The Withdrawal Method

by Pasha Malla

  He added this to his list the next night, while she screened something irreverent from France. It required a few pages and an expository style that at first seemed odd beside the pointform notes, but then he liked. He looked up: in the movie one of the characters said, "Je t'aime," to another character, and that character said it back - although there was something Parisian and disaffected about the exchange. The French! They were so mean and great.

  Opening his notebook again, he added another little story. The third time they had sex he grunted, "I love you," when he was coming, and afterwards they lay in awkward silence on opposite sides of his futon. "I love having sex with you," he whispered after a few minutes, trying to make it sound like something he'd just covered and was now reiterating, casually.

  He was reminded then of this story: one night a few months later they were at a thing for one of their artist friends. Over the crowd of people in complicated shoes they locked eyes and she winked. Something in that wink sang through him, warm. He stumbled beaming (away from some guy detailing his process) across the room and planted one on her, as dumb and happy and slobbery as a puppy. They had pulled away, unspeaking, and for the first time in his life he could see in someone else's eyes exactly how he felt.

  On the Tv the woman was now wandering morosely around Paris; her lover was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, at the far end of the couch, she was making notes.

  He kicked her.

  "Ow," she said. "Don't."

  "Hey," he said, nudging her with his foot.

  "Hush, will you? This is for school."

  He nudged again and she looked at him, exasperated. "What?"

  "I love you," he said.

  She stared at him. "And?"

  "And do you love me?"

  "No, I hate you."

  "Really?"

  "Yes."

  He looked at her. She gazed back, her expression impatient. He looked into those eyes, from one to the other across the beautiful nub of her perfect nose, searching for something. But he couldn't find it, because he wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to be looking for.

  AT NOON THE next day he went into the bathroom at work and locked himself in a stall. He put the lid of the toilet down, kept his pants up and sat. There was someone in the next stall over; he could hear the toilet paper being whisked from its dispenser, the scrub of it between ass cheeks, a cough. He waited until the toilet flushed, the stall creaked open, the taps ran, the hand drier roared, and the bathroom door closed. Left alone, he put his head in his hands and sat there like that, on the toilet lid in the stall in the bathroom, until his lunch break was over.

  HE GOT HOME that night and she was still at work. The slick clock above the kitchen table, all chrome and Scandinavian, claimed it was half past six. She was usually home before him and had something happening, food or booze, when he walked in the door. In the fridge he found half a bottle of red wine; it had been there for weeks. He poured himself a glass and drank it, ice-cold and sour, as he wandered around the apartment.

  As he made his way from room to room, everything struck him as relics: framed photos of a bike trip through the Maritimes, a table that had belonged to her grandparents, the fern that he had nearly killed and she had revived and that now bloomed green and glorious in the living room - artifacts in a museum, a history of their life in things. What would it all mean when she came home with a different skin? Maybe they'd have to get new stuff.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and from his briefcase removed the notebook. What had started as a simple inventory had become something else - notes for a story or a film treatment. Yes, a movie! One of those hipster indie rom-coms, maybe, something quirky starring a hot young actor as him and a hot young actress as her, with lots of talking to the camera and a badass soundtrack. Encouraged, he got out his pen to add another story.

  One summer years ago they were doing a shop together, and the woman in front of them in line at the grocery store had a shocking sunburn - the sort that looks as though the skin is still cooking, that it would be gooey to touch.

  The woman was middle-aged, a typical July mom in a tank top tucked into khaki shorts, a crotch that stretched impossibly from navel to knees. In certain places the sunburn - which spread across the mom's back, down her arms, up her neck - had begun to peel. White fractures split the red, the edges dry and ragged. They stood gawking at the sunburn while the mom placed eight boxes of ice cream onto the conveyor belt in a slow, pained way.

  And then, before he could stop her, she was reaching out and taking hold of one of the flaps of dead skin on the mom's back and gently pulling it free. The mom watched the cashier ring her ice cream through, oblivious. He was horrified, but amazed. What sort of human being would do such a thing? And then something snapped and, before she could be caught with the evidence, she flicked the little ribbon of mom away.

  On the subway ride home, groceries clustered in bags at their feet, he demanded: "Why?"

  "I don't know - weren't you tempted to do it? It was just so ..." She made a noise similar to those she produced during sex.

  "No. No, it was absolutely not'just so' anything. That was sociopathic behaviour. A cannibal might do something similar."

  "Oh, come on. Cannibals eat people, not peel them."

  "What do you think the first step is?"

  "Please."

  They would move in together two months later.

  He sat there, reading the story over. It came floating up off the page with the milky miasma of a recalled dream. Crap. Had he made the whole thing up? There had been a sunburned lady once at the grocery store, he was sure - but had the peeling attack actually happened, or was it just something they discussed, or he imagined? He poured out the last drips of wine from the bottle, tipped back a sludgy mouthful, and closed the journal. He sat there for a long time with his hand on the cover before he looked up at the clock.

  Ten past seven. She was late - very late. She'd never been this late before, not without calling or a plan. Maybe the skin had started to slough away at the office and she'd had to get her colleagues to help with the unwrapping. Or maybe something had gone wrong and she was lying on the floor of her cubicle, strangled to death by the crackling wisps of her old arms.

  No, he thought: she was gone. She had shed her old self and life and taken off. Maybe later she would call him from some roadside hacienda in dustiest Mexico, all fresh-skinned and new. A person reborn, free of him and their life together. He imagined her riding her bike along the side of the highway, the skin peeling away from her body, flapping at her heels, as she made her way to somewhere better.

  11

  SINCE LEE WENT in nearly three weeks ago, I spend my weekends watching movies with her in the ICU. She's got a list of classics she's always wanted to see, so on Friday evening after work I stop by the video shop between the airport and hospital and pick up the next three: The Lady Vanishes, The Seven Year Itch, and Cleo from 5 to 7. We'll watch one a day and then I'll return them all on Monday.

  Waiting for me in the hallway outside Lee's room is Dr. Cheung. "Hi, Pasha!" she says, producing a hand to shake, which I shake. Her hand is cold. Her hands are always cold, and her voice is always alarmingly loud - especially for a hospital.

  "How are things going?"

  "She's doing well!" enthuses Dr. Cheung, beaming. Then she lowers her voice. "We've got the last of the scans back and think we can go ahead with the surgery either tomorrow or the next day."

  "That's the Gamma Knife thing?"

  "Yes, we'll use it to remove the two remaining metastases from her brain. As I'm sure Dr. Persaud told you, melanoma responds so poorly to traditional radiation that we really think this is the best option."

  "And it's safe?"

  Dr. Cheung nods. "Absolutely. This in fact has less potential of complication than the surgeries we did to remove the original tumors on her back. Lee has some literature. Why don't you go in and see her?"

  "Isn't she sleeping now?" I step away from Lee's
room. "Maybe I should wait?"

  "No!" Dr. Cheung yells, her hand on my shoulder, urging me forward, voice cranked back up. "She's waiting to see you!"

  I pause at the door. Dr. Cheung nods and gives me a shove into the room.

  "Hey," Lee whispers. She's propped up in bed with a version of lunch on the tray in front of her: gravy-soaked brown mush, veggies, a lump of potato.

  "Hey," I say. I put the newspaper, DV DS, and coffee on the tray, kiss her on the top of her bald head, and sit down.

  LEE'S NIGHT NURSE is Olivier, the quiet Congolese guy Lee really likes. If Dr. Cheung is a foghorn, Olivier is a thought. You barely know he is there; he whispers and nods and treats Lee with gentle reverence. Sometimes he mutters softly to her in French, "Ma petite puce," while he is changing her iv.

  I sit watching for a bit and then Olivier turns to me and says, "Sir," which is his polite way of asking me to leave. At first I'd been offended by the nurses asking this - after so long together I've seen Lee in every state of compromise you could possibly imagine - but I've realized it's not about me.

  "Ten minutes," Olivier whispers, and pulls the curtain around the bed, closing them off. I leave the room, then head down the hall, into the elevator, down four levels, and out of the hospital, where I stand with the smokers, not smoking because I don't smoke.

  WE'VE JUST STARTED The Seven Year Itch, headphones clamped over our ears, when Mauricio appears at the curtain, his sideburns two slick daggers on either side of his face.

  "Knock, knock," he says.

  Lee hits Stop on the remote and swings the screen out of the way. "Bienvenido," she says.

  Mauricio and Lee went to school together. I guess he tutored her in Spanish before she went to Mexico for a foreign exchange. They met up down there and travelled around, and then he'd moved home to Buenos Aires. He came back up here a few months ago, maybe because Lee got sick - I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they ever slept together either. There's definitely something. I've always dealt with it by trying to seem okay with the guy, not asking too many questions.

  "Hey, man, take my seat," I tell him, standing and offering the chair. "Please."

  Mauricio's brought flowers, which he passes to me as we swap places. Shuffling the chair closer to the bed, he takes Lee's hand and runs his thumb over her knuckles.

  "How you feeling?" he asks, staring into her eyes.

  "Okay," she tells him. "Tired. The pain's not been too bad today."

  "Yeah."

  Watching Mauricio so close to her, I try to summon up some feeling of jealousy or resentment. But it's hard. My physical contact with Lee has become so perfunctory. Since the diagnosis we've had sex once - and that was six months ago and at Lee's urging, not mine. I capitulated but went about it as though she were something made of glass, the words skin cancer rattling around in my brain the entire time. Afterwards she went to get a drink of water and didn't come back to bed. Eventually, I went into the kitchen and found her sitting at the table in the dark.

  Mauricio's stroking her arm now, up and down - an arm bruised and scarred from all the lines and ivs constantly being threaded into it. The bruises are purple and yellow blotches. The newest scars are red and wet; the oldest, black scabs. She looks like a junkie. Lee's arms make something sickly rise in my throat and a prickly feeling fizz from my feet to my head. They are nothing I'd want to touch.

  But Mauricio doesn't seem to mind. He runs his fingers up and down her arms like the marks aren't even there. They gaze into each other's eyes. Her hair's been gone for ages, but since they stopped the chemo there's a downy sort of fuzz growing in. Mauricio cradles the nape of her neck with his hand, then leans in to scoop her into his arms. He holds her, softly but firmly. She hugs him back. They're this way for a long time, while I stand in the corner of the room, cradling the bouquet of flowers like some sort of caddie or valet.

  WHEN VISITING HOURS are over Mauricio and I leave together.

  "I'm going to meet some friends to go dancing," he says. "Do you want to come?"

  "Dancing? No, man, I'm probably good."

  He sambas off into the night and I make my way to the subway station.

  Riding home, slumped in my seat as the train roars and squeals its way between stops, I watch a couple at the end of the car making out. They are seventeen, maybe eighteen. Their jaws are really working. At one point the girl climbs up and mounts the guy's thigh and starts grinding into him with her hips. He licks her sloppily from neck to eyebrow, then pulls away, panting. They stare at each other for a bit, then he kisses her on the cheek and tells her, "God, I'm so fucking in love with you. It's fucking crazy."

  "Holy fuck," she says, kissing him on the forehead, the cheek, the other cheek, the mouth. "Me fucking too."

  AT HOME I POUR myself a glass of cold, sour wine from the refrigerator and take it with me as I move around the apartment. I take an inventory of the things that are technically Lee's - stuff she owned before we moved in together. I try to figure out what I would want to keep if she dies. This is what I settle on: the microwave, the coffee maker, the DVD player, the big soft towel we fought over every time it came out of the laundry. But then I realize that there's no "would"; there's no "if." The doctors have given Lee three months, tops. All these things are already mine.

  At ten thirty, I go out to eat. Most nights I do. Lee was the cook. I'm decent with a barbecue, can fry up a burger if need be. But we live in a neighbourhood with plenty of cheap food: Indian, Vietnamese, Mexican. It's late so I head to the burrito joint down the street. I order a beer and sit with it while the guy behind the counter shuffles around getting my food together. I drain the bottle when my order comes up, so I get another one and take it and my tray to sit down.

  "Pasha?"

  I look over. It's this girl Giselle I went to school with. Back then I had a girlfriend - not Lee, someone else I met through friends - and Giselle had a long-distance thing with some guy she met online. We'd go out for drinks with people from class, and every night would end with just us two left, sitting on stools at the bar together, faces inches apart. We'd stay to last call and have this weird, protracted goodbye before heading our separate ways. I came close to trying something a few times, but never did.

  "Hey," I say. It's been eight, nine years, but Giselle looks good. She was always pretty, but that was never why I was attracted to her. It was more the way she'd make you feel like you and her were the only people on the planet, those big brown eyes staring deep into yours. But right now she's with some guy in a puffy vest, possibly the Internet boyfriend. I never met him.

  "Come sit with us," she says, so I do, sliding my tray between theirs.

  She introduces the guy she's with as Philippe, a friend of hers from high school - right away I can tell there's nothing between them. I suggest they grab a beer and stick around, making sure that it sounds like an invitation to him as much as to her. Giselle orders a Corona. Philippe doesn't get anything.

  "How are things?" Giselle asks. "Still dating that teacher?"

  "No, we broke up years ago," I say. She doesn't ask any more than that, so I don't offer anything. "What about you? How's your cyber-man?"

  "Ha, right. Him. We broke up," she says, then adds, "too."

  We drink. Philippe has found an Auto Trader that seems to have piqued his interest. I tell Giselle about how I work at the airport now, in the bookstore. "All my literary ambitions have at last been realized," I say, and she laughs.

  Five minutes later I'm done eating and I've got two beers in me. "You guys want to go grab another drink?"

  Philippe and his puffy vest can't. Giselle looks at him, then me. "I wouldn't mind, actually," she says and turns back to her friend. "Can we catch up later?"

  At the pub down the street we realize that we both want the same beer, the house pale, so I order a pitcher. Giselle suggests we sit at the bar. "Like old times," she says. The bartender leans in with a candle and our jug and I pay him. Giselle pours and we sit there for a moment, watch
ing the flame distort and refract through our pint glasses.

  "Cheers," she says. "Good to see you."

  We look each other in the eye as we drink, put the beers down and keep looking.

  Our conversation flits between old stories from school and updates on classmates. Neither of us is doing much writing any more - although she's done slightly better, working as a copy editor at some trade magazine. We talk about where we're living. I don't ask if she's got roommates, and she doesn't ask me. I never once need to lie about anything.

  Then the pitcher's done.

  "Want another?" she asks, giving the empty jug a wiggle. Her face is flushed. "It's on me."

  It feels good to be out with someone. "Sure, I say," and pat her leg. "It's nice to see you."

  "It's great to see you."

  We drink, and soon we're drunk, and we're close, and there's a lot more touching: thighs, shoulders, elbows. She gets in so close that my knee slides between hers. Her eyes are heavy-lidded. By the time the third pitcher comes and we're both scrounging for change to pay for it, my face feels like rubber and we're holding hands.

  "ISN'T THAT WHAT you were wearing yesterday?"

  "This?" I wipe the sweat off my top lip with the back of my hand. "Yeah, laundry day, got a little desperate. Ran out of quarters."

  "You reek," she says. "What'd you drink last night?"

  Lee's really alert today, sitting up straight. There are days like this every now and then, when it's hard to believe how sick she is. She's her old sharp self, watching me shrewdly. I try to meet her eyes and hold them.

  She looks away, out the window. It's been alternating rain and snow all morning. "I'm going in tomorrow morning for the Gamma Knife surgery."