BURGERSCOOT

Doug sat on the granite bench around friends and family in front of the mausoleum where the remains of his wife, Susanna, had just been interred. Earl, 54, Doug’s older brother by about seven years, spoke the longest—too long for Doug’s taste—but Doug always thought of his big brother as a blowhard.

When Earl finished and said, “Now, Douglas is going to give some insight on how beautiful his marriage with Susanna was.”

Doug knew this was coming. Earl threatened it even after Doug said he would rather keep his feelings to himself. So Doug heard his big brother loading it up and started shaking his head almost mechanically until Earl got the picture. Earl finally relented by saying, “Well, I guess little brother Douglas doesn’t want to say anything nice about his late wife.”

“Typical Earl,” Doug thought. “Ever the asshole. He wouldn’t have been so overbearing if Dad hadn’t died.”

Christopher stepped up and asked if he could say something.

Nobody knew Christopher except Doug. They were best friends, and although Christopher and Doug had met less than a year ago, they had spent enough time with the couple, and the three got along famously on the occasions they went out together.

So, Christopher fell on the grenade, and after the service Doug and Christopher heard family on both sides whispering, “Who was that? He seemed to know Doug and Susanna really well,” as if all potential Doug & Susanna Friends were compelled to go through a family vetting process and somehow Christopher snuck under the barbed wire fence.

In the parking lot, Doug told Earl and the other family members he wanted to be alone with Susanna, and that he’d catch up with them at Earl’s house, where they were holding a reception.

Doug walked back to the mausoleum. He didn’t sit down this time. It would only take a couple of minutes.

“Hey, Sunny Girl, how did you like your big brother-in-law’s speech? I’m surprised he didn’t hand out study guides for it and then quiz us at the end. Douche bag! Anyway, if I talk to you here any longer, I think I’m going to start crying again. I’m going to our place and say goodbye to you, properly.”

Doug checked whether any other party members were in the parking lot, then made his way to the car where Christopher was waiting.

Doug reiterated to his best friend what they discussed last night on the phone, “Don’t repeat what I just said to anyone; a few people will know where I’m going. I’ll be back in a couple of days, anyway. I’ll text you on my way back. If you can’t pick me up, I’ll order a car. Do you think you can handle Earl and Susanna’s parent?” Doug asks Christopher for the last time. “My mom shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

“Absolutely. Don’t worry about it, Doug. When you get back, I’ll tell you how it all went down, but I don’t think anyone knows where I live, and I’m not going to the reception either. Now, where to?”

“415 H Street.”

“Oh, so that’s how you’re leaving, Amtrak.”

“Yep.”

On the train ride out of town, Doug tried to continue reading his wife’s favorite book, “Les Misères,” a book he had picked up many times during their twenty-two years of marriage but could never finish. After half an hour, having read only twelve pages—often rereading a single page—he gave up, saying softly, “Sorry, Sunny girl, I just can’t do it.”

He fanned the large book before placing it back in his satchel, but stopped when he saw a red piece of card stock deep inside. It had a quote on it in Susanna’s perfect handwriting:

“Those we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch.” — J. Thorne

Doug stared at the quote. He thought he was all cried out, but he began to tear up. He also looked up the quote. It was from one of those Harry Potter films, but who is Jack Thorne? He thought the insufferable conservative J.K. Rowling wrote all those Harry Potter books he refused to read. This copy of Les Mis was his book — they were territorial about literature — so why did Susanna put this quote in his copy of his Victor Hugo book?

Doug thought about it for a while, then fell asleep, waking at every stop. When the train arrived in Carpinteria, he got out and found the Lyft he’d ordered on the train in front of the station; it took him to a beachfront condominium he had reserved for two nights.

After he was dropped off, Doug left his suitcase unopened in his rented unit. He didn’t bother to change clothes; he walked straight to the beach toward the shoreline—the dress shoes and socks he’d worn at the gravesite hours earlier in his hand, his slacks rolled up to his knees. Walking to the water’s edge, Doug wanted to feel the Pacific Ocean’s water rush towards, around, and away from his feet and ankles as if he were no more significant than a stone in a stream. The last time he was here, renting a ridiculously expensive beachside condo in the Carpinteria, he held his wife’s hand and felt so fulfilled.

When he first waded out and the cold water hit, his entire body jolted. He welcomed the discomfort. He liked it; it was the opposite of when he and Susanna vacationed here and got their feet wet in warmer waters. They would hold each other, kiss as if Susanna had just come back from one of her business trips and everything felt new again—her skin, her lips, her hair, the sound of her voice. They would hold marathon hugs until they couldn’t stand it anymore. Then they’d go back to the condo they rented and make passionate love. When they were spent, they would nap in each other’s arms, then go to one of their favorite restaurants for dinner, come back, and make love until they were exhausted. Now, he was just cold and incredibly lonely.

“Who did you lose?”

A woman had walked up behind him and now stood about four feet away, not making eye contact, staring into the Pacific like he was.

“How did you know?” he asked.

She replied, still looking out towards the sunset, “You’ve got a hollow-out look about you, plus you’re wearing a Zegna suit and tie, holding Magnanni oxfords; your silk slacks are rolled up so you can feel just how cold the ocean can get in January, and you are alone.”

“You’ve lost someone, just like I have,” she finished.

Doug should have asked the woman about her lost partner. Still, his whole body was beginning to ache from the water’s temperature and the cold wind coming in. Doug walked back to the condo without saying anything to the woman, checked the local news forecast, dressed in more comfortable and warmer clothes, and walked up Linden Avenue to Corktree Cellars, got a small table without a reservation, ordered a chicken club and a coffee, then left for the restroom.

When Doug returned, he found a woman sitting at his table. It was the woman from the beach.

The woman sipped the coffee he’d ordered for himself and asked Doug, “Tell me about her.”

Doug was too surprised to ask her to leave.

“Oh,” she smiled, looking down at Doug’s purloined coffee, “Another one is coming. Here it is.”

A young man delivered Doug another cup of coffee, and the waiter took the woman’s order.

I’ll have what he’s having, just without the meat.”

“Then that would be a BLT with cheese.”

“But hold the B too. Remember, no meat,” she said, smiling up at the perplexed young waiter and wagging a finger as if to say, “Uh uh oh, bacon is meat too.”

“Could you double up on the tomato, please? Oh, and what kind of tomatoes does this joint use?”

“They’re just red tomatoes, Ma’am.”

Nonsense; there are over forty different varieties of tomatoes. Ask the chef if they use Heirlooms. Wait.” The woman reached over to Doug’s plate, pulled out a slice of tomato from his sandwich, and took a bite. “Hmm, not sure, but it’s not Heirloom. Anyway, that’s good enough, but still ask about Heirlooms. Thank you, young man.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

As the waiter walked away with the woman’s order, she extended her right hand to Doug. “My name is Amy, ‘The Infamous Tomato Snatcher.’” She punctuated it with a smile.

Doug took her hand and squeezed it gently.

”Here’s your slice back,” placing the slice of tomato back on Doug’s plate with a small bite out of it.

While Doug considered putting the tomato slice back in his sandwich, he also tried to figure out this strange but physically attractive strawberry blonde with beautiful gray eyes. He guessed she was in her mid-40s and exercised. She was fit and seemed to like wearing sportswear: leggings, a Cal T-shirt, and a Nike jacket. She wore a tracksuit and trainers when he saw her on the beach earlier. Doug was still in the dress shirt he had worn since the interment, but now wore jeans, a warm jacket, and loafers.

Amy and Doug talked quietly about their now-deceased partners, and the significance of the beach they were on earlier was in their dead partners’ lives. They also talked about how their partners died: Susanna in a plane crash, Seth accidentally stabbed while trying to break up a fight in San Quentin State Prison.

“But it’s not called that anymore, did you know that? It’s called the politically correct San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. Whew, what a mouthful. No wonder my husband and his fellow guards called it SQRC. Hey, did they recover anything of your wife’s?”

“You mean her body? Not really. The bitter irony is that her parents, Susanna, and I had different ideas of how to deal with our corpses. My wife wanted her body to return to the Earth, you know, to be used as fertilizer. She was looking into setting something up with a soil transformation organization. I never got around to checking that out or setting up to be cremated.

“Susanna’s parents are uber traditionalists; they wanted survivors to be able to visit a site. What a waste of real estate! In the end, when Susanna’s plane went down, and she was basically a couple of identified bone fragments, her parents got their way, sort of. That is, I didn’t care anymore, so I had what few bone chips they found cremated and placed in an urn and tucked it away in a community mausoleum. I gave her parents the option later to move the chips wherever they wanted.”

“This little two-day trip to the place we met, fell in love, and vacationed every summer is my real funeral for my wife, not the one we had in Sacramento to make everyone else satisfied. My mom, of course, was cool about everything. She just wanted me to be as comfortable as possible, considering I had lost my Susanna.”

After lunch, they walked toward where they were staying. When they arrived at the spot where they split up to walk to their own places, Doug said goodbye, but Amy asked in a mock annoyed tone, “Well, aren’t you going to invite me into your pad? Doug relented, and a few minutes later they were in Doug’s beachside condominium.

Inside the condo, they drank little bottles of Jack Daniels from the no-host refrigerator. “Wow, Jack Daniels tastes even shittier in these tiny bottles,” Amy winced.

They’d barely finished their drinks when Amy turned to Doug and kissed him. It was a deep, needy kiss, and Doug returned it, though he didn’t know why.

They sloppily kissed while frantically removing each other’s clothes. When Amy was naked, Doug pushed her violently onto the bed. As Doug removed his underwear, Amy lay on the bed, propped up on her elbows, smiling. “Hurry up, Doogie Howser, mommy is so wet!” Doug hated that name, but there was no time to talk about preferable monikers.

When they came together, the sexual exchange was violent and selfish, as if they were only using each other.

Doug spread Amy’s legs and went down on her. Amy held Doug’s head in place, ensuring he got her off.

When she came in his mouth, he spun her on her stomach; the leading edge of her right thigh hit him in the head; he didn’t care. Nor did he care how completely disrespectful this was to Susanna’s memory. He slapped Amy’s ass hard once; he grasped her hips and hoisted her rear end up. Now he reached down and grabbed a large portion of her hair; his swollen cock found her engorged pussy, overly sensitive from her orgasm.

Since puberty, Doug suffered from a kind of delayed ejaculation condition. With Susanna, they worked together so he could fully enjoy his wife, and Susana could enjoy her husband—multiple times they had sex, but this was obviously the first time having sex since Susanna died.

He couldn’t finish, and he was becoming increasingly frustrated. His mind started to wander. For some reason, The Beatles’ “Please Please Me” started playing in his head:

“Last night I said these words to my girl/I know you never even try, girl/Come on (come on), come on (come on) Come on (come on), come on (come on)/Please, please me, whoa yeah, like I please you.”

Doug began to laugh. He tried to remember the rest of the lyrics while fucking Amy.

“You don’t need me to show the way, love/Why do I always have to say, love?”

Amy was no longer participating in the lovemaking—if that was what this was. Doug, still riding, continued, now doing the call-and-response out loud.

“Come on (come on), come on (come on), come on (come on), come on (come on), please—”

Amy twisted out of the coital position and quickly started dressing without saying a word. Doug, on the other hand, was laughing uncontrollably. By the time she left, Doug’s laughter turned to sobbing, quietly calling out Susanna’s name.

After a couple of minutes, Susanna sat at the end of the bed. “Really, Douglas, insulting a woman during lovemaking?”

“You know my dysfunction, Sunny Girl,” Doug replied as if speaking with phantoms was completely natural. “Without you I’m doomed. I couldn’t help but make a joke out of it,” Doug said, swiveling to a seated position, still naked.

“With that attitude, you might as well become a monk.”

“Maybe that’s what I’ll be, Sunny Girl, a monk!”

“So, I should stop sending you suitors?”

“You sent Amy to me?”

“What does Neil Young say, ‘A man needs a maid’? But Douglas, my boy, you need a maid, a cook, a warm lap to cry on, not to mention a very patient concubine, preferably all in one so as not to raise suspicions or any jealousies among the harem.”

“Look, you were basically vaporized. If you can come back and talk with me, you can probably get Amy back, if for no other reason than so I can apologize to her.”

“Well, even if I could, you would have to lay down the mother of all apologies. I can come back to you as a ghost, but I can’t perform miracles, for Christ’s sake. Now, wash off the Susanna Slayer and put on your boxers, Love. Oops, I guess I shouldn’t call it the “Susanna Slayer” anymore.”

Doug walked to the bathroom and washed his cock while continuing to speak to his dead wife, but she was no longer commenting on what he was saying. He came out of the bathroom, put on his underwear and T-shirt, and noticed Susanna was gone. Doug kept calling for Susanna, but she didn’t return. He began to wonder if she’d ever been there in the first place.

Doug made himself coffee, grabbed a ham-and-cheese sandwich from the no-host refrigerator, hopped into bed, and ordered a couple of movies from the condo’s offerings: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Susanna’s favorites. As he watched them, he occasionally called out for Susanna, hoping whatever kind of manifestation it was would return so they could comment on her favorite scenes, but Susanna didn’t come back.

The next morning Doug packed up and checked out. It turned out one night was all he could stand in Carpinteria without Susanna. He stopped calling for Susanna, chalking it up to wishing her into existence.

Doug planned to visit a couple of boutiques to find some trinket that would remind him of his dead wife but wanted to get home and get over the grief Earl, Susanna’s parents, and whoever else was disappointed in his absence at the wake.

He bought a ticket on the next train to Sacramento, got on when it rolled in, and took a seat.

On the train ride home, Doug pulled out his copy of “Les Misères,” not to read it; he was done trying to read his late wife’s favorite book. He went straight to a red piece of card stock buried in his copy. Why did Susanna put this quote in his copy of his Victor Hugo book? He read the quote out loud: “Those we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch.”

Just then another traveler sat across from him. Doug felt he had plenty of time to look up and introduce himself—maybe even buy them breakfast or a coffee for being so rude—but he was flipping through the Hugo book for any more clues.

“Wow, that’s supersonic speed reading, Doogie Howser.”

Doug set the book down hard on the table and dropped his jaw. Amy was now sitting across from him.

“Amy, how are you?” Doug pushed the book aside and held out his hand flat on the table, hoping against hope that she would take it.

“Too bad we’re not eating right now. I’m famished. Anyway, about your hand, if I had a knife, I could pin that hand to the table, then walk around and choke you, just like what happened to poor Luka Brazzi. Alas, I’m fresh out of piano wire.”

“I’m sorry, Amy. I’m sexually fucked up, so I had no business having sex with you. Anyway, I don’t know what got into me; I’m still mourning Susanna’s death. Please forgive me.”

Ignoring Doug’s apology, Amy queried, “Do you know how to get some grub on this trolley? You can buy me breakfast.”

“We’re in a Dining Car, so someone will come around and take our orders soon. Where is your stop, anyway?”

“Martinez.”

“Poor baby. Oh, here comes Amtrak’s Culinary Ambassador now.”

Doug and Amy ate their meals in relative silence. When they finished their breakfasts and the table was cleared, Amy smiled at Doug and said, “Let’s see that hand again, Mr. Brazzi,” as the train announced the next stop: Martinez.

Doug slid his hand over anyway.

Amy petted the hand while smiling at Doug.

“She was right about you. You’re impossible.”

“Wait, who was right? Who said that?” Doug asked, though he knew the answer.

Amy avoided the question, stood up, and gathered her things.

Before leaving, she told Doug, “She said you’d need someone to make you laugh before you were ready to smile.”

At Martinez, Amy left the train. Doug followed her to the platform, hoping to say goodbye, but she was gone. He asks the conductor whether anyone else got off. The conductor replied, “Scheduled stop, sir. Nobody as far as I could see disembarked.

Doug returns to his seat to find a second red card inside his copy of “Les Misères.” It read,

Now finish the book, Love. – Your Sunny Girl