Everything Matters!

by Ron Currie Jr.

  Despite what you believe, the formulation is in fact missing one ingredient: the humble mung bean, two parts in proportion to the other components, is the magic bullet that will make your father well again.

  So yes you were wrong about something, and we’re sorry to be the ones to tell you because we know your sense of identity, if you can be said to have one, is tangled up in your intellect, in your ability to reason and deduce. Really, you’ve got little else, so we understand your disappointment and embarrassment. Perhaps you can take heart in the fact that given enough time there’s no question you would have figured it out for yourself. We simply determined, given the circumstances, that it would benefit both you and your father to hasten along the inevitable.

  Now, hobbled still by your kidneys’ death throes but revived enough by the pill to get to work again, you set about mixing batches of the proper and correct formulation. You’ll need a month’s worth of ten-ounce daily doses. Not a lot of volume, really, but it’s the detail work—shaving down the various ingredients, measuring to the exact microgram—that taxes your dwindling physical and mental resources. Eventually, though, it’s time for the mixing. Even this is a challenge, because many of the ingredients can’t be cooked or they lose their potency, so you cannot use heat as an aid in folding everything together.

  You’re bloated and slow and your mouth tastes like you’ve been sucking on old coins. The cramping is worse now on your right side, and to compensate you list to the right like a wounded ship. It takes a full minute for you to cross the lab, another thirty seconds to open the pill bottle and shake two into your hand. Your fingers have swelled to the point where the knuckles have disappeared and consequently your hands won’t flex or grasp well. You get the pills in your mouth but they refuse to go down because your tongue is swollen and dry and the taste buds are like Velcro. You sit on the floor, swallowing over and over, trying to coax the things down. They move a quarter inch or so with each swallow and then stick fast again, and it’s getting more and more painful, like one long narrow floor burn on the inside of your throat, but you’ve got to get them down or else you’ll have no energy for packaging the mixture to ship to your father, and then you realize you’ve got nothing to package the mixture with—no containers to hold individual doses, no boxes to ship them in, no bubble wrap to pad the boxes you don’t have and no tape to close them up. Nothing.

  Time passes, though in this near-death state you hardly notice. At some point you become aware that a man is standing over you. You recognize his blond brushcut and amazing cheek bones but you’re not sure how exactly, or from where. He hands you a large bottle of water with the words Poland Spring on the label and says, “Drink. Not too fast.” Even using both hands you have a hard time lifting the bottle to your lips. With a sigh of disgust the man crouches and helps you drink. “Not too fast,” he says again, as you gulp and spill water on your chest.

  “When’s the last time you took the pills?” the man asks.

  “Just now,” you gasp, and the words are hardly out of your mouth when with a few quick movements the man pulls your head forward and pries open your mouth and sticks what feels like a pen down your throat. He jumps back as you vomit with the sort of violence you wouldn’t have thought possible in your weakened state. When you’re finished gagging and hacking you look down and see the pills on the floor between your legs, whole and glistening in a puddle of phlegmy water.

  The man hands you the water again. “Drink,” he says. He looks around the lab, sees the mixer with your father’s medicine. He points and asks, “That finished?”

  “Yes,” you say, still struggling to bring the bottle to your mouth without dumping it. “But it needs. To be packaged and shipped.”

  “I know about that,” the man says. He puts his hands under your arms and pulls you to your feet. “First I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “It has to be done properly,” you say. “Dry ice. Airtight containers. And right away.”

  “I’ve got my instructions,” the man says. He takes you by the elbow and hustles you out of the lab to the elevator down the hall. You’re about halfway down to the lobby when the world goes hazy again, then disappears altogether.

  Junior

  The next thing I know I’m coming to in what looks like an emergency room. There’s a bank of twelve beds, all side by side in the same long ward, the last two cordoned off with curtains. The occupants of these beds are invariably worn and dirty in appearance, the kind of homeless-dirty where the grime has bonded on a molecular level with the skin and takes at least seven or eight vigorous scrubbings to get out. I’m hooked up to all kinds of tubes and wires. I don’t necessarily feel much better than before, but the pain in my flanks is gone and my fingers bear somewhat less of a resemblance to Vienna sausages, which can only be good.

  I don’t know how long I’m lying there, hard to tell without any windows, a while, staring up at the fluorescents, wondering whether or not Clark got my father’s medicine properly packaged and shipped, when Clark himself shows up and raises hell about me being placed here in the junkie bay like some street addict.

  “Do you people have any idea whatsoever who this is?” Clark asks, pointing at me. “How important he is?”

  They do not, judging by the perplexed and somewhat amused looks.

  “Fine,” Clark says. He takes a cell phone from his pocket and makes a brief call, then stands with his arms crossed at the foot of my bed, clearly expectant, glaring alternately at the doctor and nurses in the room. Within ten minutes an older doctor in a white lab coat arrives and shakes Clark’s hand, apologizing. The others in the room exchange worried looks. Next thing I know I’ve been moved to a private room upstairs, with an expansive view of the Back Bay’s stately brownstones.

  The following day a note from Sawyer arrives, passed to me by an orderly: Your father has received the medicine. Began taking it immediately. Has complained about the taste. And who could blame him.

  A week later, when I’ve been eating solid food for three days and feel good enough to regret missing the high summer weather I see outside: New PET scan shows a dramatic reduction in size of primary tumor. More than a dozen lymph nodes, previously hot, no longer displaying glucose uptake.

  A week later still I’m moved to a detox center outside Washington, a place where despite repeated requests for regular street clothes they insist I wear hospital pajamas, as a “phase one” patient. It’s not clear what, if anything, is required for me to graduate to “phase two.” After four days here it’s obvious that infantilizing addicts is the preferred method of treatment—pj’s, plastic sporks, metal mirrors, mandatory a.m. calisthenics set to the Muppet Movie soundtrack, occupational therapy tasks that could easily be completed by a four-year-old of submoronic intelligence, etc. But then this happy bit of news arrives: Doctors, incredulous, order second PET scan. Now shrugging their shoulders and throwing around references to God.

  Three weeks after that, on the day I’m released from the detox: Treatment completed. Tests, including blood, CAT, and yet another PET, show no detectable malignancies. The word remission has been used. So, final tally: Fathers cured of terminal illness: 1. Oncologists converted back to the Catholicism of their youth: 1. And now if you like, you’re free to visit with your family. Take a couple of weeks.

  But I decide that there’s plenty of time for that now, that I’ll give my father a month or two to regain his strength and put on some weight before subjecting him to the shock of seeing his long-dead son again. Instead I return by chauffeured town car to NSA headquarters that afternoon and take the elevator to my office. I meet with Spergel and Ross and the rest of the crew, and there’s plenty of backslapping and congratulations all around regarding the successful test of the Alcubierre drive. I thank everyone in turn and at length, because even though they don’t know why I was gone, I’m all too aware that if they hadn’t been able to pull off the test, my father would be dead. They seem perplexed but pleased by the depth of my
gratitude. Spergel in particular. With a smile he says, “You certainly don’t seem like yourself,” and I smile back and say, “Hey, even I’m entitled to get excited about saving humanity.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he says.

  I spend the next couple of days lazing around my office, pretending to organize files, fielding the occasional phone call from reps at Boeing or Lockheed, guys who kiss my ass for as long as I’ll tolerate before hanging up. All I want to do, most days, is go up to ground level and be outside, to sit on my new favorite bench in the courtyard and turn my face toward the sun and quietly revel in the work I’ve done. It’s not something I’ve allowed myself much of, over the years. Reveling. But now there is plenty of good reason. I am, God help me, in a state resembling happiness.

  Sawyer comes into my office a few days later, looking pale and drawn and just plain sad, and it is shocking, and not a little bit scary, to see such emotion on his face. And I know before he even has a chance to say it, of course I know, both because I always expect the worst and because life has never, not once, taught me to expect anything different, so as he opens his mouth to speak I clutch at the sides of my head and close my eyes and ask: “How?”

  “He was driving his Mustang,” Sawyer says after a moment. He puts his hand on my desk gently, as though it’s an extension of my body. It’s clear he wants to offer some sort of physical condolence but doesn’t really understand how one goes about doing that.

  There’s a sudden sensation of great pressure in my skull. My pulse hammers, and I hear a tremendous incongruent blaring, like I’ve suddenly been dropped into Times Square at noon. Vomit rushes hot and acidic to the back of my throat. The muscles of my arms and legs set to trembling. Before too long I become convinced that I, too, am about to die, because sustained physical distress like this does not seem at all compatible with continued existence.

  Strangely, though, there are no tears.

  “Someone hit him?” I ask.

  “One-car accident. Rollover. Hit a tree flush on the driver’s side.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I say, still clutching my head. “He’s a very careful, a very good driver.”

  “I know,” Sawyer says. “We know that. Which is why we sent someone to look into it. The local police have concluded he fell asleep at the wheel. Our man agrees with them.”

  “Fell asleep?” I ask.

  “Lost consciousness somehow,” Sawyer says. “You know there are probably a thousand possible explanations for sudden loss of consciousness, and a lot of them can’t be revealed by autopsy. Though we’re, ah, still waiting for the results on that.”

  I wave a hand at him, indicating my desire, right at the moment, to not hear words like “autopsy.”

  “Sorry, Junior,” Sawyer says. “But I think you should know. When the shock wears off, you’ll want to know these things.”

  “Give me a minute,” I say. The vomit-thing starts up again, and I try to hook the heel of my shoe around the wastebasket next to the desk and drag it between my legs. But the fine motor skills aren’t there, and I throw up on the floor.

  “Easy,” Sawyer says. He’s actually moved to take his hand from the desk and place it tentatively on my shoulder.

  I literally shrug it off. On my feet suddenly, backing away from him and wiping at my mouth, I say, “No, I’m okay. I’m okay.” I rummage around the things on my desktop as if I’ve lost something essential, though I have no idea what that might be.

  “Not one hundred percent convinced of that,” Sawyer says.

  “I’m going to step out, for a while.” I don’t look at him, just move unsteadily around the desk, to the door, through it. Surprisingly, Sawyer says nothing more, just watches me go.

  Topside it’s yet another captivating summer day. Tony, the security officer I’ve come lately to know by name during my daily walks, offers a hello. I ignore this and say simply, “Get me a car.” It is all I can manage. As simple an act as saying hi is, it seems somehow beyond my ability to conceive of, let alone perform. I am not so far gone, though, that I fail to notice the look of I-thought-we-were-friends hurt on Tony’s face as he lifts a two-way radio to his mouth and calls for a vehicle.

  It occurs to me that if I can’t even put together a simple greeting, driving probably isn’t a super idea, but I don’t have far to go, as Bill’s Lounge is only a mile and a half away out on Annapolis Road. I get there okay but then clip the right rear fender of a Grand Marquis sitting out in front of the place when I pull in. I park at a 30-degree angle to the curb, with the ass-end of the Town Car jutting halfway out into the lane.

  Bill’s has no windows at all, and the glass door has been covered with black crepe paper. Inside is dark and cool, the kind of perpetual night in which an authentic drunk can lose himself for months at a time. A Conway Twitty song plays softly. The flattopped army PFCs and local blue-collar types eyeball me in a bad way. I sit at the bar and order a double scotch. When the bartender sets a glass in front of me and starts to pour, I put two $100 bills on the bar and tell him to save himself some time and just leave that bottle of Glenfiddich right there where I can get to it.

  Because it’s been so long since I’ve had a drink I get pretty mindless pretty quickly, and the next thing I know I’ve moved to a table with two of the PFCs and we’re making friends, although “friends” is probably the wrong word because I’m lying through my teeth about everything and they’re only sitting with me because the scotch is free and plentiful. Still, it seems like a fairly good arrangement until my mood sours suddenly and I go from laughing to suicidal in like two seconds flat.

  I look at one of the PFCs and tell him to punch me in the face.

  “What?” he says. He looks at his buddy like: did I just hear what I think I heard? The two of them laugh.

  “Come on,” I say. “Hit me.”

  They continue to stare at me, smiling wide, incredulous smiles, like they’re uncertain but also sort of considering taking me up on it.

  “Even better idea,” I say, shoving my chair back and standing over them. “How about the three of us go out back, and you two beat the everloving shit out of me and take my wallet and my phone and anything else of value that I might have, and leave me there to bleed out?”

  “What the fuck,” one of the PFCs says, laughing.

  “Ah, come on.” I pour three shots, spilling scotch all over the tabletop. “Listen, you know you both wanted to roll me the moment I came in here. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  They exchange a look, smile at each other, say nothing.

  “Right, exactly. Drink up, gentlemen.” I lift my glass and toss it down. “Consider for a moment that I gave the bartender two hundred dollars for a forty-dollar bottle of scotch. What does that tell you about what’s still in my wallet?”

  “Probably a lot,” the talkative one says.

  “Probably a lot,” I agree.

  “Mike,” says the other PFC. “I don’t know about this, man.”

  I swing an open hand, slapping him hard and square across the face. He looks up at me, wide-eyed.

  “Do you know about it now?” I ask.

  “Motherfucker.”

  “Meet you outside,” I say. I grab the bottle and move to the door, walking on a tilt.

  When the talkative one catches me in the gut with his boot and leaves his hands down I stay on my feet and throw a wild, swooping right hook that somehow connects dead-on. His front teeth break like pieces of blackboard chalk, and the feeling is so much better than what I felt just moments before, even when they’ve got me down on the pavement and have broken my nose and closed an eye and stomped one of my hands to paste it feels so very, very good. And I am laughing, through the blood and busted teeth I am laughing, right up to the moment when I pass out.

  Amy

  I’m waiting for a cab to take me to the airport. I’ve got my overnight bag on the floor next to me, and ideally I’d like to be gazing out a window, but the only windows in the foyer are s
tained glass, and thus unsuitable for gazing. I feel more than a little dumb just staring at the door, but I don’t want to turn around and face Oscar. Naturally he doesn’t want me to go. He’s standing there behind me, and I know without having to look that he’s got his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his slacks in that stupid, ineffectual pose he strikes when we’re not getting along.

  It occurs to me that when the way someone stands starts to drive you crazy, it’s probably a good sign that things are over.

  “You are the lightest-packing girl,” Oscar says, “that I’ve ever met. One bag. One small bag.”

  He wants me to think this is a casual comment, a little attempt at levity, but really he’s just fishing for info. He’s hoping I’ll say something like “Why would I pack a whole bunch of shit when I’m only going to be gone a couple days?” Because we haven’t discussed how long I’ll be gone, and he’s afraid it will be a long time. He’s afraid it will be forever.

  Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t have the balls to just ask me outright, because I wouldn’t have an answer for him.

  What’s strange is we’re not even fighting. There’s no real bone of contention, besides the fact that I’m flying back east to attend the funeral of my dead ex-boyfriend’s dead father. But that’s not what this is about. What it’s about is the slow drift apart that couples do sometimes, like the movement of continents, creeping and intangible. Because it’s so gradual you can go on for years, sometimes, doing all the right things to convince everyone around you, and even yourself, that you are half of a healthy and viable pairing. But the whole time you know, with increasing certainty and clarity, that the relationship is sort of undead. A zombie relationship. And like a zombie it keeps tottering forward, mimicking life, but without warmth, or soul, or even a pulse.