About a week from now, they’ll find me downstream near Lewiston, New York, bumping against rocks to the rhythm of waves. Rivermen will drag me out, headless and fish-white. They’ll use an angler’s net to scoop my entrails, floating alongside, spilled from my split body but somehow still attached.

            Well shit, that’s not how I pictured it. If I’d known I was going to come out looking like that, I might have planned this differently. For the sake of decency, I mean. Call me messed up if you want to, but I try not to be inconsiderate.

When they hear the news, the Thursday night boys at Glory Days will drink to me and pad their stories with happy lies and buy themselves another round. And soon, once enough time has passed, the jokes will write themselves. (What’s the difference between Rockin’ Ronnie and a glass of beer? A glass of beer has a head.) They’ll laugh too hard when someone says I was a shit hot bass player but a fucking useless goalie. When the conversation fades, they’ll put Bob Seger on the jukebox and stare into their beer, trying to ignore the murky thoughts that bubble up from the bottom. Everyone who grew up in this tourist town has leaned over the railing at the brink of the falls a hundred times and heard the siren song of that thundering green water. All the townies know the tune by heart, its hypnotic spell, how it enters your bloodstream and haunts your dreams. For a few of us it becomes more than a haunting—a calling, I guess. Answering the call, when the time is right, is the difference between me and the rest of the boys.

All I ask, when the rivermen pull me out, is don’t let Helen see me like that, like some rotten trout coughed up onshore—like on that shitty Lake Erie beach where we used to go. I’d rather she remembers how we’d lay in the dunes all night, smoking doobs and fucking slowly in the sand, then blowing our minds at the infinity of stars. Maybe she still thinks of those days, the gone days when we went everywhere and did everything. All I ask, when the rivermen pull me out, is please don’t let her see me like that. Helen, she deserves better.

            In about three days, they’ll find my car in the underground garage of a casino, attracting dust and the attention of security guards. Cops will run the plates and get my name and address. They’ll knock on my door. They’ll ask around, and my neighbours will shrug. They’ll learn that no John Does have checked into morgues lately on either side of the river. Not so far this week, anyhow. They’ll assume I’m just another hard luck gambler gone missing. Then an officer will notice the folded paper on the dash under a coffee cup. They’ll read the note, but there’s so little I know how to put into words. They’ll call the number written there. Helen will answer. Haven’t seen Ronnie in years, she’ll say, we’re not together anymore—Why, what’s happened? How’d you get my number? Is everything okay?

In about one minute, it will be done.

            I go to a shaded spot I know upriver, where the grass slopes down. I ease myself in, unseen, shoes and all. It’s a muggy August afternoon, and the water’s refreshing, though now I feel heavy in my clothes. There’s nothing to wait for, so I let go of the dogwood branch tethering me to the bank, and I’m swept away. The river is shallow, and the current is muscular and swift. Its strong embrace comforts me, and for once I believe that the crooked cells eating my lungs can no longer hurt me. The swirling water feels like the cure no doctor could find. I drift on my back and squint into sunshine. There’s nothing to see up there but an infinity of blue. Layered over the roar of water are screeching gulls and the whoop-whoop of a sightseeing helicopter. Suddenly, I think about smiling because this was the soundtrack to my blithe teenage summers, working joe jobs in the tourist trade, listening to the exotic babble of Québécois and Japanese while overcharging them for souvenirs. I imagine those tourists now, clustered at the brink as they always are, posing with selfie sticks against the majestic backdrop of the Horseshoe Falls, absorbed in themselves. They don’t look down and notice me sliding past, close to the river’s edge, silent as driftwood, determined and serene. They don’t look as I turn over onto my front and swim forward for the last few strokes, reaching for the violence—the violence that will bring peace. Nobody sees as I slip over the edge in a blur and vanish into the mist in the most astonishing moment of my life.

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