Title: Contemplations Of A Life Gone By…
Summary: Slightly AU to make the song work. Sydney has died; Vaughn is falling apart. Eric watches, and in between trying to help and trying to work out the difficulties in his own life, he thinks back to the childhood he shared with his best friend. Wharton = University of Pennsylvania's business school. Minor tribute to the film, Serendipity.
Author: Celestejz
Disclaimer: "Why" does not belong to me. It belongs to the estate of Jonathan Larson and the producers of "Tick, Tick, Boom!" None of the characters belong to me. I'm just borrowing them for some thoughtful contemplation.
Contact: Littlexiaolaong@yahoo.com
Feedback: Please and thank you. Constructive criticism makes my day.
~*~
I watch him all the time now.
Before work, during lunch breaks, after work until the wee hours of the morning, I watch him.
Occasionally, we'll have a conversation. He'll laugh dourly at one of my lame jokes; I'll try to coerce him to eat something. And for a brief moment in time, our lives will have some semblance of normalcy to them again.
But those are only on the good days. And those are rare and far between.
As I sit here now, watching him nurse his usual pint of Jack Daniels in the cover of darkness, silent as death, I can't help but wonder where it all went wrong.
We had such promising futures, both of us. Best friends since the age of seven, there was a time when our greatest worry was Michael not being able to sing in the local musical, or my constant fear that my recipe would be rejected from the local White Plains High cook-off.
Everything else, we thought, would just come to us naturally, in its own time.
But now, at 29 years of age, reality has set in. No matter how hard we try, we're jaded now. The prospect of a sparkling life, good wealth, and general good fortune in our lives, has reached an impasse. One I'm not sure either one of us will be able to steer.
When I was nine, Michael and I
Entered a talent show down at the Y
Nine A.M. went to rehearse by some stairs
Mike couldn't sing
But I said, "No one cares"
We sang "Yellow Bird" and "Let's Go Fly A Kite"
Over and over and over
Till we got it right
It wasn't always like this, you know.
There wasn't always the ring of hopelessness, the aura of mediocrity, which surrounds us now. We were going somewhere once.
It's hard to think about that now, I admit. Our lives have changed so much since Sydney's death…
But on one of those good days, when Michael actually finds it in himself to smile, I'm reminded of a time not too long ago.
It happened so long ago, and yet all of it still seems so vaguely familiar. If I think about it hard enough, it almost seems like it was just yesterday…
Mike and I were 26, and fresh out of business school and cooking school, respectively. (I think it's relatively easy to figure out which one of us went to cooking school, and which one of us had the brains for business…)
Mike, wanting to put his Wharton degree to good use, had his eyes set on Wall Street. "I'll make money and do good with it"…
And I, with my cooking school certification/international politics BA from Georgetown, (my mom didn't get it either,) had my hopes on owning my own diner, while exploring a fascination with song writing I've had since childhood…
So perhaps out of a moral obligation we felt to each other, (having shared such a closely knit, musical-filled childhood and all,) we took a apartment on New York's West Side, scraping our money together, and biding our time before we really made it…
When we emerged from the
YMCA
Three o'clock sun had made the grass
Hey, I thought,
Hey, what a way to spend the day
Hey, what a way to spend the day
I make a vow, right here and now
I'm going to spend my time this way
He met Sydney Bristow not long after we moved to the city.
It had been a late autumn afternoon, one filled with the wispy scarlet colors of fall.
Leaves were tumbling off the crispy, drying, trees in restless abandon, while people were finally beginning to put away the summer clothing, in exchange for the heavier clothing favored for cold weather.
Michael had been in his third week at a new job at JP Morgan, and by all accounts, was on the fast track to becoming the firm's newest "it-boy."
I was working at a restaurant near New York's theatre district, and spent most of my mornings fielding orders from hungry production companies, and most my evenings, taking phone calls from my mom asking me what I was "doing with my life."
As I look over my laptop now, pretending to work on the diner's menu, I study his still form and somewhere, in that stationary, unmoving body, I can still remember his reaction after meeting her for the first time.
She was a graduate student at Columbia, working on her masters in English. ("Why English?" I had asked her once, teasingly. "Why not English?" She had retorted with a sassy toss of her brown. "You're a cook/song writer/international politics person." I just laughed in response.)
They had met by chance, in a moment that really did make me question fate and the serendipity behind all things for a long time afterward.
Michael had been shopping for brown paper bags at the local grocery store. Despite being JP Morgan's newest "thing", Michael liked to ignore office convention, which dictated that he eat lunch in fancy, over-priced New York restaurants.
Instead, perhaps as homage to his humble up bringing, Michael brown-bagged his food every day, and spent most lunch breaks at his desk, chomping through a mouthful of sandwich while he worked.
It earned him a lot of gentle jabs and teasing around the office, but he didn't seem to care.
Fiddling with a key on my laptop, I realize I'm getting incredibly off the point, and I look up and offer Michael some food.
"No." The grunting reply comes back as quickly as ever. Taking another swig of his drink, Michael slinks further back into his couch, and with that physical action, he closes himself off some more.
So as the story goes, there had been only one packet of brown paper bags left in the entire store. (Something that the manager later claimed had never happened before, so chalk another notch up for fate.)
Michael, busy talking on his cell phone, and Sydney flipping through the pages of one of her endless-supply of textbooks, had reached for the package at the same time.
Naturally, a brief tug-of-war had followed, which had ended when Michael, taking the initiative, had asked Sydney out for a date.
"In exchange for the paper bags." Michael had replayed the conversation for me, with a grin, hours later.
Sydney, after a laugh and a gentle mock admonishment, ("Do you really think I'm that easy?") agreed.
When I was sixteen, Michael and I
Got parts in West Side
At White Plains High
Three o'clock went to rehearse in the gym
Mike played Doc, who didn't sing
Fine with him
We sang, "got a rocket in your pocket and the
Jets are going to have their day tonight"
Over and over and over
Till we got it right
When we emerged, wiped out by that play
Nine o'clock, stars and moon lit the way
Despite my "warnings", and some rather well chosen stories of Michael's high school days, ("He danced in 'West Side Story', Sydney. Do you really want to go out with someone who dances?") Sydney and Michael soon became a couple, and fell headfirst into a relationship that I still compare, to some of the greatest romances out there.
After that first date, things began happening so quickly, that if I take the time to contemplate it, to try and relive it, (for even as an innocent bystander, I was still a witness to their blossoming relationship,) everything comes to me only in blurs and blasts of color, sound and memory.
As I continue to fiddle around with my computer, (I've long since given up working on the menu and am now just playing a lazy game of solitaire,) a loud crash from Michael's "corner", gets my attention.
Michael has thrown his empty bottle on the floor, and is now sitting with his hands cover his face. I stand up to help him, but he waves me back. "She's dead, Eric, she's dead…Why did she have to die and leave me all alone?"
The memories come quickly.
Sydney moves in. Sydney and Michael celebrate their one-year anniversary. We spend Christmas visiting my family and Michael's family back in California the second year. Sydney graduates, with a beaming Michael at the ceremony. I manage to scrape enough money to buy my own diner at the beginning of the third year, and have an opening party worthy of Wolfgang Puck's clients. Michael is promoted, and Sydney begins teaching at the end of the third year. The fourth Christmas brings a diamond ring, and an engagement. I am now the proud owner of a successful diner, (who has a side interest in song writing,) with more then enough money to make it on my own. I make excuses to leave, and while Michael and Sydney both protest, I know that Mike and I are indeed leading separate lives now. We're still friends, as evidenced at the wedding that takes place not long afterward…
And then one day, it all came to a grinding halt.
I thought,
Hey, what a way to spend a day
Hey, what a way to spend a day
I made a vow
I wonder now
Am I cut out to spend my time this way?
Sydney had been complaining about fatigue on and off for several months after the wedding.
I still remember Michael, in one of our weekly lunch meetings, confiding that he had asked Sydney to go to the doctor for a check-up, but she'd refused.
"She says that it's probably just stress from the new job." In addition to teaching high school English, Sydney was participating in an extended study at Columbia, targeting inner-city teachers, and the education standards of the kids they teach.
I had been preoccupied with thoughts of my own business at the time, wondering if I wanted to give up the diner, and return to school for my masters degree. The diner's business had began decreasing lately, (Something I fully blamed my competitors for,) so it was with a distracted mind that I had assured Michael that Sydney probably did know her own body, and that she'd probably feel better in no time.
Michael, I had assured him, probably shouldn't push her too hard. Sydney, despite her normally cheery attitude, had a tendency to be tetchy when provoked, and the last thing that they needed was for stress on their relationship.
How I wish I could take those words back now.
With only so much time to spend
Don't want to waste the time I'm given
Have it all, play the game
Some recommend
I'm afraid, it just may be time to give in
Cancer.
The word still brings an ugly taste to my mouth even now, months after…everything.
Like the previous four years, when Michael and Sydney's relationship had began, the memories of two of my best friends being forever torn apart are equally swift and piercing.
It started with Sydney fainting during one of her classes one day, purely out of the blue.
The ambulance is called; Michael abruptly leaves a meeting and hurries to the hospital.
I showed up not long
afterwards, still dressed in my cooking whites. I'm there when the grim-looking
doctors come in, with the news they don't want to deliver.
It seemed okay at first. Anemia. Easily cured with some protein, some sun and some more exercise, right? I could practically see Michael planning a trip to the Bahamas as Sydney's doctors prattled on.
But the news became decidedly grimmer.
A hole in Sydney's right index finger, and several others are forming in other bones throughout the body.
Bone cancer.
Amputation could'vebeen a possibility, but the holes have now spread so far and wide…
Seven months at best. A year if we were lucky.
I'm twenty-nine, Michael and I
Live on the west side of SoHo and Y
Nine A.M. I write a lyric or two
Mike sings a song now on Mad Avenue
I sing, "come to your senses
Defenses are not the way to go"
Over and over and over
Till I got it right
But we weren't lucky.
Sitting in the darkness with him now, my laptop off, my work a long forgotten memory, I can almost sense it now, the day that this whirlwind of self-destruction came in and wrecked and ravaged my childhood friend…
His mantra for the last hour has been repeating Sydney's name. Asking me on periodic occasions, "Why did she die, Eric?" a question that I still can't answer.
As someone who has stood by Michael since our youth, ("Who cares if you can't sing? It's the 'Y'! No one can sing here!") Watching someone who was so daring, so willing to take risks just give up like this almost killed me…
Shortly after Sydney's diagnosis, Michael began drinking himself into a stupor. Never one for heavy liquids, Michael soon became friends with the kings of the wine/beer industry. Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, you name it, he was probably chugging it.
He did his best to keep it
together for his wife, but even Sydney, in her most incoherent of moments,
could tell that he was slowly killing himself as well.
"Don't do this to yourself, Michael." Sydney had pleaded almost daily, through a haze of medicine and a cancer-related drug regiment. "You can't do this to yourself…"
I had stood there, watching, unable to act, as both of my friends had faded away…
Not long, after Sydney's death, Michael had been fired from his job at JP Morgan.
They had been apologetic, and almost sincere in their dismissal. But the fact remained that Michael was no longer the innocent, hard-working young man that had joined their firm a few short years ago.
He had changed, and not for the better. They couldn't afford to play baby-sitter to a man who claimed he couldn't live without his other half, and came to work most days more drunk then sober…
When I emerge from B Minor or A
Five o'clock, diner calls, I'm on my way
I think,
Hey, what a way to spend a day
Hey, what a way to spend a day
I make a vow
Right here and now
And that was when I began this routine of watching him.
It had started largely, as a vigil after Sydney's funeral. Friends and family were concerned about him, and wanted to make sure he wasn't going to do anything "rash."
As his oldest friend, (and his closest-living one,) I had volunteered to keep an eye on him for as long as it would take.
I wasn't doing much with my life at the time, so it didn't seem to matter. The diner was and still is functioning, but poorly.
With the new places opening up all over New York, my once loyal clients had begun jumping ship for "swankier", "trendier" places.
I'm still working on trying to revive my clientele, but that's a story for another time.
Besides, most of his relatives and friends aren't ready or aren't willing to see the "golden-boy" down like this, and they believe that it's a job that only I can really handle.
On most days, I'll go to the diner in the mornings, keep an eye on things for a good chunk of the day.
In the late afternoon, I'll arrive at Michael's apartment, and find him in the same position I left him in the night before. Drunk, unshaven and generally uncouth.
After setting in the bags of food I've managed to knick from my own restaurant, I'll force Michael into the shower, and force him to clean himself.
Afterwards, I'll retreat to my corner of the kitchen and work, while Michael will stumble aimlessly back to his corner, ready to continue to brood some more.
It's a routine that has gone on for months now, and some may say with no end in sight.
But as I sit here now, watching Michael close his eyes, his fingers wrapped around a wrinkled picture of Sydney, I want to say that I think differently.
Michael is still fragile, yes. Michael still needs to recover, yes. I will grant you all that and more.
But as someone who has known him for over 21 years now, I know that with every "good" day, every smile, every time he laughs at one of my jokes, he is slowly managing to pull himself out of the hole he has fallen in.
And while he will never forget Sydney nor her memory, I know that one day, he will recover, and finally be ready to move on with his life.
But until that day comes, I'm going to be here to help him, to be his friend, and to watch him.
I'm gonna spend my time this way…