Chasing the Dead

December 21 Present Day 6:18 P.M. Stuck in week-before-Christmas traffic north of Boston, Sue Young is scanning the radio dial, searching for a weather report, when a song comes on from the summer of 1983, Duran Duran doing "Rio," and oh boy, does it take her back. Without wanting to, she thinks of Phillip, something he'd said to her once: The past is never done with us in any substantial way. The most cursory exami-nation reveals its bloody fingerprints on every surface of our lives. It's Phillip in a nutshell, an appetizer of eloquent wisdom with a nice fluffy side salad of pomposity. In the beginning, back when they were kids, she'd only heard the wisdom. Later, after they got married, only the pomposity. Now that he's gone Sue hears a dollop of both but mainly she just hears him, his voice in her head, and despite everything he's done to her, she even misses it from time to time. The song on the radio keeps playing. Sue realizes she's stiffened instinctively against the nice leather upholstery that Phillip paid extra to have installed in the Expedition, not enjoying the crawling prickle of nostalgia, at the same time peripherally aware that traffic is beginning to slide forward in front of her. She starts punching presets on the radio dial as she gooses the gas pedal, picking up speed in little doses, and realizes that the Saturn in front of her has stopped suddenly. She slams on the brakes, the Expedition jerking to a halt just six inches from the Saturn's back bumper, close enough to see the driver's aggrieved expression in the sideview mirror. Sue exhales, thinking that she just used up all her luck for the rest of the night. It is six twenty and almost totally dark. Boston is still right there in her rearview, its stumpy conglomera-tion of mid-rises too close to even be called a skyline. Around her three lanes of commuter traffic slink forward promisingly and then congeal again. To her right, the fax machine that Phillip installed in the Expedition gives two cheerful chirps and starts spitting out a flurry of pages. Sue flips on the dome light and glances at the cover sheet. It's a draft of the loan agreement for her to look over for tomorrow morning's meeting with BayState, the final phase of the Flaherty deal. Sean Flaherty is an orthodontist, a friend of Phillip's from back in Phillip's bachelor days, when Sean and Phillip chased cocktail waitresses from here to Cape Cod and jetted off to Club Med together to drive Jet Skis and spend their money. Sue actually doesn't mind Sean all that muchhe can be a bit overbearing at times, but ever since Phillip left her, Sean's become more subdued, almost shy, around her, as if embarrassed by his old friend's behavior. Sean has always wanted to open a little bar downtown, in a narrow old space on 151 Exeter Street that he's been lusting after for at least a decade. For years Phillip promised Sean he'd get him 151 Exe-ter, which has been tied up in probate for ages since the previous owner died intestate and the offspring squabbled over the inheritance. But in the end, the promise to get Sean his bar turned out to be just another broken vow Phillip left in his wake when he abandoned Sue eighteen months ago. In the end it was Sue herself that closed the deal for Sean, just today. Upon hearing the news Sean dropped by the office, ecstatic, with two freshly steamed lobsters and a gift-wrapped case of liquor that he insisted Sue take home with her. Sue was happy to accept the lobsters, but she hasn't had anything stronger than club soda in five years. She hadn't even bothered unwrapping it to see what it was. And right now, as the traffic shifts forwSchreiber, Joe is the author of 'Chasing the Dead', published 2006 under ISBN 9780345487476 and ISBN 0345487478.