Love and Will (19 page)

The shower's turned off. The singing's stopped. She's probably drying herself but she could also be shaving her underarms or legs. Saw both of those once or twice too. Today she left the shade up a couple of inches, but it's not dark enough outside yet to look. Not dark at all. Anyway, he shouldn't be sneaking looks. Maybe he should go out to buy a men's magazine. One with naked women, but which still has serious articles and maybe serious fiction in it. Photos showing everything, but of women alone or together rather than with naked men. He doesn't like to buy that kind of magazine, give a clerk money and sometimes have to get change back for it, walk home with it rolled up if he doesn't have an envelope or newspaper to put it in, or have it around the apartment. But about every three to four months, maybe two to three months is a closer estimation, he buys one, uses it in his own way, then tears it up after a couple of days and sticks the pieces deep into a garbage bag, makes sure they're covered with garbage, and drops the bag in one of the trash cans in front of his building. But he doesn't want to go out just to buy one of those magazines, though he wishes now he hadn't torn up the last one he bought.

He turns around and looks at the sky. Go out. See what's out there. Call Jill. Ask to speak to Esther. Go to a movie. Go to a bar. Go to a bookstore and buy a book whatever it costs. For the first time in your life, find a book you want very much to read but any other time you'd think way too expensive for you. If you haven't the cash, write a check. If they won't take a check, ask them to put the book aside, leave a deposit for it, go back to the apartment, and next day, or even tonight, if the store's still open and not too far away, get that book. Or just walk along the street. Walk to walk. Walk for exercise. For fresh air. To tire yourself out. Walk all the way downtown. Through the theater district. Past the Village to Lower Broadway. Go to several bookstores and bars and then cab home. Or call Jill and say you're sad and lonely and want to come back to her. “I want us to live as a family again,” say. “I love you,” say. “I love Esther. It's not that I can't live without you. It's that I don't want to. Living alone's killing me in a way. I sneak looks at the bathroom window across from my apartment. A woman showers there and I want to see her nude. I have seen her nude, she's bought a shade just to keep me from seeing her nude, but I often quickly turn my head to her window hoping the shade's up and she's standing there nude. I have these absurd fantasies about meeting her on the street and going to bed with her. I think about buying those awful men's magazines just to use the photos of naked women in them to alleviate my excitedness. My sexual frustration. My pent-up whatever it is that keeps getting more pent-up every day. I have bought those magazines, maybe every other month. I thought of Gretta today. I think of her a lot. Not in a sexual way. I'm sorry I linked those two subjects up like that. One coming after the other. Gretta and sex. Or rather those magazines and Gretta. But I think of her a lot. Those were good days then, the time when we knew her and she died. I mean, we were sad for her. It crippled us for a while. But we were happy with one another then, the time when we knew her and a little after the time she died. The two of us and the three of us, meaning the two of us when that's all there was of us and then with Esther, and you can't say we weren't. I know I had a bad temper. You can't say we weren't happy then. I know I was impossibly moody at times. But I'm getting to understand the reasons why I had those sudden swings of mood and also how to prevent them and I doubt I'll ever get like that again or at least as much.” Call and say all that. Or walk or take a cab acrosstown and ring her bell from the lobby and ask to come up. Then say it to her or as much as you think she can take for one time.

A plane's overhead. He looks out the window. The plane passes but not in the part of the sky he's able to see. Jill has a lover now. She's in love. They'll probably get married. That's what she's said. He's met him. Seems like a decent fellow. And tall, handsome, rugged, smart. Esther likes him too. Loves him in a little girl's way, Jill's said. He's wonderful and attentive and devoted to both of them, Jill's said, and when the three of them are together they get along exceptionally well. Go outside. Take that walk. Exhaust yourself walking so you'll sleep eight to ten hours straight. Have an exotic coffee outside, have brandies and beer, have a good dinner outside and then buy a book, or buy it before you have dinner, you never would have bought for yourself before and come home. He gets up to go. He hears a shade snapped up. Bathroom's? He looks at his ceiling, floor, slowly turns around to look at that woman's bathroom. It's the shaded room's shade that's up. It must have snapped up by accident. No one seems to be in the room. It's unlit. He goes up to his window and sees a mirror at the end of that room reflecting his building's roof and the light from the sky above it. Someone goes over to the mirror and looks into it. From behind it looks like Gretta. That's the way she looked from behind. He saw her walking away from him, from them, down her road, picking a blossom off a tree, berries off a bush, going into rooms, working in her kitchen, cooking there, putting away dishes there, putting seeds into the bird feeders around her house, snapping pictures, serving hors d'oeuvres, many times. Kind of short, round, hair like that. Shape like that. Way she's fussing with her hair now like that. Then a man, both are fully dressed, comes into view and walks up behind her and hugs her while they both look into the mirror, the man looking over her shoulder. He can't see their faces in the mirror. Their images are entirely blocked by their standing in front of the mirror. Then they turn around and come up to the window, the man with his hand on her shoulder. It's Ike and Gretta. Ike raises his hand to pull the shade down and sees him looking at them. Ike points to him, they stare at him. Gretta seems shocked, Ike amused. He says “Gretta, Ike, oh God, this is too wonderful. Tell me what apartment you're in and I'll run right over. I'm so lonely. I was till I saw you. On and off, I mean, and sad—you can't believe how much—on and off too. Jill and I are divorced. She's going to remarry, while I love her as much as I ever did. That was a lot, remember? but that's not news. Esther's just great. A truly exemplary child. Intelligent, beautiful, generous, precious, good; a real dear. We missed you so. We were devastated by your deaths. The untrue news of them, rather, for here you are. We both loved you so. Love you so, love you, and I know I can still speak for Jill on this. Seeing you now is the best thing that's happened to me in a year. In two, in three. Or come over here. I'm in number nine, apartment 5D. But I'll run over to your place because I know I can get there faster than you could here. Or maybe, with this shade business of Ike's—raising his hand to pull it down, it seemed like—and the look that was on both your faces, you had something else in mind and want me to wait here a half-hour or so. You can hear me through your closed window, can't you?”

He didn't go over to his window. He stood almost at the other end of his room, looking out his window from there. Shade on the window of the once shaded room did snap up, bathroom shade stayed down. He didn't see a mirror in that room. If there is one, and in the place he said there was, then he imagined it before he saw it, for so far he's been too far away from that room to see anything inside. The room's unlit, though. That he can see from where he stands. He goes over to his window and looks inside that room. There's a double bed, made, in there. A night table beside it. A lamp on the table. Ashtray next to the lamp. Radio beside the ashtray. Cup in a saucer on top of the radio. That's all he can see in the room. Spoon in the saucer. Maybe a crack in the wall but nothing's hanging on the part of the wall he can see. What will the tenant think when he or she, if there's only one, sees the shade up? That it snapped up on its own? That a stranger was in the room and let it up? But how will she or he pull it down? Will he or she allow him- or herself to be seen from a window across from that building? It's worth waiting for. Just to see the reaction of that person, if it can be seen, when she or he sees the shade up, and what kind of person lives there.

He moves the chair from the left side of his window to the right. He turns the chair around to the window and pushes it within inches of the window. He opens a bottle of wine, sits in the chair and drinks while he faces at an angle the now unshaded room. The day gets darker. He can see a big chunk of the sky from here. His phone hasn't rung, when he's been in his apartment, for almost two days. Stars come out. Two, three, then a few of them. The bathroom window shade stays down. The light in the bathroom goes on and off a few times in the next two hours. Twice it stayed on for only a few seconds, once for almost a half-hour. He finishes three-quarters of the bottle of wine, has to pee. It's now night. Many stars are out. He can see the moon's light but not the moon. The bathroom light hasn't been turned on for about an hour. If the bathroom is part of the same apartment as the bedroom, he's sure the woman who likes to shower would have walked into the bedroom by now. Or at least a door would have opened from the bathroom or some other part of the apartment—a hallway—into the bedroom and let some light into it by now. But no light's come in. A little light from the moon perhaps. But now the bedroom's almost black. He can't see anything inside it. He finishes off the bottle. Now he really has to go to the bathroom or he'll have to do it in his pants right here. Maybe into the bottle, but that would end up being a mess. He tries to hold it in. He doesn't want to miss that person or persons, if there is more than one person living in that apartment containing that room, discovering the shade up and then pulling it down. And he's certain it'll be pulled down. But he can't hold it in anymore and runs to the bathroom. He takes his watch off the dresser while he's there. The shade's still up and the bedroom's still dark when he gets back. An hour later he has to go to the bathroom again. He runs to it, pees, runs to the kitchen and gets a beer out of the refrigerator, runs back to the chair. Nothing's changed in that room. He opens the beer, sips, puts it down, wakes up in the chair and finds the shade down but the room still dark. He doesn't know how long he's been sleeping in the chair. He should take a walk. He looks at his watch. He can't make out the luminescent numerals and hands. He squints. Still can't make them out. He gets up and turns on the side table light. It's past two. That's hard to believe, he thinks. He should go to sleep. Maybe have a bite to eat from the food in the refrigerator and a slice of bread and then go to sleep. No, just take off your clothes, pull out the bed and go to sleep.

He gets a disease and suffers from it and dies. Before that Kirt visits him in the hospital several times. Once when Chris went in for tests to see what was giving him so much pain. Other times when he was in the hospital suffering from the disease the tests showed he had, and then the last time the day before he died. Kirt also visited him at home between the times he was in the hospital and also met him at a coffee shop once, but Chris got so sick there that Kirt had to take him to the hospital.

Chris was sitting up in bed the first time Kirt saw him in the hospital. He said “I know I'm very sick, even if they don't know what I got yet. But it's not in the head. Meaning it's not in my mind, because the truth is I think what I got's going to spread to my head. But that's not here nor there now. Right now I know I'm very sick in the liver, in the stomach—one of those organs around there and maybe a couple of them. I know it's going to kill me but I don't know when. I'm almost sure I won't be around in a year or so, and my real feeling is I won't last six months.”

Kirt told him “The worst thing you can do is diagnose yourself. That's what we have doctors and pathologists and people like that for. Ninety percent of the time the patient's wrong in his self-diagnosis. What I've heard is that about sixty to seventy percent of the time the results from the tests turn out to be much better than what the patient predicted they'd be and that about twenty percent of the time the results aren't as bad as the patient thought. It's fear that makes you think it's worse than it is. Just go through the tests, try not to worry about anything, don't build things way out of proportion, think you're going to get well and feel better and that what you have isn't so bad and in fact is nothing, and your chances of something not being wrong with you will greatly improve. It has something to do with the body's chemistry, I heard, but don't ask me to explain what exactly that is or how it works. All I know is that if you think positively about your health, you're already a few percentage points—maybe even ten to fifteen percentage points—better off than if you think the worst about your physical condition. And eat well, do what the hospital people say, sleep well—all of it adds a percentage point or two to your getting better and staying healthy from then on.”

“No,” Chris said. “I know it's bad, I know it's terminal, and I can't face it. Maybe if I had had years and years to get used to it, but coming so suddenly, I just don't have the courage to die.”

The next time Kirt saw him was at Chris's home. He said to Kirt “Well, I got the test results from the doctor this week and I turned out to be absolutely right. What I have is fatal. The word is that people with my disease and in the form it's taken and rapid way it's progressed, usually don't last a year. So, unless a miraculous cure's discovered in the next few months—and the researchers working on it aren't even close to one—I'm on my way out for sure. I can't face it. I'll never adjust to it. I'm going to get crazier and crazier in the head because of it. Long suffering and then death are the two things I fear most. What should I do? Tell me, you're smart—what should I do?”