One Last Thing Before I Go (22 page)

C
HAPTER 53

H
e opens his eyes in a hotel bed. The room is dim, and the first hints of morning are starting to come through the window. He rubs his eyes, feeling the incipient throb of a hangover behind them. He had some wild dreams last night, intense and vivid, only now fading into vapor. He turns onto his side to study the woman asleep beside him. Denise. The wedding. He remembers now. He smiles.

She stirs beside him, her arm sneaking out from underneath the comforter, flailing until it finds his chest, where it comes to a rest, and he savors the warmth of it as he relives the night. His cousin Bruce’s wedding. She was the slightly sad bridesmaid. They had danced and laughed, then come up here and had much-better-than-expected sex. And now she’s asleep beside him, and he has a chance to study her face. She’s prettier than he remembers, a rare feat in these situations. There was something about her, a warm wit that he had enjoyed. He runs his fingers gently up her back. He likes the way her skin feels beneath his fingertips, hot and so incredibly smooth. He does it again. She makes a sound, like purrring, and rolls herself closer to him, nestling into the curve of his body.

“Silver,” she whispers to him.

“Yes.”

“Keep me warm.”

Something about the way she says it moves him profoundly. He wraps his arms around her, her back pressed against his chest, and presses his lips against her shoulder, and, as he listens to her soft, shallow breathing, decides that that is exactly what he will do.

CH
APTER 54

W
hen he opens his eyes again, he is lying on a couch in the small back office of the restaurant, and Rich is taking his pulse.

“I’m OK,” he says.

Rich shakes his head, trying to conceal his anger. Or annoyance, really. “You are a lot of things, Silver, but OK is not one of them.”

Silver sits up, to prove him wrong, or to prove to himself that he still can. He feels a wave of dizziness and almost lies down again, but he fights through it.

“Where’s Denise?”

“She’s outside. You know, at her wedding.”

“I’m sorry,” Silver says. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” He could be summing up the moment, or his entire adult life.

Rich fixes him with a hard look, and then sighs, his expression softening. “I know you didn’t.”

“Get back out there. You can’t miss your own wedding. I’ll be fine.”

“Casey went to get you a drink. I could use the break anyway.”

They sit in silence for a moment. The office is small and musty and smells of dog, with messy stacks of paper on every available surface. Silver can’t imagine any real work getting done in here, but then again, what does he know from offices? Or work.

“Hey, congratulations,” Silver says.

Rich smiles archly. “Thanks.”

“I thought I was dead.”

“You’re not too far off.”

Silver smiles grimly. He has run out of time, he can feel it. “You’ve got a wedding full of doctors here. Why are you the one in here with me? You should be out there, enjoying yourself.”

Rich gives him a funny look. “Because you’re family,” he says. “You’re a colossal pain in the ass, but you’re family.”

Silver nods. He still feels the urge to hit Rich, and maybe on some level you never stop wanting to inflict some kind of pain on the man your ex-wife loves, no matter how decent a man he is. But beyond that, he feels the simple, effortless generosity of Rich’s statement, including him in the family he has lost any right to claim. He doesn’t like to be pitied, will go to great lengths to avoid anything resembling it. But the sense he gets from Rich is that, despite his consistently bad behavior, Rich would like to be his friend, and for some reason, this notion, as strange as it may be, fills him with something that, if pressed, he would define as hope.

The office door swings open and Casey comes in carrying a glass of water. “Hey,” she says to Rich. “How’s the patient?”

“Breathing,” Rich says, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “What’s your mom doing?”

“Circulating.”

Rich and Casey share a knowing grin. Silver can see that they have a shorthand between them, and he feels that familiar sense of loss tweak something in his belly.

“I’ll go check on her,” Rich says. Then he turns to Silver. “We’re supposed to leave for Turks and Caicos tomorrow. But I will gladly shift that by a day or two if you would agree to let me operate on you tomorrow.”

“That’s very nice of you, Rich.”

“I need to know, today.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

Rich nods and leaves the office.

Casey comes over to Silver and sits down next to him.

“He’s a good guy,” Silver says.

“Yeah. How are you feeling?”

“Suitably embarrassed.”

“They’ll edit you out of the video.”

“And I was trying to be inconspicuous.”

She smiles and hands him the glass. “What do you do when you’re trying to get noticed?”

Silver grins and takes a greedy gulp of the water, then immediately gags and spits it out, coughing violently.

“Shit! What the hell is this?!”

“Vodka rocks.”

He clears his throat, panting heavily as the vodka burns his throat. “Jesus Christ, Casey. I was unconscious five minutes ago.”

“I know. I figured you could use a stiff drink.”

He looks at her through the haze of the shock-induced tears brought on by the drink. “And why is that?”

“Because it’s time to decide.”

“Me or you.”

She gives him a serious look, and he can see in it the formidable woman she will be. “Both of us.”

He takes her hand in his and pulls her against him. “I missed you,” he says.

“When?”

“Always.”

He can feel her vibrating against him, and when he turns to look at her, he is surprised to see that she is crying.

Be a better man.

Be a better father.

Fall in love.

He understands now that they’re all the same thing, all connected, all about this beautiful young girl he doesn’t deserve to have sitting beside him, her robust tears leaving a gentle trail on the smooth surface of her gown.

“Did you know that your mother was a bridesmaid when I met her?”

She turns to look at him, curious. “No. You tend not to ask your divorced parents how they met.”

“Well, do you want to know?”

She leans her head against his shoulder. “Yes, please,” she says in a voice so soft and high, she could be seven again.

So he tells her. And when he finishes, they decide.

CHA
PTER 55

S
ilver sits behind his kit, giving his drums a workout. He has set up two bass drums, as he always does when he’s looking to sweat. He plays in common time, bass-comping wildly, shifting in and out of broken-up beats, luxuriating in the solid
thunk
of his beaters against the bass-drum skins. His hands are a blur, his left rolling and sliding across the snare, his right tapping out a separate rhythm on the cymbal bell of his ride. He shifts rhythms thoughtlessly, starts his fills three measures back, so that by the time he crescendos they’ve told their own story. He jumps out of the beat, keeping it in his head while he goes into a complex drag sequence, and then diving back into it seamlessly. He can play like this for hours, with no accompanying music, no audience, just him and the beat, keeping time. His tinnitus comes from his years behind the crashing cymbals, but it is only here that he can drown out the ringing in his ears.

He plays himself into a frenzy until he reaches the place where all sound retreats, and he is completely absorbed into the rhythm. It’s here, in this sweet spot, that he has always found his peace. And now he plays with ferocious intensity, feeling each stroke, each beat, trying to internalize it. For all he knows, this might be the last time he ever sits behind his kit.

He has already begun to drive himself crazy with thoughts like that. It’s around five in the afternoon and he is walking around his apartment, just as he has for the last seven years. But tomorrow he could very well be dead. And within a week, the apartment will have been repainted, and some other poor loser already moved in, still falling asleep every night to the hum of the thruway, reassuring himself that it’s only temporary, a minor setback. There is a fair amount of turnover at the Versailles, and when it happens, it happens fast. He briefly pictures Jack and Oliver sitting at the pool, Jack watching the college girls, Oliver napping, Silver’s empty chair between them as a memorial.

He goes for a walk as the sun is setting. There’s a faint chill in the air, barely noticeable, but he can feel the ghost of the colder season to come. He nods a greeting to everyone he passes, returning any smiles that come his way, overcome with sentimentality. He would like to be remembered, he thinks, and then panics that he won’t be. Now that he’s decided to live, he’s terrified that he will die. He is painfully aware of his every heartbeat, wondering if this will be the one that tears his aorta, draining his heart as it floods his organs. He realizes that he didn’t shave today, and wonders if they shave you postmortem. The idea of being buried with stubble is disconcerting.

He turns onto a block, just prior to the business district, with a long row of two-family town houses. Lily is sitting on her porch beside a decrepit-looking dog as she waits for him. She smiles as he comes down the block, not the radiant smile that he hopes she will one day hold in reserve for him, but it’s still a warm smile, and he welcomes it.

“Hey,” she says, coming down the stairs.

He wonders if they’re at the stage where a kiss hello is called for, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, he remembers that he might be dead tomorrow, and he leans in to kiss her mouth, softly and decisively. He feels her lips part beneath his, and knows he’s made the right choice, so he stays there for a while, until the need for oxygen becomes imperative.

She looks at him inquisitively. “So, what’s new and exciting?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Good, because the ability to breathe is definitely something I look for in a man.”

“Anyway, I can’t really stay. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to have that operation. And that I haven’t stopped thinking about you.”

She nods, and then takes his hand in hers. “I know we just met, really, but do you have people?”

He was right about her. It’s nice to be right about something like that. “Yes,” he says. “I have people.”

“OK, because, you know, I’m around.”

“I appreciate that. But I think I need to do this part on my own. I just came to tell you that that’s the only reason I won’t be calling for a few days. But if you’re up for it, I’d really like to call you once I’m back on my feet.”

She fixes him with another warm smile. “I’m up for it.”

“Good.”

He kisses her again, and feels momentarily reborn when her fingers gently graze the side of his face. He steps back and stupidly kisses her hand before backing away. She laughs. “You’ve really got no game at all, do you?”

“Maybe. Or maybe having no game is my game.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s working for you.”

He grins and takes in the sight of her one last time. There’s very little he knows about her, and the whole thing could either fizzle or go up in flames, or he could die tomorrow and never find out. But right here, in this moment, he feels himself falling in love with her, and that feeling alone is a perfect little miracle.

“Hey,” she calls out to him as he heads up the block away from her. “Are you going to be OK?”

He turns back to her and smiles. “That’s the plan,” he says.

CHAP
TER 56

I
n order to fix Silver’s heart, they first have to shave his groin. He didn’t see that coming. He lies in bed while an Asian nurse shaves him, first with an electric trimmer and then with a disposable razor. He finds the whole process a bit of a violation. The nurse wears a surgical mask as she shaves him, which seems somewhat extreme, but he doesn’t mind, since he really doesn’t want to know what she looks like.

He leans back on his pillow and counts his heartbeats. Yesterday he watched his wife marry another man. Today, the groom will insert a catheter arthroscopically into Silver’s freshly shaved groin and guide it up to his damaged aorta, where Rich will repair it by inserting a stent in precisely the right spot. Done correctly, this will save his life. Done incorrectly, Silver will most likely not survive the surgery. He stupidly went online last night, where he discovered that the mortality rate for this surgery is roughly thirty percent. Those are some pretty rough odds.

At this moment, Silver is filled with the psychic certainty that he is going to die today. He can’t stop shaking, although that might be from having his groin exposed in the cold, sterile room, his cock shunted off to the side under a paper pad like a vestigial appendage. He wonders if he is being punished. He looks up to the ceiling, but there is no sign of God. Still, maybe a quick prayer, something simple and heartfelt, just to let Him know that he’d like to do better.

* * *

Casey sits in her car, in the parking lot, her legs shaking restlessly. She looks at her watch. They’ll be getting Silver ready now. She came into his bedroom last night and found him lying on his side, shaking visibly.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She lay down beside him and put her arm over him, trying to calm him. “It’s OK, Dad,” she told him. “It’s going to be fine.” She was glad that he was scared—it gave her hope—but it was unnerving to see him like that.

She takes a deep breath and looks out her window. The sky is overcast, and there are tiny droplets forming on her windshield. It’s going to rain hard when it comes. She closes her eyes and allows herself a single tear.

* * *

Rich comes in, already in his scrubs, and checks Silver’s vitals.

“They shaved my balls,” Silver tells him.

“They shaved your groin,” Rich says as he reads Silver’s chart. “And you’re welcome. You ready for this?”

“No.”

“Well, I am, and if one of us is going to be, it should probably be me.”

Silver smiles. “You sound confident.”

“Bad for business if I don’t.” Rich puts down the chart and smiles. “The anesthesiologist will be up in a few minutes.” He pats Silver’s shoulder.

“Hey, Rich?” Silver says.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want to die.”

Rich nods and smiles warmly. “I’m glad to hear it.”

* * *

Casey grips her steering wheel, watches a flock of geese fly past. She rubs her sweaty palms on the leather of her seat, and then turns off her car. It’s time. She steps out of the car and feels the humidity enter her pores. Off in the distance, the faintest roll of thunder, and it calms her. Sunshine today would be unbearable.

She locks her car and heads across the parking lot, then stops short when she sees Denise, standing at the clinic entrance, waiting for her.

“Hey,” Denise says.

“I thought you’d be over at the hospital.”

Denise looks at her with so much tenderness that Casey can feel herself coming apart right there on the sidewalk. “Silver asked me to be here for him.”

Casey thinks about it for a moment. “He’ll be OK, right?”

“I think so, yes.” Denise puts her arm around Casey and kisses her lightly. “You ready to go in?”

Casey leans her head against Denise’s shoulder, and takes a last deep breath. Then she takes her mother’s hand and they head inside.

* * *

The anesthesiologist is a thin, quiet man with salt-and-pepper hair that Silver finds reassuring. He sets up his various drips, humming lightly to himself.

Jack and Oliver come in one last time, to wish him well. Oliver talks in low tones while Jack paces nervously, touching all the equipment.

“Will you stand still?” Oliver says. “You’re making us all nervous.”

“I’m sorry. Hospitals make me nervous,” Jack says. “You sure you can handle this now?”

“It’s fine,” Silver says. “I don’t really have to do anything. They’ll wake me up when it’s over.”

“Just don’t die,” Jack says.

Oliver turns to fix him with an incredulous stare. “That’s great advice, Jack. Why don’t you go downstairs?”

Jack nods and turns to leave, then comes back and leans over Silver, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead.

“Now I know I’m dying,” Silver says with a grin.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll see you on the other side.”

“OK.”

Jack looks at him for a long minute, then turns abruptly and leaves the room. Oliver smiles apologetically. “He’s just worried about you.”

“I know.”

“I’m not going to kiss you.”

“I appreciate that.”

Oliver pats his leg. “We’ll be waiting downstairs.”

Silver is momentarily overcome and has to look away as Oliver leaves the room.

* * *

And then he is being wheeled down the hallway on his bed, with his mother and father on either side of him, just as they walked him down the aisle at his wedding. Elaine smiles down at him, and he can see the tired strain in her eyes. Ruben is inconspicuously saying a prayer under his breath, and Silver knows without hearing him that it’s Psalm 121, which has always been his father’s go-to prayer.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

Silver feels the roll of the wheels beneath him, the light bumps every time they hit a seam in the linoleum flooring.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

They have reached the end of the corridor. His parents can go no farther. Elaine leans over to kiss him, fighting back the tears. “Be good,” she says.

He smiles. “Always.”

His father finishes his psalm and kisses Silver’s cheek, and he can feel the tears threatening. “I’m sorry,” Silver says. “For everything.”

“You’re going to be OK.”

“Is He here?” Silver says.

His father looks at him. “Who?”

“God.”

Ruben smiles. “He’s around here somewhere.”

The nurses push Silver through the swinging doors, and even though he can’t look behind him, he can nevertheless see his parents, coming together in his wake, watching him go.

* * *

Inside, just before they put the mask on him, Silver looks around the sterile, metallic room. For some people, this is the last room they will ever see. They ought to make it look a little nicer, he thinks. Give it some warmth.

Then the mask is on him, and Rich is hovering over him.

“You good, Silver?”

Silver nods, no longer able to speak.

Rich pats his chest. “OK then. I’ll see you in a bit.”

The anesthesiologist is suddenly there, fiddling with a knob beside Silver’s head. “Just breathe deeply,” he says, and then the room begins to shimmer and fade before disappearing into a deeply textured blackness.

* * *

And then he is standing beside the small house he lived in with Casey and Denise. He looks down at his feet, barefoot on the lawn, which has been recently watered and feels cool and damp against his toes. A pair of birds fly past him and, much higher up, an airplane, too far to be heard, leaving a white vapor trail as it crosses the sky.

He hears laughing and turns to see Casey, six years old, running around the house from the backyard.

“There you are!” she says, her voice bubbling with excitement. “I found you.”

“Yes, you did,” he says, smiling at her.

“It’s your turn,” she says. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

She gives him a mildly impatient look, like he might be teasing her. “To the swings.”

She is wearing a red T-shirt, white shorts, her legs skinny and scraped, her feet in a pair of white flip-flops. She always loved flip-flops, loved the accompanying noise they made as she walked. He remembers that now. He remembers everything.

He is not really here. He knows that. And yet, somehow he is. He can see the water droplets on the grass tips, can see the browning on the white siding of his house, can hear kids riding by on their bikes, calling out to one another. Somewhere in the distance, he hears the musical chime of the ice-cream truck making its rounds.

“Daddy?”

She calls him Daddy. Of course she does. That’s who he is.

“What, baby?”

“Come on!”

She is walking backward now alongside the house, leading him past the rose bushes to their small backyard, which glows orange in the evening sun. He wonders if he’s died and she’s there to lead him to the next place, or if she’s simply there to lead him back. Either way, he knows nothing will ever stop him from following her again.

He catches up to her and takes her hand in his, reveling in the way her fingers unconsciously wrap themselves around his hand. She looks up at him and smiles. He smiles back.

“Let’s go,” he says.