Whispers of the Flesh (27 page)

That
got her attention. “He was? When?”

“About an hour ago. He wants you to take a break and meet him at the bath—” A barrage of coughs racked him, leaving him gulping air. “Bathhouse. Something about getting you in the pool and teaching you a new stroke. He wanted you to meet him there at . . . er, what time do you have?”

She checked her watch. “Ten till nine.”

“In ten minutes, then.”

Her smile of anticipation was short-lived. “I’m not supposed to take a break unless your daughter’s here to watch over you, and it’s a bit soon for me to be fetching her.”

He rolled his eyes theatrically. “God, but I’m sick of being constantly surrounded, poked at, fussed over like an infant. What I wouldn’t give for an hour to myself.”

“Really?”

“All I want . . .” More bloody coughing. “. . . is to read for a few minutes, then lay my head down and fall asleep without being stared at. Go.” He waved her away. “I’ll be fine, I promise you. I shall relish the solitude.”

She bit her lip with a contemplative expression, as if she were a bad actress whose stage direction read something like
Chloe thinks it over.
The playacting meant he had her; her “hesitation” was just for show. He’d expected a bit more of the real thing before she agreed to ditch her terminally ill charge for another shagging session with their friendly neighborhood satyr—not that he wasn’t relieved to be spared the effort of talking her into it. Still . . .

Grace had hit the nail on the head when she’d called Chloe “a spoiled, selfish, little slag and a bloody fucking menace to her patients.”

Chloe spent about fifteen more seconds feigning qualms about abandoning her post, and then she all but sprinted out the door.

His gaze on the massive old tome in front of him, Emmett tried to draw in a steadying breath, only to have his lungs expel it in a ragged coughing fit; they’d had enough, and were closing up shop. Brushing a fingertip along the edges of the pages, Emmett located the spot where they had been sealed together with a solution of white glue and water. He opened the book, revealing the rectangular compartment he’d excised out of the glued-together page block using the drafting knife and metal ruler he’d bought for the purpose back when he could still drive himself into town.

In the bottom of this secret compartment were three handwritten letters on folded notepaper, three matching envelopes, and his favorite Mont Blanc fountain pen. Mounded atop the letters, like M&Ms in a candy dish, were scores of multicolored pills.

For some time now, Emmett had been collecting the sedatives and powerful narcotics with which he’d been dosed—some of them, anyway, as many as he could manage to squirrel away without being seen. It had been easier before the super-attentive Grace came into his life, but he still managed to filch a few pills every day. He’d gotten adept at pretending to pop one into his mouth, only to palm it or tuck it into his handkerchief during a feigned—or real—coughing fit. Lowering his hand, he would then slip the pill into the book on his lap—deliberately chosen to be of no interest to anyone else, lest someone be tempted to peek inside. Once people started hovering over him on a continual basis, he’d learned how to casually distract them while performing this sleight of hand.

He actually had continued taking the medication meant to stimulate his appetite, for all the good it did. He had no desire to eat; in fact, the thought of food actually repelled him. All part of nature’s plan to shut down a used-up body as quickly and efficiently as possible—a system both sensible and compassionate, to Emmett’s way of thinking, and one that had inspired his present course of action. Although he’d never been a proponent of euthanasia and still wasn’t—it had always struck him as quite the slippery slope—if one was faced with the prospect of a lingering and unpleasant demise, while still having the wherewithal to speed things along, all that really remained was to straighten one’s spine and do what had to be done.

The key to such a strategy was the part about having the wherewithal. Emmett could feel exactly what was happening to his body. By this time tomorrow, he would quite possibly be in an agony of oxygen deprivation, gasping for air and unable to swallow—either that, or begging for the drugged stupor to which he’d promised himself he would never resort.

Some time ago, he’d realized there was a third alternative, and whereas he was gratified to be able to pull it off, it saddened him that Isabel had to be here at Grotte Cachée when it happened. He wished to God she’d listened to him and gone home after he was released from the hospital, but she hadn’t, and now he had no choice but to proceed.

Don’t think about it,
he told himself.
You’ve had plenty of time for that. Just do it.

He filled his cup with water and stirred in a spoonful of Thick-N. While he was waiting for it to work, he pulled out the three letters. After skimming each one to make sure there was nothing more he cared to add, Emmett slid them into their envelopes, sealed them, and addressed them respectively to Isabel, Adrien Morel, and the Follets as a group. He lined them up on the table, capped the Mont Blanc, then uncapped it and turned Isabel’s envelope over. On the back, he wrote:
“Cutter”: 16th–19th c. slang for a cutthroat or cutpurse. A foul-mouthed ruffian.

Emmett reread that and smiled. He thought about it for a moment, then added:

“You have got to be kidding.”

Emmett, his heart kicking, turned to find Darius, clad in jeans and an old Henley sweater, standing at the head of his bed. He’d forgotten about the ghostly gray cat who’d taken to lurking about these past few days.

“My
God
,man,”Emmett gasped. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Would that have been a problem?”

It felt good to laugh, although it sounded more like a tubercular wheeze, and engendered another bout of coughing.

“Didn’t I once hear you and your daughter arguing about those things?” Darius asked, pointing to the freshly inked smiley face. “What did she call them?”

“Emoticons.”

“You said they were infiltrating written language like a fungus, and that they were . . . How did you put it? ‘Causing the inevitable decay of true linguistic expression.’ Whereas she maintained that they were like little emotional snapshots that could sometimes convey certain pure, simple human feelings better than words.”

“Perhaps,” Emmett said, “she did, after all, have a point.”

“You’ve been quietly industrious of late.” Darius reached for the hollowed-out book with its particolored stash of pills.

Emmett instinctively shoved it out of his reach and, in doing so, knocked it onto the floor.
“Shit!”
he yelled as the pills scattered over the rug between the bed and the wall. He leaned over the side railing, straining to reach them.

“Easy.” Darius grabbed Emmett by the shoulders and sat him upright.

“No, you don’t understand.”

“You think not?” Darius circled the bed, scooped up the pills, and replaced them in the secret compartment of the book. He closed it as he stood, but he did not return it to the table.

“Darius . . . old friend,” Emmett said, his voice all the raspier from the exertion and yelling. “I don’t have time for arguments and explanations. There’s no telling how long Chloe will wait for Inigo before she gives up and comes back. If you truly understand why I’m doing this—”

“I do,” said the djinni. “Better than you think.”

“Then give me those pills. The white ones are lorazepam and the colored ones are diamorphine. Together, they should do the trick, but if I can’t swallow them all, or if . . . if they don’t quite do the job, finish it—I beg you. A pillow over the face, anything . . .”

“Is this really what you want?” Darius asked quietly.

With a caustic little laugh, Emmett said,“I
want
to live to be a hundred, but these scarred-up old lungs of mine have other plans.”

Darius studied Emmett for a long, thoughtful moment. He crossed to the door, book in hand.

“No, don’t,” Emmett said as Darius reached for the doorknob. “Don’t leave.”

Darius held a finger to his lips as he eased the door open. He looked down the hall in either direction, shut the door, and locked it; then he shut the balcony door as well. Returning to the side of Emmett’s bed, he opened the book, picked out a few of the white pills, and handed them over.

“Thank you—oh, God, thank you.”
Just do it.
Emmett put the pills in his mouth and took a careful sip of the thickened water. His throat contracted as he tried to swallow.

“Easy,” Darius said, making a stroking motion with his hand about an inch from Emmett’s throat, which began to feel warm and relaxed. “Don’t tense up. Don’t worry about it. They’ll go down.”

They did—with surprising ease. Darius handed Emmett another few lorazepams, and he swallowed them, as well.

The cup slipped from his hand. Darius caught it and set it on the table, moving as if in slow motion. Emmett felt suddenly smashed, and little wonder, considering how much of the sedative he’d just dumped into a completely empty stomach.

“No,” Emmett said thickly as Darius closed the book and set it on the desk. “Gimme the res’ before I’m too sleepy. Thas’ not enough to kill me.”

“But it’s enough to make sure you don’t remember any of this tomorrow,” Darius said as he held his hands over Emmett’s chest.

“Oh, God,” Hitch said when Grace called him the next morning to ask him to come up to Emmett’s apartment. “Is he . . . Is this it?”

There came a pause, then a little chuckle. “No, nothing like that. He’s actually having a rather good start to the day—remarkably good, considering how he was yesterday. He just wants to see you.”

“Thank God,” Hitch said. He knew the end was coming, and when it did, he’d man up and deal with it, but he wasn’t anywhere near ready to say goodbye to his closest friend in the world.

Grace was stripping the sheets off the hospital bed when he arrived at Emmett’s apartment a few minutes later. She greeted him with a cheerful “Morning, Hitch,” then cocked her head toward the balcony and mouthed,
Check it out.

Emmett was stretched out on the chaise longue, looking terribly Savile Row in a striped shirt and pink tie as he turned the pages of a magazine, the morning sun glinting off his polished wingtips. You’d never guess there was anything wrong were it not for the nasal cannula connected to the machine next to him.

Hitch shook his head, grinning. Wasn’t it just like Emmett to rally like this at the end. He always was one for “stiffening one’s back when the situation is most dire.”

“Hitch, old man,” Emmett called out as he took off his reading glasses, his voice surprisingly strong, if still a bit raw. “I’ve got a pot of American-style coffee out here with your name on it.”

“So I take it you’ve been faking being sick just to get a little attention,” Hitch said as he stepped onto the balcony, squinting against the vibrant sunshine. For Emmett to have as good a day as this with death so near was a blessing. Best to take a cue from him and just enjoy what might be their last visit together, without thinking about what tomorrow or the day after might bring.

Gesturing with his magazine toward the open, curtained French door, Emmett said, “Would you mind closing that?”

No sooner had Hitch done so than Emmett pulled off the cannula and draped it over the oxygen machine.

“Wait,” Hitch said. “Should you be doing that? Don’t you need the oxygen?”

“I really don’t feel the need for it this morning. I don’t have that cotton-wool feeling in my lungs. And I’m bloody sick of it, I can tell you—but of course Grace goes into a tizzy when I try to take it off.” Smiling at Hitch’s expression of concern, he said, “It’s right here if I start turning blue. In the meantime, do help yourself to the coffee. I had it brought up just for you. And have a slice of bread with some of that fruit paste. It’s an Auvergnat specialty, and delicious, but the bread is actually quite good all by itself. They bake it in a wood-fired oven—that’s why it has that crust. I guarantee it’s the best you’ve ever had. I just wolfed down half the loaf myself.”

Hitch declined the bread, having just eaten his fill of smoked trout and blueberry tarts in the dining room. He pulled a chair out from the linen-draped table and poured himself a cup of coffee. “So, you look to be in fine fettle this morning.”

“‘Fine fettle?’” Emmett said. “Does anyone still say that?”

“I just did. Seriously, your color’s good, you’re in a great mood, you’re eating like a horse. Maybe there really is something in the water.”

“Of course there is,” Emmett said nonchalantly. “Not that it’s quite as simple as ‘something in the water,’ but this place . . .” He took a contemplative sip of tea. “There are complex electromagnetic forces at work that can bring about rather curious phenomena from time to time.”

Could that explain what had happened to Hitch in that cave thirty-six years ago? Had it been a “curious phenomenon” brought about by “complex electromagnetic forces”? He wasn’t exactly buying it, but neither could he dismiss it wholesale, given the lack of any other explanation.