Mac loved the cemetery best at night. In a sick way. In a way that was pure. He enjoyed the company of skeletons. It put him at ease–made him sleepy, dangerously so, more open to the risks of twilight and foul play by routine grave raiders and vagabond miscreants alike. Sometimes he was mimicking them–he would hold his breath, force his eyes closed with tape, and listen to the world turning around him, without him. Oftentimes he'd stay for hours, until the sun turned into the moon and snow fell and his cheeks filled with blood, or his cellphone died and shortest finger turned white and it became difficult to sit up because he had not eaten all day. But he was peaceful–happy, amongst his friends who did not talk, only sat, still as death and more patient than in life, and listened.
It gave him plenty of time to observe the living world around him, lying down on his bed of crunchy grass, arms outstretched and extending. He was held up by the bodies below. They kept him steady, balanced on the palms of their hands.
Plenty of time to think and rethink. He had decided, during this time of thinking, that what was worst about death was the empty.
For the first two hours after Mac had learned LaRon had died, he sat in the middle of the road, his spine pressed against pavement, with a black hole growing out from the soles of his feet, consuming the trees, licking the sun, and dared the world to do what it could. What it wanted to. Send a car over his body, so tires punctured her skin like needles go through balloons. Or a comet: let flames eat away at his hair, his fingernails, his left leg and lungs. What do you do when the boy you loved has sold his soul to sleep? You sleep too. Just like Romeo, a Montague as real as any other.
It is on one of these days, when he jeered at the world, that he finds it. He notices the rose by accident.
Mac spent most of his night shift at LaRon's grave–ended his nights with it as frequently as he could, pulling weeds from the grass surrounding it, spraying the yellowed parts with hot water pilfered from the coffee station. He talked about his day. About the funerals he'd helped at. The time he'd been forced to pick out tissues from the field for a whole afternoon under the heavy-lidded gaze of the sun. He would sing, sometimes, if he was in the mood, like he had done the first time they had met. The key that opened a keyless door–his voice. Sometimes, if he was quiet enough–if he held his breath, pressed his ear so close to the ground dirt kissed the side of his head–Mac could hear him sing the next line in harmony. You know what you sound like? A white Michael Jackson. I hear you, Mac Jackson.
He sings the chorus of Human Nature with his mouth to the ground. When he comes up for air, the red petal of a rose is pressed to his bottom lip.
