Mr. Entropy

A couple weeks after Sue died, my boss, Anthony, called me to begin what would become his weekly check-in, a guaranteed half hour-plus when he encouraged me to provide color about the grieving process or simply rant about the topic du jour before I played “ticket therapist” for him, ignoring work matters until the frenzied final minutes to instead sift through his own personal dilemmas. The most prominent one involved his pending move to Miami, which caused predictable friction with his girlfriend, Melanie, but also yielded her immense kindness.

Anthony lives in the manager’s suite at a storage unit facility in Oxnard, sixty or so miles northwest of Los Angeles. Due to this geographical disadvantage, he frequently elects not to leave his isolated confines except to see Melanie, but knowing he’d soon become a Floridian, she suggested he fly me out to co-star in his Los Angeles “farewell tour.” We deliberated about the idea for months — Anthony severely tested my obsessive-compulsive disorder by not booking the flights until the eleventh-and-a-half hour — and coordinated the outing to occur during the extended July 4th break from work, the holiday itself doubling as my birthday.

He benevolently paid for both flights with credit card points, invited me to stay in his tall-ceilinged guest bedroom (and meet his spoiled black and white cat Moo Moo, the feline’s borderline Hitler mustache leading to his new nickname: Chaplin), and said he’d drive us anywhere I wanted, requesting that I craft an itinerary, the most easily fulfillable request imaginable for an overzealous list maker. We organized plans to attend a Los Angeles Dodgers game with co-workers on the evening of the Fourth, which would culminate in a postgame fireworks show. My one demand for the day was to visit the Santa Monica Pier in the afternoon.

Sue and I had vacationed in Los Angeles the previous August, which included several hours of boundless smiles at the Pier, her favorite place in the world, along with a nighttime dalliance days later for a final, bittersweet peek. Unwilling to complain about the throat cancer that would end her life less than three months later, she had casually divulged a few times throughout the years how meaningful it would be to have her ashes scattered in the ocean by the Pier someday, but in true Sue fashion tried to lessen the significance, adding that it wasn’t imperative due to the prohibitive cost and logistics, once retroactively blaming herself for stooping to passive-aggressively hint at a destination departure. My first thought when Anthony and I agreed to our tour dates was how I could bestow the ultimate au revoir on Sue by spreading some of her ashes the day I turned forty-one.

When attending The Masters on Sue’s birthday three months beforehand, the same day as a total solar eclipse, a foursome of unexplainable cosmic coincidences occurred, the number of them significant because four was Sue’s favorite number, her purchasing things in fours, grouping things in fours, and yes, texting “444” at 4:44 on the select days she caught four in a bottle. I’d inexplicably witnessed two geese at the twelfth green, a ladybug landed in front of me during the eclipse’s peak visibility, and I’d spotted her exact brand of lip gloss, the same lip gloss she misplaced weekly, on the ground when reaching for a pinecone. In addition, I had given a ticket to a man named Ken the night prior then run into him at the eighteenth green early in the afternoon, the equivalent of realizing the same guy trailing you on each aisle at the store has gotten in line behind you and wouldn’t you know it, he’s also parked next to you, except four million times more surreal.

After taking rips of “the headiest nuggs in Los Angeles” from Anthony’s bong — he’s fond of saying he’s “constantly launching to the International Space Station” as he sparks his lighter — we drove to the Pier via the Pacific Coast Highway as I repeatedly pointed at and fawned over the jacaranda trees in bloom, vivid purple snapdragon-esque petals decorating the California hills like amethysts sparkling in the sunlight. Unaware of the Saturday Night Live sketch, I mentioned to Anthony how he evoked characters from the show’s recurring “Californians” bit, Valley-voiced goofballs describing in absurdly specific detail what highways and roads they traversed when driving around the greater Tinseltown area, a navigational bit of perseveration he didn’t know was shared by Angelenos and mocked by everyone else. Sue and I had met Anthony for dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant in Malibu on the penultimate night of our vacation, a meeting I insisted occur because Anthony’s unyielding positivity aligned so similarly with Sue’s glowing outlook on life.

We were nearing the restaurant when a shock of color urged me to glance left. There stood a perfectly tan Sue in a bubblegum pink tank top, turquoise shorts, and canary yellow sandals, all details of her jewelry nondescript but I clearly viewed her smiling face and freshly styled pink and blonde hair with glistening silver strands, her right palm open as if it was about to wave, her left knee bent inward toward her right knee like a domino beginning its descent into the next catalyst in the chain, the image of her awkwardly frozen like the frame a couple seconds before she deemed herself ready for me to take her photo, those same seconds when I snapped photos anyway, much to her eye-rolling and mild annoyance and immediate compulsion to delete them from her camera roll, laughing off my goofy antics, especially on occasions when one candid shot inevitably surpassed the staged pose, Sue photogenic in perpetuity for presenting herself as a flamboyant gay man trapped in a teenage girl’s brain, the personality type she long asserted was her true self. And then, like in the movies, she vaporized. Anthony, an admitted grandmaster at making a short story long, digressed about a topic for a few minutes as I attempted to compose myself, alerting him that I’d seen Sue, him too stunned, as one would expect, to say much other than, “Holy fuck!” My own Malibu Barbie had resurfaced to say hello, to emphasize how her indomitable love and energy were with me, to thank me for returning her to where she innately knew she belonged, to add a welcoming rainbow hue to the red, white, and blue, and to prove her soft spot for loved one’s birthdays would never die. When I relayed the story to a friend who’d seen his own father’s apparition on a golf course weeks after the man was buried, he asked if a real person stood in the spot when Sue vanished. No chance. Sue may have been monk-like in her humility but sharing the spotlight under these circumstances? Impossible. This was her town for the day, now for an eternity.

As Anthony and I walked toward the ocean, an attractive blonde girl sporting sunglasses, a red bikini top, jean shorts, and black flip-flops approached us and momentarily eased her gait to point at me and say, “Great shirt!” Startled by the felicitation, Anthony questioned if women ever complimented my clothing. (Not often in forty years, but one for one in year forty-one.) I’d worn a Stevie Wonder concert tee shirt obtained when Sue and I saw him perform in full the most joyous album I know, Songs in the Key of Life, on November 11th, 2014, nine years to the day before Sue’s death. Not only did this seem uncanny, but the mesmerizing knockout was wearing the same outfit Sue wore to the pool at her apartment complex the entire first summer we dated.

I cried to an Alice Coltrane song in a private spot beneath the boardwalk for a few minutes then emptied the freezer bag of ash and bony chips into the ocean. Anthony and I each raced our tongues against instantly melting waffle cones — mutually confirming our preference to lick, not bite, ice cream in a cone — then rode the Ferris wheel, the same one Sue is featured beaming on in her obituary photo, both of us sated with our monumental levels of accomplishment despite doing so little in such a short period of time.

Relaxing in our seats by the left field foul pole at Dodger Stadium in the fourth inning, our co-worker, Jon, inquired, “Didn’t you have a thing with a ladybug at The Masters?” Upon affirming that I had been greeted by one at the fifth hole grandstands, he pointed to a ladybug on the railing in front of us, a direct connection linking Sue’s and my favorite places on our two birthdays. Like an autistic boy, I had told anyone who would listen how it was my birthday all day, something Sue enthusiastically embraced doing to embarrass me each year, and this time my self-celebration furnished a discount on a hot dog stuffed animal I bought along with a blue souvenir pin that read “It’s My Birthday!” Ashamed to refer to myself in the third person, I can nonetheless confirm that Mr. Entropy — the nickname one a friend recently christened me with following another incomprehensible fit of random luck — couldn’t have been more content with the way his birthday made him feel like a spoiled brat at the ballpark.

Unfortunately, Anthony’s plan to bring me to a classic downtown deli was extinguished by parking lot traffic, but he proposed a Denny’s by the storage unit where we could grab something quick and save time in advance of another long day. He exited the table to use the restroom, so I checked my phone assuming my birthday had wrapped. Yet at 11:54 a familiar verse emanated from the diner’s speakers:

You know I need your love
You’ve got that hold over me
Long as I got your love
You know that I’ll never leave
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it’s been you, woman
Right down the line

The Gerry Rafferty song had been Sue’s pick for “our song” years prior, her infatuation with late ’70s soft rock generated by her childhood K-Tel vinyl compilation listening habits. I would prefer to admit that I was crying due to my regret about ordering a Cobb salad, but one more time, the little lady said hello, and much like Anthony, waited until that same eleventh-and-a-half hour to flash her fourth sign, an intransigent fan of being tardy to the party. Her presence left me dumbfounded—old hat for Sue in her earthly retirement—an exceptional parting birthday gift, the joy of music being what originally brought us together.

★ ★ ★ ★

On Monday, July 22nd, my phone displayed an inbound call from a 516 area code. Unlike most people, I answer unknown numbers giddy to fuck with the anonymous person on the other line.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Adam. This is Ken. I don’t know if you remember me, but I picked up a Masters ticket from you in Augusta in April.”

“Oh, I remember you quite well. How are you, sir?”

Once we’d swapped pleasantries, I asked for his patience so I could outline why I remembered him so well, unfurling the cliff’s notes of the synchronicities from both Sue’s and my birthdays. Ken offered his condolences and explained his own numerological sorrows that earned my tears: his wife had died of cancer several years prior on October 29th, the same day his mother had died several years before that. He shared how his wife remained the person he loved more than anything else in this world and emboldened me to be self-centered to work through the grief and loneliness I sensed was becoming more pronounced as the days without Sue passed. Sparing time to bury his lede reminded me how I regarded him when we met in Georgia: he was an affable man who liked to talk, but a man who also exhibited tenderness when he listened, especially when I said how Sue and I met working at a record store.

“You know who Warren Zevon is?” he asked me.

“Of course, I do.”

“I’m a big Letterman fan,” he said about Zevon, a regular on the late-night show for years, “and he told Dave when he was dying of cancer that he tried to ‘enjoy every sandwich.’”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” I replied. “I wrote a book whose title originated at The Masters, by the way, and that quote is in the epigraph.”

Back on topic, Ken proceeded to tell me that he had received an email earlier in the day informing him that he’d emerged victorious in The Masters’ lottery, meaning he’d been graciously afforded the opportunity to purchase tickets at face value to patronize the 2025 tournament. Since he’d crossed the event off his “bucket list” already, Ken hoped to sell the tickets to me at less than market value as a thank you for my kindness and generosity when talking to him two days before he picked up the ticket, easing his unrelenting travel anxieties, and for my recommendations of what to do when inside Augusta National Golf Club over the course of the round he attended.

Consideration for indulging his girlfriend or son with a Masters trip was met by resistance — work and disinterest, respectively, were the particulars of his rebuttal — so I recommended flipping the tickets for the full profit he deserved to keep. Still, Ken was intent on making my day and implied that I could use them and bring someone with me.

“I only go in there alone,” I said. “There’s nowhere I like to be alone more than on that golf course.”

“What about this?” he asked. “What day is your girlfriend’s birthday next year?”

“The eighth was a Monday this year, so it’s a Tuesday next year.”

“What about if you and I attend the round together on her birthday? We can bond, Adam.”

“Seriously?!”

“Why not? I’ve never met anyone who loves The Masters the way you do.”

“I’m in. Just give me the price.”

“I have until August to pay for these tickets. I’ll spend time on this soon and be in touch in a couple weeks. We’ll go from there.”

Conveniently enough, my realtor and now close friend, Jessica, had treated me to a belated birthday dinner two nights prior to Ken’s call, the same night commemorating our one-year friendiversary, that unforgettable morning marked by July heat sans humidity, when Sue and I met her to investigate three rental options. The home Sue and I loved is where we moved in, Sue slowly rolling by it and daydreaming in her car for a couple nervous weeks after work shifts in advance of us being selected from a list of eleven applicants to rent the property. She texted me about how she envisioned shepherd’s hooks towering in the yard with hanging, multicolored zinnias on display backgrounded by her beloved sunflowers and a garden full of tomatoes and eggplants adjacent to our backyard picnic table, a picturesque, serene life I’d imagined for a decade only for it to conclude with me performing CPR on Sue in our hallway not even two months later. We had discussed the possibility of double dates with Jessica, a woman Sue initially cautioned me to not judge for her ample tattoos, and her husband, Sean, two people on our same wavelength, and the ideal couple we’d long yearned to have opposite us at a table with whom we could exchange stories, laughs, and shared iconoclastic ideologies.

Much like me, Sean had endured a brutally traumatic childhood, but persevered to be rewarded with regular overtures from Lady Luck in adulthood. Jessica was the first person I called after Ken said goodbye; I recorded an adrenalized two-minute voicemail summarizing the implausible late afternoon turn of events. When I read her response text message a few hours later, she asked, “Weren’t we just talking about how the sun finds a way to shine on you?”

“People are fucking amazing,” I replied.

“You are,” she said.

Now it felt hard to fathom that Tuesday, April 8th, 2025, would be anything but a seventy-four-degree, sunny day, all conditions right for the next visit from a certain someone. I know she’ll be ready to meet my new friend. In fact, I’m convinced she’ll love him. But if she can, I hope Malibu Suzie goes easy on me in the interim. There’s only so much Kentropy one man can withstand.