"Good Guys Like Us"

We pushed open the swinging wooden doors of “The Dancing Crab” and the floor was sticky under our feet. Everything smelled like popcorn and beer. A young woman who sounded like the feral, maladjusted twin of Miley Cyrus screeched into a microphone connected to closet-sized speakers in the corners. Bartenders in Hawaiian shirts fizzed drinks into clear cups on banquet-style tables covered in black plastic tablecloth dotted with palm trees. All this, and not a single edible crab in sight, though I did spot an inflatable pink one bouncing at the edge of the stage. No doubt, it was a strange place for a wake.

“I don’t recognize anybody,” said Murph.

“Lucky them,” I said, because I was in a sour mood myself. Murph glared at me. “We’re here to pay our respects and move on, okay?” I said, patting him on the back. “This is all part of God’s grandiose plan. Communal suffering causes communal mourning.”

Murph’s eyes roamed the restaurant, taking it all in. “Well, we’re here now, anyways,” he said, sighing. “Guess it’s already too late.”

This seemed to satisfy him because he changed the topic to the bereavement specials on the chalkboard menu. When he realized the wings were half off, he grinned like a stoned clown. If you ever tuned in to 105.7 WZYY The Frog in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, that was our radio station. Murph and I worked there as programmers. The wake was for our former colleague, Sam Baker. A decade ago, he was a DJ who some people tried to run out of town. Still, there was genuine shock on the day people learned he had been killed. Eyes were popping out. Folks gasped like freshly caught fish.

“Can’t believe he’s gone,” said Murph.

Because Murph was sipping one of the free beers, I decided to sip one too. It was a little dry for my taste, but that didn’t stop me. On my way back from the bar I accidentally caught sight of myself in a mirror everyone had signed in support of ending gun violence. The reflection wasn’t pretty. In my coat and tie I looked just like an overdressed beaver attending a Jimmy Buffett concert. With his pale face and pointy eyes, Murph most closely resembled an opossum. What a pair we made. I’m Augustus Lawrence Sanderson by the way. Most people call me Gus.

“Remember, today is all about the healing,” I said, as I sat down at our table. “End of story. That’s all she wrote.”

“I just got one question.” Murph pointed at me with a pink chicken bone. “If they pass you the mic, you sayin’ anything?”

“Of course not,” I said. “What is there to say?”

Murph looked down at me with those stupid half-cut glasses falling down his nose, his eyes stretched wide like two little moons. His big belly and sweat-soaked undershirt reminded me of the before part of a weight loss commercial. “The question isn’t whether there’s something to say. The question is: what can’t be said, all things considered.”

Murph’s “what can’t be said” comment referred to Sam Baker’s reputation at our radio station as a lech and all-around asshole. Others defended him as a flirt and charismatic jokester. The only thing everyone could agree on was that throughout the 90s and early 2000s he was the best DJ in all of Southern Pennsylvania. The man spoke in a silky baritone. With the patience of a cobbler, he carved out the most exciting details from hopelessly banal accident reports, spiced up mind-numbing weather updates with joke and song. “Here comes Noah!” he once boomed before the onset of a thunderstorm. In a tabernacle tenor that would make a Mormon sweat, he crooned: “it’s gonna be a bright… BRIGHT…briiight, sunshiny day!” His mustached good looks and dashing demeanor made me think of Zorro. That is, if Zorro was Black and forgot to wear a mask.

But Murph’s “all things considered” statement alluded to the shocking cause of Sam Baker’s death, how it had come to assume strange political overtones. He was murdered in an office shooting. Initially, Janice Baker told anyone who would listen that she wanted a party to celebrate her husband’s life; told you about it in her enthusiastic, overcaffeinated way that she made you agree with whatever she was saying just to get her to stop. Eventually the anger stage of grief must have kicked in because that’s when the ‘celebration of life’ posters started to include exclamation points and politicians’ phone numbers. The rumor was she had chosen this “Dancing Crab” venue because it was big and located in Harrisburg, the state capital, which meant larger crowds and more media attention.

Murph tossed some green tic tacs into his mouth. He motioned for me to lean in closer. “I’ll be honest with you. I can’t stand being here, Gus. I believe in the second amendment. If Sam had a gun on him, might have been a different outcome. Also, we can’t forget about who he was just because his death was tragic.” Murph took out his napkin and wiped his mouth and the tip of each finger. “Saying that don’t make me a racist.”

“Having a gun or being a racist has got nothing to do with it,” I said, swirling the golden liquid at the bottom of my cup. “This is a small-town thing. I’m here for Sam Baker’s family and friends. Doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white. Rich or poor. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Jew. You have to show up for people.”

“Yeah.” Murph nodded. “That’s true.”

A platinum blonde woman in a tight white t-shirt with a crab across her chest leaned over and wiped down the table next to us.

“A friend of the deceased, you think?” Murph chortled, his half-rim glasses slipping down his nose again.

“Have some respect.”

“Have some respect? When do the hula girls show up?” Murph made a wavy luau motion with his hands. “Sam would’ve liked that, though, wouldn’t he?”

I contemplated slapping Murph. Not too hard, mind you. Just strong enough to shock some sense into his system. Regardless, to call Sam Baker a former colleague was technically accurate, though a little misleading. The radio programmers sit in the darkness behind blinking switchboards while the DJs bask in the sanctified glow of the broadcast booth. We always arrived first and set up the studio equipment, which meant, even after a quick run through with the station manager for the afternoon segment, we stayed behind to close up while Sam Baker and the other DJs were the first ones out the door. After he left The Frog, I didn’t see much of him during the 10 years he spent commuting from Chambersburg to the publishing company an hour north of us, where he served as the marketing director. I occasionally asked people we both knew about him, but that was about it.

Murph whistled and pointed at the banner above the stage. In big bubble letters it read:

THINK OF SAM, PATRICIA, LOUISE, KEVIN, MICHELLE, TERRENCE, MARK!
VOTE NOVEMBER 2nd FOR PROPOSITION 217
AND KEEP OUR COMMUNITIES SAFE!

The crowd around us was mostly walking around and taking selfies.

“Healing,” said Murph. “You said it, Gus.”

The piercing sound of a freshly switched-on microphone drew everyone’s attention to the front. “Friends! Thank you so much for being here!” said Janice Baker, beaming back to us from the stage in a glittery red dress. The music lowered to background noise level, and the conversation dropped to whispers. “For those who don’t know me, I am Janice, the proud wife of Sam Baker. A truly wonderful man who deserved so much more than this. I want to tell you a little about him before I tell you a whole lot about the important gun control legislation being proposed in the state house this fall. Because if we ever want to hold the ones accountable that need accountability, we have to pass new laws. It’s that simple, people! Once is too many! Say it with me. Once is too many!”

The maniac who did it used a semi-automatic rifle. It was over in minutes. According to a manifesto later recovered from the shooter’s computer, he wanted their publishing company to print history textbooks with more information about Jesus, if you can believe it. He also wanted the bible put in classrooms across the country. In addition to Sam, he killed six other people before taking his own life.

Murph bounced his fist on his thigh, a nervous tick. “I’m reading about this MeToo movement. Women being abused and harassed for years. People did nothing. Bill Cosby started it. That’s no joke.”

“Good, because I’m not laughing,” I said. “Why in God’s great creation would you assume I have not heard about MeToo?” Murph gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. In spite of myself, I laughed.

“My point is, one of those women could’ve sued us and shut the whole station down,” he continued, “and that would’ve been Sam’s fault.”

“And yet, when Tony and any of those others wanted to hump everyone but the broom closet, you had no problem with it. Wonder why that was?”

Up on stage, Janice Baker looked as if she had swallowed a pigeon. Her eyes were almost crimson. Her hand pressed against her heart. “I’ve been so moved by all the stories I’ve heard. Stories of the fallen, people like my husband. I know he touched so many people.”

Murph smirked, but that was it. Even he was exhausted by the irony.

“Listen,” I said, turning to whisper into his ear. “You can flutter around all you want with your angel wings. I’m not going to waste my precious time defending myself for being here. The past is called the past for a reason.”

Then I excused myself and said I was going to the bathroom. Except I wasn’t going to the bathroom. I was going outside to find some quiet, some nice shady place away from everybody where I could enjoy my cigarettes in peace. The day after I heard about the Sam Baker shooting, I swore up and down that I would quit. Life was scary and unpredictable enough. I didn’t need cancer sticks tipping the balance. So, what happened next, I can only ascribe to cosmic comeuppance: a divine punishment provoked by my own inclination for self-betrayal. No sooner was I rounding the corner of “The Dancing Crab,” congratulating myself on escaping, when Sam Baker’s daughter appeared. She was seated on the edge of one of the large stone flowerpots, her neck scarfed up to the ears. Like him, she was unmistakably good looking. They both had a dark lining around the eyes that reminded me of Arabian royalty. Her thick, loose hair could have been plucked from a horse’s mane. She was wearing acid-washed jeans and a brown leather jacket. Though she had the appearance of being an adult, it was clear she was not quite there—eighteen, twenty at most. Her shiny, emerald boots were propped up on the ash tray. Taunting me, I thought, to ash on them instead. She took out a small black box and held it up to her lips. I gave a quick little wave and lit my cigarette.

“Is that vaping?” I asked.

“It’s better for you than cigarettes.”

“Well,” I tried to sound amused by my own skepticism, “I’m not doing this for my health.”

Sam Baker’s daughter squinted and tilted her head to the side. She shaded her eyes with her hand even though the sun was buried beneath clouds so lumpy and swirled together they reminded me of mashed potatoes. I put my left hand in my pocket to keep it calm.

“I’m Julie. We met once at the deli counter at The Giant. Off Pinehurst Road?”

“That’s right. Thought you looked familiar.”

Julie smiled. “You don’t remember me. That’s okay. My dad was talking at me one day and saw you standing at checkout. ‘Watch out for that one, Jules,” he said, ‘He might look like a big old barn owl’—you remember how he used to talk—’but here’s some truth you’ve never heard before: looks can be deceiving. Gus Sanderson was a force in high school. Hardest guy to tackle. Even though he wasn’t fast, when he came steamin’ through, running, and running, you couldn’t stop him. Gus the Bus, we called him.” Julie rocked and laughed.

For a moment, all I could do was cough. By the time I recovered I could see her face was warm from the memory. And because I didn’t know if she was aware we had worked together at The Frog, if she knew anything about the reason her father lost his job, I tried to keep it light.

“That’s funny. He said that about me?” I watched the ash from my cigarette crumble down the front of my pants. “Meanwhile, he was the one scoring all those touchdowns.”

Which was true. In high school, in addition to being handsome and popular, Sam Baker was also a sports God. He had been blessed with so much for so long. Blessed with so much for so long, only to have it all end, one day, in the most random and unexpected of ways: attacked at work by a person who didn’t even know him. Though Sam Baker and I were never friends, we both had families. We both grew up around the same people and crossed paths more often than not. Which meant if it had been me instead of him killed that day, I would’ve wanted him to show up at my wake, too. Then again, I considered, as Julie continued to stare at me, what did we really have in common? I dated one girl who later became my wife, while our classmates used to joke about his ‘Baker’s dozen.”

“Just curious,” I said, trying my own turn at a smile. “Why you out here, Julie? Don’t you want to participate in the ceremony?”

Julie blew a raspberry. “Already paid my respects at church. My daddy used to say how tired he was driving up here for that job. Guess he can get some rest now, huh?” Her voice got unexpectedly soft. “Some dickhead actually said that to me in there.”

“Well, people say crazy things, times like this.” I shook my head. “People try their best. Doesn’t mean they do their best.”

Julie continued to stare at me. “I’m glad you came, Gus. I’m sure my mom is too. Truth is,” Julie started to sit up straight, speaking to me in a tone that sounded way too pleasant, given the circumstances, “when my mom told me you were comin,’ I knew I had to find you and talk to you. I mean, you must’ve known how he wanted to be back on the radio with y’all. Somehow that didn’t work out, though, did it?”

I pretended to ignore the tears she wiped away with the sleeve of her jacket. I held up my hands. “I was never in charge of hiring or firing. Just remember: he was one of the best, if not the best we ever had at The Frog. A true pro.” I raised my eyebrows for emphasis before snubbing my cigarette out on the edge of the flowerpot. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should be moving back on inside.”

A few loose strands of hair swept across her face from the wind. She looked up at me. Even her eyelashes were gorgeous. “Stop,” she said.

I froze in place, already half-turned away.

“My dad knew. My mom knew. Then, one day, I knew. And probably everyone forgave you, Gus. Everyone moved on, Gus. But not now, Gus. Because if it wasn’t for you, my daddy would be fucking alive today.”

What Julie was referring to, of course, was what had been on my mind ever since I learned about the tragedy. And what had happened was this: one day, about 10 years ago, a month before Sam Baker announced he was leaving, I was heading to the station in the freezing cold rain. I had just pulled my car into the lot and was hustling back inside when I heard a noise like a wail around the side of the oak tree near the entrance. I stood there for a moment until I heard it again. All I could make out from the source was the edges of a bulky gray winter coat. I waited, until the person in the coat took notice. She was a young lady. One of our interns. She shrugged at me. That’s when I opened my umbrella. Slowly, she walked over and crouched under it with me. When I started walking toward the station entrance, however, she made that wailing noise again and shook her head, clearly too distraught to return to work. She didn’t have a car for some reason. Someone had dropped her off, she explained. That’s when she asked if we could sit inside mine.

Reluctantly, I walked with her back to my Corolla. Once inside, I cranked up the heat, fogging the windows. Her sniffling filled the quiet. She reached for my hand. As our fingers joined together, I felt the slickness of my sweat under my armpits, underneath all the layers of clothes I had on. This wasn’t the kind of scene, the kind of interaction, I needed getting back to Sheila.

“It’s over,” she said, turning away from me. “He’s leaving. Sam Baker, asshole of assholes, is leaving.”

It was news to me. Murph, my usual source for work gossip, had not said a word. And though I knew it didn’t take a Scotland Yard detective to deduce Sam Baker’s bad behavior had finally caught up to him, I also remember thinking, why now? I had grown up watching Anita Hill testify against Clarence Thomas only to see him later slip into those supremely erudite robes. The Monica Lewinsky scandal had not so much been a cautionary tale as a juicy twist on the oldest story ever told: the bawdy overreach that comes from grabbing at too much power.

“You sound upset,” I said.

“That’s because I am.”

She pulled her hand away. I looked at the knuckles of my other hand, still on the wheel. “Were you in love?”

“Are you retarded?” She shuddered and rocked in her seat.

“I guess I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here.”

Like a flame to dynamite, she exploded: “How can he keep acting like this and never get caught? The way he talks. Whistles. Tries to grab us and play it off as a joke. You know what it’s like to work with him around? It’s sick. It absolutely makes me sick.” She moved her head side to side in such a slow and deliberate way it was as if her neck collar was lined with needles. “He’s up for a promotion. A big fucking station in Baltimore. WBCL 99.1. That’s a big city, Baltimore. He’ll have a whoooole new crop to pick from. He’s seeing someone at our station. I heard he slept with another girl before that. People pretend to care. No one really cares. You, you,” I’ll never forget how she lingered on that word, stuttering in a way that made me think she would never get it out, “you men!”

She looked down at her hands and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I need to stop talking. You probably don’t even know my name.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know your name.” So I told her mine.

“Abbie,” she said, faintly smiling. “I’m really, truly, like, not myself today. This is so embarrassing.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin she pulled from her pocket.

“Thing is, I happen to agree with you,” I finally said, when it seemed like enough respectful silence had passed. “Have you told management about any of this?” When she didn’t respond, I tried a different track. “The women deserve better. I got a wife. I’m a father to a daughter. I don’t like it either.”

“If you don’t like it, then why haven’t you done anything about it?”

I opened my mouth, closed it. Opened it again. I tried to smile. “The problem is, wandering from the marital bed won’t cut it. That’s not a crime. Look. What you and the other women need to do is get organized. Speak up and pull together all the details. Maybe start by getting a lawyer who specializes in sexual harassment.”

“A lawyer?”

“Have him contact the station. Then, you don’t have to worry about reporting anything yourself.”

“Hire a lawyer. With all this money I’m making? The message, being, what? Legal threats are the only reason to care about how women are treated? Jesus!”

When Abbie started wailing again, I tried to restore calm. “Just try to meet me halfway. Tell me who all is most upset and maybe I can help.”

She shook her head. “Everyone is scared. And if I start telling you the stuff they’ve experienced, I’d be betraying their confidences. And I bet he’s friends with half the goddamn HR department and half the Chambersburg police department. The lawyers too. They listen to the radio. They know who Sam Baker is. Fuck. I don’t even know why I put up with this place. I’m a Jersey girl.”

That’s when I had my epiphany. An epiphany that set a whole series of events in motion that ultimately resulted in Sam Baker losing his job. Though, for what it’s worth, that was never my intention. My intention, even then, my hope, was to rattle his conscience just enough to force him to change. Help him realize that being Sam Baker the DJ celebrity also meant treating people with a baseline of respect. Because if he understood that, maybe, I thought, he would learn to stop using everyone around him solely for his own pleasure and entertainment.

“It might actually work,” Abbie said, when I finished explaining my offer. “Thank you, Gus. How can I thank you?”

She surprised me by turning to hug me, holding the embrace longer than I expected. “You’re a good listener,” she whispered into my ear. Mixed with the worry about what I had committed myself too, I felt something even more problematic. A stirring, a tingle—a buzz down below. It had been a long time since I was in such close contact with such an attractive young woman. Abbie was nearly half my wife’s age. There was so much to respond to: the squish of those breasts pushing against me, the honeysuckle punch of her perfume. I pictured Sam Baker experiencing a lifetime of such intoxicating embraces. By the time I returned to the office, I was shivering. People must have thought it was from staying out in the cold so long.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?” said Julie, snapping me out of the memory.

I didn’t, but I tried my best anyway. “I came here to pay my respects, Julie. I can’t do that sitting out here. I’m going inside.”

“My dad found out about your letter. No one believed that bullshit. Why all the hate?”

I tried to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. I threw up my hands. “If it didn’t work, what’s the difference?”

“Yeah, that letter didn’t work.” Julie leaned back on the flowerpot. “But that blog worked, didn’t it? Worked out reeeeal good. She called daddy right before it went live. Told him everything.”

The blog had never been part of our agreement. All I had agreed to was helping write an anonymous letter based on the various allegations she had mentioned. Abbie was in charge of driving to Baltimore and dropping off a copy with the radio station recruiting Sam Baker. The blog went up three weeks later. To me, the three-week silence had meant the claims had already been investigated and found to be untrue. Abbie concluded the opposite. The worst part was the blog did nothing to encourage any women to come forward. It did, however, make the outrageous suggestion somewhere in the comments section that Sam Baker was being protected at the station because he was Black. Though the blog was live for just six hours before it crashed, the damage had already been done. Abbie left town—never leaving so much as a goodbye message. After Sam Baker died, I found her on Facebook, working at some radio station in Toledo. As MAGA as they come, according to her photos.

As bad as the blog was, many of us assumed Sam Baker would be fine. All The Frog needed to do was send out some zombie-faced lawyer to tell us to ignore the chatter and not comment to the media. It wasn’t until Sam Baker stepped up on the green Froggy chair, a tradition for everyone giving a goodbye speech, that I realized he was making a forced departure announcement. His intentionally vague plans told us everything. Mr. Narcissus would have never been able to keep his mouth shut if he had landed a better job. He loved the sound of his own voice too much.

“You did it for that white bitch, didn’t you?” said Julie. “Good thing we got so many cameras inside there, Gus. Maybe I should go tell all them about the role you played in his downfall. Yeah. While I got them all here for this gun rally, I think I just might do that.”

“Wait,” I said, reaching out. “Hold up.”

“Don’t touch me!”

I felt the vibration of my phone in my pocket. Murph had texted multiple times. WHERE ARE YOU?!? WHEN ARE WE GOING HOME?!? As soon as I looked up from my phone, Julie was walking away at a fast clip.

“It’s time to come clean,” she said to me over her shoulder. “It’s time to witness the truth of who you are to everyone!”

“Julie!” I called. “Wait!”

She was already several yards ahead of me and showing no signs of stopping. In no time at all she would round the corner and be inside “The Dancing Crab.”

“Julie,” I said, one more time, chasing close behind.

But by the time I pushed through the swinging doors, she was no longer in sight. In fact, I couldn’t see anything. Blinded, I held my hands up to my eyes. It was then that I realized: my vision was blurred by the glaring spotlight turned in my direction. The relief at being alive momentarily replacing the shock of thinking it had ended. Which made me think of the last time I had seen Sam Baker before his death. It was about a year ago. We had accidentally crossed paths one spring Saturday afternoon at a pub called “O’Callaghan’s” just outside of Chambersburg. We were meeting different people for lunch that day. Waiting in the front lobby, we paced around. When it became clear both our parties were running late, Sam Baker and I sat at the bar and pretended to notice one another for the first time.

“I never did get to thank you, Augustus,” he said, once we got our beers. “Put that wallet away. This one’s on me.” I could tell from the pleasant tonic of his voice he had not lost a step from his old DJ days. Sam Baker’s teeth still gleamed like the polished white keys on a cocktail lounge piano.

“Thank me for what?” I asked, hoping my antsiness didn’t give me away.

Sam kept smiling. “Franklin said you put in a good word for me. Said you were absolutely, positively, done in when I said I was leaving. He said you just couldn’t fathom the station letting a talent like me walk away. I know what you did, champ. This is me saying I appreciate it.”

Franklin Mosby, the C.E.O. of the publishing company he worked for, Lippincott & Co., was a guy we both used to play football with. I had lost track of him for most of my adult life when he reached out to me over LinkedIn. He told me he had always been a big fan of ‘Baker in the morning’ and wanted to get my perspective on things. Franklin Mosby, by the way, also happened to be a man of color. Which matters because when he asked me if I thought there was any truth to the rumor that Sam Baker had been mistreated, I said, yes. I said it was hard to believe the station would have dropped Sam Baker under the same circumstances if he was white. The whole process was rushed after that claim on the blog. No one from the station was ever interviewed. Anyway, I was tired of feeling guilty about some racist blog I had never signed off on. Never signed off on, yet had somehow helped create only because I was trying to do the right thing by helping someone else who was supposedly being mistreated for an entirely different reason. The whole thing made my head hurt. All of which meant that when I heard the news that Sam had accepted a job at Lippincott & Co. in Harrisburg, I felt relieved he was back to work. Then again, if he really had done the things Abbie had told me to put in the letter, if even some of that was true, it meant I had helped Sam Baker find a “whole new crop to pick from.” Which meant that would be on my conscience, too.

I watched Sam Baker raise his glass half-way to his mouth and cock his head. The insinuation was clear—he expected me to recite back the Franklin Mosby story.

“I bet I had nothing to do with it,” I said, as if trying to set up a good punchline. “It was a long time ago, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Sam Baker wet his mustache with another sip of beer before clearing the foam with the back of his hand. “That’s probably true. I mean, who are you, after all.”

I remember the way he looked past me toward the door at the entrance. Most likely, he was scanning the lobby to see if his party had arrived, an innocent glance. Still, I couldn’t help thinking: Sam Baker, the consummate predator, searching for witnesses. He flashed me a bemused expression that did nothing to distract from the furious cadence of his words. “Don’t get it twisted. I’m not bitter about what happened at The Frog. I know how it goes. I just wished I had paid more attention. It’s always the quiet ones. Shhh. You hear ‘em? Creepin’ in the shadows. Ear pressed close when no one else is around. Say they love you! Say they want to be around you forever! Then they change their tune. They found a way for me to be over, so I was over.”

I sipped the rest of my beer down. “You think so? How do you stop people like that?”

Sam Baker shrugged. “You know what you do with people like that?” He slapped the counter. “Nothing. That’s what you do. Small town living comes with small town thinking. Buy in or cash out. Those are your choices.”

“That’s it?” I said, only because I had a hard time understanding what he was saying anymore.

“I almost did get away though.” Sam’s voice switched to a register stuck somewhere between melancholy and despair. “Back when we were in high school, I never imagined I’d still be living in this country-ass place. I bet you didn’t either. Harlem. Chicago. L.A. Shit. My sorry ass never even made it to Baltimore. I almost broke free.” Sam Baker flapped his hands together like a bird taking flight. “It all got lost somehow. Still, I’m no tragic case. I’m just thankful there are good guys like us around.” He clinked my glass.

“I tell my kids all the time, as I’m sure you do,” I said, glancing at the lobby to see if my party had arrived. “Treat people well, they might remember. Treat people poorly, only guarantee is, they never forget.”

“Cheers to remembering!” said Sam, clinking my glass again. This time when he did it, he did it with such force my beer splashed over the rim and across my hand. “Oh my,” he said. “Looks like the next round’s on me as well.” He splashed the rest of his beer across my shirt. “Damn I’m sloppy.”

Silently, I headed to the bathroom to clean up. By the time I returned, he was gone. A voice called out to me, an apology for being late. I proceeded with the lunch I was there for, as I’m sure Sam Baker did as well.

“It’s Gus Sanderson!” Janice Baker’s voice crowed from the stage. The spotlight swung back to them. “Was there anything you wanted to say to everyone?”

Janice, illuminated on stage, had Julie standing sentry beside her, stiff and serious. A flint of rage sparked in her eyes. Both their eyes, as a matter of fact. Mother and daughter: twins in grief.

“Yes,” I shouted back. I found my way to the stage and took the microphone. I leaned into the spotlight. I spoke slowly. “I’m not usually the voice on the radio. I just provide the oxygen from the sound booth as a programmer. But my voice counts too.” Polite laughter rippled across the room. I searched for Murph in the crowd but couldn’t find him. It was all just an undulating darkness, eyes and mouths chopping and moving into each other, as impossible to distinguish as rolling waves in the night. Behind them, a row of news cameras. Beady red lights. All of it, as Julie had said, being recorded.

“I want to talk about the fairness and unfairness of things,” I said into the microphone, reaching for the shoulders of a very surprised Janice Baker, a Janice Baker who, for some reason, didn’t break away, “I want to talk about survivor’s guilt, too. About what we have to try to do to explain the unexplainable. How we have to make the best of our time, flaws and all, because the future is listening.”

I nodded over to Julie and received the scowl I knew I would get in return. Then I pulled Janice Baker in tighter, perhaps too tight. I tried to imagine what was going through Sam Baker’s mind on the last day he was alive. Rolling around with death, painting his hands in blood, did he know who was to blame?

I looked out at the crowd again. All at once, I decided, all the faces had come brilliantly into focus—every religion, every race, every gender or nongender. Every future killer, liar, and offender of men. I closed my eyes. I listened to myself panting through the speakers. I reached up to my neck, releasing the top button so I wouldn’t look so squeezed on camera. My thumb pressed lightly against the on/off switch of the microphone, creating a pulsing, scratchy sound, like my heart.

I opened my eyes. I watched them all bob and twitch as I continued to speak.