The last time I saw C. Erin Arizzi was at the Executive Plaza, in Hunt Valley, maybe late September or early October. We were both on deliveries, working at two different shops across the road from each other. I pulled up alongside him and we greeted each other, wished each other luck, and went our seperate ways in pursuit of the almighty tip.

If I had to describe C. Erin Arizzi, I would say he was a person impossible to hate, with an infectuous grin and an easy word for everyone. The clearest memory I have of hanging out with him at a social gathering was four years ago, just before Thanksgiving, as his band, Ruby Minor, played a show at Otto’s Grotto. It was a Friday night, and I hadn’t been planning on going, but something forced me out of my apartment at the Colony and down I-83 into a city that frankly terrified me. The place itself certainly deserves the title “ghetto”, with its crumbling walls and stained decor. I have memories of forcing my way through a crowd to the bar, and shouting to make myself heard over the band, meeting other co-workers there, trying to play pool on a table that if memory serves was off-tilt.

He was always easy to spot on the road - rail thin, bald, with a full beard. He looked sort of like my grandfather, I remember (although gramps never had a beard), although sixty-some years younger. His car — a black Nissan Maxima — wore as its sole decoration a Maryland flag bumpersticker on the rear.

We’d both worked at a pizza shop on York Road in Cockeysville together for a few years. One day that first summer he came into the store agitated - someone had mistaken the pizza sign on top of his car for a taxi sign and had tried to get a ride to the city.

I don’t think anyone ever teased him or asked him why he had two girls’ names - Carmen and Erin. He would’ve made a joke if someone had. I don’t think I ever saw him get angry. He was one of those guys who went to school one semester a year, paying for it himself. He loved his cats, and off-beat movies. He’s the one who recommended that I see Best in Show and Royal Tennenbaums.

The first year I knew him, he told me his roomate had just gotten a job teaching English. I asked him where, and he told me, “Some school with a crazy name that probably no one knows - Atholton.” Well, actually, I did know the name - I graudated from there. As it turns out, his roommate taught my sister her senior year.

This morning I swung through Hampden to visit an ex-co-worker of mine. We’d both worked with Erin. At first she was happy to see me, then sad. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, but my cell phone is broken and that’s where I have your phone number. Did you hear about Erin?”

And I just sort of knew, the way she said that, the redness in her eyes. Something related to his diabetes, but I was sort of tuning her out by that point.

C. Erin Arizzi’s funeral was last Tuesday. I spent all day today looking at the backs of every Nissan I saw. Looking for a Maryland flag.