Garry, from Yo, Taxi
By: Leon Wolf
Tags: Friendship, New York City, Old Friends, Conversations, New York

“Garry acted like he was already in heaven, he did what he wanted to do. I always said he was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. There are nicer guys, but you wouldn’t want to meet them. They can’t be as much fun. They don’t get wasted and say ‘Tony, you in there?’ and expect an answer to come from my insides because I reminded him of his friend Tony for a moment as we drove in his white Cadillac convertible. We were heading back to his house from mine, where we had rolled additional joints after we and our wives smoked the one I’d brought with me and we wanted to keep partying. Garry and I burned one to prepare for the twenty-minute drive to his house, and on that high highway ride home he thought I had Tony in there.

“The night Garry died, Angela and I, his Air Force buddy John, John’s wife Inge, and Garry’s wife Bian were with him at home. Garry’s doctors told him the end was near. Garry said fine. He’d had enough of pain, being weak as a kitten, sick, unable to eat or walk.

“Garry and John used to go up in spy planes and listen to Viet Cong radio transmissions. Air Force intelligence had picked them out, right from basic training. Smart boys. We stood around the bed. Garry was good to go. Cancer for ten years and it finally did him in; something they couldn’t cut out or burn out or medicate into submission. He wanted to die at home. He wanted to die that night.

Bian handed me a letter from an old girlfriend, Garry’s former fiancée. ‘Read loud so he can hear you,’ Bian told me. It was too hard for her, plus she didn’t read English well. Her English? She’s Vietnamese. Garry met her at the zoo in Saigon during the war, what, fifteen years ago. The letter said, ‘Dearest Garry, My first love. We’ll never see each other again and I want you to know how wonderful it has been to have you in my life. You have been a dear friend for so long and will be forever.’

“I choked up, tears in my eyes. My voice cracked, and I found it hard to catch a full breath. No sound other than me reading and Garry breathing. Garry’s eyes were closed. He breathed slow and heavy from all the meds. He was on a ton of shit because of the pain. Time stuck on that scene, slowing down to match his breathing. The room compressed and became still, like the moment before the big bang. Reading the letter was the hardest thing, feeling time stop on my friend dying, my emotions.

“Time resumed. The others left the room. Garry said my name and tapped the middle of his forehead — where people say the third eye is. I planted a kiss right there. He died a few hours later.

“The month before Garry died, we wanted to prove once and for all if there’s life after death. But how? If he came to me in a vision, big deal; it could be wishful thinking on my part. If he didn’t, what did that mean? He might have better things to do in the spirit world.

Eventually, we came up with a plan, Garry wrote a phrase we had never used in conversation, and Bian kept it hidden. If I had a dream or something with a message from Garry, Bian would show me the paper. Garry visited me in my sleep one night a month after he passed. Not the scrawny, weakened, pale man cancer killed. No sir, he looked buff, youthful. Rippling muscles, lush, tan skin, no gray in his beard or his hair, a bounce in his step and a twinkle in his eye. We said goodbye outside my front door. It conveniently faced the sunset. Garry gave me a hug. He turned to walk away, a cliché into the dying colors of the day.

He said, ‘Catch you at the big show, buddy boy.’”

“Wow. What did he write on the paper?”

“I never found out. When I told Bian about the vision, she said she couldn’t find the paper, had never read it. We were so close.

“Check this out. Garry loved everyone, but he hated Dr. Jackass. Jarkas, but we said it the other way. It fit better. Jarkas moved out of the practice six months before Garry died, good riddance we thought. You know what? We found out that one week after Garry died, Jackass called his patients. She told them Garry’s deathbed wish was for her to take over their care. Think about that. The one person he couldn’t stand, because she was so sneaky, had the balls to lie to each and every patient about a dying man’s wishes. Like she was there. Like Bian would have let her in the house. Jackass convinced a secretary to give her Garry’s patient list, and she called them all. I don’t know if Jackass paid or tricked her. What a goddamn world this is, huh. She’s gonna live to a hundred, a rich cheating bitch until the end. Meanwhile Garry died at forty-three.”