, Doc?"

"We blew it. That's my point. All of us. How could we be so G.o.dd.a.m.n stupid?"

"Blew what?"

"How could we have had unfettered access, for so long, to a man who clearly knew some of the final answers-and never once have asked him any of the questions?"

I knew what he meant, and didn't want to admit it. "What questions?"

"Don't play dumb, Jake. The important questions." I was too stoned not to admit it. "Oh. Those."

"How did all this-" He gestured at the universe around us. "-get here? How did I come to be stuck here in it? Will I end, when I cool? If not, then what?" He relit the joint, took a second great hit.

So I continued for him. "Does it matter what I do in the meantime? If so, why? Is it all going somewhere? Is there some kind of point? Or is virtue its own only reward? Is there a G.o.d?"

Doc exhaled and took up the litany. "And if so, is anyone mounting an a.s.sault on Heaven? That's the thing I never grokked about religious belief, you know? All that time I spent watching people die for a living . . . watching their loved ones buckle with grief and loss ... seeing that all human lives begin with agony, and most of them end with it . . . that no more than five or ten percent of real-life stories, if that, get anything you could possibly call a happy ending-" Deep breath. "-that a good half of even those of us lucky enough to die in a hospital bed die in unbearable pain, which G.o.d allegedly forbids us to shorten ... that when we beg Him on our knees for ten thousand years straight to explain why this torture must happen, to as many souls as procreatively possible, all we get back is 'Trust me.'" Deep breath. He reached across the table, took my hand, squeezed. "I can understand people who believe in G.o.d, Jacob. I just can't understand why they aren't trying their best to kill the motherf.u.c.ker."

"Jesus Christ, Sam!"

He let go of my hand, picked up what was left of the joint, and squinted at it. It had gone out again. "This is ditty pood grope," he said, and then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. "s.h.i.t."

"Sam, what's wrong?"

He dropped the roach on the table. "I was about to say it seemed to help suppress the spoonerisms. I brant seem to latch a cake. Oh, bin of a such!" Without warning he slapped the ashtray into a nearby ficus.

Shocked, I took his hand back and held it in both of mine. "What's the matter? Something with Mei-Ling?" It was a natural conclusion to leap to. Doc's wife, at age forty-mumble, was the only one of the five Lady Sally's alumnae who was still working-and that profession is a lot more dangerous these days than it used to be.

He leaned closer, added his free hand to the pile, and lowered his voice. "Jake ... I have a humor in my ted."

Suddenly I was too stupid to untangle a spoonerism. "What?"

"I have a tomb brainer. d.a.m.n it, a train boomer. s.h.i.t." He lowered his head, took a deep breath, and said slowly and carefully, "There is an evil spider growing in my skull. It will sill . . . will kill me soon."

I could feel my eyeb.a.l.l.s trying to bulge out of my head. "Oh, my G.o.d. Oh, Sam!"

In my head I was thinking, No, there's been a mistake, the script editor has f.u.c.ked up, this is wrong, wrong! Doc Webster isn't one of the ones who die, for Chrissakes. He's not a spear-carrier; he's one of the heroes. Like me.

"Spoonerism is one of the symptoms," he explained. "It'll get progressively worse. After a while I won't even know for sure if I'm newing ... if I'm doing it or not."

"How long?" I heard myself ask. He would say a year, and I would tell him about my cousin in Canada who'd been told he had a brain tumor that would kill him in a year, and was still alive and well three years later.

He shrugged. "Maybe a week. Maybe a month. Not two." I felt a wave of dizziness. "Who else knows?"

"Aside from professionals, only Mei-Ling, until just now. I was hoping to keep it that way, for as pong as lossable. But she can't wake the late atone."

So that was why the doc had been sitting alone.

"She's home, crying?"

He nodded. "I certainly hope so. I left to give her the chance."

I've read that in the Old West, if you really p.i.s.sed off the Comanche, they used to cut open your chest and pour in hot coals while you were still alive. I felt like that now, only with ice cubes. I couldn't seem to get enough air, felt my stomach clench like a fist, and wondered briefly if I were having a heart attack. This news was more than I could encompa.s.s, way more than I was prepared to accept. "I can't carry this alone, either, Sam," I said. "I gotta tell everybody. I'm sorry."

"I know." He nodded. "I know, Jake. I've known that since you sat down. Shared pain is lessened." He shuddered slightly. "But you tell them for me, okay? I've been dying all trey, and I just can't deem to suet."

I said nothing. I was trying to decide whether I had it in me to tell all my friends that my oldest friend just about everybody's oldest friend-was on his way out. Doc Webster had been responsible for bringing many of us to Callahan's in the first place. (Pun intended.) And just then a strange and wonderfully dopey thing happened. More to relieve the tension in our necks than anything else, he and I both happened to lift our gazes skyward just as a meteor flared overhead. Automatically we sucked a little air through our teeth. And then the doe said, with quiet wonder, "Wow-a starting shoe."

For some reason, I broke up. It started as a giggle, and before I knew it, I was laughing so hard I literally fell off my a.s.s, ended up curled up on the ground, pounding it and whooping.

Well, you know. Maybe Ebola is as contagious as laughter...but I doubt it. Doc lost it seconds after I did, and remained seated only because his center of gravity is lower; that's my story, anyway. When we might have stopped laughing, he said, "Trust me to find a ridiculous death," and we were off again.

After a while I helped him to his feet and walked him home. It didn't take long: Doc and Mei-Ling live right next door to me and Zoey, no more than a hundred yards from the bar. He barely had time to tell me the one about the lion who enters a clearing and sees two men, one reading a book and the other typing away on a laptop, and knows at once which man to eat first (readers digest, and writers cramp), and then we were there. We stood at his door, looking at each other for a long moment, as awkward and self-conscious as teenage first-daters trying to decide whether to go for a good-night kiss or just agree what a terrific time we'd had. Two unusually articulate men, completely at a loss for words. Finally he sighed and said, "Well, thanks, Timmy-I really had a terrific time," so I pulled him into my arms and hugged him as hard as I could and kissed the side of his neck and he stroked my hair and hugged back, and it was quite some time before we remembered to be embarra.s.sed again and let go.

He flashed me the crooked smile I knew so well and went inside, and I stood there a moment. I hadn't quite finished all my closing rituals yet, and distant murmurs told me there were still a few customers in the house. But none of the undone ch.o.r.es was mission-critical, and I don't have any regulars I don't trust to close The Place. To h.e.l.l with it. I left the compound by the parking lot entrance, where I'd be less likely to be seen leaving, and walked west to Mallory Square.

Packed and bustling though it is at sunset, the square is almost always completely deserted late at night: the area is too open and exposed and just a bit too well lit to const.i.tute a good place to neck. As always, there was no slightest trace of evidence that dozens of vendors and street performers had been doing lucrative business here only hours earlier, not even an empty film container to mark the pa.s.sage of thousands of stunned, stoned, or stained tourists and their children. As usual, the only one present was John the Fisherman, fishing alone off the south end of the pier just as he has every night of his life, as far as anyone can remember; we exchanged nods as I pa.s.sed. I sat on concrete right at the edge of the dock, at the spot where Will Soto always sets up his tightrope for the sunset celebration, lit the stub of my Texada Timewarp, and stared across a few hundred yards of dark slow water at what the Chamber of Commerce would like you to call Sunset Key, and every Conch calls Tank Island. It was an absolutely textbook Key West night: air the temperature and the approximate humidity of a spit-take, coming from the west in a gentle, steady breeze against my face. It kept away the fried-food-and-beer smells of Duval a few blocks behind me; I smelled only brine, iodine, my roach, and a faint hint of petroleum product spills from that day's cruise ships. In the far distance a huge dark cloud loomed over the Gulf of Mexico, heading this way, but it would be hours before it arrived. It seemed a perfect metaphor. Darkness coming for my oldest friend, still a ways off but unstoppable.

I sat there for maybe an hour. I tried to wrap my mind around the news, and failed. I tried to imagine a world without Doc Webster in it, finding the funny parts for us, and failed. I tried to cry for him, and failed.

Finally I made up my mind, found a pay phone, dialed from memory a number I'd once solemnly promised myself I would never use again, and failed at that, too. I couldn't raise so much as voice mail. I counted twenty-five rings, then gave up. Did you know that with the proper wrist action, you can get the handset of a pay phone to skip seven times? (Try it yourself.) When I got back to The Place I found that as expected someone had done an imperfect but adequate job of closing up for me. I just set out food for Pixel and Harry, dropped a pair of hard-boiled eggs into the pool for Lex's breakfast, and went straight to bed. Okay, went stoned to bed.

Zoey got in about half an hour later, dragging her ba.s.s and her a.s.s. She'd had a jazz gig that night, and the way it works for her is, the better the music she plays, the more exhausted she is when she comes home. I thought I was doing a fair job of feigning sleep until she said, "Jesus, Jake, what's the matter? Is Erin okay?"

I rolled over. "What do you, read shoulder blades? Erin's fine, sound asleep. Come to bed."

"Are you okay?"

"Hey, my wife says I'm a lot better than okay."

"To you, maybe. What's wrong?"

"Can we talk about it in the morning?"

"Of course we can. We can talk about it whenever we like. Right now, for instance."

She wasn't going to let it go, so I decided to just get it over with, tell her the news as calmly and dispa.s.sionately as I could and then try to comfort her. "You know how I'm always saying Doc's puns are brain damaged?" I began, and then I lost it, started crying as hard as I ever have in my life, in great racking sobs that threatened to tear my diaphragm, might have if not for the strength in my Zoey's arms. After a while I was able to squeeze out words between shuddering intakes of breath, "Tumor," and, "Inoperable," and, "Mindkiller," and, "Week. Month, tops." Somewhere in there, Erin joined the hug, and even in my pain I was impressed because I've personally seen her sleep through both a hurricane and a riot.

A long time later I came to the awareness that I was cried out, hollow. It was like vomiting: you don't exactly feel good afterwards, just a tiny bit less rotten-but that tiny bit makes the difference between intolerable and endurable. I realized there seemed to be only one pair of arms around me now, opened my eyes and learned they were my daughter's. I started to ask where her mother was, and then I knew. Zoey was next door, with Mei-Ling. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again it was morning, and the arms holding me were once again my wife's, and we were both crying.

I usually keep bartender's hours. That day, I was awake at the crack of dawn.

Even so, leaving my bed took everything I had; leaving my house seemed out of the question. I knew there was a perfect sunny day outside, because there nearly always was, and I wanted no part of it. An insoluble dilemma lay out there. The moment I stepped out onto my porch I would start seeing and being seen by my friends, some of them anyway. I knew I could not look even one of my friends in the eye even momentarily without telling them that Doc was dying, and yet for the life of me I could not imagine myself doing so, could not think of the right words to use. So I dithered around in the house as long as possible, and then some more. I made what even for me was a special omelette, so large and complicated that it really should have been considered a full-scale omel, and wolfed the whole thing down. Zoey and Pixel stared at me. I frequently cook omelettes-for supper; it may have been the first time either of them had ever seen me eat a bite less than five hours after awakening. I did all the dirty dishes, by hand, and dried them all with a towel. Zoey and Pixel stared even harder. I made the bed-well, I always do that, being almost always the last one out of it, but this day I decided it was not only time to change the sheets, but also to rotate and flip the mattress. Then I collected the trash that would not be put out for another three days, and began coaxing the old newspapers into a more orderly stack. Erin and Pixel were staring at each other now.

When I started alphabetizing the spice rack, Zoey came over and put a firm hand on my shoulder. "The bad times, too," she said enigmatically, and slipped her arm through mine. "Come on, Slim. Let's go open the store."

I closed my eyes and sighed. Three times in a row, each longer and deeper than the last. And finally nodded.

By the time we got as far as the porch, my nose and ears had already given me a pretty accurate head count and roster. Roughly three dozen folks, nearly all hard-core long-timers. Unusually large crowd for so early in the day. Had the news about Doc leaked already? No, I realized; the faithful had begun to gather in antic.i.p.ation and support of the imminent scamming of Tony Donuts Junior. I'd forgotten I also had that to look forward to. I'd have balked there in the doorway if it were possible to balk while arm in arm with a moving Zoey.

After ten years in Key West I had become enough of a connoisseur to discern the differences between a garden-variety perfect day and a Platonic ideal; that day was one of the latter. The blue of the sky looked like about six coats, hand rubbed. Sunlight danced on the surface of the pool like Tinkerbell's gym cla.s.s. A gentle breeze carried scents of Key lime, coral dust, sunblock, sulfur, seash.o.r.e, and the competing but compatible lunch smells of several culinary schools, chiefly Cuban, Creole, and Islands cooking from Bahama Village to the south of us. Somewhere nearby, children and a small dog hooted with joy and did something that made rhythmic crunching gravel sounds like castanets. In the fifty-yard walk to the bar, I was smiled at, nodded at, or waved to by just about everyone present. They all seemed to accept my answering grimace as a smile.

Tom Hauptman was at the stick, selling as much cola and lemonade as beer, and he'd just started making somebody a Cuban sandwich; the gloriously layered fragrances of ham, roast pork, cheese, pickle, and press-toasted bread were already beginning to circulate. I left Zoey at her usual stool and joined Tom behind the bar. But instead of pitching in with the sandwiches, I squatted down, opened a cabinet, and took out a grey cylinder the approximate size of a can of baseb.a.l.l.s, if there is such a thing. Some seated at the bar fell silent as they recognized it, and they sat up straighter. A very kind person named Colin MacDonald once fetched it back from Ireland for me. Its simple greyscale label reads, in part,

The World's Oldest Whiskey Distillery

BUSHMILLS.

DISTILLERY RESERVE.

SINGLE IRISH.

MALT WHISKEY.

This Premium Irish Whiskey is exclusive to Visitors at the Old Bushmills Distillery originally granted its Licence to distil in 1608.

Aged 12 Years

THIS BOTTLE WAS SPECIALLY.

LABELED FOR.

Jake Stonebender AT THE DISTILLERY.

I cracked the lid, eased out the amber bottle, and set it reverently on the bar. Its front label mirrored the one on the can; the one on the back said,

Bushmills Distillery Reserve is a Single Malt Whiskey aged in oak casks for 1214 years.

We have selected this whiskey for its exceptional quality and smoothness.

This fine whiskey has a soft, sherried nose giving way to a full-bodied, malty taste with overtones of almond and marzipan.

The bottle was within an inch or two of being full. I went to the dishwasher, took out a full rack of shot gla.s.ses, and began setting them up on the bar top next to the Bushmills Distillery Reserve, in rows. Silence broke out along the bar, and slowly metastasized to the nearby tables, the pool and lounge chairs, and the croquet pitch someone had set up just beyond the fireplace. Those who were free to do so started drifting toward the bar; the rest began arranging things so as to be able to do the same, if they could. It was way too early in the day to be drinking whiskey, especially that whiskey, but they all knew I knew that.

I counted heads, skipping those I knew would not drink whiskey for one reason and another, and set out that many shot gla.s.ses. When I was done filling them all, the bottle had only two or three shots left in it. I poured a.s.sorted soft drinks for the nondrinkers.

"Fill your hands," I said, and soon the bar top was empty except for the bottle. I picked it up and took it with me to the chalk line before the fireplace. People made way for me, then waited for me to make my toast.

Whoever had closed up for me the night before had not only shoveled out the ashes, but had also taken the trouble to set up the next evening's fire for me: a pyramid of wood on a base of kindling and crumpled newsprint. I thought about lighting it, or having it lit; either seemed too much trouble, too theatrical. A fire in the morning in Key West is ridiculous, like a cold shower outdoors in Nunavut. I'd been trying to think of the right words since the night before. It seemed time to give up, and just say whatever the h.e.l.l came into my head. Only nothing came into my head.

I turned and looked around at my friends. They could all see I was in pain. Not telling them what it was was impolite, keeping them in suspense. I lifted the bottle, as one lifts a gla.s.s to propose a toast, and everybody lifted theirs. "Empty your gla.s.ses," I said, and upended the bottle and drank until nothing came out.

n.o.body argued or questioned or mentioned the early hour; as one they drank with me.

I tossed the bottle a few inches in the air, changed my grip on it to its neck, and flung it into the fireplace, so hard that it managed to destroy the fire setup before exploding against the back wall.

"I planned for that bottle to last a lifetime," I said, and then shook my head. "I just didn't know whose."

I could see faces begin to change, and I understood that keeping them all in the dark any longer now would be unforgivable-and still, forcing out the few simple words was harder than fingertip push-ups.

"Dot's dying. Maybe one week, maybe four. Not eight. Brain tumor."

Five seconds of pindrop silence crawled by, and then something happened for which I can find no other adjective than that most overused of words, awesome. Maybe you were in a crowd when you heard about 9/11, or about the Nameless One backshooting Johnny Lennon, and you know what I mean; if you don't, I hope you never find out. When two or three dozen adults all suddenly burst loudly into tears at once, it goes beyond sad or tragic or even terrible; it's all three of those, certainly, but most of all it's just ... awesome.

Groans, sobs, wails, wordless outcries of all kinds. Loudest was Long-Drink McGonnigle, who fell to his knees, bellowing like a speared bull. Lex made a gargling sound, cut the water in a running dive, and disappeared. Every couple there turned to each other and embraced, their empty gla.s.ses still in hand. So did many singles; multiperson hugs formed simultaneously in several locations. Some people just sat down as if their strings had been cut, on the ground if necessary. Fast Eddie's head was on his keyboard, his hands clasped on the back of his head. Noah Gonzalez turned on his heel and walked away as if rejecting the whole business, then stopped and came back-then left again, then came back-I remember thinking it must be hard for him to keep pivoting that way with only the one leg. Tommy Janssen dropped his empty gla.s.s, beat his temples with the heels of his hands three times, then held his skull in them as if to keep it from bursting. I found myself in a group embrace with Double Bill, Josie Bauer, Arethusa, either Suzy or Susie Maser, and my wife. A group embrace with everybody sobbing in a different rhythm is really weird, but there was some comfort in it just the same.

An empty gla.s.s burst in the fireplace. I didn't see who started it. Suzy Maser was second. Then Omar. A few seconds later, three more gla.s.ses arrived together, then a scattering, and finally the barrage began in earnest. The hug I was in broke up in order to partic.i.p.ate. That fireplace is designed specifically to retain broken gla.s.s under just such conditions, but shards sprayed from it now, and so did brick chips.

Finally it dwindled away as we all ran out of ammo-except for Long-Drink. When his gla.s.s was gone, he threw his hat after it . . . and then his sungla.s.ses, and then his cigarettes, and then his beeper, and then his watch . . . he was reaching behind him for his wallet when Omar and Tommy put hands on his shoulders and made him stop. Gently but firmly they got him to his feet and led him away like James Brown, to the cottage he shares with Tommy. I was vaguely glad it lies to the north of my own, between mine and Eddie's, so they didn't have to pa.s.s Doc and Mei-Ling's place to get there. Maureen hurried ahead of them and got the door, then followed them in.

Eventually people started talking, of course. But you know, even in my grief I noticed then that not once did one person ask me a single stupid question. n.o.body said, "Are they sure?" or, "Can't they do something?" or, "Why don't they operate?" or, "How's Mei-Ling taking it?" or any of the useless things people always say in such situations, because they feel they have to say something and there is nothing sensible. I was asked only one question, and it was a pretty good one; I only wished I had a happy answer. Fast Eddie called out, "Yo Jake. Mike don't answer?"

People stopped talking to hear my reply. I found that I could not trust my voice, even with a single syllable, so I just shook my head. And that made everyone slump a bit more, but n.o.body felt a need to follow up with, "Not even his machine?" or, "Did you let it ring ten times?" or, "Are you sure you got the number right?" or any other intelligence-insulting question. Okay, we can't order up a miracle, it was worth a try, let's move on, was the general att.i.tude. Do you see why I've devoted my life to hanging out with those people? Within the next couple of minutes, we had sorted ourselves out, quite automatically, without direction or conscious decision. Each one of us needed help, to one degree or another-some more, some less. Each one of us had some kind of help to give-some more, some less. We'd known each other a long time, and been mutually telepathic more than once. So we triaged ourselves, without needing to think much about it. We mixed and matched and remixed and improvised until those in need got some and those with surplus gave some, and everyone found at least some measure of solace. With the help of alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and food-but most of all with the help of each other-we got through that morning together.

All of us except the Professor and Erin, who spent most of it way over on the other side of town, with n.o.body but Tony Donuts Junior for company.

7.

TELLING THE TALE.

No conditions are permanent; No conditions are reliable; Nothing is self.

-the Buddha.