Ham On Rye

Ham On Rye

I’ll never forget my last lunch with Andy. We’d found a booth in the back corner of some sandwich shop. I ordered ham on rye with a Coke and Andy had a club with a root beer. It was his favorite meal and I never doubted that’s what he would get. It was habit, and in the end, Andy was one big habit stuck on replay.

It was a Thursday.

“Nice of you to invite me out to lunch, dude,” Andy drawled, leaning back in the booth. His sandwich sat untouched in front of him and I wondered if that’s how it would remain. “What’s the occasion?”

“Well-”

“I mean, I’m used to catching lunch with you,” Andy interrupted in the way I’d always found irritating. But I didn’t mind it so much now. “But for you to pay? Man, it must be something big.”

Something big. I had to resist the urge to chuckle at his choice of words. Oh, it was something big alright. Probably the biggest something big I’d ever had to tell him. That was saying something, because with Andy, there was always something big going on. That’s just the way he was. I shouldn’t have expected anything different.

Even his damn funeral had been big.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Did someone die?”

Yeah, Andy, someone died.

I’ll never forget my last lunch with Andy. I ordered a ham on rye with a Coke and Andy had a club with a root beer that sat untouched the entire time. It was a Thursday. I was still dressed in black.

“Listen man, we’ve been friends a very long time and I need to tell you something important.”

How do you tell someone they’ve been dead for three days?



Word Count: 292
written for "Invalid Item"   by A Guest Visitor
First place for 7/9/06