Robert Nazar Arjoyan
DRUNK IN THE GRAVEYARD
Jesus Christ ticked off each push-up while Neil Young sang about a man and a maid. Raffi’s hands reddened with strain and weight, flushing redder in a slant shaft of summer sun. The golden cross chained around his corded neck rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, holy corners chipping the old hardwood of his childhood bedroom with every metronomic rep. His throat was a cauldron of grunts lidded shut by the tight line of his mouth. Raffi hit his hundred and collapsed dead to the world just as Neil’s next song was snuffed by a call’s burring vibration. He saw that it was Rosie and answered.
“Hey!”
“Hey.”
“How you doin, you good?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not!”
“Are you having at least a little fun?”
“Eh.”
“Think your cousins took you to Vegas a year early, girl, they—”
“Listen, I need you to get my dad.”
Raffi shot up like a man coming alive and felt the arcing crucifix jab a bristly thatch of chest hair.
“What were you doing, push-ups?”
“Huh?”
“Or are you just pretending to be outta breath to think.”
“Where is he?”
“At my mom’s.”
Raffi glanced at himself in the closet door mirror. Behind his sweating reflection, fine drapes blew in the breeze of an open window and sawed the strings of a detuned acoustic.
“Raff?”
“My bad, Rose, I’m here.”
“Are you?”
“Said I am.”
“So will you?”
“Now?”
“Yes. I’ll take you through it.”
Raffi could hear a million slot machines jingling inside the phone. He stood and spied his parents watching a soap opera in the den.
“He’ll be happy to meet you.”
Raffi nodded, and the wind continued to play guitar long after Raffi left.
◊
He chose a button-down with jeans, and, because there wasn’t time to bathe, Raffi gave his armpits what he and Rosie had dubbed a stripper shower.
Raffi suspected he was fast reaching his destination when he sighted families of flower sellers on the roadside. He slowed to a roll as commuters from behind honked their irritation.
Raffi whirled a quick wrist at them.
He swerved his Passat to the shoulder nearer the Home Depot buckets and purchased what ten dollars would afford. If later he sensed this was the wrong move, he would simply leave the paltry bouquet and trash it before getting home. These weren’t flowers for anyone else.
After merging back onto the street, Raffi drove toward the towering gates which glinted bronze in the leaning light, a knight-errant adventuring to some mysterious palace.
“Hey Siri, call Cozy Rosie.”
“Calling Cozy Rosie.”
The volume of his voice coupled with the car speaker’s loud confirmation drew sneers from vexed visitors within earshot. Waving an apology, Raffi rolled up his windows and dulled the phone’s clanging for the sake of the offended bereaved.
He approached a steep hill landmarked by various shapes of black and white and gray. A generous fountain sparkled to his left, cylinder spurts shooting high into cloudless blue and sprinkling upon spotless green. Opposite, a collection of brownish buildings which were no doubt administrative in nature but almost storybook in architecture furthered Raffi’s odd feeling of fairytale unreality, their thatched roofs and elongated windows—
“You got there?”
“Hey, going up now, yeah.”
“Cool, so you’re gonna go straight until—”
“Fuckin’ called you with the windows down.”
“That’s OK.”
“People stared at me dirty, I felt stupid.”
“That’s OK, you’ve never done this.”
“True.”
“Now go straight until you see the angel at the fork, then veer right.”
“Does your dad know it’s me coming?”
“Mmhmm. Did you see the angel?”
“Seeing and veering.”
“Keep going on this path, it’ll curve here and there, but don’t get off it.”
“Gotcha. Where are you now? Hotel?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s quieter. Vegas isn’t doing it for you, huh?”
“At all. You’re gonna see pillars soon, like Greek pillars snug with a stone bench between.”
“Eh, I think I passed that.”
“Make a U at the little church, no worries. At the pillars, you go righ—well, no, from your direction you go left.”
“Going left, got it. Rose?”
“What?”
“Does he do this a lot?”
“Do what, get drunk in the graveyard?”
“Yes.”
“Are you bothered by that?”
“I mean, no, I guess I’m not. Are you?”
“He doesn’t do it as much as he used to. Did you turn?”
“He’s not over it, huh?”
“You don’t get over a thing like that.”
“Him or you?”
“Anyone. Did you turn?”
“Left at the pillars.”
“Good.”
“I’m passing a long wall of—”
“They just…they kinda finished raising each other, you know?”
“Kinda like we are.”
“Kinda.”
He heard the smile trying to hide in her syllables.
“I’m passing a long wall of something, I don’t know—”
“Limestone. He’s behind there. Just keep driving.”
“It’s actually really pretty here.”
“Yeah, you’ll get familiar soon enough.”
“Umm…”
“No, I—fuck, I don’t mean like you’ll be picking up my dad from my mom more because we’re gonna be together forever or whatever, I mean like your family and stuff will die too.”
“Well, shit, Rose, is that any better?”
“No. But it’s life, Raff.”
He heard her true age.
“What do I do now?”
“Has it opened up or are you still in a tunnel of trees?”
“It’s opening.”
“That’s it, then. Did you get flowers?”
“I did, actually.”
“Leave ’em in the car.”
“Why?”
“It’ll upset him.”
“OK.”
“But I appreciate it.”
“Thought it was the thing you did.”
“It is. Her stone is sorta in the middle. Just tell him who you are.”
“Who am I, your boooooyfriiiiend?”
“Yep, say it just like that.”
“Call you after?”
“Please. And he might talk shit but just ignore him.”
“Copy that, Cozy.”
“He probably won’t remember any of this.”
I’ll never forget it, Raffi didn’t say.
“Thank you.”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
“I lov—”
Young breath snared her words and stunned him deaf like crashing waves.
“It’s alright. I…I love you too.”
◊
It had gotten warmer out and Raffi didn’t want to leave flowers in the hothouse of his car. Plus, Rosie’s dad was going to sit there and he’d see them, smell them.
Raffi grabbed the irises and the tulips and crossed the wide street. A big body Benz was parked beside a waste bin and silver spigot. How many times had Raffi seen that clunker during the past year of courtship, but never its owner?
He’s not ready yet, Rosie would say. Are you?
Raffi trailed the cobble path leading to a waist-high door, a path dotted on either side by flat markers. He stopped at one to read the rusted plate.
“Do not stand and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep.”
His shirt hugged his frame and the beat of his heart hammered the cotton. Raffi wondered if it was visible, if that uneasy cardiac contour could be witnessed through the stitching. He set the flowers down and waited for his pulse to hush.
It wouldn’t.
A soothing draft winged out of the looming oaks and cooled the sweat stippling Raffi’s flesh. He told it thanks, and shoved down scores of funereal imaginings, dioramas depicting dead the living. Moldered blossoms bowed and scraped at his coming, pointing south of heaven.
Rotting things for rotting things.
Raffi ascended a short collection of steps and pushed open the small gate when a beige paper bag cartwheeled into his shoes. He traced its trajectory and saw Rosie’s dad supine on the sheared lawn, head lolling into the hollow of his wife’s final resting place.
Raffi paused, and so did everything else.
The man burped and sat up, brushing turf from his salt-and-pepper beard. Raffi blinked and began to feel himself thawing. He took care to avoid stepping on anything but grass, and in seconds Raffi stood above him, shading him with his shadow.
“Mr. Sargsyan.”
A sniff.
“I’m Rosie’s friend.”
“Yah.”
Raffi examined the surroundings. If not for all the corpses, it would be a lovely spot to picnic.
“You are boyfriend.”
“I’m here to help you home—”
“Rosie say.”
“Yes. She asked me to.”
A nod.
“Sit.”
“No, I—”
“Sit, sit.”
“I’m OK to stand, Mr. Sargsyan.”
Mr. Sargsyan looked at Raffi, just a flick of his rheumy eyes, and Raffi’s knees folded. They were Rosie’s eyes looking out at him, and he could never say no to them.
“I’m sorry for your loss, it—”
“You are speak Armenian?”
“Oh, well, I can understand better than I can speak.”
“Then between the two of us there’s one bilingual person.”
Raffi chuckled, unsure.
“I’d like my grandkids to do both.”
“Of course.”
“And read it as well.”
“Naturally.”
“She would’ve too.”
Raffi grumbled another nervous assent as Mr. Sargsyan produced a crumpled pack of Parliaments. He offered one to Raffi, who shook his head side to side. The older man nodded his own up and down. As Mr. Sargsyan lit the cigarette, Raffi noticed the daintiest ring circling his twisted pinky.
“She didn’t want it to go in the ground.”
Mr. Sargsyan exhaled dual plumes like some sagging flightless dragon.
“I was a kid, a volunteer firefighter on weekends. That’s what we were. A nurse and her fireman.”
“I’m sure she loved it.”
“She made me promise to give it to Rosie. Later, before she made the great change.”
Mr. Sargsyan twirled his hand and lassoed wisps of smoke. Raffi shifted, a wet patch of earth sogging his bottom.
“How old are you?”
“Ten days younger than Rosie, actually.”
“Yah?”
“April 27th, May 7th.”
“Rosie always says I never remember her birthday, never remember anything.”
“Yeah, she told me you wouldn’t remember this, either.”
Mr. Sargsyan laughed, a rocky barking that lifted his entire face from its doomset languor. Raffi couldn’t help but laugh along.
“Eh, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. According to my daughter I’ve forgotten everything past the age of thirty-one. Should it be the other way around?”
“I don’t know.”
“No.”
The bottle on the grass had some whiskey left in it, and what little remained shone and sloshed like a placid sea. Mr. Sargsyan pointed at Raffi’s dangling jewelry.
“Are you a Christian?”
“I mean, I was baptized, but this is from my grandpas. The necklace was my dad’s dad’s, the crucifix was my mom’s dad’s.”
“And they’re still alive?”
“All of them.”
“And your parents?”
“Yup.”
“Praise God.”
Mr. Sargsyan looked at the convening clouds, looking maybe for receipt or reward, but finding only sky, he clicked his tongue and plucked from it a fleck of tobacco.
“What if when I die I don’t like her anymore?”
“Pardon?”
“What if when I die and I meet her in the afterlife or wherever and I just…don’t like her. I didn’t know her all that long, and I haven’t known her for a long time.”
“You probably don’t have to worry about that for a bit.”
Mr. Sargsyan studied Raffi again with those Rosie eyes, and then smothered his cigarette on his heel. He polished off the bottle in three gulps and deposited the butt inside.
“Help me up.”
Raffi secured Mr. Sargsyan under his shoulder and heaved him standing. They were about the same height, Mr. Sargsyan edging by inches.
“You are exercise?”
The switch to English jarred Raffi, so too the question.
“Just push-ups for now.”
“Push-up always. Make you strong. I push-up too.”
They passed the outer plots, hobbling beyond death’s borders.
“What about your car?”
“Ah, I leave her here many year, this car. She fine, she go no place.”
Mr. Sargsyan pointed to the Passat’s back seat in spite of Raffi’s insistence he ride shotgun. He fell in and spanned the row. Raffi started the engine.
“Are you comfortable back th—”
“Has Rosie tell you how she learn to drive?”
Raffi watched this man in the rearview, paler already beneath his tan.
“You taught her.”
“Yah.”
“Here.”
“Yah.”
Mr. Sargsyan laughed again.
“Just like this.”
But Raffi didn’t.
“Tell her I do not forget, Raffi.”
“I will, Mr. Sargsyan.”
“How can I? How can I?”
Raffi journeyed atop winding avenues, through a yellow haze of dusk and effigy, while he listened to Mr. Sargsyan’s slurred directions and committed them to memory.
Robert Nazar Arjoyan was born into the Armenian diaspora of Los Angeles. Aside from an arguably ill-advised foray into rock ‘n roll bandery during his late teens, literature and movies were the vying forces of his life. Naz graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and now works as an author and filmmaker. Find Robert Nazar Arjoyan at www.arjoyan.com and on Twitter at @RobertArjoyan.
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