Affidavid - Safi Alsebai
It was getting troubling, radio silence from David for a few weeks, and, though people come and go, after the second week without any sightings or phone calls from someone as close as David was to me there are few options: besides calling in a missing persons report or a wellness check, you can come to terms with the fact that the person has probably moved without telling anyone to start a new life in middle America, or has been institutionalized. Then they eventually come back with something to get off their chest, things like shame or defeat. When he finally called, and when I answered, he didn’t bother with any preface after I asked how he’d been, so I wasn’t sure right off the bat whether or not he was good, or rather, well. I was just pleased he was alive. And he certainly didn’t ask how I’d been, since it wasn’t a formality for him at the moment, that question, How’ve you been David?—a formality to which he may be beholden. It wasn’t a feigned question on my part, and there was no way he could feign an answer on his. It was a real question that he seemed to need to answer.
DAVID
“Remember my friend Marni? We went to school together, I think you might’ve met her at Christmas a few years ago before she moved. No, it might have been New Year’s, at my old apartment when I still had the cat, I’m sure you two have met. Anyway, she’s back, and, I swear, I can’t wrap my head around what’s going on, Peter, or else I don’t know where it’s going. So, you know, she moved a couple years ago and it was because her partner David got a job, his name’s also David, maybe you might’ve met him. And he’s an actor too, we knew each other, we’d been on similar casting calls, I knew him in that capacity, and between the two of them starting to date and moving, it was a really short time, but the three of us were close. Marni and I, it was like a reconnection, like we had finally potentiated a friendship that could’ve happened so many years earlier, and, besides, we, the three of us, just clicked, David and I especially. I mean he just really got where I was coming from and I got where he was coming from and we helped each other out. Marni, David, and David. And it was a sweet three, four months, but it was only three or four months. And we all had lives of our own, so when they moved it wasn’t earth-shattering, I mean everyone moves, everyone’s so far all the time, but we still have lives wherever we are. That’s what’s nice about everyone moving. And it was honestly out of sight out of mind for the most part, there’re so many other people in our lives that minus two (minus one even because they’re a couple to be honest, they functioned that way) isn’t that big of a deal, especially since we were only that close for that amount of time.
“So Marni’s back, but without David because he passed away, and she was really only living there for him, at least that’s what she told me. She reached out a few days after she moved back and she called me for the first time in years, David I’m so glad your number hasn’t changed I’m back do you want to get coffee sometime let’s catch up. I didn’t make much of it people move all the time, it’s only natural, but to get hit with the fact that she moved back because David died? I was stunned, you know, to say the least, and I wasn’t sure in that moment if I was supposed to console her or what, but it ended up being really natural, we just talked. We talked for a few hours in the coffee shop and then we just walked around and talked more. I guess he just got really sick all of a sudden. Some kind of fungus or prion or amoeba he got swimming or eating something, no one was even sure, the doctors even, but he went fast, and a week after the funeral she had already packed, she said, I wasn’t going to stay there, there wasn’t anything there for me except for David, and I couldn’t move back to my parents’ obviously, she’s not close with them and they didn’t understand David and barely mustered up the decency to go to the funeral, so I just decided I’d come back. We talked about those few months of closeness and what we’d been up to in the years since and the theater scene out where they’d moved and how I don’t act anymore but it’s fine because I didn’t act because I liked acting, and she said that’s what David always used to say, it’s about performance and recognition and human emotion and the iterative, and there’re so many other ways to go about doing that than being on stage or in front of a camera, and we cried on park benches and stuff, for hours. That was three weeks ago today. Yeah, so, after that whole excursion and talking and park benches she asked if I wanted to go back to her place and she’d make dinner, something warm, because, you know it was just getting cold, and I thought why not? Peter, I haven’t left the apartment since then. I’ve been here living with her for the past three weeks. At first it was a convenience thing, you could say, we had dinner, and then we started drinking, and crying more obviously, and she put on some records and we cried, and she put on a movie and we cried, and then we’d gone through a couple bottles of wine maybe, and she said, David, it’s late and you look tired, just crash on the couch.
“The next morning it was breakfast and then lunch and then dinner, and David, the whole day—the other David, obviously. Looking at photos of him with her, talking about his hospital stint for hours, poring over yet again our few months hanging out together. You know, she said, he really admired you, you two were cut from the same cloth, and I would cry, and she would cry. It’s funny, we were close but for such a short amount of time, and I was surprised at how immensely mournful I felt that he was gone, and how immense my expressions of emotions were about that mourning were, and how I wasn’t alone in all of that immensity because Marni was right there being immense on the couch next to me. I’m so glad you’re still here, because I really feel like you understood him and understood us, she would sob, as if they didn’t know anyone here before they moved, as if she didn’t know anyone here except me. And she just didn’t want me to leave, the second day, the third day. I told her, I have to go to work, Marni, it’s Monday, and she sobbed, and I felt bad. Maybe everyone they knew move just like they had, or didn’t care, or maybe her friends secretly hated David and were secretly glad he was out of her life and they tried insinuating it to her that she should think about her own path, her—you know, that kind of stuff—and she couldn’t hear that because she’s grieving and now she really doesn’t know anyone, or at least doesn’t trust anyone but me with David’s memory. So I called out that day sick, and then the next, and so on, and I’ve probably been fired by now, I’m not even sure. I’ve missed every deadline I’d been assigned before she and David
came back into my life. The time just started passing. One day became the next. And I wasn’t even thinking about work because Marni and I were too busy thinking about David.
“At first, I stayed on the couch, because where else was I going to stay, it’s a one bedroom apartment, and I spent the first week or so shuffling between the couch and an armchair and the dining table. Besides cooking and eating and talking about David and sleeping, I would sit on the armchair and read or watch TV, and during the day Marni would do some residual desk work, from like 11 to 3 or something, just taking calls and sending emails from the kitchen table, she’d have me look over them if it was with higher stakes. And after she finished working she would tidy up and we’d cook something, or once she grabbed takeout, another time she did some groceries, laundry. I just stayed there and waited for her to get back because what was I supposed to do, just leave without saying anything? And in the evenings, of course, we’d just talk about David. And it wasn’t just David, but everything he was about, performing and what their lives meant and therefore what life means, and the natural world because the two of them were big into outdoors stuff, and how we’re all really screwed because we haven’t got that much time left before the Earth becomes uninhabitable, stuff like that. How some of us have less time than others, like David. And honestly it just felt like when she and David and I were doing our friendship, when we’d go out for a drink and just talk and everything felt mild. She’s so mild, you know, and I can be mild too I guess in the right situation. For hours on end, talking with Marni, for example, that first week. Mild. We’d talk and talk, mildly, and eventually we talked without crying, by the end of the week. She’d go into her bedroom, and I’d lay myself down on the couch, and we’d go to sleep without crying.
“The second week, though, I guess Marni started having nightmares or night terrors or sleep paralysis or something, which wasn’t surprising. It couldn’t have been but a little more than a month since David has died, since she’d watched him die of some kind of brain damage, kidney damage, heart failure, gastric bleeding. Can you imagine? One night she just could not stop letting out just the worst sound, shrieking practically. I went into her room, slowly, and said her name and stuff, Marni, are you awake? But she wouldn’t stop, she couldn’t stop, so I approached her bed, and put a hand on her shoulder, then another hand, and she woke up and did the same to my shoulders, and we held each other until she calmed down, and her breathing was half-normal, which took a while, and by then we were both falling asleep in her bed. So that week, I started off the nights on the couch and then slept beside her once her grief woke her up. And the next morning, I’d wake up before her, because God knows she needed the extra sleep after what she’d gone though, and I’d go back to the living room and lay back down on the couch, and when she’d wake up she’d thank me for helping her out. But this last week, the third week, I don’t bother with the couch anymore. I don’t want her to feel like she has to thank me, and I want to be there in case she has a waking panic, but she hasn’t so far. She sleeps pretty soundly, except sometimes I hear her saying, David, softly, from inside her dream or something, and the nauseating thing is, Peter, I’m not sure if she’s addressing him or me.”
***
PETER: “Why are you so shocked, David, that I don’t know Marni? No I don’t know Marni, I mean maybe we have met, but I honestly can’t put a face to the name. And I’d be able to, with a name like that.”
DAVID: “And David?”
PETER: “No, I really don’t think I knew him.”
DAVID: “Maybe you saw him, he was in that reworking of that Wilder play when he was still living here, I’m sure you saw it. It was really well done—”
PETER: “If I did, I didn’t know him. I’m sure he was a great actor.”
DAVID: “Peter, he was.”
PETER: “Well what now? What’re you doing, what’re you going to do?”
DAVID: “I’m honestly not sure.”
PETER: “What do you mean you’re not sure? You have no clue what your two options are? Well, David, you can either stay or you can leave. And, how’re you even on the phone with me right now? Is she taking the longest nap, we’ve been on the phone for an hour.”
DAVID: “She’s been out of town for the weekend, since Friday afternoon, I think she’ll be back soon, hopefully.”
PETER: “Well why don’t you just leave while you still can. What about your apartment? What about your life?”
DAVID: “I told you, I can’t just leave. Can you imagine, all of this crazy, life-changing shit happens to you, and the person who’s there to help you through it just abandons you?”
PETER: “But are you really abandoning her, David? Really. Be honest with yourself. What’s going on? You practically disappear off the face of the earth for three weeks, and you finally call someone—me—and it turns out you’ve been taken hostage by this woman? You can’t tell me that’s normal.”
DAVID: “I’m not a hostage, Peter. And what do you mean, this woman? She’s my friend, and she means a lot to me, and I mean a lot to her.”
PETER: “David, there’s a major misinterpretation going on here.”
DAVID: “And we both care about David.”
PETER: “Cared about David. How well did you even really know him, anyway? You care about Marni, which I guess is fine, but you can’t convince me it’s normal, and you can’t convince me she’s being normal either, letting you—obliging you–to squat in her house, sleep in her bed, emotional substrate.”
DAVID: “People’s grief is idiosyncratic, Peter. I’d assume you’d get that.”
PETER: “Idiosyncratic? You can’t think this is just a quirk, can you? David, her boyfriend just died, what, five minutes ago, and you’re playing along as some pantomime of him.”
DAVID: “What are you talking about? No one can replace David. I can’t believe that the thought would even cross your mind that I’d even attempt to replace someone as special as him. Those weren’t my intentions at all. I felt bad for her, and we were so close the three of us. And he wasn’t her boyfriend, he was her partner, Peter.”
PETER
I actually had met Marni and David—the other David—when they still lived here, and I think I might’ve had a more than marginal hand in setting the two of them up, or in introducing them to David—my David—or something, I don’t even remember. But I actually hadn’t seen David in Skin Of Our Teeth, or in anything else, and it wasn’t Christmas either. It was at a birthday party, I don’t remember whose, I don’t remember why I was there. I was standing outside, smoking, shivering basically because I left my coat inside, getting my ears chewed off verbally. It couldn’t have been New Year’s Eve, it must’ve been a day or two before, because I remember asking someone, whose name was whatever name it could’ve been, probably Tyler, and who was boasting about how amazing the party inside was, while simultaneously complaining that whatever he was on was making him numb to the repetitiveness of the music— I remember asking him where he was going to be on New Year’s Eve, and he said, everywhere, which wasn’t the answer I was looking for because I didn’t have New Year’s plans. He was explaining his model for life, his business model, how he mostly dealt with DJs when it came to drugs and congressmen when it came to sex. His friend, whose was also whatever name it could’ve been, probably not Tyler, was explaining that for him it was the opposite, except without the congressmen, by which he meant he only had sex with DJs—he said this as if he were a Nobel Laureate in Comedy.
I notice an attractive couple who I pretended with the elasticity of my face to recognize, and David, being such an amazing actor I guess, and Marni being just amazingly drunk whisked me back inside, and I introduced myself to them and they introduced each other to me. They seemed like former lovers seeing each other for the first time since a breakup. That they might have agreed to actually interact with one another for once at this party because they were both friends of the host and that they were now having to undergo the effects of both a built up calm and forgiveness after a tumultuous break and the tension of passions past. But I was also in a dramatic mood for the night. Delusions of grandeur and so on. I had nothing to ascribe to them but some mythic quality, because of how they’d saved me from the chattering disasters I had been trapped by moments prior. So, after cute introductions and so on, I asked them if they were doing anything for New Year’s and they said they were going to a party at their friend David’s place—my David—a party I had totally forgotten about until then but that I decided to go to.
When I saw them at David’s party—my David—the buoyancy of their having saved me at the previous party had worn off, and they were less majestic than I had first encountered them, not bad, but normal, not too interesting, some kind of media girl and an actor. Marni and I made smalltalk for maybe four minutes, in which I asked her how long she’d known David—the other David—and she explained that she’d seen him act in something—maybe the Wilder play—but that the night before was the first time she actually met him and that they’d spent the entire time since then together; sub-zero winter fling. She went on for most of the four minutes describing that to me, and that familiarity, seeming cloying and annoying, put me off. I felt like I was with Tyler and his friend again, and refrained from talking to either her or David—the other David—for the rest of the night, and for that matter, forever. Not my type. I think that’s probably why I pretended I had no clue who either of them were, because I obviously didn’t, and even if I did, I definitely didn’t want to then, let alone now. David—my David—must’ve been smitten.
DAVID
“But that’s where I’m starting to get worried: even if I don’t think I could replace David, even if we do have the same name, and we sort of looked similar, but, Peter, come on, he was better looking than I was, for sure, and a better actor, that’s why he stuck it out longer than me, and that’s why his thoughts around it were so much more profound, all of that beauty that Marni saw in him and that we enjoyed way back before they moved to some God-forsaken place—one of the last places God built—where the prions or amoeba or whatever it was destroyed him, even if it’s not me that’s replacing him, I can’t shake the uneasiness I feel when she says, David, in her sleep. Because I can’t be one hundred percent sure she’s saying his name and not mine, and I don’t know what it would mean if she was saying my name and not his.
“I’ve gone so far as to ask him, from the beyond, for his blessing, not like that, not to be with her in that way, and definitely not to take his place, but just in my being there. Like, Hi David, it’s me, David, and
I’m wondering if it’s okay that I keep hearing Marni say your name, which also happens to be my name. And then I feel him nod and say, Yes, David, I’m okay with that. Because he knows that I’m there because Marni needs someone in this time of pain, and that really no one else has been there to help her through this journey of mourning.
“So I just lie there, awake, sometimes, while she’s asleep, because I wake up in the middle of the night, and I don’t get up because I don’t want to wake her and risk having her go into one of her night terrors. And eventually, when she starts saying, David, softly, over and over, that lulls me to sleep. But until then, you know what, Peter, the last production I saw David in before he and Marni moved was this really tiny production of Antigone, and I don’t even remember who else was in it, I barely remember where it was performed, I just remember David playing Polynices, who, you know, isn’t really a character in the play because he’s already dead, but I guess the director decided to have someone play Polynices on stage lie there the whole time, completely still, acting out the role of corpse. Peter, it was so powerful to watch him play death that way—especially now that I know that it would take him so quickly. Well, when I lie awake next to Marni, I just imagine myself as David’s understudy. And it’s been so long since I’ve acted that it takes a lot of effort for me to play this part, really, but it’s also so invigorating and stimulating and affirming to know how important this part is, that it’s the part that David played, and that I’m playing it for David—and for Marni too. And it’s nice to know that I still have the acting bone in my body.
“But I can’t just be David’s understudy, can I? Even if I ask his permission? That’s messed up because, ultimately, I don't want to be David, no one can be David except for him and he’s gone now. It’s one thing to play Polynices, he’s a fake dead person. David’s a real dead person. I can’t pretend to be dead. Is that what you’re saying? That I’m trying to take the place of a dead person, that I’m trying to basically be a dead person, against my own will, for Marni?
“Maybe you’re right, maybe this is abnormal. Should I bring it up to her, the way she talks in her sleep? I just don’t want to spark any sort of conflict, and honestly, what if she is saying my name David and not his name David, I don’t even really want that. And to be honest, it isn’t even because of her, it’s because of David. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel some sort of affection by now. Anyone who happens to live together for three weeks the way we have, anyone who shared that kind of physical and emotional proximity for that kind of time and with that kind of intensity, it’s not surprising if one or the other or both of us had some feeling for each other. Yeah, that’s the whole premise of this, some feeling. That I cared enough about her to walk and talk and stay and everything, because we’re friends, but I mean something more than that. That’s expected.
“But what I don’t want is for me to have feelings for her—love feelings, but obviously, Peter, not that kind of love, not yet at least—while she has feelings for me playing the role of David, understudying David. That’s not fair to me. But what do I do then? Tell her that I love her—with a lowercase L or something—or that I’ve grown close to her, and that if she wants me to keep loving her with a lowercase L—like, more than friends you know but not too deep—that she has to abandon David? That I’m my own David and her only option or else she’ll be alone grieving by herself? It’s a devil of a bind, Peter, either I abandon her and leave, or she abandons David and I stay. Can I even ask that of her, when the entire point of me staying is for David? Jesus, Peter, could you just indulge that question?”
PETER
“You want me to indulge this question, David? Fine. I think you should really be asking yourself, what’s so wrong with being a dead man? If everything else about David is so incredible, then maybe you’re lucky that there’s even the slightest chance that Marni sees him in you, don’t you think? You say he’s inimitable? Well, David, I say you’re a good actor, I truly believe that. I think you have the chops to play the role. And if you can, and it’s truly as amazing a role as you say it is, then the only thing wrong with it is that he’s dead. And what’s wrong with that? No one’s saying you have to be David for the rest of your life, but if you really care about Marni—and I’m really indulging here—as much as you say you do, and you refuse to leave her apartment, and you’re afraid of hurting her already bruised feelings, and rightfully so, and I honestly think you’re more sympathetic than I’ll ever be, David, really, then why don’t you play David? For just a while? It can’t be that different from you playing David playing Polynices, which you have a lot of practice doing, every night in David’s bed. You probably wear David’s old clothes too, his socks and underwear even. I can’t imagine you haven’t changed in three weeks. His cologne too, his deodorant. You smell like David. Those books you read are his, so are the records you listen to. And no one’s seen you in three weeks, so we all thought you were dead, David or Polynices or otherwise, or that’d you’d moved without telling any of your non-Marni, non-David friends, which meant you’d be as good as dead. But what’s wrong with that, David?
“Haven’t the past three weeks taught you anything? The dead aren’t eviscerated. They have more power than we want them to. We talk to them and they nod back. Or at least you do and then David does. I think that it’d be a rising to the occasion of something, David, a rising to the occasion of a performance beyond the pale, since the meaning of performance matters so much to you, since it’s about the emotions and humans that you and Marni talk about over grief ice cream. To play out the idiosyncrasies of grief, let the dead bury the dead, but also the idiosyncrasies of love. Because I do think, at the end of the day you love her, like that David, not just with a lowercase l, not just more than friends, you want to be David to her. Otherwise you wouldn’t have spent the past three weeks locked in her apartment. The only problem is you don’t want to be dead, but, David, that’s what love is calling for right now, and if you really love her and you’re not willing to take the call, then maybe you’re a coward.
“There, how’s that for indulgence?
“But honestly, David, the fact that Marni just called you and practically kidnapped you from a coffee date and is taking you hostage to replace the deceased is really unsettling, and the fact that you’re playing along with it, under some guise of sympathy or politeness or something, that you’ve been in that apartment for three weeks without leaving, is even more unsettling. Anyway, I’m going to let you go now, I’ve got to get off the phone, I’ve got, I don’t know, dinner to eat, but I feel bad hanging up the phone, and I shouldn’t have leaned into it so much because I think you need more clarity than you do indulgence.
“And, really, if you haven’t completely lost your mind, please just tell me you’re leaving that apartment, or you want me to come get you. I can’t believe this is real, David.”
DAVID
“It’s very real. It’s the realest thing that’s ever happened to me, and David is the realest person who ever lived and who ever died, and Marni has felt the realest grief I’ve seen. And it’s fine, really. Don’t worry about me, it’s okay if you hang up, I’m glad I got to talk to you. Maybe you think you were just indulging me, maybe that’s what I wanted, but I feel more clarified than I feel indulged. I’ve got to go anyway too, I think I hear Marni coming back, and she’d feel bad if she knew I was talking about her.
“Before you go, Peter: next time I call you, call me David, because I hope to be.”
***
The next time he called me, I did call him David. What else was I going to call him, besides presumptuous? Which would have been an apt scold altogether, since he, skipping all the formalities and feigning nothing—and by now it’s clear it’s constitutionally difficult for David to feign, which might be why he so immediately acts—was calling to ask if he could crash at my place for a while. Turns out he wasn’t as clarified as he thought he was, though even the most indulging viewer would be hard pressed to say David’s issue was one of dramaturgy instead of, say, premise, permission (i.e., ethics). Well, I’m more than the most indulging, as he knew. Perhaps he was just a bad fit for the role, perhaps a bad actor altogether, and, in any case, I’d be the judge of that now, I told him, for as long as you need. At last, just what I needed: a David of my own.