Missing In Rangoon

“What if death isn’t a dash but a period?”

“You know what I think, Ed?”

A silence fell between them as McPhail stared at the makeshift altar.

“The whole universe is connected to the end of that dash.”

Rituals with candles, incense and flowers, Calvino thought, are supposed to allow people to make their peace with the destruction and the absence. But the ache of the loss is never easily appeased.

“It’s time, Ed. I’ve got to get back to my office.”

McPhail nodded, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He

opened a bottle of rum and took a long drink before screwing the cap back on.

“Rangoon,” he said.

“Think about it.”

“You think the Lonesome Hawk might have been reincarnated in Rangoon?” said McPhail, taking another hit from the rum bottle.

Calvino laughed. “A new bar,” he said, “filled with all of the old regulars, reborn in Rangoon, asking George, ‘What’s the special?’ And Baby Cook coming out of the kitchen with her blouse hiked up over her belly, sweating and smoking a cigarette.”

McPhail slid out from the booth. He walked to the bar and placed the palm of his hand over each candle, extinguishing the flames one at a time.

“I don’t want to say goodbye more than once. You go to Rangoon. You find that bar. And you tell George and Gator and Bill and the rest of them that McPhail loved them. I did. You know that, Vinny.”

Calvino watched him walk to the door and look back one last time.

“You’ve got to get back to your office,” said McPhail.

They’d done what they’d come to do—perform one last small gesture. Rituals last an instant, memories a lifetime. The two things may be out of proportion, but however a man measures the difference, Calvino figured, in the grand scheme of things they aren’t all that far apart. Rituals and memories have never been meant to last forever.

It was time to go. They pushed through the door with the crumbling poster for free food. They walked around the piles of rubble and into the old parking area. Calvino stopped and took a final look. McPhail kept walking.

The flow of time carries all men and all things. It had swept away the Lonesome Hawk, and the river of time would always move through the minds of men, drowning them in the past or sweeping them downstream into the future. There was a choice.

“McPhail, wait up. You really should come to Rangoon.”

McPhail swung around on his heels.

“Next life, Vinny.”

TWO

Pseudoephedrine Is Not an Illicit Drug

RATANA SMILED AS Calvino came back into the office. He returned the smile.

“How did it go with McPhail?” she asked.

“He doesn’t want to go to Burma.”

“I meant with paying respect to George and the others at the Lonesome Hawk Bar.”

“They haven’t got back to me.”

Her eyes smiling, she said, “They will let you know.”