The question was fairly straightforward.

“What are the things that make you really happy?”

He’d always do this to me — send my head spinning by asking things I’d spent a lifetime avoiding thinking about.

“How do you mean?”

“Just that,” he repeated, “what are the things that make you really happy?”

I tried thinking of the last time I had even been happy.

I couldn’t remember. How strange.

“I don’t know, man. Can’t we talk about something normal for a change?”

“Normal?” he asked, carefully weighing the word.

It wasn’t rhetorical, he really didn’t get it.

“You know, the things people usually talk about — the weather, sports …”

“Why would I want to talk about the weather?”

“Seriously man, just chill out. Let’s just enjoy the beer for a while, yes?”

He gave a sort of nod and turned away.

Of all the times spent wasting away at J’s bar with him, this is the one memory that comes back to me as clear as day. I remember the twitchy eye, the nervous fidgeting, the unusual number of cigarette stubs in the tray, and in between, like dust-motes under sunbeam, hung a question left unanswered.

We go to a coffee shop after his funeral.

“What is your most vivid memory of him?” she asks.

I’m looking out of the window at a little boy on the sidewalk. His head is stooped low as he walks, his gaze fixed hard on the ground — he’s looking for crispy leaves to crush under his feet.

She calls out to me.

“Huh?”

“I asked what your most vivid memory of him was.”

“Oh.”

We sit in silence for close to a minute, I quietly contemplating, she alternating between staring outside the window and sipping her coffee.

I shake my head.

“There are many, I’m not sure where to start”, I say.

“How about the most recent?”

I give it some thought.

“Then maybe I’d tell you about the day he called me over to tell me he was going to become a father.”

A smile runs across her lips. She nods slightly, prompting me to carry on.

“No,” I say, “that’s it.”

“How can that be it?”

“I did not go.”

She looks confused now. Not her fault, but then I hate having to explain things.

“Can we meet at J’s today? I have something to tell you.”

His voice was shaky. Somewhere between overwhelmed and afraid.

“I’m flooded here at the office today. Can’t you tell me over the phone?”

“El is pregnant. I’m going to become a father.”

“Shit, that’s great news!”

“It is, isn’t it?”

It was the way he said it — with an uncertainty that I had never realised had existed in a man as sure as he. This came to me as an afterthought, of course. I was never quite the one to pay attention.

“We need to celebrate this, but I’m busy now.”

“That’s okay.”

“Don’t sound so low! Tell you what, I’ll call when I get off from work, we’ll go.”

“Sounds good.”

“I don’t understand. You did not go or you could not go?”

“What difference does it make?” I say with a sigh, “it’s all the same now, El.”

She’s about to break down, I sense. I feel the need to say something.

“This morning, while unpacking my winter clothes, I found an old photograph of the three of us.”

She dabs the corner of her eye with a napkin.

“It fell from between one of my old diaries. He was holding that injured stray he’d brought home, do you remember?”

“Kafka”, she says with a nod.

“Yes, and I was totally against it! Kafka was no name for a female cat.”

“He insisted on it, didn’t he?”

“Yes, ‘gives her an air of mystery’, he’d say.”

“Nineteen doesn’t seem like such a long time ago” she says with a hint of nostalgia.

I like to believe that, in some way, we have immortalised this moment in time — this and many others — and I realise that it may not seem like much but it’s all we have to remember him by.

She looks calmer now — happier, even. I call out to her but it’s her turn to lose herself in deep thought.

So instead, I drink my coffee and let the quiet wash over.

It was a lie. I did meet him at the bar that night.

“You’re here!”, he shouted.

He was pretty drunk when I found him.

“Good thing you’re here, the boy’s hitting it hard,’ J said, shaking a bottle of Jack in his hand, “you look after him, okay?”

“Don’t I always, J?”

I’m sorry J.

“It’s so good to have you here!”

“Well, the occasion called for a celebration after all, did it not?”

He said nothing.

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“Last week …”

“Why’d you wait so long to tell me?”

“You’re always so busy. I didn’t want to intrude,” he said, a hint of disappointment in his voice.

“Too busy for you? Never!”

“Sure.”

“Oh come on, don’t give me that!”

“Give you what?”

“Okay, well in that case — why call me now?”

Again, silence.

He rubbed his fingers along the rim of his glass, blankly staring at the liquor cabinet which sat opposite the counter. I scanned the pub we would visit with religious frequency in our youth.

Not much had changed, perhaps some of furniture was new, and they’d removed the old Wurlitzer box and J’s hair was somehow whiter but everything else at least felt the same.

The smell of sweat and cigarettes, J’s nicotine stained smile, the constant chatter, men offering to buy women drinks, women declining their advances with obvious disinterest or, on rare occasions welcoming them — it was all as it had always been — and I certainly hadn’t changed.

He lit a cigarette.

“I thought you’d quit?”

He breathed out the smoke and watched it pass over my head.

“It’s not mine.”

“What isn’t yours?”

“The child.”

“What?”

“It’s not my child.”

“Wh — ”

He shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

An intense rage built up inside me. Was it El I was angry at? Was it god? Even now, I do not know. I do know that I had wanted to punch a hole in the wall.

Why did the most unfortunate things happen to the kindest man I’d known?

Life isn’t just unfair. It’s plain cruel.

I think that on some level I blamed myself for his misfortune. That I had been successful in life while he had failed in every endeavour bore on me like leaden weight. Although with time, I have come to accept that it wasn’t my fault and yet I believe that I could have done more.

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

“Did you not hear me the first time? It doesn’t matter.”

I try to picture his body sinking to the bottom without a fight, and the bottom itself — cold and dark, a void he will never return from, a void he was all too familiar with. I try to think of the things that might have gone through his head.

I close my eyes and hold my breath. Fifty-four seconds is all I can manage.

Melancholy, it hits me like a wave. The weight of it all finally bears down on me.

He is gone.

In my youthful selfishness, there were so many things that I could not — did not say.

Not even goodbye.

I place my pen on the paper and begin to write.

My dog.

Warm fuzzy hugs.

Old bookstores.

Looking through old photographs.

Good company.

Cold winter mornings.

Sunrise.

The mountains.

The beach.

Mother’s cooking.

Helping someone in need.

Giving love.

Receiving it.

The question is fairly straightforward.

What are the things that make you really happy?

Special thanks to Snippets for all the help. As I’ve said before, I can’t seem to thank you enough!