Houndy stirs next to me, moaning a little bit in his sleep. Then he sits up and does that epic throat-clearing thing he does every morning, making barking and snorting noises, so loud that they could stop traffic. It always makes me laugh, like Houndy is composed only of phlegm and old tobacco products from his misspent youth, when I happen to know for a fact that he is made of seawater and strong coffee and lobster claws.
I reach over and rub his back when he’s finished, and he turns and gives me a look I can’t quite read, which is weird because I can read all of Houndy’s looks. Always have been able to. He’s the least mysterious man on the planet, which is why it’s worked so well between us.
He is looking at me. “You’re not going to get well, are you?”
“I don’t know. I suppose there could still be a miracle. Anything can happen.”
“It’s getting bigger. You gave your tumor a name, and now it’s bigger. Don’t you think maybe you gave it too much love? You encouraged it.” Then he shakes his head. “Listen to me, talking like this. Like any of this is really real. Blix! Why the hell couldn’t you have used all your . . . whatever . . . your power to stop this from happening?”
“Oh, Houndy baby, everybody eventually has to make their transition, and I’ve done what I could, but maybe we have to face it that Cassandra is the way I’m meant to go. Come over here, you big old lug, and let me love on you for a minute.”
He says no but then he scootches over and holds on to me. I’ll bet he was a fine specimen when he was young, because he still has the strongest, broadest shoulders and the softest little earlobes and the reddest cheeks and a light in his eyes that you don’t find on most humans today.
One time he said to me, “You know, I had a great six-pack when I was young,” and I said to him, “Bragging about beer is so unbecoming for an old man.”
The truth is that he is still a beautiful man.
“Why do you want to leave me?” he says, his voice all choked up, and I can’t speak for a minute. I just rub his back in circles, closing my eyes tightly and drinking him in—the smell of him, the way his muscles ripple underneath my hands, the labored breathing that comes out of him in bursts.
This, I think, is my life. I am living my life. Right now. This is the moment that we have.
I stroke his head and look deeply in his eyes. There is no answer. I don’t want to leave him, but I believe we all create our own reality, so I must have planned this. I can’t figure it out, why it went down this way, and it hurts to try, to tell you the truth. I just know that some ailments aren’t meant to be healed, and that Houndy and I—and Marnie, too, and everybody that I know—are engaged in some kind of dance of our souls and we are here to help each other. So I tell him this, and he kisses me, and then in his regular voice he says I’m his very favorite lunatic, and maybe I could do a spell to make the lobsters simply jump out of the sea so he doesn’t have to haul them in today for the party, how would that be; and maybe while I’m at it, I could do a spell that his back would stop hurting, and that we would both live forever here in this perfect little brownstone that threatens every day to fall down around us but so far hasn’t.
“Okay, I’ll try to get the lobsters to come right to you,” I say. “And I also have another new project, that I didn’t tell you about yet. But I need to tell you.”
“I hope it’s you staying alive.”
“Sssh. I think Marnie and Patrick are supposed to be together. I’m working on that.”
He pulls away just slightly. “Marnie and Patrick? Are you out of your mind?”
“No, she’s right for Patrick. I’m convinced of it. They’re supposed to be together. That’s what all this has been about, Houndy. All of it. My meeting Marnie at the party. Patrick coming to live here in the first place. Who knows how far back this goes?”
“Oh, no,” he says. “What are you doing this for? Blix! You can’t possibly want to torment poor Patrick any more than he’s already been tormented.”
“Torment? Love is not torment,” I tell him firmly. “Trust me. These two are a match. I knew it the moment I saw her, but I just didn’t know I knew it.”
“Blix.”
“Houndy.”
“He doesn’t want love. He’s hurt.” He gets up out of bed, pretending to be all grouchy. “Patrick just wants to be left alone.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said to me. Everybody wants love, and the ones who appear to want it the least actually need it the most. Remember when you first came to me? Huh? Remember that? You didn’t know you wanted love.”
“Yeah, but, with all due respect to your matchmaking ways, let’s not overlook that Marnie married Noah. What about that? He’s the one she wants.”
“Well, she did marry him. But he’s left her. The universe works in mysterious ways, Houndy, and I know what I’m doing. You just have to trust me.” I hug myself and laugh.
He starts waving his hands in the air around his head, like there are gnats bothering him. He can only go so far with this kind of talk. And sure enough, he’s pulled his clothes on by now, and he goes to the bedroom door to leave, grousing again about how he has to go get the lobsters, and I remind him that Harry said he’d get the lobsters, and then I say, “Okay, you. I think you need to come back to bed for some special attention.”
“Blix. I don’t wanna.”
“Oh, Houuuuuuuundy . . .”
“No.”
“Ohhhhhhh, Houuuuuuuundy . . .”
“No, no, no.” But he is standing at the bedroom door again, trying to hide his smile.
I waggle my fingers, like I’m sending over some fairy dust. I crook my finger at him. “Houndy, Houndy, Houndy!”
“Damn it, Blix. What are you doing to me?”
“Youuuu knooooow.”
He comes over to the bedside, and I reach over and lift up his shirt, and unbutton the cargo pants he’s just buttoned up.
“Blix, it—it’s not going to . . . ohhhhh!” And then he comes down onto the bed, tumbling really, and he’s laughing in surprise, so I roll him over and put my nose right up to his, and then—and this is an effort, let me tell you—I hoist myself up on top of him, and sit there, straddling him. And slowly, slowly the light comes back into Houndy, and he gives himself over to me. It’s almost like that moment when you’re sautéing mushrooms, and they give up, yield themselves to you, and the alchemy is complete.
That’s Houndy and me, making love. Mushrooms in a pan.
Like we’ve done for so long, thick and thin, sickness and health, all that. You never know which time is going to be the last time.
He wasn’t my first love, or second, third, fourth, or maybe even thirty-fourth. But Houndy, as I’ve come to see—simple, uncomplicated, straightforward Houndy—is the love of my life.
And when I tell him so, he squeezes his eyes shut tight, and when he opens them again, the light of his love nearly blinds me.
Lola comes over to help me get ready for the wake. I’m washing bowls and trays while she unpacks the streamers and tiaras and confetti left over from our last bash early in the summer.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Somehow I don’t think streamers are quite appropriate for a wake, now are they?”
“Everything should be appropriate. I’m changing the rules of wakes, remember? I’m going out with a bang. Streamers and whatever else. I personally will be wearing a tiara and I hope you will, too. I’d like to die in a tiara, as a matter of fact.”
She turns and smiles at me sadly. “Ah, Blix, you’re not dying. I’ve seen people who are about to die, and they’re nothing like you. They’re not washing bowls for a dinner party, for one thing. And they’re not thinking about sex.”
“Oh dear, did you hear us?”
“Did I hear you? Are you kidding me? Damn straight, I heard you. I was walking outside on the sidewalk, and I thought, that Houndy sounds like—wait, is that why he’s called Houndy? It is, isn’t it? He baaaaays like . . . Oh!” She b
ursts out laughing.
“That’s it. He’s an old hound dog.”
“God, I miss that.”
“Sex? Do you, really?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Really really?”
“I said yes. But it’s been so long, it would probably kill me. It’d be like sandpaper down there.”
“Oh, that’s no excuse. They have stuff for that now. At the drugstore. And you could be having sex, you know. You know you could.” I can’t resist saying it. “And speaking of which, how come you’re not telling me about that guy who comes and picks you up? He would sleep with you in an instant.”
“Oh, him.” Her face goes cloudy. “You sent him, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. Not him, per se. I don’t even know who he is. I just put out in the universe that you needed somebody to love again. So tell me why you’re so secretive about him.”
“You want to know the truth?”
“Yes, damn it. You tell me everything, except now suddenly you’re keeping this man all to yourself. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how mean you’re being.”
“Well, I haven’t told you this because I don’t want you making a big deal out of it. Putting all your magic dust all over it. He’s a friend, okay? From the past. Nothing more than that.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. The truth is, I did concentrate real hard on having her find someone who could win her trust, someone she’d perhaps known from before, because Lola is a little bit cowardly when it comes to meeting new men. I wrote journal entries; I did chanting; I threw the I Ching coins. I did a couple of spells just for good measure. And I sent prayers out into the universe. It’s all a mix.
“See? There you go, doing it again. Matchmaking when there’s nothing there. Sorry. Just wishful thinking this time, Blix.”
I simply smile.
Just before the wake starts, Patrick sends word that he can’t come. He’s feeling pugly, he says.
Pugly. This is code for Patrick thinking he’s too ugly to be in polite company. It’s the word we use between ourselves. Patrick isn’t just shy, it’s that he has a disfigurement, you see—a scarred face and a jaw displacement. He was once in a fire when his kitchen exploded due to a gas leak, and in one instant he went from being relatively handsome and well-adjusted, he said, to being a hideous beast. His word for himself, not mine, because the light that shines out from Patrick’s eyes transforms his face. You see that light, and you don’t even know about his jaw and his skin, which is stretched so tight in places that it’s almost translucent. His light makes you forget all that.
But that’s how he describes himself, as a hideous beast because he is the only one who can’t see that light, and periodically I have to go down to Patrick’s apartment, which he keeps dark and musty smelling, and also it’s filled with old computers and one grouchy cat, and I sit down there with him and try to tell him about the light that other people see in him and also that he has a soul that anyone would love.
He breaks my heart, Patrick does. He promised he would come to the Blix Out.
“I’m going down to see him,” I tell Houndy and Lola, and they exchange a look, but nobody tries to stop me. I put on my long spangled skirt, and Lola helps me zip it up over Cassandra, and then I put on the purple tunic and the shawl that has the lace and the mirrors sewn everywhere, even on the fringe. Lola fluffs up my hair, which is sticking up everywhere—and off I go, trundling down the stairs, down to Patrick’s lair.
“I can’t do it today, Blix,” he calls from the other side of the door when I knock.
“Sweetie, I need you to come to my wake,” I say. “Just open the door a little crack. I have something I need to tell you.”
After a while, I hear about five locks being unlatched, and then he lets me into the apartment, and I go tromping around, and I open all the shades and turn on lights. He’s standing there in the darkness, wearing what he always tells me is his work uniform: baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt, way too big. He’s a thin, waifish guy now, somebody who would barely leave a shadow, and that’s what he intends, I think, to waste away until he’s just a smear in the world, as small as a piece of gum you’d see on the sidewalk. He can’t be loved anymore, he told me once, so now he doesn’t want to bother anybody. He has some horrible job, writing about diseases and symptoms, and so he’s steeped in troubles and doesn’t want to bother the people of the world with his yawning, gaping need. I get this, I do.
“Patrick,” I say. “Honey.”
“I can’t do it. Listen, I love you and I think it’s fantastic that you’re doing this amazing party—”
“It’s not just an amazing party, as you call it. It’s a wake. An Irish wake.”
“Whatever it is, but you don’t want me there having a panic attack. I’d ruin the whole mood.”
“We’ll stick together. We can do our dance, and then you won’t need to panic.” One time, when it was just the two of us, we made up a dance in which we wore hats that we pulled down until they nearly covered our faces, and then we threw them up in the air. We might have been drunk when we invented that dance, but we could be drunk again, I tell him. I pick his Hawaiian shirt out of his closet, which contains exactly three shirts, all meticulously hung up and evenly spaced.
“You look devastating in this shirt, and you know you do. So you can put on that and your straw hat, and we’ll dance and drink. People need you there. If you’re not there, I’ll have to answer the question all night long: Where is Patrick? Where’s Patrick? Think of how that’s going to be for me. It’s going to ruin my whole evening having to explain your absence.”
He just keeps looking at me sadly and shaking his head.
“Patrick,” I say. “Honey. We can’t undo the scars and the burns. We can’t go back to that day, so we just have to figure out how to move forward from it.”
I go over and gently touch his face, touch the place on his cheek that is nearly sunken in, and the smooth, bright part near his eye where the skin was stretched taut. I take his hand and hold on to it.
He is silent, unmoving, while I do this. A praying mantis of a man.
“Can’t we find a way together to be in the world in spite of the fire?”
He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. And I take his hand, and very carefully, slowly, drag it over to Cassandra, where she is resting beneath my shirt, and I lift my shirt ever so gently, and place his hand on this ball of tumor that even Houndy doesn’t want to look at or touch. I wrap his hand around Cassandra, and I tell him her name. I am terrified that he will pull away, that he’ll recoil, that I’ll see the horror in his eyes before he turns away.
Instead, what flickers across his face is compassion. He doesn’t move his hand. He says, “Oh, Blix,” like a slow exhale.
“We are all broken,” I say to him. “And we all still have to dance.”
He sucks his breath in. “I scare children, for God’s sake.”
“And yet we still have to dance.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Also. I didn’t want to have to bring out the big guns here, but I think this really is a wake. I think tonight is the night I’m going to die.”
“Damn it, Blix. What are you talking about?”
“I have some evidence I’m not going to go into. But I’m just saying you might want to come and hang out. Otherwise, I’ll have to haunt you for the rest of time.”
And then I kiss him and kiss him, kiss all the scarred-over parts of his face, kiss his eyelids and his forehead, and then I go back upstairs, and I am not surprised—not a bit surprised—when an hour later he shows up to the party, and we slow dance together, him in his Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants and me in my spangles and sequins, with Cassandra bouncing around like a baby in a pouch.
The tiki torches by then are bright flames against the dark night sky, and people are gathered around the fire pit, where Houndy is cooking the lobsters he and Harry somehow got from the sea today. Jessica comes out with pots of melted butter,
and Sammy, recently returned from his visit to his father, is playing his guitar in the corner. There are clusters of people everywhere, people playing music and people just talking, and oh, so many people, and Lola is bobbing here and there, putting out platters of things, pouring more wine. There’s a keg in the corner, and Harry is pumping it like it’s a musical instrument.
I am twirling around in the middle of everything—very slowly, very gently—and I am smiling when it happens. Smiling, as if life is just going to continue in this iridescent way, and I will always be a body, and Houndy will always have a body, and we have time for so many more wakes before the very end comes.
But no. There’s a sudden commotion next to the fire pit, and at first I think too many people are trying to put too much wood on it. But no—somebody is down on the ground, and others are gathered around, and somebody says, “Quick! Call nine one one!”
Lola turns to find me, and when our eyes meet, I know the very worst has happened. “Houndy,” she mouths to me.
And it’s true. I push through the crowds, and there he is. My Houndy.
Lying on the ground on his back and he is not breathing, and by the time I get there he is already dead, but no one knows that yet, only I know it because I see his spirit leaving, and I can see his face growing more gray, the pink of him vanishing like a magician’s trick, and somebody pushes me aside and does CPR on him—for the second time, I’m told—and Houndy is gone from his body, but part of him is still there with me. I feel him leaving, feel him slipping away, but first he’s drifting around telling me he loves me, and then soon he’s small enough that he can fit in the folds of my shawl, where I will hold on to him forever.
People are all murmuring, the crowd is like a tide, bending and waving, and gathering and subsiding. There are hands on me, people trying to lead me away from him, and good luck to them, because I can’t be led anywhere. And then there is the sound of a siren, and the pounding of boots on the roof, as EMTs come and do their work, bending over him, coaxing him into coming back, trying to use their machines to persuade him. But he’s in my shawl, I want to tell them. He’s not where they can reach him, not really.
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