The Postmortal (3 page)

I wonder if we’ve completely flipped the script on that now. I wonder if the cure represents insurance against religion. Because what if the pope is wrong? If I forgo the cure and end up dying at seventy to please a Lord who turns out to not exist, I’m gonna feel like a real jackass. Isn’t it better to live an extra thousand years or so, just in case?

I guess I’ll find out at some point. Some very, very distant point. Twelve more days till the cure.

Until the other night, I hadn’t told anyone that I’m in the middle of getting the cure. I didn’t tell my dad or my sister or anyone at work—didn’t consult them either. They don’t know I’ve done it, and I sure as hell don’t know if they have. I didn’t even tell the banker friend who gave me the address. For one thing, I haven’t finished the process yet, so I’d feel a bit foolish telling everyone that I’m about to live forever, only to find out a week from now that my doctor has been caught and thrown in Rikers.

But more to the point, I have yet to meet a single person who has publicly admitted it. I think we’ve all collectively adopted the unspoken rule that you don’t mention it out in the open. Like getting a nose job. Every discussion I’ve had about it has been conducted strictly in hypothetical terms. “Would you get it?” “What if it were legal? Would you get it then?” “Would you fly to Brazil and do it? I heard about a bunch of people at work who are taking sudden ‘vacations’ to Rio.” Stuff like that. But no one has ever said to me, “Yes, I got it”—which is just so weird. Clearly, people are going to get it. If a random person like me can go and have it done, I have to assume that I’m not alone. But I suppose there’s just too much uncertainty right now to go around parading the fact.

Anyway, I was more than happy to keep all this to myself. But Katy got it out of me. She’s an interrogator, my roommate. Aggressively interested in other people. Present her with wine, and she’ll pepper you with questions until you feel as if you’re under a hot lamp. She delights in extracting key information from you and then playing with it—stretching it out and bouncing it against the walls until she grows bored with it.

We were sitting in our apartment, watching the news. They were doing their nightly cure story, and Katy turned to me, clear out of the blue. She was squinting one eye.

“Did you get it?”

“What? No.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “You are the absolute
worst
liar ever.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You fell dead silent when that report came on just now. Don’t try to hide it. I have excellent cure-dar.”

“Cure-dar?”

“Uh-huh. Remember when I said Jesse Padgett had it done? She totally did. You could tell because she’d clam right up whenever the subject was mentioned. Just like you did there. You should look in the mirror. Your face is so red right now. You look like a giant tomato.”

“Aw, Jesus.”

“You did it! You did it! You did it! I can’t believe this. You slippery bastard!”

She got the confession in record time and beamed in delight at the accomplishment. Her eyes bugged and she smiled proudly. She has a snaggletooth and loves to flaunt it as a distinguishing feature.

“Don’t go broadcasting this all over the place, all right?”

“Oh, I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “I promise you that. But you’re gonna tell me everything.”

“They haven’t even finished yet.”

“They haven’t finished? What do they do to you? Tell me, tell me, tell me. I heard you get sixty shots, all in the armpit.”

“No. They just took my blood, and then a week from now they give me three shots. That’s it.”

“That’s it? Holy underwear. What did it cost?”

“Seven thousand bucks.”

“Shh!”

“That’s nothing! That’s less than nothing! I once expensed a tab at Lusardi’s that was bigger than that! You have to tell me how to do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“This doctor will only take direct referrals from a small circle of people he knows, and one of them happens to be a guy I know. No extra degrees of separation beyond that. It’s like a drug dealer, I swear.”

“So just give me your guy’s name and I’ll say I know him.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, please. Who made you guardian of the fountain? What—is this like your little boys’ club? Do you all go get the cure and then take a naked swim together? Is that it?”

“I just don’t want to get anyone in trouble. They asked me not to refer anyone.”

“This is so unfair. Who’s the guy you know? Is it Schilling? I bet it’s Schilling.”

“No . . .”

Another crooked, triumphant grin. “It is! This is amazing. I don’t even need a polygraph. All I have to do is ask you a question and wait for your head to blow up.”

“Regardless, you still need the address and phone number.”

“Well, why hold it back? Honestly. Give me one good reason, apart from your little pinky swear not to, why I don’t deserve the information and you do. I’ve never known you to be timid about anything. But I ask you about this and you turn into a mute. Come on. Don’t be so annoying. It’s not like people won’t find out at some point that you’ve had it done. In fact, judging by how quickly I found out, the whole city should know by morning.”

“Okay. Fine. I will give you all the information.
After
I’ve gotten the final shots a week from now. And you have to pay the cable bill for six months.”

“What?”

“Referral fee,” I said. “It’s only fair.”

“You’re such a goddamn lawyer.”

“Those are the terms. We have a deal?”

“We do. I can’t believe you found it. Oh, I love you! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Yes! You know, I’ve been trying to find a curist for months now. I am so relieved. This is gonna be incredible. Except . . . You’re sure this guy’s legit, right?”

“Yes.”

“Because you know about all the bogus ones out there, right? How do you know this guy isn’t gonna inject you with Cascade? Remember the lady in Queens who had that done to her last week?”

“I’m certain it won’t be Cascade. For one thing, this doctor has no dishes to wash.”

“Okay, then I’ll wait until you get your shots. And if you don’t drop dead on the spot, I’m definitely calling him. I am so excited! I’m gonna be twenty-seven forever! And I don’t have to go to São Paulo to do it!”

She sprung up and rushed to the kitchen, then froze halfway there.

“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Do you know what I just realized? I’m always gonna get my period. That sucks.”

“Seems like a minor sticking point.”

“We could be roommates forever too. Do you want to sign a hundred-year lease ?”

“No.”

“Your loss, because I am gonna party my ass off until the year 5000!”

Then she poured a glass of Shiraz to the brim and danced on the sofa.

 

That’s the kind of thing you hear when you talk to my dad for any considerable length of time. I don’t want to say he goes off on tangents, because that would suggest that he has a main topic from which to deviate. I enjoy his company because he never answers any question with the phrase “I don’t know.” He either knows or he’ll talk out his ass until he’s convinced you he knows. It’s a skill I’ve yet to master.

I’m due to get the cure finished off on Monday. I should be all excited at the prospect of beginning the rest of my indefinitely elongated life, but I’ve found myself increasingly impatient as I grow closer. All I’ve done the past few days is calculate population figures and think about death—mine and anyone else’s. I don’t enjoy thinking about death, which is one of the reasons I wanted the cure in the first place. Now, I seem to be obsessing over it. The irony of it all is infuriating.

All this ruminating and provocation was beginning to feel like a vise on my head. I was getting sick of endlessly talking about it with myself. I needed an outlet. Someone besides Katy. Any time I bring up the cure with her, she screams out in ecstasy and packs a bowl. She’s got a fabulous attitude about the whole thing, but I needed to go a bit deeper. Besides, I was already visiting my dad for the weekend, and I would have burst like a grape if I didn’t fess up.

My dad has lived in northwest Connecticut for the past fifteen years, in one of those towns you can only get to on Metro-North by switching trains at Bridgeport. Then you have to go all the way to Waterbury, at which point you feel as if you’ve been dumped off in a nuclear fallout zone. Towns around Waterbury are populated exclusively by elderly people and kids who took enough acid to permanently unmoor their brains. After more than five days in the vicinity, I have a hard time not wanting to tear off my own skin. Once you’re in that part of the state, there is nothing to do except eat and drink. And that’s how my old man has spent his retirement: eating and drinking.

He picked me up at the Waterbury station and drove me home. He had cold beer and a dish of mixed nuts waiting at the house for us. It was his way of entertaining the way my mom might have, way back when—of adding a nice little flourish to my arrival. I appreciated it greatly. Once we sat down, I couldn’t hold back.

“I’m getting the cure.”

“What?”

“I’m getting the cure. Final shots are on Monday.”

“So it’s real?”

“Far as I know.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

He sat there. He had an inscrutable look on his face. I couldn’t read him in the slightest.

“How did you get it?” he asked.

“I knew someone. It wasn’t that hard. Do you want it? The doctor said he wouldn’t give it to anyone over thirty-five, but I bet I could convince him otherwise, or find someone else to do it.”

“Won’t give it to anyone over thirty-five? Well, isn’t that a bitch? I suppose I’m a member of the ‘unluckiest generation’ now. That’s what they called it in the news report. ‘The last to die,’ they said. It’s like the people who died just as TV was being invented. That had to have been aggravating. You spend your whole life sitting next to some giant radio. And when they finally get around to adding picture to the sound, you’re dead as a doornail. Not really fair.”

“Like I said, I still think I can get it for you.”

“How much did it cost?”

“Seven thousand bucks.”

“I don’t know. Seems like a lot.”

“It’s eternal youth, Dad. It’s not gonna cost the same as a gumball.”

“No, you’re probably right about that. It’s just . . . I dunno. Look, I don’t mean to sadden you. Because I’m happy as can be that you found something that will keep you healthy forever and ever. I really am. It’s a comfort to me to know that you’re not going to grow old and have crappy knees and hit a golf ball no more than eighty yards. But each day I’m down here is another day I’m away from your mother.”

We sat quietly for moment. My mom died when I was fifteen years old, right after we moved from Buffalo. She died of cancer. For two years, she went through chemo and radiation. She aged forty years in a whisper. All her hair fell out. They kept going back to cut out parts of her again and again. And she stayed alive because she knew this was the only life she’d ever have. No reincarnation. No afterlife. Just this. That’s all you get. By the time the cancer had colonized every inch of her frame, she’d dropped to ninety pounds and looked like a mummy preserved in oil. Just a skeleton with a tarp of skin stretched out over it. There was nothing about her dying that was good.

“You really think you’ll see her again?” I asked him.

“Oh, I have no doubt of that.”

“But she’ll always be there. Why spend the next few years just sitting here waiting? Why not do something with the time you have?”

“I do plenty!”

He gestured to his railroad timetables. My dad collects them in bulk. Five times a year he’ll drive to some random state and attend a timetable convention. He’s the only person at those things who isn’t dressed in overalls and a Fruit of the Loom T-shirt.

“I’m just saying that there may be places and people that you still have to discover. You may find a new passion, like antique boats or something.”

“Antique boats? Why would I like antique boats? I’ve met those boating guys. They’re all completely cheesy.”

“It’s just an example, Dad. It could be anything. I just don’t think there’s any need for you to sit here, waiting for the end.”

He grew angry at that remark. “I’m not waiting for the end, John. I’m not in a rest home. I have a life, one I’m glad to have. I’m not some sad old thing you have to come and check on occasionally like a houseplant. But I have a date with your mom somewhere down the line, and I don’t want to postpone it longer than I have to. I don’t judge your decision to loiter around this planet forever, like a skateboarder outside a movie theater. And I would hope that you’d refrain from judging mine.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad or to judge you. I’m being selfish here. I know that. I just don’t want to see you go.”

“You’re gonna have to. I’m sorry.”

We sat quietly for another moment. I checked my watch. It was 9:19 P.M. When I was in grade school, a friend told me that every conversation pauses awkwardly at 20 and 40 minutes past the hour, because the ghosts are flying over your head. So in my head I rounded up to 9:20. For Mom’s sake.

“I know it was hard to see your mom go,” he said. “I was there. I wouldn’t wish the anguish you, your sister, and I went through on anyone. I know why you’d want to hold on to me so fiercely after that. I really do. If your mom were still around, you can bet I’d turn over fourteen grand to your doc quick as lightning. But she isn’t, and I’ve accomplished everything here that I wanted to do. I’m comfortable. So I don’t want you to think this is some awful thing that’s going to happen to me down the line. It’s fine. Besides, I’m already old. I assume this thing doesn’t take thirty years off your odometer, correct?”