There isn’t much need for us to catch up on the ordinary details of each other’s lives. Facebook made those kinds of reunion conversations more or less obsolete, and good old-fashioned gossip fills in the gaps. I know that he still has the garage. He knows that I made a life selling super juice. I know that his father died two years ago and his mother shacked up with his uncle. He knows that I flew Mama up to Toronto every Christmas, and that she’d bitch about being there the entire time. I know that he was engaged to Chrissy Parsons, but that fell apart a year ago when she pumped every dime he’d been saving for their wedding into a slot machine, and then got onto the hard drugs. He knows that I was engaged to the world’s biggest douchebag, until that douchebag got caught putting his penis in places his penis should not have been. Namely, in his boss’s mouth.

“Lookin’ some good there, by the way,” he grins. “Come back just to show off or what?”

This. This kind of thing right here is what I’ve been dreading. How do I tell people that my secret to dropping the extra twenty pounds I lugged around most of my life wasn’t hot yoga or detoxing? And then how do I fake optimism, and pretend I haven’t leapfrogged over the normal seven stages of grief, and invented my own single stage: Surly and Reckless Resignation to Being Doomed. And where is that goddamn gossip network when I need it? I’ve been home for nearly thirty-six hours. That’s more than enough time for Peggy to have told everyone and their dog why I’m back so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions, and everyone could just greet me with pity and pleasantries. But no, I’ve gotta do this batch of dirty work myself, I guess. Thank Jesus it’s only Willy Gimp. And thank Jesus I’m good and stoned now.

“I’m back living with Ma because —” I pause, inhaling sharply before crushing the roach out in the ashtray. “I got diagnosed with brain tumours. Inoperable ones.” And then I ramble. “Wow, that’s good weed. I haven’t smoked weed in a really long time. Like, ten years. In Toronto I hung around with all these hipsters so it was all blow and Jägerbombs. But this is way better. Not skunky either. Hey, got ‘Roadhouse Blues’ on here? Haven’t heard that tune in for-fuckin’-ever. God, did I always talk this much when I was stoned? Got any Visine? Or Doritos? The munchies, man. And the pasties.”

I remember the tea in my travel mug, take a gulp, and nearly spit it back out all over the dash of Gimp’s truck. My chattering mind and my pasty mouth expected my usual gently steeped loose leaf green tea with bits of toasted walnuts and praline sprinkles, candied pineapple, flower petals, and other bits of artisan tea goodness. Fruit tea, Mama calls it. Whether that’s because she thinks it is actually made of fruit or because she figures only “fruits” drink it, I’m not certain. Instead, I get a scalding mouthful of Effie Fortune’s Stovetop Sludge, which I could probably bottle and market as a potent detoxifying tincture, if I wasn’t so busy getting ready to die.