Suicide Lane Cafe

Marina

Her name was Marina. 

She was young and old all at the same time, like one of those optical illusions that change form when you look at it again. People said she was looked like a lion; I thought she was like a beach, a tawny beach, with sandy hair and sandy skin and crystalline eyes and freckles that dotted her face and neck and shoulders. 

The first time I met her she was eating soaked watermelon and apple pie infused with Everclear, a small glass of rum by her side and a long, thin cigarette smouldering on the table by her elbow. She looked twenty, small and demure and innocent until she opened her mouth. I was drunk with youth and thought I knew everything, and sat next to her and stole a piece of apple pie, and she threatened to gouge my eyes out if I didn't put it back. 

I put it back and picked it up again, wiggling my eyebrows, and she laughed, light and tinkly and free. We sat there for hours, in the 1920s bar in the Village with costumed flappers crooning jazz, smoky and dark and elegant. When we got tired of drinking and smoking we left and roamed the art galleries and drove screaming to the Rolling Stones.

Eventually she moved in with me and shared the cramped apartment I was paying $2,000 a month for. During the day I went to NYU and came back brimming with exuberance and the unwavering knowledge that one day I would take over the world, and at night we went out and got drunk and chain-smoked leaning against the battered car I refused to sell. I never knew what Marina did during the day, nor did I care to ask. I was terrified of breaking this tenuous friendship, of upsetting her and coming back one day to find her clothes gone with only her memory to hold on to. 

We could debate for hours, talking about Neo-Marxism and morality and Jesus Christ and astrophysics. Marina seemed to know something about everything -- more often than not I was crushed to pieces during an argument, when she would admit to a point I had made before slowly leading me down a baited path into conceding her point. 

Marina's greatest philosophy was that she could drop dead any minute, and her greatest tragedy was that it never happened. She had vicious mood swings -- now, I realise that she was probably bipolar -- and I often took the brunt of it. She had hurt me various times in fits of anger, the worst being when I had to drive to the hospital for twenty stitches on my stomach after I'd walked too close as she waved a switchblade about. 

And yet she was still the closest friend I ever had. When I graduated from NYU she was there, crying and beaming at me. Later we went out with a circle of friends, all majors in writing and philosophy and drawing and painting, and we debated and laughed and got drunk at a karaoke lounge we'd stumbled upon. We thought we were going to live forever.

Eventually the euphora of being a new graduate wore off and I had to leave. Marina despised airports -- said it was impersonal and depressing and sterile -- but she came along to say goodbye regardless. And she cried, and I cried, and they announced my flight, and the last thing I saw was her face turned downwards, her hair shielding her face and her shoulders shaking. 

She eschewed emails and sent letters instead, scribbled napkin drawings or excerpts from a poem she'd just read. I replied every one in the same form. If she sent one drawing, I'd send her another. If she sent a poem and a postcard, I'd do the same. We continued this way for months, new letters coming in the mail weekly. 

And then one day her letter never came, and I received a phone call saying that I'm sorry, but Marina killed herself a week ago, would you like to come to the memorial service?

I didn't.