November 10, 2009. New Haven, CT.

... but it's pouring down with rain
do you remember?
are you alive?
do you still speak of deeds undone?

Back at school. I haven't visited much since I graduated, and I try to stay away when I can. But there were forms to initial and personal effects to sign for, and before I knew it I was back at the Beinecke Library after hours, just like old times.

I don't know who originally broke the padlock on the door leading to the roof, but it's been hanging open ever since I first climbed up the access ladder at the top of the stairwell. Whoever it was probably had the same idea I did; from any of the lower floors, the neighboring buildings block out the view of the sky. Climbing up, I experience an unaccountable moment of disorientation -- the smell of acrid gunpowder smoke somewhere in the dusty stairwell. I was thinking about fireworks.

Down in the valley of the street below, the last of the day's cold moves sluggishly; exposed to the open air on three sides, the roof feels far away from the evening traffic. Squat turrets of the air vents, the humming bulk of the air conditioning unit, a line of pigeons huddled on the edge of the roof : I'm not surprised that nobody else is up here. So I find a likely-looking bend of utility pipe to sit on, button my coat to the neck, and wait for the dark.

And the smell of foliage that brings it back.

Two years ago, or three, the damp soaking up into my shoes from the wet grass as we all stood, waiting. My dress shoes, because Chloe and I had been ... driving? Remembering the windows down, the warmth of the air on the interstate, my collar too tight, stickiness on the soles of my feet in those uncomfortable shoes as we drove ... where? And it all falls together, those individual pieces of memory like playing cards.

... but achievements never last
do you recall?
do you dream?
do you still need company?

I don't remember if I had seen the invitation, or it could have been a phone call, but it eventually ended up with Chloe and myself on the road, I uncomfortable in my rented suit and she in her pearls. We had taken her car for the trip, though it wasn't much -- up I-95 north across most of Connecticut into Rhode Island -- and she had been explaining how it wasn't exactly a party. More of a social event, I remember her saying, but all the windows had been down because her air conditioner was broken and we couldn't hear eachother talk too well on the highway. So mostly we listened to the radio, changing channels as we passed through the staticky ranges of the college stations -- Yale, UConn, Connecticut College, URI, a solid block of the Pixies and Sonic Youth as we headed east along the coast.

I remember that we started out early, but I also remember that we arrived in the late afternoon -- the sun canting through the trees as we drove -- which doesn't add up with a three-hour drive. Still, both memories are fixed equally in my mind, bookending the rest of the night. I know that the house was surrounded by quiet streets, an old residential area somewhere in the circles south of Providence, and that we had to backtrack at least once to find it. We had gotten lost somewhere close but not close enough, nearer to the water because we asked directions at the guardhouse of the old Coast Guard training center on the point, a lovely spread-out grounds of oak trees and stone library buildings. Much later, after Chloe had died, I remember trying to find it on a map, for reasons I can't recall.

By the time we rounded the turn up the long drive, gravel crunching under the tires of Chloe's car, and parked at the end of the row of silent cars that had already arrived, the sun was almost gone, last glow in the windows of the upper stories. Getting out of the car, stretching life back into my legs and tugging my collar, I'd asked about the other guests, but Chloe was already talking about the house and outbuildings and mid-1800s architecture.

...but there's nothing left to learn
do you count the years?
do you breathe?
do you still watch the sunrise?

Inside, with the doorman making a pretense of taking our coats, was a blur of introductions and Chloe smiling over my head. There must have been only thirty or forty guests, and the large house with its marble entryway, but together they seemed like more. Not in a rude way, you understand, because they were not rude in the least, but they filled space more than other people. I shook hands, said my name, and sweated, while Chloe -- more practiced than I, and dressed in her own clothes rather than something rented -- laughed and talked about things and people I didn't know. And finally, Chloe excused herself and took me aside, smiling, and pointed out the corridor that led to the game room, and I gladly took the reprieve.

What could I tell you, to convey what it was like that night? I could tell you about the house, because I remember it the best : the heavy brocaded furniture, the echoing hallway with its graceful stairs, the floodlights silhouetting trees in back. Or the other guests, with their grace and sureness, their stories of places and people I didn't know, their easy laughter in other languages. I could tell you about winning forty dollars at the roulette table they'd set up, or about trying to learn the box step while everyone was dancing in the ballroom.

I remember when we all gathered in the dining room, lining the long white-draped table with the chandelier above, and the man who I'd mistook for the doorman stood at the head of the table to announce the first toast. We drank to any number of things, dedicating our health to eachother, and the Art, and the Threefold Fate, and the uncommonly fine champagne. But after all these, and after all our laughter, there was one last toast.

"To the dead," said the doorman, "we can offer nothing and say nothing. The nature of the dead is to give, and what health we can offer them is as nothing to their generosity. We do not drink to them, but rather with them, for they are with us always."

And, in silence, we all drank. And, though the lights stayed on and the music played again from the ballroom, it was only to accompany us outside, with our jackets and our keys and our last handshakes until next year or the year after.

But later, we must not have left at all, or else I must not remember correctly. I remember standing next to Chloe and the doorman, on one of the banks of earth out in the blackness of the polo field, with the night suddenly chilly and dampness seeping up through my shoes. We were looking up, talking quietly about something, waiting. Finally, I remember Chloe pointing upwards, a dim shadow against the lights from the house back among the strees, saying look, up there, there they are. And we looked up where she was pointing just in time to see the first of the thin trails of light as they sidelonged across the night sky before disappearing into the trees. Falling stars. And I forgot about the cold, about the jacket I'd left in the house, about my wet shoes, and looked up. And none of us spoke for as long as I can remember.

...but you never liked to swim
do you feel safe?
are you happy?
do you still know my name?

Months later -- over a year, in fact -- with Chloe dead, I remember going through all the mail that her death had generated. Tax forms, subscriptions, memorials, obituaries, and the daily influx of condolences were all sifted and opened and filled out or replied to. People wanted to be assured of her death, to be reassured, to cordon her off in their scrapbooks or their memories like mine. I replied to all of them. But one morning, not soon after the first rush of mail, there was an envelope with no return address and a Providence postmark, addressed to Chloe. And when I opened it, there was nothing inside but a blank card and the faint smell of wood polish.

Now, on the roof of the library, it has grown as dark as it ever gets in a city. Across the spiky rooftops of the quad, the trees are dark masses pinpricked by windows and streetlights. The edge of the roof has dissoved into the dark. The first green splashes of light are beginning to spread across the sky above my head. I look up, watching the fireworks.

Lyrics: Covenant (the electro group, not the metal one), "Still Life"