The death of a writer

She knocked on the office door. I was alone and the rain saturated sky masked the time of day. I aroused myself from my dream-like work trance to open and I saw her there, perplexed.
- No. She wasn't here. Yes, she might have left.
Her bedraggled curls hung limply with the moisture and her eyes drooped, sadly. My gaze interrogated her. She said, -Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. Her face went two shades sadder.
-I'm sorry, that's terrible. Who is he?
-He's a writer. My favorite writer. He was only 67.
I reached out to hug her (at times like these you hug first and ask questions later)
-I always imagined I would meet him. I really wanted to meet him, I felt like I knew him.
Funny how we feel that we know people through the words that they leave on paper.
-I don't know his work, I say, but I feel like I have heard the name.
-He was a journalist, he wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
-Aha, yes that sounds familiar. Sweetie, don't get any ideas.
-That's what my friend just told me.
-She's right, you know. The sadness that seeps from her daily is tremendous, only absorbable in small doses. I don't want to be sad like that, I know that my light hasn't gone that dim, I doubt that it will ever. I wish that I could help her feel better.
-One of my favorite authors died today too, but he was old. Guillermo Cabrera Infante. (I don't think this made her feel any better) I am sorry.
-I dreamed of meeting him, it was one of my life goals. She ambled off down the hallway in her grief to share her story with the next office's inhabitant. I was left alone in reflection.

G. Cabrera Infante is dead. My immediate thoughts are with my professor, who is out of town and who was a close friend of his. In fact, in class we talked about the fun that they had at word play. She talked about their collaboration and I wondered (I am always making up stories of intrigue) if maybe they didn't have an affair... perhaps just a literary one? He told her that they should write a novel together. She never could. I imagine what it would be like to collaborate with such a genius and I am saddened. Maybe R. was right, life is sometimes too painful, and you have to find a way out. I hope she'll be ok.

As for me, all I could do was go sing, so that is just what I did.