A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (53 page)

Why are these people not noticing? Why is it not considered unusual that I
’
m writhing on the floor? Have I writhed on this carpet before? I try to think of when that might have happened—

Someone from next door, the
Chronicle,
notices first, through the glass, and comes over; then it
’
s people everywhere. I am helped to the couch to rest there, then the asking of questions about where and how bad and why. Maybe I am kidding.

“
Are you kidding?
”
asks Paul.

“
Fuck you.
”

I refrain from saying I
’
m dying. I
’
m only about 95 percent sure that I
’
m dying, and don
’
t want to alarm anyone. But soon I will know. I say
hospital, hospital.

“
I
’
ll take you,
”
says Shalini.

“
Thank you yes,
”
I say.

I stumble to the elevator, scraping along the wall, leaning on Shalini. Shalini smells so nice, oh you smell nice Shalini. I
’
m dying, Shal, dying. Jesus I
’
m hunched over, I can
’
t even walk. I need someone to carry me. Shal can
’
t carry me.
Goddamn
it! /
have to tell
—
He should know
— At the elevator I almost want to turn around and tell someone to call Toph
’
s school, to have him meet me at the hospital but I can
’
t walk all the way back maybe I can tell the guard in the lobby, and he
’
ll call up to the office, and then someone can call Toph
’
s school— Oh but the fucking message
’
ll
get
butchered fuck fuck— No, Toph shouldn
’
t know, I don
’
t want him to see me die— I
’
ll slip away like Dad, during the day, sly-like, that
’
ll be the way, we
’
ve had our time, we don
’
t need a goodbye fuck this elevator is fucking slow Shalini you smell so good.

In the car I am almost crying, because the pain is ten times
what it was when it knocked me to the floor. But I am tough, I am army tough. But this is fucking breaking me in half, this is acid all over me, acid being kicked into my side with steel-tipped shoes by a hundred little Nazi fuckers, all inside me—fuck! Can AIDS kill like this? Yes, yes. No, no, no. Maybe. Oh I knew it when that happened, that condom broke, I knew it was wrong from the beginning, that sex and with her and my life and guilty guilty. And Toph! All squandered!

Oh this is worse than the time when we went rafting, when the American River was way too high, when we went, all of us, and then we hit those rapids, plunged down, all fell from the raft, and I was in the froth, quickly swallowed a gallon, couldn
’
t
get
straight, couldn
’
t stay above water, trying to look, to see where Toph was, if he had fallen, but couldn
’
t see, was mostly underwater, and thought about how ridiculous this would be, how stupid to be drowning on some little rafting trip, what a pathetic way to go, and helpless to save Toph, wherever he was. But when the river turned and slowed, I found my balance, scanned the river, now flat, and there he was, Toph, alone on that huge raft, the only one who had not fallen out. He was grinning like crazy.

It
’
s too sudden for AIDS. Something has burst. It
’
s my appendix. Is that fatal? Of course! Always! No, no. Then what? What is it? I must be dying. Internal bleeding. A tumor! A bleeding tumor!

“
I
’
m dying, Shal.
”

“
You
’
re not dying, hon.
”

“
Then what the hell is this? What if I
’
m dying?
”

“
You
’
re not dying.
”

Shalini is driving too bumpily. She is driving on all the bumpy streets. Carelessly. She is stopping too often, and braking too suddenly, because she
’
s so careless. Goddammit, Shal.

“
Shal, can you drive...more mellowly?
”

“
I
’
m trying, hon.
”

“
Hold my hand,
”
I beg. I want to rest my head on her right
thigh. I want to sleep. Then I
’
m struck, for a second, by a kind of exhilaration. I don
’
t have to be at work. Moodie
’
ll have to finish the stuff that
’
s due tomorrow. I
’
m doing something important, something that is more crucial than anything else I could possibly be doing—oh what relief, not having to choose, not having to feel guilt about wasting time, idling, doing this when I should be doing that—no decisions here, only survival—

So easy, so simple!

How can the pain be getting worse? It
’
s shooting now—planets explode inside me.
Vve been hit, Vve been hit!
The sky is blue like always, this perfect San Francisco sky maybe I will die before I even
get
there— Oh Shal, why are you wearing that tight ribbed shirt today, the day that I
’
m dying? Why didn
’
t we ever date, Shal? Before seat belts—not before seat belts but before everyone wore seat belts—my mother used to whip her arm hard against our chests when she stopped short, as if her arm could do anything, would do anything when we hit, her arm so flimsy and I am so flimsy, there for a few years, protection for a few years, sorry Toph, sorry, sorry, I am weak and am being taken, as I expected to be taken— I will not be buried: I want my ashes, or my whole body, dropped from a cliff; a helicopter, a volcano, into the ocean...Oh but which ocean?

Which ocean?

Which ocean?

In the waiting room they first ask me about insurance, which I do not have. I had had insurance for a few months a few years ago, but then they stopped sending bills, I think— But I can pay, I will pay, I swear I can pay, here are credit cards, please take this thing out of me. Please I cannot stand up I will sit here, just over here and answer the questions no actually maybe I will lie here, across these chairs, my head on Shalini
’
s thigh, actually maybe I will go into that next room where I can lie down on the floor and

MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER! I can yell. MOTHER-FUCKERMOTHERFUCK!

It
’
s a kidney stone. I wake up and am drugged. Kirsten is there. I haven
’
t seen Kirsten in weeks. Beth couldn
’
t
get
out of work, so called her. Kirsten takes me home.

“
I thought I was dying,
”
I say.

“
Of course you did,
”
she says.

I lie down on the couch. Kirsten leaves.

Toph stands above me. Hey, 1 say.

“
Hey,
”
he says.

“
Hey.
”

“
Hey.
”

“
Okay, enough.
”

“
You okay?
”

“
Yeah.
”

“
So. What about dinner?
”

“
What do you want?
”

“
Tacos.
”

“
Can you deal? I don
’
t think I can move.
”

“
Do we have stuff?
”

“
I don
’
t think so.
”

“
Do we have cash?
”

“
No. Take the ATM card.
”

He walks to the ATM and gets money and then to the grocery store and gets beef, spaghetti sauce, tortillas and milk. While he
’
s gone I doze for a minute, dreaming of persecution. I wake up suddenly, knowing this is not good, this lying on the couch, incapacitated. I will sit up straight, nonchalant. No one
’
s dying. Does he think I
’
m dying? Maybe he think
’
s I
’
m dying. He thinks I may be
dying but am not telling him. No, no. He does not think this. He is not me.

He comes in with the groceries, walks past me, into the kitchen.
“
You want me to cook?
”

“
Yeah, can you?
”

“
You want fruit, too?
”

“
What do we have?
”

“
Oranges, half a cantaloupe.
”

“
Yeah, yeah. Thanks.
”

I doze off to the sound of the beef crackling in the pan, and when I wake up he is clearing off the coffee table, putting the piles of papers and magazines and his math homework underneath, in stacks corresponding to their former places on top of the table. Then he goes back to the kitchen. He comes out with two plates, fully arranged, with the piles of just-burnt-enough beef, the tortillas folded on the sides of each plate, a bowl with the fruit cut into manageable portions, oranges and cantaloupe, all wet and orange. He goes back to the kitchen and comes back with the milk.

“
Napkins.
”

He goes back and gets the roll of paper towels.

We eat. I doze again. I wake up at one point to the tapping of fingers on the Playstation. The next time I open my eyes it
’
s dark; he
’
s gone.

I walk to his room. He
’
s asleep, in a sort of crash position, arms splayed out, mouth wide open. His forehead is hot, like things inside are burning.

Robert Urich says no. We were so close. It would have been so perfect. His publicist seemed to like the idea, she was going along with us and it, laughed a little at the idea—at the very least she found it diverting. Urich was just the kind of person we needed: a star (or, at the time, near-former star), a household name who for whatever reason had fallen off the national radar, someone whom everyone knew and maybe even cared about at one time or another, but who hadn
’
t been seen for some time. We needed a celebrity who the public, the press, not to mention the hard-to-fool Internet community, would believe had indeed died, but whose passing did not make national news. The celebrity, therefore, couldn
’
t be so big that it would be implausible that his death was first reported by a small, mediocre San Francisco bimonthly.

But who? Urich was our first choice, because a) we, like everyone, had been huge fans of
Vega$;
b) we knew he had some sort of sense of humor, at least as evidenced by a few self-deprecating comments made on this or that talk show with regard to his role in the seminal
Turk 182!
’
, also starring Timothy Hutton; and c) he was slated to star in an upcoming series called
Lazarus Man.

Lazarus Man. Too perfect.

“
It
’
s just not right for us,
”
his agent said.

Then Belinda Carlisle. We decide that Belinda Carlisle, too, would be perfect.

^u
She lives in France,
”
says her publicist.

We run through other possibilities—Judge Reinhold, Juliana Hatfield, Bob Geldof, Laura Branigan, Lori Singer, C. Thomas Howell, Ed Begley, Jr. We consider Franklin Cover, the actor who played Tom Willis in
“
The Jeffersons,
”
but then don
’
t bother calling him, remembering that we cast him in what could have been considered a negative, or at least kind of pathetic, light, in an interview a year earlier. An exchange: