Chapter 18

Ethan Chang already has death on his mind when the Death Lady approaches his row.

So that’s ironic, or coincidental, or possibly it’s evidence he’s living in a simulation.

He isn’t just casually thinking about death, either. He’s fixated on the topic. He’s been thinking about nothing else all day.

One of the flight attendants on this morning’s flight out of Sydney had asked if he were “off to Hobart for work or pleasure?” with a big friendly smile.

“Funeral,” Ethan had answered, and the poor woman didn’t know where to put her smile.

It was his first-ever funeral. At the age of twenty-nine. His flatmate, Jasmine, talked him through funeral etiquette. She said he should dress like it’s a job interview, don’t be late, don’t chew gum, turn your phone to silent, and open every conversation with “I’m so sorry for your loss.” She said his broken wrist was not an excuse to get out of a funeral. She said funerals weren’t like birthdays. He wouldn’t get another chance next year.

Jasmine has been to extravagant funerals all over the world. She’s been to a memorial service where guests sipped champagne while the deceased’s ashes were scattered by means of a magnificent fireworks display. She said it was touching, but it would have been better if they’d synced the fireworks to the music.

She moves in very different circles to Ethan because she’s an heiress. A frozen-fish heiress. He’s seen her described that way in the social pages: Frozen-fish heiress Jasmine Dumas, arrives in Rome for lavish celebrity wedding.

Frozen fish made Jasmine’s dad rich, “richer than God,” but he’s keen for his children to learn “how the real world works.” He therefore bought Jasmine a Sydney apartment with only stingy ocean glimpses from the master bedroom and made her responsible for all the other expenses like electricity, water, and so on. Jasmine is philosophically opposed to working nine to five (she is an entrepreneur and needs creative space), so she advertised on Flatmate Finders for someone to take the second smaller bedroom, and that’s how she found Ethan.

Jasmine has turned out to be both a good landlord and flatmate.

She even cut up his steak after his rock-climbing accident. She just did it without even asking. She said her brother (who lives full-time in Paris now, his apartment has only stingy glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, once again “keeping it real”) was also into extreme sports and he’d broken seven bones. Ethan didn’t tell Jasmine that he is definitely not into extreme sports. It had been his first time at the rock-climbing center and he didn’t even make it as far as the supposedly easy “bouldering wall” before he tripped over his own backpack while attempting to put on his harness, fracturing his scaphoid bone.

“Mountain biking? Skateboarding? Snowboarding?” guessed the hot flight attendant when he handed over his boarding pass to return home, and for some reason he told her the truth. The surprised, pleased sound of her laugh that followed him down the aisle made him think that maybe he should do the same with Jasmine. He’d noticed that when it came to women you should often do the exact opposite of what you intuitively thought you should do.

“Why do guys like us always fall for girls who are out of our league?” his friend Harvey had said after he met Jasmine for the first time.

Ethan kind of felt like punching Harvey when he said that.

(He thought he was playing it cool.)

(Yes, obviously she’s out of his league.)

Harvey often says things that make Ethan’s head explode. Like, “Guys like us never make it past middle management.” “Guys like us don’t drive cars like that.” “Guys like us are never good at sports.”

Of course, Ethan didn’t punch Harvey, he has never punched anyone in his life (“Guys like us don’t get into fights”) and he never will punch Harvey because Ethan has just attended Harvey’s funeral and right now Harvey is lying in a big shiny black coffin beneath a whole lot of earth, and Ethan can’t believe it, he just can’t believe it.

Harvey is dead. Harvey doesn’t “say” things. Harvey “said” things. Harvey is forevermore in the past tense. He’s said everything he will ever get to say.

Harvey will never again text Ethan some random, weird-angled photo of a sign or a tree or a street corner that means something to Harvey but nothing to Ethan. Harvey will never again ring Ethan at an inconvenient time, for no reason, like he’s his grandmother, just to “catch up” or, more accurately, to sigh about his life and his decision to move back to Hobart, which had maybe not been the right decision, and should he change his name because girls brought up Harvey Weinstein whenever they heard Harvey’s name and that didn’t get things off to the best start, like, girls got weirdly combative, as if Harvey was about to misuse his power, when obviously, guys like us have no power. Harvey will never get a new job or a new girlfriend, a better haircut or a new perspective.

That’s it! He’s done!

It’s unbelievable.

No matter how many times Ethan lets himself think those three words, Harvey is dead, they don’t seem to lose their profound shockingness.

Ethan feels queasy but also hungry. He shouldn’t be hungry. He gorged himself at the wake, which was unexpected, although he’d noticed a lot of people were eating in the same frantic, mechanical way, shoving food into their mouths. Ethan and one of Harvey’s cousins ate a whole platter of mini chicken-and-mushroom vol-au-vents between them. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Ethan said, and Harvey’s cousin said no need to apologize, it wasn’t Ethan’s fault, and besides, he only saw Harvey once a year at Christmas and he was kind of a douchebag, and he grinned as he said it, but then the shape of his mouth went all wonky, and Ethan had to look away fast.

It was an aneurysm. Ethan had looked it up, and as far as he can understand, it’s like malware had been installed in Harvey’s brain years ago and it sat there, waiting, and finally caused him to crash when he was in the foyer of his local cinema. He’d bought a ticket to see the latest Marvel movie. He was on his own. He often went to movies on his own. He’d bought a jumbo box of popcorn and all the popcorn went flying when he fell. All that detail came from Harvey’s cousin.

Ethan tries to imagine the scene. Harvey falling. Was he scared? What were his last thoughts? What’s happening to me? Harvey liked popcorn. Preferred not to share. He always said, “Get your own.” It’s distressing to think of him dropping his popcorn like that.

So he never got to see the movie. It wasn’t good. Harvey would have taken the time to write a long vicious review on Rotten Tomatoes.

Dying is by far the weirdest, most interesting, most glamorous, and way-out thing that Harvey has ever done. It’s like he’s moved to Siberia or joined the priesthood or got into NASA.

“You must allow yourself to grieve,” Jasmine had said solemnly, while she was cutting Ethan’s steak into very tiny pieces. “Take time off work. Just a month or two.”

Just a month or two. She’s so cute. As if he could say to his boss, “I’m taking a month or two off work to grieve.”

Ethan is weirded out by Harvey’s death, but he isn’t grieving. That feels too serious and dramatic a description for what he’s feeling. Isn’t grief just for family members?

He’s only known Harvey for, what, four years? No. Five. They both got hired on the same day as junior software engineers at the tech company where Ethan still works. Harvey grew up in Hobart, and he’d moved back about six months ago.

Did he even like the guy all that much? He could be kind of a downer. Someone got up at the funeral and said, “Harvey always lit up a room,” and Ethan thought, What the hell? Harvey never lit up a room in his life. He was the one skulking in gloomy corners making disparaging comments about the music.

Ethan had been wondering if he would make an excuse not to go to Harvey’s thirtieth birthday party, over which there had been a lot of doleful, depressing discussion. I dunno if I should be celebrating. Didn’t you think we would have achieved more by thirty, Ethan?

Now Harvey won’t ever achieve anything new.

No more achievements for you, Harvey.

There had been parts of the funeral that felt operatic. Like when Harvey’s uncle played the bagpipes and when Harvey’s dad collapsed in slow motion, like the way an avalanche starts out slow and gets faster, and Harvey’s grandfather tried to catch Harvey’s dad by his elbow but he was too frail and instead Harvey’s sister had gone running to help.

Harvey had never mentioned he had a hot sister.

Ethan hopes the hot sister didn’t hear him embarrass himself by saying “I’m so sorry for your loss,” to one of the caterers. She wore a white shirt, black pants, and carried a tray of ham sandwiches. There were a lot of clues.

Harvey would have found that hilarious. He would have laughed his silent, wheezy laugh that made him look like he was choking on a grape. A guy at work once tried to give Harvey the Heimlich maneuver when he was laughing. It was the funniest thing Ethan ever saw. Harvey reckoned he broke a rib.

The woman next to him swears.

“The baby,” she explains, gesturing to the front of the plane. “It’s started up again.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” says Ethan. He can hear the baby screaming—and he knows it cried for a while when they were on the tarmac—but it’s just background static, it doesn’t really bother him. “Sounds upset.”

“The CIA torture prisoners with that sound,” says the woman.

“I would never take a baby on a plane,” says her friend in the window seat. “It’s child abuse. I think it hurts their ears.”

“I’m more concerned about my ears.” The one in the middle seat clasps her hands to the back of her neck, drops her chin to her chest, and squashes her ears with her arms. She’s got heart-shaped sunglasses on the top of her head.

In normal circumstances Ethan would have been hyperaware of the two attractive women seated next to him. They were a bit tipsy when they first boarded and he was vaguely aware of a long emotional discussion regarding a mutual friend “Poppy.” He probably would have struck up a conversation. He can do that. It’s a skill of his. Women don’t find him intimidating. He would have given them his opinion on the issues with Poppy. He has an older sister and he grew up talking to all her friends, so it’s possible he gives off “little brother” vibes, which could be a problem. It’s been over a year since his last serious relationship. He’s on the apps. Ready to make a commitment. He’s not bad looking, apparently; it’s hard to rate himself objectively.

“Guys like us always get friend-zoned,” Harvey once said. “It’s because we’re beta males. No one wants the betas. They SAY they want the betas, but they’re lying, they want the alphas.”

That “beta male” comment is probably why Ethan decided to try rock climbing.

Thanks a lot, Harvey.

“I feel like this old lady heading down the aisle is having some kind of episode, ” says the woman in the window seat. “Ooh! Here comes the flight attendant to sort her out. Oh. My. God. That kid just threw up all over the flight attendant!”

“Gross,” says the woman in the middle seat without lifting her head.

Ethan leans into the aisle. A lady is walking down it pointing at people.

“She’s predicting deaths,” says a sharp voice. “I heard her say ‘Cause of death, age of death,’ so that’s not weird at all.”

The woman in the window seat nudges her friend. “You hear that? She must be a psychic from that festival!”

Both women simultaneously lift up their phones and press record.

“If I could afford it, I’d go to a psychic, like, once a week,” says the window-seat woman.

“Me too,” says her friend. “I find it really calming.” She turns to Ethan. “You into psychics? Bet you’re not. Men are so…” She puts on a deep manlike voice. “I need evidence ! I need facts !”

Ethan doesn’t say anything, as his opinion is clearly unnecessary. Also: she’s right. He is not into psychics, and yes, he does need evidence, he does need facts.

The lady points at the elderly couple diagonally across from Ethan. He hears her say, “I expect old age, age one hundred. I expect old age, age one hundred and one.”

The elderly couple nod politely, seemingly unperturbed. Why would they be? Those predictions seem fairly benign and obvious. Isn’t that the dream? To make one hundred and die of old age?

Now the lady is in the aisle next to Ethan. She is small. She seems harmless. In a hurry. A little irritable. She reminds Ethan of his grandmother when she learns she is required to download an app.

She points first at the woman in the window seat. “I expect melanoma, age seventy-nine.”

“Gotta give up those sunbeds, babe,” chuckles her friend, still filming. “Ooh—my turn!”

The lady points at Ethan’s seatmate. “I expect liver disease, age eighty-seven.”

“Gotta give up the espresso martinis, babe,” says her friend.

It’s Ethan’s turn. He smiles automatically up at her, as he would at any older woman stopping to talk to him.

She says, “I expect assault.”

“Assault?!” His smile vanishes. “You mean I’m going to die in a fight?”

“Assault,” repeats the woman. “As I said. Age thirty.”

Thirty? Ethan feels it in his stomach. A shadowy version of the feeling he experienced when he first heard the news about Harvey. “I don’t really get into—”

“Fate won’t be fought!” She steps forward.

His seatmate elbows him. “So, how old are you?”

“Twenty-nine,” answers Ethan vaguely without looking at her.

“Well, that sucks for you,” she says with such nonchalant sympathy that Ethan grins, but that’s when it happens, because he thinks, like an actual idiot, Wait till I tell Harvey about this. Harvey loves this kind of left-field stuff. Harvey will do his quite good Morgan Freeman impersonation: “Ethan Chang was twenty-nine years old when he learned the manner of his death.”

But he can’t tell Harvey. There is no telecommunications platform on which to reach Harvey. It’s like Ethan has only now realized he’s dead, even though he’s just been to his funeral, even though he’s been thinking about literally nothing else but Harvey’s death the whole day.

He hears a strange sound like a panting dog. It’s him.

Ethan hasn’t cried like this—proper salty tears sliding off his jaw—since he was a child. He didn’t know his body still possessed the ability to cry like this. It’s like he’s lost control of his bladder. He is mortified. His glasses are fogging up. His nose is running.

Guys like us don’t die young, Harvey. Guys like us get old and bald and paunchy. Guys like us peak in our fifties, standing around the barbecue in short-sleeved plaid shirts talking about cholesterol and interest rates.

“Aww, sweetie,” says the woman next to him. “You’re not going to die in a fight. They just make stuff up! None of it is true!”

She unbuckles her seat belt, stands up so fast her heart-shaped sunglasses slip back from her hair and over her eyes, and shouts, “Hey, lady, you made this guy cry !”

Which is pretty funny, and very embarrassing.

Ethan can see Harvey laughing. Somewhere in the multiverse Harvey is laughing his head off, but in this universe Ethan will never witness Harvey’s stupid silent wheezy Harvey laugh again.

And now he’s thinking of Harvey’s mum and dad, and Harvey’s grandfather, and Harvey’s hot sister, and Harvey’s cousin, and all their sad-as-fuck caved-in faces, and these are the people he should have met at Harvey’s thirtieth, not at his funeral, and if Ethan is feeling this sad, how sad must they be feeling, and it is not right, death is not right, it’s not fair, it is unbelievably painful. Harvey, mate, come back, of course I was coming to your thirtieth, I wouldn’t have missed it. It feels like he will never stop crying. He doesn’t know how to make it stop.

Ethan Chang is so very, very sorry for his loss.