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Julian’s funeral was on a bright June afternoon. I went to it astonished at the fact that such a day would ever arrive. Julian had always seemed— not in the way that people usually mean it— immortal. He wasn’t our rock, he wasn’t an immovable force, someone who couldn’t die because of how strong he was, or at least not in the way you would imagine such a person. Rather, his fairy-like presence, god-like almost, in the way he was pleasant and knowledgeable and cryptic, the way he seemed to float above us all, ethereal and untouchable by earthly matters like school administration or money, made him in our minds a deity, a benevolent professor pulled right out of a fairytale, and so, inherently undying.
Over the years, his image had changed in our minds. I, I’m afraid to say, had taken to idolizing him like I did those early days in Hampden, remembering fondly his long sermons on this or that particular habit of the Ancient Greeks, the way he inclined his head when he listened to me talk over a cup of tea.
Francis had taken the opposite approach. He had a tendency to blame him for what we did in Hampden, for putting in our heads the initial idea of the bacchanals, for perorating on and on about the passion and the beauty of the ancient civilizations we studied, that were responsible, he thought, for Henry’s actions.
“Melodramatic” was his favorite word whenever we had this kind of conversation, forgetting that this was how we all were, wrapped in our superiority and differences with the plebeian mass of students, taking delight in being tortured souls, Francis in particular, down to his suicide attempt, very Francis-like in that it was a combination of a lazy way out and great spectacularity.
He refused to come, when I called him to tell him the news, still reeling from the article I had just read, a small eulogy in the corner of a newspaper. I didn’t have anyone else’s number, so I went alone, in a rented tuxedo vest and the black slacks I wore to every formal event.
I had expected his funeral to be a big one, considering his small celebrity status, but when I got into the church, it was absolutely packed, people with a vaguely familiar air and wearing expensive clothes spilling out of the pews and standing in the alleys, sticking close to the walls on each side of the church, or all the way at the back, near the marble stoups. The last funeral I had been to was Bunny's and I was already relieved at the absence of the crushing sense of guilt I had to suffer through at this one.
I was overwhelmed, feeling awkward like I always did in big crowds, and the joint I had smoked in my car in an attempt to relax-- which was the reason why I was late in the first place-- was clouding my thoughts and making me paranoid, afraid that someone was going to turn around and call me out for being high.
There was nowhere to sit, so I stood in the back, near someone who had either taught at Hampden or was a small-time celebrity who hadn't aged well.
I was scanning the crowd while some shockingly famous people succeeded each other at the gallery to heap praise on Julian, their words all blending together in my confused mind. I was hoping to see someone I really knew, anyone, an anchor I could grab onto to ground myself, but I had no luck, the back of everyone's head inscrutable.
I couldn't help but find funny the spectacle of such a disgustingly catholic funeral for someone like Julian, who considered monotheist religions as he would a speck of dirt on his shoe, too young, too "new-money" for him and his pagan sensibilities. The idea of Julian looking over the assembly with the same twist of the mouth he adopted when someone mentioned the Church was for some reason so unspeakably funny to me all of a sudden that I almost burst into laughter at an inopportune moment, after some permed blonde had just finished a touching story about a diner where Julian had generously tipped the wait staff (a story I strongly doubted was true). "This was just the kind of person he was," she finished tearily, patting her cheekbones with a handkerchief. I had to disguise my lips twitching as sadness rather than a more uncouth emotion.
I met someone's eye as I feigned wiping a tear on my sleeve to hide a smile overtaking me when the priest talked about Julian's imagined piousness. The guy was standing against the far right wall, most of him hidden under the huge mass of his dark coat, jarring for a June day, long hair half tied behind his head, the rest hiding a good part of his face, making his features almost indistiguishable.
I hadn’t noticed him before, despite his towering height, because he was cloaked in the shadow of the side door he was leaning against. He shifted slightly, making his face catch the light, reacting to something that was said that I hadn’t heard, too engrossed in our staring contest, and I glimpsed at a gruesome scar peeking under the mass of hair over his eye, pink and garish even from the other side of the room. The exchange couldn’t have lasted for more than a couple dozen seconds. The stranger turned around brusquely and exited by the door he had had his back to, the hot wind making his coat billow out behind him, his gait so achingly familiar suddenly that I almost cried out.
My face must have shown something of my surprise, because the retired movie star/Hampden teacher next to me was staring at me in alarm. I don’t remember much else of the service other than how suddenly sensitive I was to the sweltering heat of space filled with warm bodies, the tight shoulders of my vest, the coldness of the brick wall I had my back to.
I was lost in the memories of Henry that were suddenly coming back to me: his way of irritably pushing his hair out of his eyes when it started to get too long, of his chipped front tooth that gave such a boyish charm to his smile, that I had so longed to have directed at me. A million gestures were surfacing in my mind, a million words he had said to me. One time he had kissed me, when I was recovering from my pneumonia in my hospital room, a kiss I would be almost sure I had imagined, if not for the memory of his warm hands on my still frozen cheeks.
I was still shaken when I left the service without going to see the burial, thinking of the dozens, the hundreds of time I had thought seeing Henry in the city, imagined him written on the features of a million strangers, seeing his silhouette leaving parties, disappearing into taxis, into alleyways, the fantasy I entertained of him (one I had of all the others) appearing at my door, flushed from the Los Angeles heat, like no time had passed at all.
I didn't mention Henry to Francis when I called him to fulfill my promise of "making sure he's really dead" (a transparent show of his grief disguised as disdain), afraid that he would laugh at me, afraid that he would believe me.
"So the old Chiron has bit it," he said lightly, and I could so clearly picture him, sitting in his chair near the telephone, barefoot and smoking (I could hear his exhales), probably nursing some whiskey in his tea, fingering nonchalantly the telephone cord, like he always did on the phone, that it almost hurt.
"Yes," I answered, the memory of Julian's made-up face, barely changed from the last time I had seen it, young and small in death, still fresh in my mind.
"Did you check his pulse?"
In a way, it was a relief, as Julian was the only person outside of us who knew what happened to Bunny, or at least had a strong inkling, and even if I knew he would never had said anything, I had been worried, feeling disloyal in my lack of trust in him, of the police knocking at my door, tipped off by Julian's lips, loosened with age.
"Have you heard from Camilla?" I asked lightly, like I did every conversation we had, and Francis answered with his usual non-committal sound. I suddenly felt very alone, the looseness, uncharacteristic to my person, that came with weed having left me.
"Do you ever think Henry could be alive?" I asked, as if apropos of nothing. Francis made a sound. "What brought this on? He shot himself in the head."
"I've heard of people surviving that." I hadn't. "You said that you saw him."
"I was bleeding out in a bathtub at the time." Francis was starting to sound irritated. "I could have just as well seen Santa Claus."
I abandoned the topic, and I heard Francis drinking something in the following silence. I was thinking of Henry, and I knew Francis was too. We didn't say much after, and the quietness of my room suddenly weighed on me.
I poured two drinks, a few fingers of scotch in each. I drank one and left the other sitting on the table, feeling delighted by the dramatic picture it made, alone there. I fell asleep to an image of Henry's smile, right before he pulled the trigger, secret like he knew something we didn't.