The Debt

by Tyler King

  “For the record,” I said, brushing my fingers along her cheek, “I apologize for being a prick.”

  Hadley arched an eyebrow. “And...”

  “And for resorting to covert tactics. Maybe that was a step too far.”

  “Hmm.” Nodding, she pursed her lips. Sassy little shit. “Maybe. You certainly know how to overdo it.” She grabbed my face and planted a rough kiss on my lips. “But I love you anyway.”

  White light burst in the center of my vision. Electricity shot through my body, hot and violent. My arms clenched around her. My jaw locked. It was a sudden, terrifying burst like being struck by lightning.

  “Josh?”

  Hadley pulled back, but I couldn’t let her go.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I tried to speak, but my lips wouldn’t move. Sharp pain flared behind my eyes. The room slid sideways. Her face blurred in two. Her voice became a loud, high-pitched ringing in my ears.

  “Josh!”

  The last thing I remembered was falling to the floor.

  Chapter 32

  The myth of my invincibility had been greatly exaggerated. I woke with a splitting headache and a bitter taste tinged with blood on my tongue. Like the worst hangover that ever drove a man to sobriety, I felt nauseated, disoriented.

  Opening my eyes, a blurry collage of color filled my vision. The too-bright room smelled like latex and antiseptic. Despite my diminished capacity, I felt her. I squeezed her hand entwined with mine. Her presence alone could wake the dead.

  “Punky.”

  “Hey,” she answered as she leaned closer. Warm lips met mine. “How do you feel?”

  “Like shit. What happened?”

  Fingers swept over my eyebrows. “Can you see?”

  I looked in her general direction and found only a pale blob with a dark frame hovering above my prone body. “You’re fuzzy. Come closer.”

  “This better?”

  “A little closer.”

  Long hair brushed my cheek. “Here?”

  “Just a little more.”

  Her mouth caressed mine. I sucked on her bottom lip, licking across the soft flesh.

  “Get in,” I told her.

  “The bed?”

  “The bed. My pants. Yes.”

  “Can you even feel your dick?” Her fingers wove into my hair.

  “I don’t know. Reach down there and find it for me.” I took her hand, sliding it down my chest.

  Hadley backed away. “Josh, do you know where we are?”

  “Can we pretend I don’t?”

  “Not really.” She put her hand in mine. “You had a seizure. An ambulance brought you to the hospital. You’ve been unconscious for almost an hour.”

  “Well, fuck.”

  “How much do you remember?” Hadley dug her thumb into the pressure point between my thumb and forefinger, massaging the nerves.

  Girl was fucking magical.

  “I made a mess.”

  “That you did.”

  “But we’re not fighting anymore, right?”

  “Not at the moment,” she said with a sweet smile. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s not do that now.”

  As a rule, healthy men in their twenties did not fall to the floor, flopping about and foaming at the mouth. Our pattern of lurching from one emergency to the next wasn’t nearly over.

  “Just be here with me.”

  The doctor entered minutes later. Then it was tests and waiting and the resignation that I had pissed away too many years of not creating a life with Hadley. Not delivering on the promise of my parents’ aspirations for me. I was sick of being the erotic wasted talent.

  My mind was elsewhere as the doctor delivered the results of my MRI. The finer points of my state of health were not enough to hold my attention. Perhaps because I had never been especially interested in myself as a topic.

  * * *

  “Josh, this is insane. Stop.”

  Towing Punky behind me by the hand, I dragged her through the dark, thick forest. I followed only a memory and the narrow beam of the flashlight.

  “Josh.”

  “This is important,” I told her.

  I wasn’t sure what we’d find—if anything—but it was imperative that we seek it.

  “Now?” Our boots crunched over dead leaves and squashed mounds of mud and moss under our soles. “It’s freezing. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Morning, actually.”

  We’d spent all night at the hospital. The sun was due soon. I walked in front of her, holding back hanging branches from her path.

  “That makes all the difference.”

  “Really? How so?”

  Her snarky tone was a thin veil at best. She’d come willingly. Out of curiosity if not absolute terror that I’d drop dead should she take her eyes off me for more than a second.

  “You should be resting. You need to call Simon. You—”

  “Sweetheart.” Pausing, I turned the flashlight up to illuminate her face. “I appreciate your concern. Rest assured that I am aware of the thirty-seven tasks of dire importance that I must carry out in due time and precise order.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  No one did unimpressed like Punky.

  “But”—I stroked my thumb along her jaw—“I’ve earned the right to fuck off any damn way I please. That starts with you, me, and our very own Neverland.”

  “Now would be an awful time to develop a Peter Pan complex.”

  I aimed the flashlight into the distance to her right.

  Pressing my lips to her ear, I whispered, “Close your eyes.”

  After a skeptical glance, her eyes shut.

  On the trip home from the hospital and without any particular instigation, a memory poked me right between the eyes. Not following would have driven me fucking mad.

  “‘If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one,’” I recited, seeing as how she’d given me the cue, “‘you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colors suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colors become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.’”

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  Peter Pan was one of her favorites. As a child, she never understood why people kept telling her she couldn’t fly away and join the Lost Boys.

  I waited, siphoning every necessary second from the universe. “Magic.”

  I doused the flashlight just as the first shades of color rose up like high tide over the trees.

  “Open.”

  Watching the light touch her skin and the sparks ignite her eyes, I viewed the gentle sunrise in the slow dawn across Hadley’s face.

  “Impossible,” she whispered.

  “I no longer believe in any such thing.”

  Tugging her forward, I led Hadley through the tall grass. Our tree house. The lost adventure. Overcome by vines and time, the rotted remnants still occupied the center of its massive tree. We stared toward the east while I held her against my chest, arms wrapped around her stomach.

  “Do you like it?” I asked.

  “It’s hallucinatory.” She wiped her eyes as her chest rose and fell to a staccato rhythm. “I can’t believe you found it.”

  Sitting among the wet grass and the bird songs, we watched the world transform. The sun overtook the sky, painting night into day. I wanted to write it all. The melody of her heartbeat. The chorus of her awe. For the first time in months, the music in my head sounded nothing like the distorted, puzzled meandering of a hapless neophyte. But it would have to wait. Item number 17.

  “You spent the last few weeks waiting for me to combust,” Hadley said.

  “And you didn’t. Why?”

  “The same reason you waited so long to tell me what happened that night you ran away. How selfish would I be if I heaped my crazy into your lap? You had your own shit to deal with.”

  “Like what?” I asked, incredulous.

  What po
ssible “shit” did she think was more important than her well-being?

  “You pulled a gun on someone.” She brought her legs up to her chest and wrapped our arms around her knees. “Because of me.”

  “And I’m pretty fucking okay with that.”

  This was the conversation we should have had weeks ago. Then again, I hadn’t come right out with it either.

  “No one lays a hand on you, Punky. Ever.”

  “My parents. Tom’s house. Every time something bad has happened, I’ve been alone. It felt like too much to ask of you.”

  “Get rid of that thought.” Gripping the back of her neck, my nose pressed to her temple, I willed Hadley to accept my sincerity and put to rest this debate for the last time. “Seal up whatever self-destructive, self-conscious crevice of your head that idea crawled out of and never open it again. I love you. Shit like that just pisses me off.”

  “I’m scared.” Her grip on my hands tightened.

  “I’ll dig a moat and build a fucking wall around the house, if that’s what it takes. If you don’t want to move—”

  “Damn it, Josh!”

  Hadley got on her knees and turned to face me. Either she was going to tackle me to the ground and mount my dick as if it were a Thoroughbred, or Punky was about to beat the living shit out of me.

  “I didn’t set the alarm when I went chasing after the ambulance. I didn’t check the locks. I’m not sure I even closed the front door behind me. They put you on a gurney and drove off. What if that was it? You can’t leave me to do this on my own. That wasn’t the deal.”

  “Come here, sweetheart.” I pulled her into my lap and tucked her against my chest. “I made you a promise. I always keep my word.”

  “You could go blind.”

  “But I won’t.”

  “You could end up a vegetable.”

  That was expressly against my wishes, but a conversation for later. Item number 26.

  “You could die.”

  “I will die. It’s unavoidable. But not before I’m old and senile.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t make it a joke.”

  No. The mass of tissue and calcium deposits festering near my optic nerve and pituitary gland were not a joke. I’d seen nothing amusing in the image of the tumor inhabiting my brain. Item number 4: Schedule supraorbital craniotomy. But it was my tumor and I’d take it any way I pleased. With grace, if possible. Dignity.

  “Things are going to be different,” she promised. Combing her fingers through my hair, she cast her eyes downward. “No more doomsday bunker and flailing to fool-proof life. After you beat this, I’ll get help.”

  “You think we should try normal for a while? See how the other half lives?”

  “Let’s not go to extremes.”

  “Fair enough.” I placed my lips to hers. “I’m going to be okay, sweetheart. Don’t start burying me yet.”

  “If you don’t wake up from surgery, I’ll make sure they can’t give you an open casket.”

  “That’s my girl.” I took her lips, embedding in the kiss everything I hastened to explain. “Hadley, I’m not done yet. I just got everything I ever wanted.”

  * * *

  I spent hours avoiding the call to my dad. At my mother’s piano, I played at the keys and scribbled notes. It felt imperative, a fever of creative energy. As if years of abstinence now begged to be sated, the music released. It all came so easily, pouring out of my fingers, rushing to be realized before...

  Anything could happen. Step outside and have a tree fall on me. Get struck down by lightning on a clear day. But music wanted to be heard.

  I felt her there. My mother. Her influence in every bar I composed. Years spent distancing myself from her memory, letting that empty hole fester and scab over. I had refused to treat the wound or find a way to fill it. Afraid to acknowledge the loss like it could become any more real if I allowed myself to think about her or look at a photograph.

  But it was different now. Faced with the possibility of leaving this life, I saw all the work left undone. The wasted time spent squandering the gift she nurtured in me. If I didn’t honor Carmen’s memory, if I didn’t do something with the experience of the short time we’d had together, what was the point? I was her only child, and I had all but abandoned her legacy.

  Most of all, I didn’t want my father to watch me suffer her loss anymore.

  Sitting in his study, it was late in the afternoon when I finally worked up the nerve to call him.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Josh, how are you?”

  I sank into his leather couch. It smelled of the cigars Simon smoked in secret and the brandy spilled when Carmen found him out.

  “Existentially? I’m experiencing a renaissance.”

  “Is that right?”

  I heard the smile in his voice and hated to let it happen.

  “I came close to demolishing her piano last night. Hadley and I had a fight.”

  I rubbed at my eye. The headache was unbearable. My vision in one eye had danced somewhere between blurry and useless for most of the morning.

  “Instead I sat down and played Rachmaninoff.”

  “You’re going to have to learn how to talk to that girl.”

  “I’m working on it. I’ve been at it all morning,” I said. “The piano. It’s coming faster than I can transcribe. Nothing like I’ve attempted before. I don’t think I’m the same musician I used to be. You’ll need to give me your opinion.”

  “Of course, son. I’m thrilled you’re trying.”

  “I don’t want the music to crawl too far up its own ass, you know?”

  My heart raced. A praying man would have looked to the sky and begged for an asteroid.

  “You’ll have to tell me if I’m diluting myself. Deluding. Either.”

  “I doubt it, but I’d be happy to listen.”

  My throat convulsed in an attempt to swallow. “You’ll need to come home, Dad. I...uh...I need you to come home.”

  “Josh, tell me what’s happened.”

  It gutted me to say the words. No father should receive such a call, least of all Simon.

  “I’m sick, Dad. I need your help.”

  A son witnessing his father cry is akin to nothing else. There is no comparison. Mothers and daughters can’t possibly find a correlation in their relationship. It doesn’t exist. Perhaps accepting that her mother masturbates. Maybe then. Short of that, no.

  For a while, I sat on the smoke-infused leather couch and listened to my father cry. I had heard it before. He’d cried for days after Carmen died. No matter that it wasn’t new, the sound still got to me. So foreign.

  In some sense, I had always accepted that my life belonged to the people who loved me. My dad. Hadley. Experiencing the moment they pondered my mortality brought to light the truth that my life was a responsibility, a promise. It wasn’t mine alone. It was an investment into which others had patiently, dutifully, selflessly paid. Whether or not the hands of a surgeon left me otherwise intact and functioning was beyond my control. What I did to pay out dividends after the fact would be within my realm of manipulation.

  “I’ve envied you,” Simon said. He sounded exhausted, both for the energy spent and the reserves he would tap in the coming days. “I’d give anything to have been with her at the end.”

  Revulsion to his sentiment was immediate and reflexive, though I did understand his perspective. My mother had died quickly and silently across my lap. His wife left this world while he was fifty fucking feet away doing fuck knows what. I stood and left the shadowy room, phone to my ear.

  “Were there...signs?”

  We’d never broached the subject. After the funeral and mourning and slogging through the grief, I had slammed the door on every attempt made to discuss her.

  “Did I let your mother die?”

  “Fuck. No. Dad, that’s not what I meant.”

  “I asked myself that question every day for four years. Then it was every other day. Yes, there were signs
. If a patient walked into a doctor’s office complaining of headaches, irregular sleep patterns, memory loss, mood swings, and claimed she heard music when there was none, he’d order a CT scan and an MRI. But your mother—”

  “She was always a little irregular,” I answered.

  “Yes. Eccentric at times. Alternately focused and dispersed. She carried on according to her own rhythm. The picture was not so clear until there was nothing to be done.”

  My mom liked to paint flowers. As in Alice in Wonderland, Red Queen taking a brush to roses and lilies. So of course Hadley was enamored. My mom taught her how to paint the smallest, most intricate scenes on the most unconventional of canvases, to build huge worlds in tiny places. Carmen didn’t compose music, she told stories about little boys slaying dragons and fighting pirates while dancing her fingers across the keys. Every note was a syllable. I could play the tale of King Arthur before I learned to read.

  “I’m going to find you the best possible surgeon,” Simon said.

  “I know.”

  “There are some specialists here I can consult with. I’ll make the calls, then book the flight.”

  I found Punky on the back porch with the easel set up and splotches of paint running up her arms. Punky was the messiest damn artist outside of a preschool. The more material she got on her, the better the work turned out. Fascinating how that happened. I never saw her so uninhibited as when she worked. Or when we were fucking. That was pretty terrific, too.

  “Thank you,” I answered Simon.

  Hadley set down her brush and turned around. She took my outstretched hand and pressed her cheek to my chest.

  “I’m not scared. Maybe I should be. Maybe anyone in his right mind would be. The most terrifying part is knowing how much this hurts you.”

  Both of them.

  Chapter 33

  “Tell them,” Hadley whispered in my ear.

  She sat on my lap, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. I’d fallen asleep twice during the movie. Near us, our friends covered the living room couch. It had been a week since my diagnosis, and Hadley was growing more insistent that I go public with this latest development. I was inclined to ignore it until it was time to go under the knife.