If we had known our math better, instead of the usual counting off one, two, three, one two, three, we definitely would have succeeded in the way we both wanted. If we knew how to turn our last moments into a problem, we could have simply solved for X instead of doing clumsy trial and error. Perhaps we might have looked foolish with calculators and graphing paper and all that, but we would have gotten the job done. You only get so many times to try and kill yourself.
Or maybe it would have been better for us to have been so bad with numbers that we had no chance of ever killing just one of us. If we had been completely incapable of an educated guess then we would have been too conservative with either the oven or the pills and none of us would have been killed. But even though Campbell was the one who died, he still wanted it to happen. He did not intend to leave anyone like me behind, someone close who he could not imagine being left to pick up the pieces, put everything together, and try to move on. He must not have felt that close to Alyssa, because that is exactly how he left her, but the intricacies of their relationship were always a mystery to me. Maybe she was in on it, or knew what we were up to through inference, and then did not care.
Yet here I am now, left behind despite all the plans and resolutions I had made with Campbell, that I did not want to go on. When we set everything up, taping shut the windows and the holes in the walls and cracks under the doors, I thought I was set. We had purchased enough pills to kill a large mammal, at least by our estimation. But neither of us had ever had a pet larger than a hermit crab, so what did we know? Yet we had the same certainty that told us life could not get better convincing us that we could not fail. We thought that to fail at suicide was always a choice, done by those who were desperate, but wanted to be found out and saved for help. They would make sure the rope was the wrong length, the bag was not thick enough, the gun not really aimed at the right place, and the cut deep but missing every vital vein or artery.
One of us died, so they know it was no cry for help. I am in the ward with all the other failures, who came up short, but they did it on purpose. I am in a bed with tubes stuck in me and feeling all the more an idiot because I really did want out, planned for an escape, but my plan was only half successful. The others do not say anything to me, but I can tell they are judging me. Inside their heads the gears turn up words to describe me, words they think I cannot hear. I do not really hear them, but I can guess. They can probably do the same with me, if only because we have been in this room with nothing to do but look at one another until we have become fully literate in reading the contours of each other's faces and the punctuation we might use with the darting of our eyes.
"Hello Dylan, how are you feeling today?" A woman facing down the precipice of middle age takes a seat by my bed. I know she is looking out for me. She went to school for all those years dreaming of helping people like myself from harm. She may not have had the image of my face exactly in this hospital bed sustaining her all those years when she was tempted to perhaps become an accountant or lawyer, but my case was what she was hoping to work with.
"I would say the same old, same old, but I'm in a hospital. It's not my usual thing."
"Dylan, there is someone here to see you."
"Oh really? This isn't your fancy way of saying that the medication lady or lord is here?"
"Not at all. It's your sister. Clarissa."
I look by the door and there she is, leaning against the threshold, holding her purse tightly by the strap as always. She comes in takes the mental health specialist's seat. I'm not sure if she is a psychiatrist or a psychologist. If she is giving me pills, she is doing it without me seeing any of the prescriptions. I look at my sister and she looks back at me. We say nothing for a while and then she reaches out and her braceleted hand delicately grabs my wrist as if I had cut it in hopes of escaping life and the usual drag.
"We buried Campbell yesterday. I thought you would want to know."
"Oh. How was the weather?"
"It was sunny. Isn't always sunny here?"
"Yes, yes. Just wanted to make sure I didn't miss any snow or rain."
"No, there was none of that."
There is another moment of silence and it drags on. I think that might be appropriate to start praying. The last time I had gone without so much sound in a group of people I was in a church. I look at my sister and smile. She had come out all the way here, I figure she should be starting all the conversations.
"You know he did it because of you."
I am startled, but able to respond. "We did IT together. If you mean that IT was our joint suicide." Some of the bodies in the other bed stirred.
"You lied to him."
"How did I lie to him?"
"You told him that you were a DJ."
"I never said that."
"Well that's what he thought. He thought you were Mr. DJ, spinning discs in all the clubs."
"I never told him that. I didn't like to say the word…karaoke, but I'm sure he could tell. Did I ever mention clubs?"
"Alyssa told me that he said you were a DJ. In the clubs. Spinning discs. I don't know where he got that idea—"
"I never told him that. I'm not that creative." I sink a bit into my pillow and sheets.
"Well that's what he thought. He would apparently say to Alyssa 'how can I be happy if Dylan is a successful DJ with his own business and he isn't happy?'"
"Yes, I have my own business. But only because I couldn't bear doing karaoke for someone else. If I was going to play someone else's songs like that, I might as well be my own boss, miserable as it is."
"I guess he should have looked you up online. There's a lot you can find out that way. You ever look him up?"
"No Clarissa, no. And I haven't looked you up either. I don't do that with everyone I love."
"We'll you won't find much for him, that's sure."
"He's probably got fan pages and cults following his every move."
"What do you mean?"
"He was Mr. Musician, playing in the park for crowds, coffeehouses, all that. That's what I assumed from what he told me. Should I have assumed differently? That he was a drug dealer, or known pornographer, or maybe just a secret public notary?"
"You probably played his music."
"What?"
"Well, the odds are that you played his music, or at least own it."
"I have his CD."
"No, I don't mean Neon Vernacular, or whatever he called it. No, Dylan, he was a studio musician."
"I have no problem with that. Are you being elitist again?"
"No, Dylan, his job was to make karaoke music."
"Oh."
"That's what he did. He recorded other people songs so someone like you could play them for other people to butcher when drunk."
"I had no idea."
"Where did you think it all comes from?"
"I just thought it was all done with computers now."
"Well they still need a human to play it."
"Yeah."
We talk for a little bit more and then she leaves. The good thing about family visitors is that the medical staff gives you a break while you rest from them. When I had a moment to myself I tried to rest, though between every batting of my eyelids I saw the two of us, Dylan and Campbell back together, having eaten our pills and breathing in the fumes from the stove. Our heads were in that odd position which now seems unique to us, my head and his resting right by one another and our bodies stretched out in different directions. The light is a healthy amber color, almost what might one expect from a cheap beer, but perfect for this occasion. It brings out all the contours we share in common. I look at my brother and I happily breathe deeper. Now I know what Campbell is thinking. There is no more song to record that another has written, no more covers meant for unappreciative audiences. If this is the only way he can hope to be original, then this is it. I try and think about what song could be playing while I am unknowingly only damaging myself and he is dying, but damn it, all that comes up is Journey.
Benjamin Nardolilli is twenty four years old and lives Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee, The Oklahoma Review, Hawk and Handsaw, Heroin Love Songs, The Poetry Warrior, One Ghana One Voice, The Maynard, Elimae, Scythe, and Perspectives Magazine. He maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.