The Supper We Couldn't Digest

Marcus pushed the spinach around his plate, the wilted greens glistening with olive oil like something already half-decomposed. We were at that Italian place on 4th, the one with the candles stuck in empty chianti bottles, where middle-aged couples went to pretend they still had secrets worth keeping.

"She's got me on these vitamins now," he said, finally taking a bite. "The horse pills. Iron, D3, some proprietary blend that costs three hundred dollars a month."

"And do they work?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. Marcus had been my friend since college, thirty years of watching him chase the next thing that would fix everything.

"I don't know," he said. "I think I'm supposed to feel different. More purposeful. Less like a guy whose wife just hired a divorce lawyer."

The candlelight caught the silver in his hair. He looked suddenly old, not the aging I'd seen gradually over decades but some catastrophic version, as if time had finally gotten tired of being subtle.

"Your dog," he said, changing the subject the way men do when emotions become too physical. "The golden one. What's his name?"

"Buster. He died last month."

"Shit." Marcus reached for the wine, his fingers tight on the stem. "I'm sorry. I should've known. You didn't post anything."

"I didn't want the performance of grief," I said. "The likes, the comments. He was fifteen. It was time."

Marcus nodded, staring into his wine. "Everything dies. That's the joke, right? The vitamins, the spinach, the fucking yoga. We're just polishing the brass on a sinking ship."

"Some ships sink faster than others," I said. "Some people just need better crew."

He looked at me then, really looked, and I saw what I'd been avoiding for months: the way he'd stopped sleeping, the tremor in his hands that wasn't from the cold restaurant, the particular quality of someone who's quietly making arrangements.

"Are you seeing someone?" I asked.

"I'm seeing the right people," he said. "Don't worry about me."

But I did worry. I'd worry for the rest of my life, probably. That's what friendship becomes eventually—a long corridor of worry, lit by the memories of who you used to be, back when you thought spinach was just a vegetable and not something that symbolized everything you should have done differently.

"To Buster," Marcus said, raising his glass.

"To Buster," I said. "And to the goddamn vitamins."

We drank, and for a moment, it was enough.