by Brad Oates
The youngest member of Edgar's inner circle by two years, Jake had joined the group late, and only through sheer tenacity had he managed to be accepted at all. Still, he was dependable, and Edgar knew that beyond anyone else in his life, he could always rely on Jake when he wanted to get truly, righteously shit-canned.
It was precisely due to this ease of access that Edgar accurately considered himself quite the authority on the heinous Sunday mornings after a night out with Jake. All the tell-tale signs were there; the swimming head, the raspy throat, and the overwhelming senses of loss, confusion, and regret. Still, even as the evidence mounted, something at the back of his weary mind struggled against the tightening noose of logic, and he could not wholly commit himself to this explanation just yet.
Pulling another cigarette from his still-full pack, he trudged onward as he drew the lighter up to his mouth. With a flick of his thumb, the flame ignited, sending a soothing wave of nicotine coursing down his desert-dry throat.
If Edgar had thought he'd heard angels singing before, there was no doubt now. With a final step, the haze of fog peeled back to reveal a stout brown building with dirty windows and a flickering, neon sign: The Scholar's Lament.
The chill which ran down his spine was accompanied by a long sigh, and despite his ongoing misgivings, Edgar could imagine nowhere else he'd rather be at the moment. The place had served as a sanctuary during his 'academic career', and it was in this very bar that he'd cemented most of the defining relationships of his life.
"Another round over here!" Stepping into the large, dim room, Edgar was immediately put at ease by a familiar voice. Gazing around, he found everything in place—exactly as he remembered. The unused popcorn machine in the corner, the sprawling bookshelves full of battered hardcover tomes beautifully bound with patterns utterly unrevealing of their contents... even the tiny shelf high up in the far corner holding an odd, miniature brass motorcycle.
Tinny, outdated music played quietly from beaten up speakers mounted above the long bar, and in the far left corner opposite the door was the ugly old ceramic statue of a student toiling over an invisible project, his forehead balanced on his palm in a show of deep frustration. The intricately painted statue, as always, was covered with countless years of intimate personalized graffiti.
"Hurry up!" Once again, the voice was Duncan's, who sat beside the scholar and stared over at Edgar with an impatient smirk.
The call made Emeric turn, adjust his glasses, and send out that big, dumb smile he seemed to reserve only for the company of his friends.
"Hey Edgar," he called softly, his voice barely making its way over. Edgar moved slowly, passing strangers as his mind raced with possibilities. How much did I drink last night?
Draped around the shoulder of the poor busy scholar was the long, muscular arm of Jake. How long has it been since we've all been together? Edgar wondered as he made his way methodically through the familiar bar. A year at least, maybe more?
Time was cruel to young men and naïve promises, and although the four of them remained relatively close, it was an especially rare occurrence these days that their schedules allowed all of them to get together at once.
Not all, Edgar corrected himself, not anymore.
The three familiar faces watching him from across the room burdened Edgar once again with the nagging suspicion that perhaps his entire situation was still, somehow, the tail end of the most elaborate joke ever pulled.
A splitting hangover, a walk through an inscrutable void, and a trail of doubt leading through a golden gate and ending at his old university hangout. Doubting his sense of reality was nothing new to Edgar, but existential questioning certainly was. How does one know if he's truly dead? He wondered. The question was too heavy to hold in the tissue paper folds of his throbbing brain, and he let it spill out with no significant contemplation. If he was to unravel the mystery of the night before, the three men in front of him were the place to start. Those bastards.
If it was a cruel joke, he was certain he could rule Emeric out. The mousy little man, although clever, would never have the spine to play a trick on anyone, and Edgar least of all.
Jake certainly would have done it, but alone the drunken buffoon was about as practical as tits on a bull, and his ability to plan was even less functional. The ever-increasing complexity of the joke—if indeed it was one—meant Jake could not have done it by himself at any rate.
If anyone could have pulled this off, it would be Duncan. In his prime, Duncan was the perfect foil to Edgar—returning every joke, answering every shot, and one-upping him with every misdeed. But Duncan was Edgar's oldest friend and closest rival...if he'd done it, the crowd he assembled to witness the humiliating punch-line would have been far more significant.
Stopping in front of the table, his friends turned cheerfully to greet him. Emeric pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, smiled, and nodded in eager anticipation of Edgar's acknowledgment. Definitely not Emeric...but he'll be the first one to come clean if he does know anything.
Jake, his arm still cast about the ceramic student in a careless gesture betraying no affection, stared not at Edgar, but rather at the five shots presently being laid out by a waitress. An exceptionally sexy waitress, Edgar noted with restrained glee.
Duncan, meanwhile, was a picture of poise—sitting squarely against the backrest of his chair with his hands folded politely in front of him. He gave one stiff, formal nod as he spoke, "Edgar."
No one moved...no one said a word. Emeric, Edgar realized with unease, failed to pass his shot up to him, as was customary. The bar waited in purgatorial silence until a jarring sound brought Edgar's head around to the right, where a chair at the end of their table had been pulled out with a long, grating screech. Falling into it with a graceless but refreshingly characteristic plop, was Alex.
That was it for Edgar. His breath left him like a freight train making up for lost time, and he stood stuttering meekly. He had known only Duncan longer than Alex, having met the latter in his first year of university. Together, the three of them had partied and grown; they'd learned life lessons, and shared things that were...unsharable.
Everything changed after university, however. As Edgar applied himself to music and worked his way into an industry that was every bit as nepotistic and elitist as he'd imagined, Duncan had lied, stolen, and even studied his way into the ranks of a prestigious law firm. Emeric had taken up a professorship at the very university they'd all studied at, and Jake, never having chosen a major, dropped out once his friends finished their tenures, but managed to finance his nights out with Edgar by taking up construction.
Meanwhile, Alex began to drift. An inspired painter and lover of wine, women, and whimsy, Alex shared just about every characteristic of Edgar's save for the latter's respectable preference for hard liquor; that and his drive for success. While every bit as talented, even Edgar would admit that— albeit only to himself—Alex was interested only in the moment. He'd simply travelled about, never applying himself to any long-term goals.
The thing that really bothered Edgar however—and never more than this moment—was what Alex did when he'd finally come back to reunite with his old friends years later. It wasn't that they'd ever lost touch, social media made that almost impossible, it was just that they had so much proper catching up to do. So, when Alex ended up wrapping his jalopy around a tree after their first night out drinking and being carried away on a covered stretcher, it had put almost as much of a damper on the festivities as his sitting down at the table just now.
"Fuck," said Edgar. Emeric smiled up at him, his pale hand extending a shot.
"Time to get drinking boy!" bellowed Jake, as he waved, and half-spilled, a shot under the nose of the eponymous lamenting scholar.
Duncan smiled with quiet repose.
"Good to see you, buddy." Alex looked up with unabashed sincerity— he'd never lost that shit-eating clarity usually reserved for children and lunatics.
"But you're
..."
The words stuck in Edgar's throat, but his table seemed to care little for the immediate completion of clauses. Instead they followed Duncan's example, and watched with good-natured patience.
"...dead," Edgar finally finished.
"Yeah," Alex agreed, shrugging his shoulders as if to indicate that it was every bit the bummer Edgar seemed to imply.
"And so am I." He needed no conductor to follow this train to its destination.
"Yeah!" Jake hollered with the drunken enthusiasm of a freshman at a strip club.
Emeric shook his head. Then, realizing the obfuscating nature of his gesture, nodded to Edgar in an exaggerated arc, blushed, and stared back down at the table.
"Afraid so, my friend," Duncan chimed in, his calm voice chiding, "you really fucked up this time."
"Thanks," Edgar mumbled.
"Now don't mope about it. It'll happen to us all eventually." While sincere communication was nearly a foreign language to Duncan, he did mean well on occasion.
"Happened to that asshole long ago," Jake declared, thrusting a meaty hand towards Alex, and spilling the majority of his shot in the process.
Alex offered only a comical shrug and an exaggerated pout. "Sorry about him," consoled Emeric.
"Let's move on from all this unpleasantness, Mr. Vincent. Here we are after all, together again!" said Duncan.
"Don't call me that!" Edgar snapped.
"Sorry Eds, didn't mean to ruin your afterlife." The self-assured smile on Duncan's face had been custom-designed long ago to raise Edgar's ire. It worked without fail.
"Drink, you losers!" Jake hoisted his near-empty shot glass into the air. "The man is crass, but he isn't wrong," Duncan admitted, holding up his shot in turn.
With a gentle clink and a uniform motion, the five reunited friends tossed the liquor down their throats. Jake scowled darkly into his empty shot glass— seeming to suspect it of withholding—as Edgar took the chair beside Emeric. His attention lingered briefly on a final empty seat near the wall beside him, an unbidden question playing through his mind before being forced out by another.
"Holy shit!" The consideration only struck him that very moment. "Are you guys all dead too? What the hell happened to us?"
"Afraid not, mon frère, you're on this journey alone." While he enjoyed toying with Edgar, Duncan's intentions were beyond dispute. He could always be counted on to tell Edgar what he really needed to hear, and—to Edgar's endless frustration—to remind him of things he would sooner forget.
"He is." Jake's finger shot across the table again, sloppily jabbing Alex in the eye and eliciting a yelp.
"Watch it, dude! I'm dead, that doesn't mean I don't feel." Alex rubbed his eye as Jake nodded proudly.
"If you're not dead, how are you here?" Edgar demanded. "And how did both Alex and I make it to heaven for fuck's sake?"
"Maybe this is actually hell." Jake leaned forward as he spoke, placing his palms flat on the table as his eyes turned to saucers.
"Oh wow," Alex said with a chuckle, but no one at the table was willing to bite onto Jake's attempted epiphany.
Edgar grimaced over at Jake, who only lowered his eyes in an ill-fitting display of humility. "Now that that's out of the way, can we focus on the guy who just fucking died for a second? Explain to me how you guys are here."
Gulping uncouthly from his wine, Alex leaned over and placed a small hand on Edgar's forearm, "What would heaven be without friends, buddy?"
"You, I can understand, but what about the living ones?"
"Alex might not be wrong." The tips of Emeric's forefingers circled his temples as he spoke, and were soon lost in the coarse red wire of his hair. "It wouldn't be very heavenly if you had to sit around just waiting for everyone else to die."
With a sudden motion, Jake's hand flashed over in a wide arc and knocked the glasses from Emeric's face with a loud crack. "This isn't all about you Emmy, you selfish prick."
Emeric stuttered self-consciously before reaching down to gather up his glasses. Jake searched the faces of his peers for affirmation of his good deed.
"That was thoughtless, Emeric," Duncan agreed, the sarcasm in his voice readily apparent to everyone but its intended target. Jake beamed.
Edgar watched Duncan take a long sip from a glass of caramel coloured liquid—brandy—Edgar knew. At least one of my friends has class.
"I'm glad you shitheads are here," Edgar admitted, "...and for this bar. Heaven isn't half as bad as I'd have guessed, especially when I saw those ungodly obnoxious gates out there."
"No doubt about it. I can hardly imagine how all those Christians can stand it," said Duncan. This sent a gale of laughter around the table.
"I don't suppose their heaven would be like this at all." Emeric was dedicated to the quandary now, and seldom allowed himself to fall into the languid humour which Duncan and Edgar both loved so much.
"What is eschewed on Earth is denied beyond it... If I'd known that I would've been far less abstaining," said Edgar.
"And here twice as soon," came Duncan's quick retort.
"How did I die anyway?" he wondered aloud. "Do any of you remember anything?"
He was met with blank stares.
"What can I get for you, handsome?" The voice came from beside him, and turning, Edgar saw a stunningly beautiful server leaning in to take his order. Not the same one as before, it struck him that this one might be even more unnervingly lovely. Heaven, he decided right then, would suit him well.
"Scotch," he answered with a well-practiced smile. "Your very best," he finished, after briefly considering the occasion's special significance.
"Of course, sir." The woman curtsied deeply before she turned; a trite gesture, but sufficient at least to allow Edgar a better view of heaven than he'd had up to that point.
Finishing his wine and glancing over his shoulder to ascertain the whereabouts of his next drink, Alex returned Edgar's attention to more practical matters. "Can I bum a smoke from you?"
"Come on man, you don't even have your own smokes in heaven?" Edgar rolled his eyes but reached into his back pocket without any true resentment. Removing two from the pack, he handed one to his needy friend and lit the other for himself.
"I'm just going to go ahead and assume I can smoke in here."
"Heaven ain't so different after all," Jake declared with a guffaw.
"I just ran out," Alex grumbled defensively.
"I don't run out anymore," shared Edgar with a delighted smile. "It's like a fresh pack every time I open it up here."
"Well, you are in heaven," Emeric spoke softly, the better to dull the redundancy of his input.
"And yet my friends remain beggars?" Edgar laughed aloud.
"You are the company you keep." Jake smiled broadly, then poured the remainder of his beer down his gaping maw.
"I believe you're thinking of 'what you eat.'" Duncan spoke in an incredulous monotone.
"But I'm not even hungry." Jake was confused.
"Jesus guys...I'm beginning to dislike heaven again. Is it like this for you too, Alex?" Edgar asked.
Alex twirled his empty wine-glass absently between two thin fingers. Finally catching his attention, Edgar was answered only by an uncertain gaze.
Emeric glanced about inquisitively, eagerly soaking up every clue he could as the waitress brought out Edgar's drink.
"You're as useless in heaven as you were on Earth, Alex." Edgar spoke from the side of his mouth, skillfully managing to simultaneously sip at his scotch and take another drag from his cigarette. "This is fucking perfect. I'm dead, and I'll never even know how I died."
"Hey, I'm sure it'll come back to you eventually." Emeric set a comforting hand on Edgar's arm.
"You know what the real kicker is? I was just about done writing the score for BHI!"
Duncan turned his attention to the bar as Emeric nodded sympathetically. Alex stared vacantly into his empty glass, while Jake drifted off—his lips wrestling with some unspoken debate.
This continued as Edgar drank in silence. After some time, Jake's struggle overpowered the apathy of his friends and brought them all around to gape at him in dumbfounded awe as he continued opening and closing his mouth in exaggerated movements.
Ultimately, it was Duncan who broke the silence, "BHI—it's an acronym you fucking idiot, stop trying to sound it out."
"Basic Human Indecency. Don't you remember the documentary Edgar was scoring?" Emeric always sought to play the peacemaker.
"Watch it, Emmy," Jake threatened. Edgar slumped down into his seat— his forehead finding a comfortable perch in the palm of his hand.
The table was quiet a moment, as each man considered what Edgar might need. "Don't be so glum, my pitiful pupil." Duncan reached over and gave Edgar a loving punch on the shoulder, then held up five fingers to the waitress behind the bar.
Looking up at the statue across from him, Edgar managed an ironic laugh. "Sorry guys, it's just a bit much, you know. BHI was going to be my masterwork. I was finally going to show those fuckers exactly why I'm the best. What my music would have done for that script—it was really poised to make an impact. The entire project will probably fall through now. Heaven— shit!"
Edgar lit himself another cigarette, intuitively passing one to Alex before being asked. No one spoke as the server brought out the requested round, placing them before each man in turn—scotch, beer, brandy, wine, rum and coke.
"How can a group as incompetent as all of you be here with me, if you're also still alive?" The question straddled the line between simple rhetoric and pleading sincerity with painful uncertainty as Edgar finished his first scotch and moved on to the next.
Duncan only smiled. It was not a demeaning gesture, nor even mocking. He just smiled over at his friend and allowed a moment to pass.
Edgar looked to Emeric, who nodded reassuringly. He was seldom much help, but ever the most eager in the attempt.
