Here’s where I’m at: I think you came home to write and print the ending, the section about our last night together, and then you went to Eddie’s, or went back to Eddie’s. Based on what I know now, it’s possible you went to Eddie’s first then came back home to finish the book and then went back to his place. Whatever. You coming back home, that’s when you had to have written the rest of this. Because how else would you know it would be our last night? Fuck, even I am now thinking like this is a memoir and not a novel. How you wrote about the jacket puppet fight and your whiteboard presentation to me and how it was our last conversation has me shook because it’s true. And if that’s true, maybe the rest of this is true.

I wish I knew beforehand you weren’t coming back. I wasn’t ready.

Eddie’s gardener found your body in the garage under a tarp. I know you weren’t in pieces but, goddammit, I instantly imagined you like the old pullout couch that’s still out back in your yard. According to the coroner’s report, you’d been dead for two days. Until the report was released, there were rampant rumors in the press about you having OD’d or died by carbon dioxide poisoning or autoerotic asphyxiation—h a! Sorry, I’m joking on that one—a joke I know would’ve made you mortified. Fuck, I miss you.

For a few weeks people freaked the fuck out and you became Beverly’s new bogeyman, especially after the cops found your car and searched it and in the trunk was some of the stuff we’d bought on my move-in day: rope, the hacksaw, and the hammer. Not a good look for you and your Eddie-intentions. Sorry, my bad? As a gag, I stuck that stuff in your trunk the day after we were done using them thinking you’d find it and you would’ve been like what the fuck, but I guess you don’t open your trunk, like, ever, and I totally forgot about it. Why didn’t you ever open your trunk, Art? I tried telling the cops that it was just stuff we used during my move-in and bedroom remodel. I didn’t tell them I’d dumped it there as a joke because things would’ve become way more complicated than they needed to be. As it was, they searched the house and confiscated your phone and iPad, which they still haven’t returned. I made sure they didn’t get their grubby fascist hands on your laptop or this manuscript though. I had to protect you and protect our book. I did that for you, at least. And I will do one more thing for you/us too. Besides making sure the book gets published.