OC Boys

We were winding up the evening, letting the last of the retold stories slowly unroll. It always turns on who is still living, whose bones are now rotting away. T. tells us K. died of cancer some six months ago. This is news that slipped by us. T. says he was never right anyway. He remembers the fun they had in the old grand piano boxes, thrown out behind the music store turned bar. “Man, we used those boxes. I mean we used them. One day I ducked into one of those boxes and K. was screwing this guy, this kid, M. He wanted me to join him, but I said nah, I gotta go home. He took things too far, K. did. But in the end he got religion. Became a deacon. M.’s been gone a long time, hung himself in the shower.” It wasn’t late, but we downed the last of our beers, made our way home.