Despite not having known each other long, Lisa and Brad went on a trip together outside the country, so some time had passed before I was able to speak about any of this.
"How was your trip?" I later asked him, once he returned and we were yet again in the same bar sipping the same type of beer.
"Huh?"
"Your trip. With Lisa. How was it?"
"Oh, yeah, you know," he said before finishing his glass.
"That good huh?"
"That good." He was a man of few words.
"So you know, I never got to tell you about what happened," I said.
"What happened with what?"
"With the dentist. Gretchen. I went for my appointment and she wasn't there. Now I have to wait till next time I guess," I said before I sipped. Brad only looked at me with an expression of bewilderment on his face, appearing serious all of a sudden.
"Dude, you don't know?" he asked with his mouth agape.
"Don't know what?" I asked.
"Didn't I tell you?" he said. These questions were beginning to annoy me, and I wish he'd just have it out.
"What, did she run off and get married with one of your Marine buddies? Figures," I said, answering my own question before he had any chance to speak. I swear, women think that they're the ones who have all the heartache, but it isn't true. At least women have their women friends to discuss their heartache with, unlike me. What was I supposed to do, pour myself out here in front of Brad and say I was still depressed over Margaret dumping me, or even worse, that I'd not been with a woman since? No thanks.
I looked over at Brad who was still gaping at me.
"What the fuck is your problem?" I said. He was really beginning to annoy me now. I wish he'd just come and say what he means rather than act all dopey all the time. But then again, what could I expect from a Marine who'd been drinking?
"It's just that I thought you knew," he said with a grin.
"Knew what?" I said loudly, but being in a bar, it was not loud enough to penetrate the alcohol lingering in the air.
"She committed suicide."
"What?!?!" I shouted. This time it was loud enough. He repeated himself.
"What do you mean, she committed suicide? I thought you were gonna say she lost her license 'cause someone found out about the tequila, or that she ran off and got married. Where did you hear that?"
"It was on the news, in the papers, where've you been?"
"Not reading any of it I guess. Where…what…when did it happen?"
"About a month ago, right before Lisa and I went on our trip. But get this, you wanna hear how she did it?" he asked with a strange smile. I'll admit that a part of me felt guilty in wanting to know how.
"What, did she drive off a cliff or something?"
"No, get this. She injected some of that Novocain shit into her neck, and then slit her throat with a scalpel."
"Ugh!" I exclaimed, loudly enough to be heard a few tables over. Suddenly my beer did not look so appetizing, and I pushed the glass, along with the bowl of peanuts, across the table in disgust. I turned my head and looked outward, trying to focus on something, which happened to be a chubby woman in overalls trying to bend over to make a shot at pool. I watched her hit the balls, as they made their clicks across the green felt, followed by her roar of laughter.
"I don't remember ever hearing that. I'd have surely remembered if they said something like that on the news," I said.
"They didn't give out the details, they just said she died. Lisa was the one who told me how it really happened. Sorry man, I'd have told you sooner, but I thought you knew," he said.
"I guess I'm not as desensitized as you."
"No, it ain't that. I just forgot is all. Who'da known she was so fucked up to go on and do a thing like that?" he said.
"Yeah, who'da known," I repeated.
"Too bad though, she was pretty hot."
"Yeah, I suppose," I agreed, and left it at that.
It was a strange feeling that overwhelmed me that night. It was not one of overwhelming sadness or loss, just surprise. I had heard a joke once about dentists having the highest suicide rate of all medical professionals. They were, in effect, the poets in their field. But she was the only one I could remember liking even remotely. To lose one's self in another was certainly possible, if allowed. To be left with nothing of the self, save for timid recall and strange happenstance. I thought again of her perfect neck that night- I could not get its shape out of my mind, how her individual hair strands coaxed against it, how undisturbed the skin there was and how smoothly the alcohol went down as I remembered her swallowing it, and then her grinning. It was a stupid thing, but I kept recalling her thin necklace too, with the little red heart attached to it, wondering now what had happened to it and if it meant much at all. I thought this for a while, and about all the things that go noticed by most others or myself, which ended up being not very much, if at all.
Jessica Schneider is a fiction writer, poet and the co-founder of Cosmoetica.com. She has written several novels as well as short story collections and plays. Her work has appeared in New York Review, Womb, Avatar Review, Tryst, Ache, Stride, Eclectica, storySouth, Manifest, Ken Again, Stick Your Neck Out, Sidereality, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Hackwriters, among others, and her short story "Sandwiches From Home" was nominated for the Million Writer's Award, as well as having her poem "Another Woman" picked for poem of the day for 5/26/06 by Frank Wilson, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Book Editor. Her blog is jaschneider.blogspot.com.