The tie was a bad idea. I had just put it on and it was already choking me. I saw my reflection in the rear- view mirror- red, swollen eyes; tired face; sad grim. How appropriate, I told myself. After all I was going to a funeral. A heavy sight slipped through my lips. This whole trip was a bad idea. I looked at the open church door across the street. It seemed creepy and for a moment I felt like I was in a horror movie. A wishful thought of escape ran across my mind but I cast it away. I had to go in- there was no other choice. No turning back at this point.
I went in slowly. My head was a bit dizzy from the heat and I sat down on the nearest bench before I faint. My hands were sweating, my mouth was dry and there was a loud bell echoing in my ears. The casket was just several meters away and I saw an old, tall, thin woman crying over it. She wore a simple black dress. No jewelry, no make up. Her shiny, black hair was held in a tight bun on the back of her head. Her eyes were bright blue, like an early morning sky, her eyebrows formed a perfect line. I would have recognized her anywhere. She looked so much like her daughter… or was it the other way around. “Excuse me.” I looked up. Tow serious, strict eyes were watching me curiously behind a pair of glasses. “Yes”
“Are you Mr. Foster?”
“Yeah, can I help you?”
“My name is Frederic Holt. I’m Miss. Fox’s attorney. I sent you the letter.”
“Oh”…’so you’re the reason I’m here?’ I thought, “Can I help you?”
“Yes, sir.” He smiled innocently, “ I’m afraid I have another letter for you.” He reached into his pocket and gave me a small, white envelope. “Miss. Fox told me to give this to you in the day she died, when she was in the hospital. If… anything should happen to her,” he explained “she told me to give this to you personally.”
“Did she say why?”
“No, sir. She said you would understand.”
I would understand??? I didn’t even know why was I there in the first place. He gave me his card and told me to call him if I had any questions. I just smiled politely hoping he’d leave me alone. I put the envelope in my coat and closed my eyes hoping that that way everything would clear up. It didn’t. I opened them again and there it was, the open casket of perfectly polished, dark brown wood. It just didn’t want to go away.
I’ve been to funerals before. My grandfather, a colleague from work, my grandmother. I knew how it went. You understand, you cry a bit (or a lot), you go to the funeral, you get depressed and a month or so after that you find out that no matter what, life still goes on even without the loved ones. You cry a bit more and you move on. Tragic- yes, but yet common in a weird, soothing kind of a way. It was everyday life, almost too unrealistic to provoke fear or real everlasting sorrow.
This time it was different. One day, two and a half weeks ago, I woke up and found a letter, in my always-empty mailbox, that Ginger Fox had died in a car crash two days ago and I had to go to her funeral by request of her lawyer. “IT’S VERY IMPORTANT!” was written in the end, underlined a few times. Since then I haven’t slept one night. I haven’t shed one tear. I haven’t been cheerful or calm for one moment. I expected it to go away. It didn’t. Finally I packed my backpack and went to L.A. It took me one afternoon. 3 hours, 15 minutes and 35 seconds to be exact. The sun burned my scull, there was a sense of mortality in the air witch couldn’t fill my lungs. I felt… no, not depressed. I felt desperate. As if I was just woken from an eternal sleep and I found out that I have one day to live. SHE had died. It was so… awfully true. So unfairly real.
I looked at the grieving woman in front of me and got up from the bench carefully. I walked slowly, minding my steps and clutching my fists for strength that I didn’t have. I took a deep breath and looked at the body, lying in its wooden bed.
Ginger Fox. Gink. I felt a sudden urge to scream. Even now, she looked…
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Her mother looked at me with a sad smile. I gave a short nod.
“Beautiful” is a simple and incomprehensive word. It lets you know that her eyes were bright blue, but not that they were glowing in the sun, when she was happy or sad. That they were bright even in the dark. It means that her lips were thick, but only I know how she used to bite them when she was nervous. That when she smiled her whole face lit up and you forget everything and everyone else.
“Yeah, she’s very beautiful.”
“Did you know her well?”
I hesitated. “No. I went to school with her but we weren’t very close.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why?”
She looked at me softly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
I slightly touched my pocket and wondered what exactly did she mean to say.
“What’s your name?”
I hated that question. It made me blush every time.
“Flame. Flame Foster.” She smiled again.
“It’s a good name. Full of character.”
If you say so.
“What do you do?” she asked me after a while.
“I’m a teacher. At the San Diego university. Literature.”
“How brave! Books are a dying breed now a days. Have you ever written anything?”
“ No.”
“Why?”
My eyes filled with tears. “I never found an inspiration.”
“I hope you do” she told me and went to take a seat.
For five years Ginger, also known as Gink, and I had only one conversation. It was at a school play. She sat next to me and that’s how we met.
“You know I was suppose to play the leading part” she said, “My mom is an actress and she wanted me to try and see if I had any talent too, but acting’s not what I want to do.”
“What do you want to do?”
She looked at me both amused and surprised at the question. Then she smiled. “I want to travel and see everything that is worth seeing in the world.”
“It’s a fine goal.”
“What about you?”
“I… I …oh, well…hum… I want to be a writer.”
“Have you written anything yet?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I still haven’t found an inspiration I guess.”
“Well when you do, I’ll be one of your biggest fans, I promise.”
I looked at the girl in front of me. Pale and pretty. Calm and peaceful. Beautiful. Divine. I touched her cold hands for a final goodbye and sat down in the back of the room, deadly certain that I had just lost something I never knew I had in the first place. The ceremony began. I didn’t hear a word. The awfully big bell in my head was louder that ever. After that I got into my car and cried for the first time in almost three weeks. It ended fast and just when I was ready to drive away I remembered about the envelope in my coat. My hand was steady. It was a short message, written by hand.
“I wish you’d go and see the Angel- the only thing that can put out a flame like you or make it burn even harder. I think you’ll find your inspiration there, in the only place I couldn’t reach.
P.S. I wouldn’t be too angry if you mention me in one of your books. Yours Gink!
That night I slept for 9 hours and in the morning I felt more rested that ever before. I carried the letter with me all the time and reread it every day. Of course, it took me almost a month until I figured out that by “Angel” she actually meant ”Angel Falls”- one of the places she wanted to see but didn’t get the chance to. It also took me just as long (or even longer) to find a way to reach it. Not by air, though that the best point of view. I wanted to stand in front of it, to see it, to hear it, to feel it, to taste it. I stood there for as long as I could. The water fell with such force that it split the ground underneath my feet. And right there, for an instant of time, a split second, I felt as if she was standing next to me. Her smile, her glowing eyes. Her excitement at the magnificent view. I felt so proud that I had fulfilled her last request. I wondered if she ever knew that I loved her- I didn’t know myself, until then. I wondered if she ever loved me. But then again: “Does it really matter, if it got me here?”
