O7: Oleander or "Danny remembers what happened"

From N7:
"Danny." She came over. "I love you. You're great. But what I need is one hundred and forty Grishams stacked before your break." She actually patted his shoulder, and turned back to her shelf. He could hear the starched music of the Galleria laughing in his ears.

As he stacked the books, he remembered the days immediately after Roddy died. First, he'd called Marina to tell her, his mouth wet like raw oysters and his voice nearly illegible. She'd sent him home and told their boss he was sick. The walk home had been collapsed and extended in time; he remembered the gray streets sighing into lame prisms from the tears in his eyes, the confusion over what it meant that Roddy was dead, the guilt and - he had to admit it - relief that their two year tug-of-war was over.

It wasn't that they'd been so happy together. He'd been remembering a fight over Danny's choice of cocktail, "another fruity drink," as Roddy put it, when Danny had detoured into the corner store on his block for two pints of ice cream, a canister of potato chips, and a large bottle of wine. He remembers cradling the red sleeve of chips against his chest as he watched Michelle Pfeiffer overact in "White Oleander" on the couch as he finished the merlot and avoided the incessantly ringing phone. It had been one of his favorite things about the apartment - something he missed terribly in his reduced, group-house circumstances now: the fact that no one could get close enough to barge in through the door.

That weekend he'd rented a car for the drive down to Richmond and made the journey alone to the strains of the "Garden State" soundtrack. He had given up on answering the phone or going back to work. He'd scrolled through their pictures on his camera, crying as much for his lack of reaction as for the false, sunny picture the images conveyed. For four days he had subsisted on delivered pizza and Chinese food, and when he'd emerged to the parking lot at the funeral home, it was only his darkest sunglasses that kept the low winter sun at bay. Becca had hugged him and sobbed. Roddy's parents had nodded and -briefly - taken his hand.

And he'd left the cold funeral the way he'd entered it - alone.

Danny ran his hand along the spine of the last book, keeping to his squat, hoping to escape notice. Hoping no one would need him, or realize that he was done.