Reunion Tour

Part Two: In Which This Guy Remembers

I’ve never flown first class before. It was always something I would rather have saved for an overseas trip when I’m forced to be in a plane for many many hours. But making travel plans at the last minute eliminates the cheaper choices, and thus I found myself rationalizing that this was a sufficiently unique occasion to experience a new indulgence.

I spent most of Friday and Saturday doing Normal Things, because I had that privilege. I wasn’t being asked or required to Do Anything other than Be There, so I was permitted to pretend it Wasn’t Happening for a couple of days. Sunday morning I awoke with just enough time to pack and head to the airport. I put it off until I was running so late I had to sprint to the gate before they gave my seat away, which they were in the middle of doing as I hit the counter. I even got scolded by the guy who wanted my spot, “What, did you run through an airport, dude?” with the sort of entitled attitude that only a mediocre white man could match.

The timing of the flight itself was such that I missed the first few hours of the wake. I was in such a hurry and frame of mind that it took a couple of hours for me to realize I was at Nizar’s parents’ house, a place whose threshold I hadn’t crossed in a generation. In my defense, it wasn’t usually decorated with photo trees displaying Kevin Through the Ages.

The house was mournful, yet full of laughter as we shared stories. The first round was about all the times Kevin had been arrested after ignoring his latest collection of speeding tickets. His father learned that day that this had happened more often than he’d thought.

We also talked about his cars, another staple of Kevin’s life. He didn’t exactly drive a car. It was more like he would don car shaped armor which protected him at high velocities. To Kevin, the space between the gas pedal and the floorboard was wasted, and he lived to eliminate that gap entirely. Every time he got behind the wheel, it was like he was trying to steal precious seconds from the hands of Death to add back on to his life. Every tenth of a second mattered. Every hundredth.

The next day I drove up to Denton where our college years overlapped a little. I have many memories there which have nothing to do with him, and I tried to visit those, but kismet kept intruding. While walking through my favorite used bookstore cater-cornered from the Courthouse on the Square, I ran across a book. It’s name and title had been lodged in my memory for over twenty years.

I saw them during the opening credits of John Carpenter’s Vampires. The movie was a backlash to the recent popularity of the Interview with the Vampire series. We were fans, but Carpenter’s movie was made to reestablish the gory horror of the subgenre. “Have you ever seen a vampire? They’re not romantic. They’re not hopping around in rented formalwear seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Eurotrash accents.” It was gritty, it was brutal, it was funny, it was exciting, and we loved it. Quoted it for years. I had always resolved to read the book, but never once did I make an effort to find it.

Walking randomly through the bookstore, I saw it. Its cover was facing outward on a shelf at my eye level, a trade paperback. I blinked hard, and said out loud, “You’re fucking kidding me.” No one was kidding me. It was the book. Now I own it.

It wasn’t the last time I made the statement that day. An hour or so later I drove over to the UNT campus, and found a convenient spot in the parking garage. After I got out of the car I saw it was space number 42, and I tipped my hat to Life, the Universe, and Everything. That night I tried to distract myself with television, and was immediately greeted with the line, “My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead.” I offered a few choice words to no one.

Remembering is easy, as it turns out. It happens all by itself.