Lit Riffs

by Matthew Miele

  “Are you still at … ?”

  “No, I moved,” she said, her hands shaking. “Here, let me give you the address.” She fumbled in her bag for a pen. She thought she’d have to sit down, right there on the sidewalk.

  “Here.” He pulled a pencil out of his pocket. She saw him palm a crystal. Was he into crystals now?

  She pointed to the pencil. “Ah, some things never change,” she said. She wrote her address and phone number in a faint jagged script that looked the way she imagined her pulse would look if it were graphed.

  She sniffled. “So …”

  “It’s my heart,” he whispered, “it’s enlarged and pressing on my windpipe.”

  “Your heart?”

  He nodded. “Makes it a little hard to communicate.”

  His heart? Of course, she thought, it’s your heart. His heart was making it hard to talk.

  “Jesus,” she said, “but you’re going to be okay?”

  “I’m dying,” he said. She wondered how many times he’d said that, and to whom. “Well, I’m on the donor list,” he said, “but you never know.”

  “Right, you never know,” she said, then smiling like Pollyanna, she heard herself chirp, “It’ll happen. I know it will.”

  He shrugged. They looked at each other and stood there awkwardly, but neither seemed to want to move; it felt to Tracy like everyone was watching them, it felt illicit, they shouldn’t be talking, but they were.

  “So, call me sometime,” she said, “or write me.”

  “I will,” he croaked.

  There was a moment when they might have hugged, but didn’t. So they waved.

  The list. That phrase rang in her head. He was on the list. People in hospital dramas on television were always on the list, and they always got a heart/a brain/some courage right at the last moment. In her experience that didn’t happen here, not in real life.

  Had he ever thought about calling her? Writing her? Was he going to wait until he died to reach out to her? Everyone knows that when someone is dying, they reconcile with estranged family members, they reel in lost and forgotten loved ones. She felt slighted. The sick are supposed to make latenight phone calls to old lovers, but she hadn’t heard from him.

  “It’ll happen,” she had said, wanting it, at that moment, to be so. “I know it will.”

  How grisly it all sounded, the optimism punched up with fear that somebody matching your blood and body type wouldn’t die soon enough to save you. Scanning the daily papers for news of gang shoot-outs, a stabbing right through the temple of some healthy young guy who’d pledged his organs to science. They would fall back into love and have one last tempestuous fling. Then she could marry Tad; or no, then she would finally be free; or no, she would forever mourn him. How poignant!

  Until Tracy saw Ray, she had considered her novel dead. Then she didn’t. It wasn’t until she started walking home that it dawned on her—she had the end of her book. Ray is going to die. Ray is going to die, she thought, her heart pounding hard, Ray is going to die, and I will finally be able to write our story.

  What happens when the love of your life dies? For certainly he was the love of her life, not Tad, he wasn’t, or couldn’t be, the love of her life. No, it was Ray, always had been, and always would be. She was filled with such purpose! This wouldn’t be one of those sappy boyfriend dies and the girl goes crazy, believing his soul has been reborn in her cat stories. No, this would be different. She rushed home and turned on the computer, she would start all over. There they were in his hospital room. She’d even give him a private room. He would be lying in bed, back against the pillows, and she would be holding his hand. There would be paint under his nails, scars on his hands—there was the cut from punching out the window in her bedroom when she said she didn’t believe he loved her; there was the half-moon bite from the parrot in that bar in Oaxaca—he’d stuck his finger into the cage after the bartender told him it bit. They’d be playing hearts or backgammon on the bed like they did on the beach, a ladder of sunshine reaching down through his hospital window, a ladder like up to heaven, and a breeze barely moving the curtains. Do you remember our bedroom in Mexico? he’d ask, lifting his head, his dry lips straining to kiss her. “How poor we were?”

  No, that was too mawkish. And anyway, windows in hospitals don’t open, someone would pick up on that.

  No, maybe she could begin with his mother calling her—having found letters from her in his belongings—or perhaps an envelope addressed to her by him in black pen, written in big block-letter capitals (TO BE SENT IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH, it would say across the top), would just arrive one afternoon and proclaim that he had died and tell her that he had always loved her, and that he was sorry. Surely he’d be prepared for his tragic early death. After all, he had always said that his genius would not be appreciated in his lifetime, that he like his idols would die young and tortured.

  Or the novel could be one of those experimental ones! Ha, wouldn’t her old professor like that. It could be told through letters, and drawings, and found objects. That might be good. In the story she would reflect back on this box of letters—it would be raining outside, or just stopped raining, or she’d seen his face in a cloud—and muse about how they’d come together at the end, their chance meeting on the street—it was kismet, was it not? How they’d wept and made peace, how they had confessed their love for each other, and life would come full circle. When Ray died, life would come full circle.

  What about the heart? Could one even use the heart in a story like this? In a screenplay, a Julia Roberts vehicle sure, but a real novel? The heart! Come on. No. She’d have to make his illness cancer, or some rare blood disease, a particularly virulent and rampant strain of ringworm. Wouldn’t that be revenge? Ray had always wanted to go out with a shotgun blast, and she would have him lie and waste slowly away, driven mad, driven mad with longing for her—no, that was too Edgar Allan Poe.

  The heart. What could she attribute to her changed heart?

  That evening she wrote Ray a letter, telling him how much she had loved him, would always love him, how he’d hurt her in ways she still wasn’t over. It was the sort she figured a person could only write once, maybe twice in a lifetime, the sort that feels like you’ve broken off one of your own ribs to write it.

  She expected to get her letter back or get no response at all. When she saw the envelope in her mailbox, her name written in Ray’s trademark heavy capital letters, she felt her book was blessed.

  “Why did it end?” he wrote. “I don’t know. It was just one of those things. I fucked up, and I am sorry.”

  It was just one of those things. She read this line over and over again, a dull surprise at how every time it shocked her, and hurt her, like stepping on a sprain.

  “I was in a bad place, in myself, my work. I freaked out, I ran away from everybody.” She wouldn’t ask what that meant, she should have, and who was everybody?

  Still, she’d never known Ray to apologize ever. This new Ray, this sick Ray, maybe he deserved to be let off the hook. The rules were different then. They’d never promised themselves to each other, not really. Still.

  “You broke my heart,” she wrote, period. She loved Tad, she did, but he didn’t know her, they weren’t connected like she and Ray had been. She couldn’t see herself growing old with Tad the way she had once imagined growing old and white-haired with Ray. She saw them in matching white fisherman sweaters, she saw them living in a small town in Mexico, sitting on a crumbling wall that overlooked the sea, posing for the photographer that had been sent by Art Forum for an article they were running on Ray’s newest masterworks.

  Now, though, her book aside, Ray was going to die. Nothing would ever be the same, nothing was the same now. Every cup of coffee was the best coffee she’d ever had, the salsa music coming from a car that was being washed below her window was the liveliest. The pink in the evening sky so gorgeous it stopped you in your tracks. It reminded her of how with Ray everything was better,
he insisted on it.

  She was sad, of course, that was easy. What was harder, and ugly, was the indescribable excitement she felt, not just the shiver of having him back in her life, not the exquisite sensation of a new kind of pain, but the fact that Ray would die, and she would have something.

  “I like this writing letters,” Ray wrote her after their first few exchanges. “Someday these will be collected, you’ll see….

  They began emailing. Every time she saw a new message from him, she felt the exhilaration of cheating on Tad. Although perhaps cheating was too strong a word—likewise, she was also sort of cheating on Ray. After all, when he’d asked, so casually, if she was seeing anybody, she’d been oblique, she didn’t want to scare him off, and it didn’t feel like a lie, or a sin of omission, saying she was in a relationship, but she didn’t know what the future of it was. That was true.

  Tracy’s fingers trembled on the keys. While writing allowed her the space to think, to control and compose her thoughts, she wanted to hear his voice, even though she knew it was hard for him, that he couldn’t breathe and got tired easily. He talked to people all day long in the hospital, didn’t he? She was sure he wasn’t writing everything down on a little pad. He had no patience for that sort of thing. She wanted to hear his voice. How could she write his character if she didn’t hear his voice?

  When he wrote her that he was checked into Mercy hospital because the infection in his heart had worsened, she called him.

  “Hey,” he rasped, and she was suddenly sorry she’d done it. Her heart beat in her mouth.

  “Hey,” she said. “Just calling to see how you are.”

  She flicked on her computer.

  “Same,” he said slowly. “Hey, you want to come and save me from the Sisters of Mercy?” he croaked. “The food sucks but…”

  “Of course,” she said, her heart beating fast, “just as soon as I can.”

  She imagined lying down in Ray’s bed with him. How many other people were visiting him? How many other women had he been with? Why did that idea make her want him again? Perhaps in the novel he would die while love-making to her, or right afterward. Maybe, in the book, she’d even get pregnant.

  She typed Sisters of Mercy.

  “I can’t talk,” Ray said. “Can we email? Snail mail is bullshit. Anyway, I haven’t got that kind of time.” He laughed, then started coughing, right on cue.

  She typed I haven’t got that kind of time as he spoke.

  “Are you typing?” he said.

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  Tracy liked the physicalness of the letters. Like they were skin, they could be chopped off, or lost through fire—and she thought about keeping them in the refrigerator the way Robert Lowell had for fear of passing out in bed with a cigarette and burning his house down. She wanted the evidence. Anyone could type an email. No, she wanted his hand.

  He began writing her every day, sometimes twice a day, and late at night. Come hang out—I want you to come. When I get sprung … She read that line again and again: When I get sprung I want you to come see the paintings I did since the last time I saw you. Poor Ray, she thought, poor Ray thought he was going to live. He fought valiantly, she would write. Right up to the end!

  She was curious about the work. Had Ray fulfilled his promise? Perhaps one day he would be famous? She wondered, too, might the sale of his letters be enough for a down payment on an apartment, a country house? A country house with a barn?

  I miss you, he wrote, I don’t believe there is any such thing as an accident.

  And nor did she. Never let it be said that she denied a man his dying wish.

  She imagined it would be easy to visit him. He was so sweet now, so soft. She had dreams of lying in his arms in his hospital bed, and him dying, and some part of her knowing it, but not getting up. Just lying there, making herself stay until someone else came in and discovered them there.

  No, the way she figured it, the worst part of all this would be the bad coffee in the styrofoam cup, and the smell of industrial cleaner. Ray would be weak, in bed, pale and sucking ice chips. Feeling perhaps lucky to be alive, lucky to have her back in his life, and he’d be kind and warm. There wouldn’t be any uncomfortable silences to fill as they would have something to distract them, something to talk about—his dying, all the time they squandered. She’d go a few times, rack up the points. The old girlfriend, the nurses would say, and nod their heads solemnly, appreciatively. She could just see the romance snowballing in their minds, taking on speed and shape, becoming as the days progressed more and more dangerous, a thing to admire, but not a thing to endure.

  She comes, and they get back together, how perfect! It might make the local papers. It was like an opera. All that was missing was that great death scene.

  She went to see him. She stood at the nurses’ station in her blue miniskirt and a black turtleneck sweater, white patterned tights, and high-heeled Mary Jane shoes. Ray liked it when she dressed like this. She hadn’t worn these clothes in ages. The nurses barely looked up to point the way for her; she wondered if she looked upset or resigned; did they think she wasn’t his girlfriend, but maybe his sister?

  “Knock knock,” she said as she stuck her head in the door. Why did she say that? She hated it when people said that, why not knock? It was like people who said Xmas instead of Christmas.

  “Hey,” he said, muting the TV—a commercial of a pork chop slow-dancing with a box of Shake ’n Bake flitted across the screen. Was that one of Tad’s? “Welcome to the good ship Lollipop.”

  She kissed his cheek. Where could he go?

  A large, square-headed nurse came in and plumped up his pillow with affectionate roughness. “This is my first mate, Esther,” he said hoarsely.

  Esther rolled her eyes like this was part of some routine.

  “Hello, Esther,” she said. She’d have to remember to write this all down. Esther nodded. She felt a pang; she had always loved Ray’s kindness to the waitresses and store clerks. Maybe she was still in love with him. He looked small in bed. He had an IV in his arm. In his lap she saw a book about healing the body with light. She liked this idea that Ray had become vulnerable to such nonsense as holistic healing. It would be good for the book, too. Maybe he would actually be saved by the healing power of an amethyst crystal the size of a Volkswagen, and then go on to become some rock-hound shaman.

  He put the book facedown on the bedside table.

  “How are you? Are you okay?” she said. She was trembling, she wanted to take his hand, but was afraid. Her mouth felt dry and pasty.

  “Hey, as good as I can be with tubes sticking out of me.”

  “Really?” she said.

  “No, I’m scared as shit,” he said.

  She froze. He wasn’t supposed to say that.

  “Who are these bastards in the white coats?”

  She looked around the room collecting details for later. She was shocked that she could do this—after all, here was Ray, brave Ray saying he was scared.

  “Don’t worry,” she said.

  He pursed his lips and looked down into his lap.

  “Listen, I’ll stay with you,” she said, taking his hand; it fit into hers perfectly. She’d never realized that the grasp of a hand could be as distinctive as someone’s kiss. “I won’t leave your side.”

  “You look good,” he said to her; he stroked her forearm. “Really.”

  Her heart turned over against its better judgment, like a dog aware that it is losing all its dignity but must have its belly scratched.

  Esther stuck her head inside the room. “Visiting hours is over,” she said.

  “But, I just got here …,” Tracy said, relieved.

  Ray smiled at her. “It’s cool. I am tired,” he said weakly. “Thanks for coming. It’s good to see you.”

  She smiled like Florence Nightingale and kissed his temple, his skin was so cool.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said, taking his hand, “better than okay.�
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  “Don’t be such a stranger,” he said, and then, “thank you.”

  She walked out into the hall, each step faster until she was nearly jogging. She passed up the elevator and took the stairs. The racketing echo of her heels striking the steps was glorious. It was like gunfire.

  Outside the hospital, leaning against the wall, she caught her breath, her side ached. One day Ray would be gone and she would be glad, grateful that she got to spend this time with him. She’d have done the right thing. Even though it would take the last of her money, she hailed a cab to take her home.

  The next day they exchanged email. The time on his said 6 a.m. “Did I tell you I finally made it to Paris? It was gorgeous, amazing. I can’t believe we never made it there. That is a crime. There is so much we should have done. I love you.”

  I love you. “I love you,” she could hear him saying it as she read it over and over again. I love you? That was the drugs talking, or maybe the crystals.

  At twelve o’clock she took a break from the book and checked her email again.

  “Fuck, I am bored here,” he wrote, and she wondered if he regretted writing I love you to her, if he was covering his ass now, “but at least I can read. Would you bring me some books, whatever is turning you on these days—”

  Turning you on?

  Did he love her, really love her? She felt a pang in her chest, how could she do this to him? It was a gift, she told herself. I am keeping Ray alive on the page. She wondered what he would think about what she was writing. Here he was on one screen, virtually back-to-back with his own story. Not intentionally, she didn’t write him back until the next day. Instead she worked feverishly on her story, she felt like there was a train bearing down on her, gaining on her hour by hour. As she wrote, she could hear the crash of the sea outside their cottage window, smell the lime on Ray’s fingers and sea salt, she could taste the fish soup she’d made with mussels they’d cut off the rocks, and feel the needle prick of fish bones in her mouth. She wrote for hours and hours, finally standing up stiff and bowlegged, the inside of her legs aching.