Dasha

„Are you coming tonight? “

The question lingered in the air somewhere far away…

“Ground control to Hannah! Are you coming tonight?”

Background interference…

“HANNAH!” Lisa shouted. 

“What?” 

“Are you coming tonight?” Lisa repeated irritated.

Hannah looked at her colleague, but her head was still in another galaxy.

“Girl, please! Hold your horses! Your enthusiasm is killing me!” Lisa said with an overdramatic stance.

“I´m sorry!” Hannah said, “Of course I´ll come, but just for a drink or two and then I´m out of there.”

“Wow! You´re so much fun today. Aren´t you happy for Dasha?” Lisa was waving her arms around as if she was performing a Greek tragedy.

“I know you´re scared you´re going to lose a friend to a handsome and sexy man.” Lisa continued.

God give her a nosebleed or something, Hannah prayed. Anything to shut her up and make her leave.

“I´m just not a Batchelor party girl.” Hannah smiled.

“You mean you´re boring.” Lisa filled in, “And it´s a bachelorette party.”

“See you later then.” Lisa sighed and closed the door behind her.

Hannah was relieved Lisa finally left. She sat at her desk a little longer staring at nothing.

She was not in the mood for this party at all. Her best friend was getting married in a few days, and from where she sat, she could see a catastrophe unfolding. Her mind wandered back to a conversation she had with her a few weeks ago:

“Don´t marry him, Dasha.”

“What did you say?” Dasha asked.

“I think you heard me the first time,” Hannah replied and Dasha had started crying.

Yes, she had tried to talk her friend out of it. Dasha wouldn´t hear any of it, she even threatened to break off their friendship. Hannah couldn´t even begin to comprehend what it was exactly that appealed to her in this snobbish stiff upper-lipped machine of a man. She did not want to see Dasha sink back into a life-threatening depression. Her mind was so fragile.

Hannah took a deep breath, grabbed her bag, and left the office. She stopped home to change into the ridiculous pink T-shirt the girls had made for this occasion. Put on some make-up and left for the restaurant where the party took place.

She parked the car in the underground parking but waited a few minutes before she got out. Her mind wandered back to the last conversation she had with Dash about this wedding:

“You have no right to ask me to witness an oath I don't believe in.” Hannah had told her friend a couple of weeks before.

She was the last one to arrive. The other girls had enjoyed more than one watermelon margarita already. 

Hannah did her best to seem light-hearted and happy, but she was having difficulty breathing. Dasha looked so happy and so elated. Hannah barely touched her food. She wanted to leave after dessert, but the girls held her back; insisting she stayed till the stripper had performed. The later it got, the more exuberant the girls behaved. Hannah was relieved the stripper finally finished his erotic performance for the gang of boisterous half-drunk girls. She walked over to Dasha and gave her a big hug.

“I have to go now; my stomach is a little upset.” She whispered in Dasha’s ear.

 Back in her car, she stared at her steering wheel for a long time. 

Oh God please let me be wrong and let this go right please, she prayed.

 The following weekend the wedding took place. A relatively small ceremony for family and close friends. Afterward, there would be a blast with hundreds of guests, but Hannah only stayed for the ceremony and reception and then went home to change, and drive to the coast for a long walk on the beach.

She knew her friend was very sensitive, and she prayed passionately that the cold frog she married that morning would be able to love her as Dasha needed and deserved.

Dasha had been married once before. She was living on cloud number 9 until exactly one day after the wedding - when her new husband casually announced that he had to travel for work. The truth was that he was celebrating her honeymoon with his lover. A bolt out of the blue struck Dasha. He was a closeted homosexual. No one had ever suspected, least of all Hannah. After the whole affair came to light, and the divorce was completed at lightning speed, Dasha sank into a very deep depression. After a 6 month stay in a clinic, she slowly recovered. And then she met Javier. She fell head over heels for him.

This time would be better! She was sure of that…

Javier was in no way a homosexual. But he was cold and haughty, closed-off and he was an outright misogynist.

What was going on with her friend? Why did she have to fall for this kind of women haters? It had to be true that love is blind. And probably deaf as well.

 After a long walk, she sat down at the foot of a dune and stayed there until the sun went down.

After the wedding, Dasha went on a honeymoon. Hannah got a few postcards in the mail and a few nauseating selfies. everything seemed to be running smoothly and Dasha looked happy.

When she came back to work at the office, she spent days floating on clouds boasting about the fairy tale honeymoon. Hannah was glad her friend was doing so well, yet she couldn't shake a sense of impending doom. 

And then one day Dasha announced a farewell party. From now on she was going to focus on having a baby.

Hannah thought she was being smashed in the face with a blunt instrument. She wanted to tell Dasha, so bad what was on her mind but kept her mouth shut and hugged her friend.

“You have to keep in touch and come visit very often!” Dasha cooed like a lovesick teenager. It took a year for Javier to decide that the best way to proceed was to get help from a fertility clinic.

Dasha stayed in touch, but a lot had changed, and Dasha’s cheerful tone had disappeared. Nor was Hannah allowed to visit her anymore, for Javier had decreed she was nothing but a bad influence on Dasha and a dreadful jealous old spinster.

“Are you happy?” Hannah asked her friend. Dasha nodded and took a sip of a glass of wine.

“Isn´t it a bit early for that?” Hannah asked pointing at the giant wineglass.

“Oh please! You sound just like Javier. It´s just to take the edge off. Get off my case will you.” And she took another big gulp.

“I´m sorry. I wasn´t aware I was doing that.” Said Hannah while she blew an imaginary fluff off her sleeve.

“You´re just jealous, that´s all.” Dasha replied. Her words came out as if delayed from a fluent stream of conversation. Hannah didn't react, she was convinced that something was wrong. Dasha lay stretched out on the sofa in a grey jogging suit. 

She had to get rid of her cat, Dasha said. Javier had read somewhere that cats were very bad for pregnant women.

“But you´re not even pregnant yet.” Hannah spoke.

“Better be safe than sorry.” Dasha replied in a very dry manner.

Hannah bit her lip not to say she knew a lot of pregnant women who have one cat or more. Maybe it was high time she talked to Doctor Green again.

Dasha wouldn´t hear about it: “Javier says shrinks are quacks who do more damage than good. That way they can keep up the payments for their BMW`S:”  

“I'm worried about you, girlfriend!” Hannah said, “You are a shadow of your previous self. Come, let's go for a walk along the water. It's such a beautiful day and a little fresh air will do you good.

“No, Javier said to take it easy.”

“Take it easy? You’ll end up taking roots here on that couch.” said Hannah, dumbfounded. Dasha did not answer. 

“What the hell is wrong with you? I don't recognize you anymore. Do you still recognize yourself when you look in the mirror?” Dasha averted her gaze.

“You have to go”, she said in a soft voice, “Javier is coming home earlier, and he doesn't want you to come here anymore.”

 Hannah rolled her eyes.

“OK,” she sighed, “The last thing I want is to ruffle your husband's feathers. Call me if you need me.” She kissed Dasha and left.

Hannah got to see less and less of Dasha. her phone calls were ignored, her e-mails unanswered, and one day Javier called her, making it unmistakably clear that her presence or friendship was no longer wanted.

Hannah cried a lot at first, but she made peace with the fact, that Dasha wasn't going to be a part of her life anymore.

“Are you coming tonight?” 

Chills ran down her spine: “What?”

“Are you coming tonight?” the chubby receptionist repeated. “We´re having a birthday party for Lisa. You didn´t forget, did you?”

“No…no. I´m sorry! Yes, of course, I´ll be there.” Hannah said.

A strange sensation of Déja Vue came over her.

She had a few cocktails at the party, but she was unable to shake off her general feeling of unease.

The next morning, she enjoyed her coffee on the small balcony of her apartment. She saw a flock of birds lined up across a wire.

“Who died?”, she whispered softly and immediately became angry with herself for thinking such dark thoughts on such a beautiful morning.

As a child, her grandmother would tell her stories about birds that flew the souls of deceased people to heaven's gates. When they sat in a row like that on a wire, they were simply waiting for the soul about to leave this earth, to finish saying goodbye.

She went back inside and opened the weekend newspaper.

She froze completely. As if transfixed she stared at the newspaper on her kitchen table. Normally she never read the obituaries, but somehow, she'd landed right on that page when she opened the paper. Her tears began to flow uncontrollably down her cheeks before she even fully realized what exactly she had read.

There, in a great solemn announcement… it read that her best friend had departed from this world.

The funeral would take place a few days later and was only to be attended by members of the family. 

She decided to go to the funeral anyway, well aware that she would not be allowed into the chapel. Wild horses wouldn´t stop her attending if only to stand outside the chapel. It was also the only way to find out where Dasha would be buried. Hannah got goosebumps at the idea that her friend would be buried beneath the earth. Dasha never wanted that. She wanted to be cremated and strewn in a lush forest with damp and moist grounds. 

Hannah had blocked the stream of thoughts every time it drifted to her best friend's cause of death. She knew though, she just lacked the courage to accommodate that concept—as if it could keep the unavoidable at bay. Or never make it into actually happening: Suicide.

As she stood across the small chapel, she saw birds again neatly lined up on a power wire.

The following week she went to visit her friend's grave. The Indian summer sun had shrouded everything in a warm orange glow. She spread her scarf over the damp grass by the grave. There was no tombstone on it yet. The ground has to settle first, the cemetery manager had told her when she asked him for help.

“Hi, friend.” She whispered in the air. “Why couldn´t you come to me?” tears rolled over her face, and she wiped them with the back of her hand.

“God, I miss you!” Hannah sobbed, “You were my dearest friend. More than that; you were my only family!”

“They made you small!” she cried while plucking at the grass, “And you believed them, didn´t you? You swallowed every word as if it was a written gospel. When they told you to hush and settle, they only wanted you to hear them better when they convinced you, you were defective. Broken! You were not! You were not broken!”

“You were always the best of all of us! You who always chose to see the best in everybody… You were a diamond!”

“I love you Dasha.” she dried her tears and blew a kiss on the grave.

Before she stood up, she put her head back, and saw the birds again, neatly lined up on a powerline.

“Goodbye Dasha.”, she said, and the birds flew away...