I’m still wearing a winter jacket in this month of June. It makes sense for early and late in the day, not so much the remaining bulk of hours. A small inconvenience, or ritual, to remember this garment. I stuff it in a drawer at the office, careful not to leave housekeys or wallet, as I could well forget to grab it on the way out.
There was a meeting yesterday. Almost everyone knew what it was about but none said a word. I knew. I think one person was unaware. One of ours died last week. He’d been working remotely (reasonable accommodation) for months since his cancers had become impossible to control. Of the people I’ve known at this job he was the one I could talk to most easily, most candidly. He could talk to anyone. That was his ease. Both of us were retired barflies. He spoke wistfully of his days at the 9th Avenue dives, I of my time at the Astoria locals. We talked about taking in a Happy Hour sometime at one of these FiDi Irish pubs.
After he stopped working on-site I realize only now that I never thought of him as having only one hand. He had a hook where the left hand used to be. He was such a natural with it that in his physical absence I never equated it with anything to do with his character. He wore it well, but with humor. One time a manager said something like “We’re a little short-handed today,” and Dan replied “I’m a little sensitive about that terminology.” He made a similar retort when someone used the term “single-handed.” He really did perform this job single-handedly.
He talked about his wife a lot. His “Chinese wife,” as he almost always referred to her. I’ll likely never meet her but she sounded interesting and fun. He was early- to mid-60s, and the cancer had been with him for years before we worked together. He often commented that “These doctors don’t know what they’re talking about,” and he would say this when, in fact, a doctor looked at his MRI or scans and would admit that they didn’t know what to make of it.
With one exception he was the only person at this place with whom I could sustain a conversation. He was a bit of a cut-up, and I like to tell dirty jokes or tell tawdry tales from my life of lethargy. But not here. Not anymore. He once asked “Can I ask you a question of a personal nature?” I might have looked at him as if he’d pulled a gun on me. That was one of our first conversations. He just wanted to know wat my ethnic background was. Hillbilly on my dad’s side, Czech on mom’s, with a mystery Greek dude thrown in because anyone with blue eyes is said to have descended from a single Greek man who was first to have the pigmentation.
There is a lot I never knew about Dan. He had very little online presence, and from it I gleaned little. I don’t expect to attend the service on Thursday but I could change my mind about that.