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17 – Goodbye, Arturo

Is it wrong to feel so little when so many people are mourning?  If it had been me, would these people be feeling the same things?  Would it be fewer people balling their eyes out?  More?  None at all?  If the tables were turned, as they say, and I was the one laying in the casket, grisly, grey, dead, would anyone care at all?  Would they be glad to have Arturo back?  I suppose they would never have known if I was the one up there and he was sitting here, but would they trade me for him?  Many of them seem like they would give anything, anything at all, to have their precious, handsome, gifted, kind, loving, wonderful Arturo back.  Well, he’s not coming back, guys, so get used to it.

His mother has been crying throughout the service, silently soaking her dainty handkerchief with tears and snot.  His father beside her has been holding the hand sans-handkerchief, looking stoic and strong, but the heavy lines of his face revealing the war this “tragedy” has caused taking place inside his head.  Oh, poor babies.  His sister Eva—god, she looks fucking tight today in that black dress—spoke after the priest gave his eulogy, generic but comforting to those who’d have it.  She was so sincere.  I was impressed.  She said they would all miss Arturo, his bright smile, his laugh, his winning attitude.  That it was such a tragedy to have one so young taken from them before he had the chance to affect the world.  Before the prime of his life.  Strong and handsome, Arturo was a man who loved his family, his friends, his country, his God.  Arturo was blah blah blah….  I zoned out.  Her tits looked really fucking great, man.  Wow.  I was staring right at them jiggling in her dress as she gesticulated during her speech, when his aunt sitting next to me grabbed my hand and looked meaningfully into my eyes.  Hers were filled with tears, red, swollen.  I did my best to play it like I had been lost in Eva’s words instead of staring at her tits, but the woman was so lost in sadness that I could have been drooling and barking like the wolf in the old Looney Tunes and she still would have thought I was displaying a sensible expression of grief over Arturo, my sweet lost best friend. 

Eva sat and some cousin who I’d never met came up and played some sad sounding song on the piano I didn’t know that really opened the water works in the crowd.  I hid my face in my hands to avoid any more sincere ocular exchanges of misery.  I closed my eyes, enjoying the darkness, and pressed my palms hard into my eyes.  Hopefully the redness the pressure caused would be enough to convince people I had been suffering silently, tears barely held back in this moment of extreme loss.  Oh, poor Arturo.  If only you were here to see how fucking hot your sister looks today.  Shit, man, she’s fucking banging.  When I noticed myself coming to half-mast—probably best not to stand up from the pew with a fucking boner—I filled my head with all the unsexy thoughts I could muster—my sixth grade homeroom teacher, the homeless man who used to pee on my window, taxes.  I was trying so hard not to get hard that I barely noticed when the funeral procession began.  Arturo’s dad passed me, took my look of concentration on unsexiness as distraught distance, and placed his hand on my shoulder in a show of support.  

“Come David,” he said, “let’s pay our final respects.”

I looked up at him, my eyes glazed and red from the pressure of my palms still, and nodded silently.  Man, this had turned out to be a lot easier than we had imagined weeks ago when we decided that Arturo needed to die.  All I had to do was bury the fucker, get through the reception, and disappear.  Easy.  I stood, walked up the aisle, made passing eye contact with Eva, took my place on the coffin, and walked dear sweet Arturo down the aisle, into the hearse, and out of my fucking life.

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