Our first death, a drug overdose. Fergus, blue faced and stiff on a Saturday afternoon. The irrevocable words have reverberated all week: Fergus is dead, Fergus is dead, Fergus is dead. I'm unaccustomed to death, and masticate this pronouncement as I go about my business, needing to be convinced. What is the protocol, in these circumstances? He wasn't my friend. I was paid to know him. Nevertheless, I had a great affection for him- lazy, dishonest Fergus whose collection of pornos gave the lie to the claim that psychiatric medication ruins your libido. Well-mannered Fergus who shoved Cum in my Bum out of sight under his couch cushions when we came into his house. Gentle Fergus, who loved his mother and got upset when she split up with her boyfriend. Fergus who loved movies and good music and wrote short ecstatic poems about the small joys of life- trees and birds and the breath in your lungs.

I mourn him in a sneaky and sporadic fashion, listening to Union Station (to which he introduced me), looking at the order of service with his grinning bearded face on it, crying sometimes when there is nobody to challenge my right to do so. I look at our other clients and wonder that they are alive and he is not. Mostly, I just wish it hadn't happened.