Today was Tuesday and here was the Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. Sam and I were here like we were most afternoons, smoking cigarettes under the flying salmon and pretending to wait the rain out. For one thing, in Seattle, the rain waits you out and not the other way around. For another, neither of us wanted to sit alone in our apartments waiting our lies out so this, for now, was ideal.
“I figure death and sex are pretty much the same you know?”
Sam was always philosophizing. He was 23, just a year older than me, but since that year had been spent out of college and in the real world I always kinda figured he knew some things I didn’t. I worked at the Pike Market Medical Clinic as a transporter, which meant I moved patients from the room they were barely living in to the one they would probably die in. Most days, I thought about death and even felt like an active participant in the process. Sam worked at a Kwik Mart down Post Alley from the market. Both of us made enough for rent and cigarettes.
“I mean,” Sam stared through the wall of water coming from the overhang we were sitting under, “I know about as much about what’s supposed to happen after death as I do about what’s supposed to happen after sex.”
Sam had been in several serious relationships. Some of them had come to an abrupt end and some had just faded away. I had only been in one, which hadn’t lasted long and I wasn’t in a hurry to revisit the whole ordeal.
“Ha.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just, I don’t know. Made me laugh.”
“I’m saying,” Sam said, “people always smoke after sex but I never understood why. I figure if I’m ever relaxed during the day it’s after I have sex.”
“Oh? So you have sex most days now?”
“What if I do?”
“What if you do.” I sort of laughed. You could never tell when Sam was being serious or joking or some mix of both.
Sam was real anxious. Always anxious. His eyes were always bouncing around, which I imagined seemed rude to people when they first met him. Sam would take a cigarette out of his mouth with one hand and bite a nail on the other. Real anxious.
“My point is people talk about death as this ‘final resting place.’ Well, I don’t want to get to heaven or wherever and feel like I need a smoke you know?”
“So you figure if sex isn’t enough for you to rest in peace then death might not be either?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Sam had big round glasses, which I suppose made the whole darting eye routine a bit more noticeable, and a scar on his face. Not the kind that makes you feel sorry for a guy though, just the kind that tells you he’s been places. He wasn’t particularly muscular, but not scrawny. I guess he looked like people must have looked before everyone cared so much.
“It would be kind of ironic, though.” He turned away, exhaling a stream of smoke and, while I appreciated the courtesy, it seemed in vain as I looked ahead, exhaling my own.
“What’s that?”
“I mean if you got to heaven,” he said, “and you still wanted to smoke.”
“Why’s that?”
“If smoking kills you and you keep smoking anyway, you beat the system.”
“Well at the rate we’re going we’ll be finding out pretty soon. You got anymore?”
“Last one.” He offered me the remaining cigarette.
“Ah, you have it.”
“Yeah I better,” he said wiping his fogged glasses, “You’re the one who’s still pretty optimistic about life and sex and all that.”
He always figured he’d die young and I always thought that’s why he stared off into the distance and did his hair up like James Dean. He kept his face clean shaven. Sam’s father had run a tight ship when he was growing up and although he had abandoned most of the enforced principals of his youth, this was one that he had not yet shed.
“Thing is Sam, sex causes life.”
“And life causes death.”
“So I guess you’re gonna stop having sex because it eventually causes death?”
“No, Jack.”
“And we’re not gonna stop smoking either. So lets go get some more and head to my place.”
“Alright.” He stood up and put on his brown Members Only jacket that was just a little too short for his torso.
“So why do you think sex and death are pretty much the same anyway?”
“I wake up every morning waiting for one of them to happen.”
“Ha.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just, I don’t know.”
“Alright, Jack. You’re buying.”
The Pike Place Market sits on Pike Place which runs northwest from Pike Street to Virginia Street, overlooking Elliot Bay. Sam lived alone in an apartment on Virginia Street, just a block away from the market. I lived in one of the market apartments which are home to mostly low income seniors. My neighbor Joe was an 82-year-old man, separated from his wife, who functioned as an ever-present grandfather to me and Sam. He was racist in the way that older people can get away with and he had taught us how to smoke. Every day I’d play him in a game of shuffle board. When we got there Joe was sitting outside and met us with his standard greeting.
“Sam, Jack how the hell are ya?” He always seemed surprised to see us, even though this was a daily occurrence. Come to think of it, he and Sam always greeted each other the same way too, each one sarcastically reminding the other of their estrangement from their not-loved ones.
“Seen your Pop lately, Sam?”
“Na, Joe, you seen your wife?” The conversation never went further than that and I guess it didn’t need to.
That night we decided against our usual game of shuffle board because Joe’s back was acting up and instead we sat outside listening to Miles Davis, accompanied as always by Joe’s commentary.
“You know for a black man,” Joe said as if the light bulb had just flipped on, “he can really pay a tune.”
“Joe, you know its 2009?” Sam said with a sort of indifference. This, not unlike our entire relationship with Joe, was routine.
“Boy, I know what year it is and I’m sayin’, for a black man, he’s really something.”
“Sure is.” I said. Its not that I minded them arguing, but I’d heard this one before. “Sam thinks death and sex are pretty much the same thing Joe. You agree with that?”
Joe was ready for death. He had fought in Korea and he always said there was no resting in peace after that. He also said that he was so sure he was gonna die over there that once he got back, death didn’t worry him much. I had transported vets like him at the med clinic and I believed him. They never seemed worried, like they found some comfort in knowing that they should have died a long time ago and that the death they now faced would be much more kind. A lot of them told me that they’d slept but they hadn’t rested for years.
“I think people don’t know what to do after death same as they don’t know what to do after sex.” Joe said, lighting a cigarette and leaning forward slowly to turn Miles down a bit. “Sex is just like life boys. It either ends too soon or takes too long and when it’s over most people don’t know what the hell to do.”
“You liked to cuddle didn’t ya Joe?” Sam could never resist the chance to get a rise out of him.
“I’m saying when things are finished I’m ready to sleep. People don’t know what to do when they feel at peace for a minute so they gotta light a cigarette or talk. What’s more, when you die they got two or three planned events before they even put you in the ground. It’s the same reason I don’t want to be cremated. When I’ve smoked my last I want to rest, I don’t need folks lighting me up again.”
I don’t think Joe meant to trust us with his last wish, but it turned out that way. He died in his sleep later that week. Sam and I acted as his family and made sure that folks didn’t go ‘lighting him up again.’ There was no funeral except for me and Sam smoking while two black men buried him and spending the night listening to Miles Davis outside my apartment. I think that was the first time I realized why Joe felt the way he did about death and why Sam was so anxious. It was the same way I felt about jazz music. A jazz song usually ends much like it begins, with a slow fade. I think life left Sam and Joe feeling unresolved, like eight minutes of a Miles Davis song. All they could hope for was to slowly fade and pass away.
The day after Joe was buried, Sam and I were back in the market and things were all like they had been and it was raining. I didn’t smoke as much as I watched several cigarettes burn down to their end. A man with an open guitar case played and sang;
“There are times that walk from you, like some passing afternoon”
“You think Joe’s smoking?” Sam asked. His smoking had not slowed down at all and he was methodically working his way through the pack as normal.
“No. I don’t actually.”
“Well good for him huh?”
“Is that how you wanna go?” He took off his glasses and looked right at me.
“Just kind of burn out in the middle of the night you mean? Yeah I guess that’d be alright.” Outside the rain had slowed and I motioned to Sam, figuring we’d take this chance to walk to work mostly dry. We got up and walked in the direction of the man with the open guitar case.
“There are things that drift away, like our endless, numbered days” Sam took the pack of cigarettes out of his pockets and I opened my hand for another. He pulled his away from his mouth with his middle finger and thumb and flicked it away. He took the remaining cigarette from the pack and dropped it in the guitar case as we passed.
“All out.”
