Conversations With Eddie

 Preview From Snapshots At St. Arbuck's Vol 2

"It's been awhile." This from Eddie as we sat on the patio of St. Arbuck's, sipping our brews and enjoying the brief period of time that exists between days when there is a thirty mph wind and one hundred-ten degree temperatures, and days where there is a thirty mph wind and fifty degree temperatures.

It's normally called "October," but this year it started a week early.

"Yes, it has," I agreed. "I feel like I haven't seen you for a month."

"Six weeks," he corrected, tipping his chair and balancing on the back legs.

"No! That long?"

"Yeah, Jack. And don't forget, I was the one who had to call you or else we wouldn't be here."

"You did not!”

"Did too!" he wrinkled his brow. "Matter of fact, if I didn't call you on a regular basis, we'd never get together."

"What are you talking about?" I stammered. "I call you!"

"Oh? When?"

"Well, I called you..." I paused because suddenly I couldn't remember. "...you know, that time."

"That time? That's it? That's the best you can come up with?"

"Give me a minute," I stalled, hoping to buy some time.

"Dude, if you got to think that hard, then you have already made my point for me."

All right...he had me, but I had a secret weapon.

I got it from my wife.

She pulls it out during arguments such as this and I am helpless, yea, all men bow in helpless surrender before its power.

I felt the power rise as the word formed on my lips. "So?"

He rocked back in his chair as if he'd been smacked in the face.

"What did you just say?"

"I said, 'So?'"

He stared at me in a blank-faced stupor for about ten seconds before saying, "Oh no you did not."

"Yes, I did."

"Dude..." he said, stretching it out, the tiny vocal tremor at the end betraying his surfer roots. "Oh, dude..."

I smiled triumphantly.

He shook his head slowly. "I can't believe you actually stooped to use that on me. Me!"

"I don't see what the big deal is."

"You don't see what the big deal is?"

Eddie has a habit of repeating everything you say when he starts getting a little worked up.

"No, I don't."

"You don't?"

"You know, if you're going to repeat everything I say, we're going to be here a long time."

He threw his hands up in the air and let his chair come forward with a bang.

"You're not supposed to say things like that."

"And why not?"

"Because, it's not...it's not, well, manly."

I laughed sharply.

"That's silly."

"For the record, saying 'silly,' isn't real manly either."

I wadded up the bag in which my chocolate chip banana coffee cake had come and arced it toward the waste basket where it fell cleanly through the opening.

"How about that?" I said petulantly. "Is that manly?"

"You don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

"You know...why it's a problem," he continued quickly. "You wanna' know why it's a problem?"

"Is there anything I can do to stop you from telling me?"

"No! Now listen to me. If we—guys that is—start resorting to girl strategies in order to win arguments, our entire gender will be set back centuries in our evolution."

"I thought you didn't believe in evolution."

He rolled his eyes and let his head fall backward with his mouth hanging open.

"I give up."

"You two arguing again?" The friendly, albeit nosy store manager appeared at our table.

"No!" we said in unison.

With a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" motion of her elbow, she moved on to clean another table.

I looked at Eddie, "I have no idea what we were talking about."

"Now that's more like it! That right there is a manly thing to say."

"I'm not sure I..."

"Yeah, man. When the little woman is in the heat of the moment, you pull that out and, bam! Argument over."

The realization of how profound this really was spread over me like warm butter on a sticky-bun as we fist-bumped across the table.

"Isn't communication great?"

One Fine Day

I have a theory—any phone call before six o’clock AM can’t possibly be good news. I received such a call on the morning of May 1, 2009. On the other end of the line was Chip Lightman, Danny Gans’ good friend and manager of eighteen years.

Chip said, “RG, I have something to tell you and I didn’t want you to see it on the news.”

Immediately several images and thoughts battled for preeminence in my mind, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

“Danny died in his sleep.”

Suddenly the air had been sucked out of the room and I felt as if my body had been transported onto one of those old Tilt-a-Wheel carnival rides. Vertigo kicked in, a total loss of spatial reference.

To be honest with you, I’m not sure what I said next but I remember very clearly what Chip said.

“Danny really cared about you, RG,” a fact of which I was well aware, but it was good to hear it anyway.

We chatted for a few more minutes before he had to end the call, as there were dozens of people to notify about the death and a limited amount of time in which to beat the news reports. After he hung up I must confess that I fell completely apart. Explaining to my worried spouse what had happened came in short bursts, as I was unable to control the emotion longer than a few seconds at a time.

The whole thing was so surreal we had to turn on the news just to see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears that our dear friend had, indeed, passed away.

Gone.

He was gone.

How was that even possible? We had talked the day before about getting together that very afternoon, and now...

It’s funny, isn’t it, how you can wake up thinking that it’s just another day—just another in a long string of fine days only to learn that it is anything but.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur as we tried vainly to make sense of the tragedy. Details were spotty and mainly speculative.

“What now?” my wife asked, her red-rimmed eyes a mirror of my own.

What now, indeed? It was a question certain to be on the lips of family, friends, band members and crew who were suddenly unemployed, business associates. It would be a long, long while before any of us found a suitable answer.

I had the uncommon privilege of being Danny’s friend for a little over twelve years. During that time we had many, many conversations about his life, his career, his faith, his passions, the joys and pain and his singular focus on being the best entertainer the world had ever known.

Mainly, though, it was just two friends talking over a set of bench presses at the gym, an afternoon coffee at Starbucks or lunch at one of his favorite restaurants.

Given his fondness for interjecting one of his patented vocal impressions into our talks, I used to tease him about it feeling like I was having a conversation with, “two hundred people.”

It has been said that we are born at sunrise and we die at sunset, and in between we spend our days and years chasing daylight. Danny Gans pursued and caught the sun, swallowing it whole and turning it outward to an adoring public who basked in its light for a season...a season foreshortened by his untimely death.

I miss you, my brother, my friend.