DEANO
By
David Olner
I didn’t know if I was supposed to go over, that was the thing. I was crossing the grass verge, heading to The Little Shop, when I saw him in his car. He was at the junction outside the old bingo hall. He shouted at me, oi knobhead, or something along those lines, and I shouted something similar back. Then we kept looking at each other for a moment and I didn’t know if I was supposed to go over, and then there was a break in the traffic on the main road and then he waved and then he was gone. And I was still there, on the verge. And that was the last time I ever saw him.
He rang me a week or two later and asked if I still went down The Punch Bowl on Saturdays, asked if he could tag along that night. I told him he’d got the days wrong, that I went down on Fridays, had just been there the night before and he asked me if I fancied going back that night anyway. I told him that I couldn’t, that I was so hungover I couldn’t even look at a beer, let alone drink one. And he laughed, said he knew that feeling, but he sounded a bit disappointed. He loosely arranged to come with us the next week but never did. And that was the last time I ever spoke to him.
I got a call maybe a month after that. It wasn’t from him, but about him. Mikey called and asked if I’d heard about Deano and I said heard what, like anybody would. And he said that Deano was dead, Deano had killed himself. You’re joking, I said, like a lot of people probably say in those circumstances. As if anyone in their right minds would joke about such a thing. And I don’t remember the rest of the call but I do remember that when I got off the phone I went out into the backyard and smoked and I remember how my legs would not stop shaking whether I sat or stood. And I was at my mam's house and, of all the things I could’ve wished for at that time, I wished the dog was still alive. I thought it all would’ve been much better if I could’ve sat there on the sun lounger and smoked, with the dog parked on my foot like she used to do and my free hand rifling through the soft fur on her neck.
I didn’t go to the funeral. I’d just started a new job and they’d already advanced me some holidays I hadn’t yet accrued. I sat in a Portakabin with the fat bloke from the agency and I told him about the funeral and he said he couldn’t give me the time off. And I knew I could have protested, lobbied for it, could’ve told him that Deano was one of my best mates, that I was best man at his wedding, that there was no way I was going to miss his funeral. But I didn’t. I just sighed and said okay. Because I really didn’t want to go to the funeral, couldn’t face it. Because Deano was always so teeming with life that it seemed impossible to consider the flipside. Because I didn’t want to see the hard evidence – dark earth and cold stone, his mam and Kelly in bits. Other mates, shift workers looking pale and exposed in the daylight, trying to be staunch in suits I’d seen them in at the races.
I saw him everywhere after he died. I saw more of him than I ever did when he was alive. He was always just up ahead of me, the back of some stranger’s head, some stranger who, on closer inspection, didn’t look anything like him at all. I never got up close, tapped them on the shoulder and then apologised like they do on the telly. I just saw them and tailed them until I was sure they weren’t Deano, eliminated them from my enquiries. I knew it was potty when I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I thought about what might have happened if I’d just walked over to his car when he was outside the bingo that day and talked to him for a bit, or gone down The Punch Bowl with him that Saturday. Whether that might have been just enough, just enough human connectivity to keep him tethered to the earth for a while longer.
His dad. His dad had it the worst. It was his dad who found him. They’d been sorting the house out after Kelly left, were supposed to be doing something mundane together that day, cleaning the garage out or creosoting the shed, I don’t know what it was. Deano didn’t answer the door because he was already gone so his dad let himself in with the spare set and found him there and he must always wonder if...
I don’t think any of it would have made a difference. Deano went after death the same way he lunged at life. Excessively. Voraciously. He took all the tablets in the bottle when half would’ve done the job. He swilled them all down with a litre of Smirnoff Black. It was never going to be a suicide attempt. That just wasn’t his way of setting about things.
Sometimes I try to imagine the taste of it all in his mouth.
I’d like to say I think about him every day but I don’t. I forget about him altogether. But then he comes back to me, at the oddest times, and I shake my head in the middle of the street and I think: Aw, Deano. Why’d you go and do that? We were all just here.
And then I remember him. I remember him at 4 am, drunk as a bastard outside my house, dancing on the roof of his car in his boxer shorts when there wasn’t even any music playing. I remember me and Mikey pushing him back from the pub in a shopping trolley, laughing as we let him go at the top of that steep ginnel, the cart veering into the brick walls and making sparks that lit up the night like fireworks. I remember his wedding reception, the trapped sunlight that baked our backs in that hotel conservatory. Him refusing to take his heavy RAF jacket off because he was proud to wear the uniform, me keeping mine on too in some daft act of solidarity, even though it was only from the Next outlet shop. Kelly’s dark skin offset by her ivory dress as she rolled her eyes at the two of us. Sweaty and nervous and giggly, shaky hands slopping vodka tonics around and fingering tatty speeches we’d written on the back of bank statements the night before. Him winking and dead-legging me right before I stood to deliver mine.
Don’t fuck this up, he’d whispered to me, laughing, always laughing.
He rang me a week or two later and asked if I still went down The Punch Bowl on Saturdays, asked if he could tag along that night. I told him he’d got the days wrong, that I went down on Fridays, had just been there the night before and he asked me if I fancied going back that night anyway. I told him that I couldn’t, that I was so hungover I couldn’t even look at a beer, let alone drink one. And he laughed, said he knew that feeling, but he sounded a bit disappointed. He loosely arranged to come with us the next week but never did. And that was the last time I ever spoke to him.
I got a call maybe a month after that. It wasn’t from him, but about him. Mikey called and asked if I’d heard about Deano and I said heard what, like anybody would. And he said that Deano was dead, Deano had killed himself. You’re joking, I said, like a lot of people probably say in those circumstances. As if anyone in their right minds would joke about such a thing. And I don’t remember the rest of the call but I do remember that when I got off the phone I went out into the backyard and smoked and I remember how my legs would not stop shaking whether I sat or stood. And I was at my mam's house and, of all the things I could’ve wished for at that time, I wished the dog was still alive. I thought it all would’ve been much better if I could’ve sat there on the sun lounger and smoked, with the dog parked on my foot like she used to do and my free hand rifling through the soft fur on her neck.
I didn’t go to the funeral. I’d just started a new job and they’d already advanced me some holidays I hadn’t yet accrued. I sat in a Portakabin with the fat bloke from the agency and I told him about the funeral and he said he couldn’t give me the time off. And I knew I could have protested, lobbied for it, could’ve told him that Deano was one of my best mates, that I was best man at his wedding, that there was no way I was going to miss his funeral. But I didn’t. I just sighed and said okay. Because I really didn’t want to go to the funeral, couldn’t face it. Because Deano was always so teeming with life that it seemed impossible to consider the flipside. Because I didn’t want to see the hard evidence – dark earth and cold stone, his mam and Kelly in bits. Other mates, shift workers looking pale and exposed in the daylight, trying to be staunch in suits I’d seen them in at the races.
I saw him everywhere after he died. I saw more of him than I ever did when he was alive. He was always just up ahead of me, the back of some stranger’s head, some stranger who, on closer inspection, didn’t look anything like him at all. I never got up close, tapped them on the shoulder and then apologised like they do on the telly. I just saw them and tailed them until I was sure they weren’t Deano, eliminated them from my enquiries. I knew it was potty when I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I thought about what might have happened if I’d just walked over to his car when he was outside the bingo that day and talked to him for a bit, or gone down The Punch Bowl with him that Saturday. Whether that might have been just enough, just enough human connectivity to keep him tethered to the earth for a while longer.
His dad. His dad had it the worst. It was his dad who found him. They’d been sorting the house out after Kelly left, were supposed to be doing something mundane together that day, cleaning the garage out or creosoting the shed, I don’t know what it was. Deano didn’t answer the door because he was already gone so his dad let himself in with the spare set and found him there and he must always wonder if...
I don’t think any of it would have made a difference. Deano went after death the same way he lunged at life. Excessively. Voraciously. He took all the tablets in the bottle when half would’ve done the job. He swilled them all down with a litre of Smirnoff Black. It was never going to be a suicide attempt. That just wasn’t his way of setting about things.
Sometimes I try to imagine the taste of it all in his mouth.
I’d like to say I think about him every day but I don’t. I forget about him altogether. But then he comes back to me, at the oddest times, and I shake my head in the middle of the street and I think: Aw, Deano. Why’d you go and do that? We were all just here.
And then I remember him. I remember him at 4 am, drunk as a bastard outside my house, dancing on the roof of his car in his boxer shorts when there wasn’t even any music playing. I remember me and Mikey pushing him back from the pub in a shopping trolley, laughing as we let him go at the top of that steep ginnel, the cart veering into the brick walls and making sparks that lit up the night like fireworks. I remember his wedding reception, the trapped sunlight that baked our backs in that hotel conservatory. Him refusing to take his heavy RAF jacket off because he was proud to wear the uniform, me keeping mine on too in some daft act of solidarity, even though it was only from the Next outlet shop. Kelly’s dark skin offset by her ivory dress as she rolled her eyes at the two of us. Sweaty and nervous and giggly, shaky hands slopping vodka tonics around and fingering tatty speeches we’d written on the back of bank statements the night before. Him winking and dead-legging me right before I stood to deliver mine.
Don’t fuck this up, he’d whispered to me, laughing, always laughing.
