She rolls me out of the alley, and I’m a melted puddle of gratitude and can’t say a thing—like my throat’s been paralyzed. We hit the street and suddenly it’s all noise and people pushing and yelling, and I don’t know if she’s taking me back to the bar or somewhere else, and I don’t care because she can take me to hell itself at this point and I’ll be happy. I just close my eyes and go with it.
Then we stop. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Not hers. Much too big and heavy to be hers. I open my eyes. We’re in the light from the open doorway of the bar and there’s someone leaning over me, breathing smoke and booze into my face. Holy shit. I’ve been caught by the devil himself.
“Well, well. What have we here?” Sylvie’s father is standing over me, swaying and red-eyed and giving off heat like a chimney. He reaches down and tears my mask off. His spittle sprays onto my face. “Could it be? Our little wise-ass punk? Out of the hospital? Not so sick, after all? You lying fake.”
I shake my head. “Just out on leave, sir,” I croak out.
Marie bends over my head and tries to push the man’s big hairy hand off my shoulder. “Leave him alone,” she says.
He shifts his focus onto Marie, and I feel his hand tighten. “And who is this?” He breathes fire all over us and then he gives one horrible laugh that turns into a kind of sob. “Little bitch. Out here, your tits hanging out.” He turns his eyes back to me. “You forget about my baby, Richard? You out here fucking around with whores while she—”
Marie’s smack makes a bright red mark on his face. “Get out of our way,” she says.
Sylvie’s father grabs at her arm and she shrieks, and I make a grab for him, too, shoving both hands into his chest and pushing as hard as I can. But the man is immovable. He’s crying and spraying spit everywhere and he’s almost, I can hardly describe it, he’s howling.
And then, I don’t know, there’s a million people coming toward us, and Phil’s in the lead. He leaps on Sylvie’s father’s back and they go down, and then I can’t see a thing except for a whole bunch of feet and rolling backs. Marie pulls my chair out of the way and she sits down, hard, on the curb and sighs. “Nice friends you have,” she says. And then she stands up and puts one hand on my head. Her hand runs along my bald scalp, feeling the bones of my skull. She bends down and looks, real close, at my eyes.
I can feel it, her staring. There’s no mask now. And I know that I got no eyebrows and no eyelashes and that I look like a reptile. And I know she’ll be completely disgusted and she’ll never, ever put her mouth or her hands on me again.
Marie reaches down and touches one finger to my wrist. My hospital bracelet is right there, out of hiding. She’s real quiet, and then she says, in this scared kind of voice I never want to hear again, “Jesus. Tell me it’s not AIDS, okay? Just tell me that.”
I want to close my eyes so I don’t have to see her, but I can’t. Got to meet people’s eyes, Mom always says. Look ’em in the eye. So I look right at her, round face, pink hair falling down now, spikes all slumpy. “Not AIDS. Cancer. Not catching. No worries.”
Doesn’t matter, catching or not, she backs away. “Oh, man,” she says. “I just . . .” She wipes her hand on her skirt. And then she’s gone. Running down the street, weaving between costumed people, her skirts pulled up and her strong legs churning.
***
Things blur. Sirens coming. Phil running, pushing my chair uphill, panting and grunting. Flashing lights. Phil turning, and we’re in an alley and we’re still moving fast, and then we’re two blocks from Warren Street, on a quiet side street, and Phil parks me behind some bushes in somebody’s front yard, and he leans over, holding his sides and groaning. “Shit,” he breathes. “I am too old for this.” He falls on his back onto the grass and lies there, his breath honking in his chest.
I feel strangely peaceful. I start to look around. This is a nice street; houses have pumpkins in their windows or on their porches. There’s no trick-or-treaters left; it’s late, I guess. Jeannette might be calling the police right now. Might have done it hours ago. I have no clue.
Phil’s breathing calms down and he sits up. He’s starting to laugh. “I hope you got some, Richard, me lad. Make it all worthwhile.” His face is smeared with blood, and his knuckles are cracked wide open. He opens and closes his hand a few times, testing it.
“I sure did, man,” I say. “Thanks.”
He nods. “Mission accomplished.” He sighs. “You want to go back there? That hospital? Or you want to go home? I can take you home, you know. We’re, what? Five, six blocks away? From where you and Sisco live these days?”
I hear the real question in his voice and I get it: he doesn’t know where we live. Mom doesn’t want him to know. I close my eyes and I can picture it, the tiny little house Mom finally was able to buy us two years ago. He’s right, it’s only about five blocks away, to the north and west. Another quiet street, bitsy little ranch houses in bitsy little yards. But for Mom, it’s a huge accomplishment, that house. It’s huge. She bought it, fair and square, on her own. All by herself. My room is about eight feet by eight feet, hers not much more. But it’s got a little lawn and a little porch, and she planted flowers, and there’s a crab apple tree out back. It’s our sanctuary, she said once. Our safe place. It’s ours. Our house is something I think about a lot, sitting in my hospice room. Like how it’s so close and how I could walk there anytime. Or take a cab. I could go home, lie around my room. But then Mom would have to take care of me, and I think that’s way too hard, that this stuff should be left to the pros. Really.
And, anyway, Mom’s sick. I bet she’s in bed by now, wrapped in her old quilt and finally asleep after the trick-or-treaters. Last thing she needs? Phil and me, all messed up, knocking on her door.
“Hospital,” I say. “Don’t want to get Jeannette in trouble.”
It is a long hard climb, uphill all the way. I’m too beat to help. It’s all on Phil. And he manages, in short spurts with long rests. Give the man credit—he gets me back to Richie’s World, almost safe and almost sound.
7
I WON’T EVEN TRY to describe the scene back at the hospital, it’s so dark-edged and foggy in my head. I remember that the first thing I saw when Phil pushed my chair into the ER entrance and said good-bye, backing and bowing away, was the clock. It said 12:24. Not even Halloween anymore. Now it’s All Souls’ Day, I thought. I remember that. Or All Saints’ Day. Whatever. I can’t roll myself another inch. Can’t get to an elevator, can’t do one single thing. I just sit there. I might even be crying, I’m so tired. No, let’s be honest: I am crying.
It all got kind of wild, I heard afterward, but at the time, I just drifted off to sleep. The ER staff, they read my bracelet and put me on a stretcher and got me back to the hospice unit. They understand the meaning of No intervention. Good people, those ER folks.
So I’m sent back to my floor where, Edward tells me the next day, Jeannette was a complete and utter basket case, she was so scared. She was shaking and crying and she called him in early to take over her shift since she couldn’t see straight. But, lucky thing, she didn’t call the cops or my mother or anyone else, she was so afraid she’d lose her job. She just paced around, cursing the name of Philip Casey up and down the corridor.
Here we are, All Souls’ or Saints’ morning, and Edward’s got his hand on my pulse and he’s mad, I can feel it. I’m lying flat on my back and keeping my eyes closed, but I can feel heat in his hand. “She curse my name?” I ask.
“Same name, Mr. Casey. Same name.” Edward drops my wrist and bends over, putting a hand on my chest. “You listen to me, Richie. You almost got a good nurse fired. You scared that poor woman to death. You can’t do things like that. You . . .” Then he sighs. There’s a long sort of pause, then he says, quiet, like he almost can’t believe he’s saying it, “You got to grow up, man.”
And, you know, couple days ago, way back on Cabbage Night, I’d have laughed at that. But today, it makes a sort of sad sense. M
ight be something to think about, if I get a minute. But I can’t think. All I can do is sleep. All day. I sense people walking in and out of the room, I hear them talking. I hear my phone ring, a lot. Finally, a nurse answers it and talks, low and calm, to my mom. Couple of times, I go to pull up my blue star blanket, I’m so cold. But it’s not there. Somebody brings in a white hospital blanket and puts it over me. People stand around the bed, whispering.
But it’s all part of a dream. I know that, because Marie is there, too. She’s part of a crowd. A whole bunch of people I don’t know, some of them in weird clothes, costumes maybe. Everybody’s drinking, smiling. It’s some kind of big party. Mom’s there. She looks young and happy, and there’s some guy with her, a guy I don’t know, laughing and putting his hand on her neck. I know, in the dream, that I’m not born yet, that Mom hasn’t got a care in the world. I’m not exactly me, not yet. I’m just, like, about to be. Hard to explain. I’m, like, there, watching, but I don’t exist. Like I say, it’s hard to explain.
I don’t wake up, really, until it’s dark outside. And when I do, it’s Sylvie who’s sitting next to my bed, all curled up on the lounge chair. I sit up, try to pull myself together. She’s grinning. “Oh, man,” she says. “You are so cool, Richie. You got out. You are, like, the hero of hospice. I even heard those two old men in 304 laughing about it. ‘Kid got out,’ they kept saying. ‘Damned if he didn’t.’”
I shake my head. I mean, here’s a weird thing: I have never, ever been cool. Not even close. Never in my whole life. Ever.
Sylvie stands up, wobbly on her feet. I notice that she’s dressed, wearing some kind of black top and jeans. They’re about four sizes too big, but she’s trying. She’s got this funny little green striped hat on her head and she’s wearing lipstick. She leans over my bed and puts her lips right next to my ear. “Richie,” she says, clear as can be, “Richie, I don’t want to be a virgin anymore. Okay?” She backs up. “Okay?”
I just stare at her.
She smiles. “You think about that. Okay? But not for too long.” She walks out, holding on to the door frame with one hand, steadying herself, walking on her own. She’s determined, anybody can see that.
Part II
NOVEMBER 1 - 3
8
SO NOW IT’S NIGHT and I can’t sleep. It’s real quiet; the harpy’s closed up shop for the day. Everyone else on the floor, I’m guessing, they’re deep in sleep. But me, I’m sitting up in bed, kind of quivering with extreme wakefulness, my brain leaping. The excitement and surprise are just too much. I mean, I got a prospect that I never, ever saw coming: a girl—cool girl, pretty girl, popular girl—who wants me to be her first. As in, FIRST. My studly services have actually been solicited. I am not going to have to beg to even touch the girl, my usual MO. No, no, this time I have been formally invited. As in, Your Presence as Official Deflowerer Is Requested. (Bring Your Own Tool.)
Add this to the incontrovertible fact that just about twenty-four hours ago, I received my first—and please, please, please not last—blow job. Or something like it, anyway. Okay, so I’m inflating in my mind, big-time, I know that. Still, it happened, without one minute of pleading on my part. I mean, it was offered, man. Free and easy. Suddenly, I’m one hot dude. See, this is why it’s cool to be alive, no matter what. It’s all about surprises, the whole you-never-know thing, which really is turning out to be true. There is just no way in the whole wide world that I could have guessed, two days ago, that any of this was coming my way. What are the chances: seventeen-year-old virgin boy meets fifteen-year-old virgin girl in hospice, and they fall in love and/or lust, do the do—and meanwhile this ultrasexy boy gets his first bj, or whatever, on the side? Really, all of this in hospice where, believe me, this is not the norm. I mean, me and Sylvie, everybody, we’re here because we got the Big Diagnosis: one month or less. You arrive and thirty days later, you either go home or Go Home. And yet. And yet, I am suddenly in full-swing, in-demand, hot-guy heaven. This does not compute, children. All I keep thinking, in my maturest mode, is Holy Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But just to make sure that all of this sudden uplift in my sex life doesn’t make me forget that I do still have SUTHY Syndrome, I get to see Sylvie’s father pacing the hall, making his umpteenth turn past my room. Never for a moment should I forget that Somebody Down Here hates me, too. Every time the man passes, he slows down and glares through the window in my door. His face is all dark and blotchy, bruised and cut, and it hangs there in the window like a bad moon rising, I swear. I close my eyes and feign sleep, but I can still feel his Evil Eye trained right on the center of my forehead. The beam of fury strikes like a bullet: POW. Finally, just before midnight, when the man has passed and repassed my room a million times, I can’t take it anymore and I ring for a nurse.
It’s poor old Edward, who’s been pressed into doing, like, a triple shift. I mean, the dude looks so beat that I feel healthy in comparison. He’s been bathing and lifting and medicating and who knows what all since seven A.M., taking the seven A.M. to three P.M. shift, then the three to eleven, and for some reason, is still here. His shoulders are bowed, I’m telling you, and his uniform is all wrinkled and stained with about eight best-left-unnamed substances. I feel sorry for bothering him, especially since he’s still trying to be cheerful and reasonably professional even when it’s clear that’s a huge stretch of human patience.“What’s up, young Richard?” he asks.
“Nothing much,” I say. “I’m feeling better, actually. I just need help getting out of bed, okay? Can’t sleep. Can I hang with you guys for a while?” They let me sit at the nurses’ station some nights, when things are quiet. There’s some laughing there, usually, and some fat-full, salt-heavy, sugar-laden, unhealthy snacks for those who choose to eat. Some company for the sleepless, at least. Nurses, they get the middle-of-the-night blues, too. How could they not?
“Oh, sure, like you deserve privileges.” His eyebrows pull together. Then he sighs. “Okay, fine. We could use some cheering up.” He grabs my chair and hoists me into it.
I shouldn’t ask. Should never ask around here. But I can’t help it. “Who?”
Edward steers the wheelchair so I can see into room 304, the room that the two ancient dudes share—well, shared. Past tense. The bed by the window is all neatly made up, empty. The curtains are pulled around the other one.
“Oh, no,” I say. “Did one of those guys actually die while the other one was right there in the room? I mean, isn’t that against regulations?” I mean, really. Usually they hustle the actually—as in right-now, today, this minute—dying folks into private rooms for family privacy and to prevent roommate trauma. The least they can do, don’t you think? Give everybody some breathing space for those last breaths.
He gives a snort. “Let’s just say it’s frowned upon. But sometimes, we don’t know. Thought the man was taking a longish sort of nap, but got busy. Missed what was happening, like a total fool.”
At the nurses’ station, I can see that everyone’s down. They’re all just subdued. There’s a Br’er there and two aides, along with Edward and me and a nurse I don’t know. She’s the kind that wears a stiff white cap bobby-pinned to her hair, and the white cap has one of those black velvet ribbons running across it. That kind of cap always spells trouble, in my experience. The cap sits on top of a helmet of gray hair. She’s got supervisor and reports written all over her. She looks at me hard, like I’m some strange beast and she’s pissed off that I’ve escaped from my cage, but then she glances at Edward’s tired face and doesn’t say anything, just makes a tsking sound with her tongue. I can tell that this group is going to bring me down from my sex-happy high, big-time. “Going for a drive, daddio,” I say to Edward. “Don’t wait up.” I wheel myself off down the hall.
First stop, Sylvie’s room. If I can see in, maybe I’ll know that her father’s given up prowling and has crashed on his little cot. Or gone off to drink in a local bar, like he always seems to do once Sylvie’s asleep. I ease up
to the doorway, hands on wheels, ready for a quick reverse should the man be in there, like some grizzly bear in his cave, protecting his young. The door’s open, and I lean in. The cot is empty. There’s a big half-moon hanging outside one of the windows. I roll farther in, quiet as a paraplegic mouse. I park myself just at the foot of Sylvie’s bed.
The room smells girly-sweet. There’s a big bunch of pink roses in a vase by the bed. The little night-light over her bed is on—it’s never really dark around here. I can see the shape of Sylvie in the bed, curled on her side under a sheet. I focus on the curve of what I assume is her hip and get a big lump in my throat. I know, I know: a big lump in my crotch would be more promising. But that’s not happening at the moment. I’m not sure it ever will with Sylvie. Partly because she’s sick, partly because she’s fierce. Partly because her old man would fry my ass. But mostly because I got this deep sense that she is so far out of my league that I’m dreaming if I think my lips might ever touch hers. Like they wouldn’t even match, you know? Her private-school, smart-girl, good-family, college-prep lips are just not the same shape as mine. Like we’re different species. I roll over to the bulletin board and check out, in the iffy moon/ hospital light, all the pictures her mother has put there, like I got to make sure, like maybe she wasn’t so gorgeous and perfect back in her other life.
Somebody Up There Hates You Page 6