thursday, may twenty-fifth, two-thousand

the three of us grabbed a log and rotated it so we could watch the sun touch the pacific. dave found a stick to pack his pipe, he looked like an old man. dave was almost a punk, he didn't like the music, but he liked the scene. the attitude. he swore off any movie made in hollywood with a rare exception. he didn't do much shopping that didn't include organically grown junk. we had called him coffee dave to distinguish him from the other daves we spoke about. reason being he talked about all the different coffees, where they came from, what beanery they were roasted in, and the name of the driver who delivered them to the store. he could tell, just by sticking his nose in a bag, what kind of bean it was.

luke left early the next morning, dave later that afternoon. both were heading to their respective homes. to celebrate/send off we decided to smoke, luke and i sharing a cigar, dave with his old man pipe. where they were going after they visited mom and dad was something i could never get an answer to. any time i asked, i would hear any one or two of the various places there were thinking of landing. dave in kansas or bellingham. luke, just somewhere else.

we spoke of the coming summer. what a year had done. did it do much? had spending nine months together taught us anything other than patience?

watching the burning globe reflect itself off the sand kept three guys quite for a good fifteen minutes. the silence was broken by an old biker walking by, saying in his raspy, "one too many smokes" voice, "those things'll give you boys cancer." we all kind of laughed and said "yeah, we know."

i was a little bit more upset than the two. school had been out for a month, dave was living with me, luke still at the school. i was staying there for another three months, and my two closest friends were going to the other end of the world. planning on going to school in september, i'd end up close to dave again. maybe he'd know what happened to luke, then the three of us could stay close.
when i got home, a note from another friend from school, she dropped by to say goodbye on her way out of town, left her email address and phone number. that note disappeared shortly after i saw it.

morning came, and they left. that day, friday, i made the decision to move home and put in my two weeks. i didn't get into the school, i
haven't heard from either of them. through a friend, who is a friend of daves friend, i hear that he's in sweden or something. luke, gone. it didn't end like it was supposed to.