“Anyone can give a hug. I can get a hug from the doorman.”
“Then do,” she says. “I need to be married to someone who is like a potted plant, someone who needs nothing.”
“Water?”
“Very little, someone who is like a cactus or an orchid.”
“It’s like you’re refusing to be human,” I tell her.
“I have no interest in being human.”
This is information I should be paying attention to. She is telling me something and I’m not listening. I don’t believe what she is saying.
I go to dinner with Eric and Enid alone.
“It’s strange,” they say. “You’d think the cancer would soften her, make her more appreciative. You’d think it would make her stop and think about what she wants to do with the rest of her life. When you ask her, what does she say?” Eric and Enid want to know.
“Nothing. She says she wants nothing, she has no needs or desires. She says she has nothing to give.”
Eric and Enid shake their heads. “What are you going to do?”
I shrug. None of this is new, none of this is just because she has cancer—that’s important to keep in mind, this is exactly the way she always was, only more so.
A few days later a woman calls; she and her husband are people we see occasionally.
“Hi, how are you, how’s Tom?” I ask.
“He’s a fucking asshole,” she says. “Haven’t you heard? He left me.”
“When?”
“About two weeks ago. I thought you would have known.”
“I’m a little out of it.”
“Anyway, I’m calling to see if you’d like to have lunch.”
“Lunch, sure. Lunch would be good.”
At lunch she is a little flirty, which is fine, it’s nice actually, it’s been a long time since someone flirted with me. In the end, when we’re having coffee, she spills the beans. “So I guess you’re wondering why I called you?”
“I guess,” I say, although I’m perfectly pleased to be having lunch, to be listening to someone else’s troubles.
“I heard your wife was sick, I figured you’re not getting a lot of sex, and I thought we could have an affair.”
I don’t know which part is worse, the complete lack of seduction, the fact that she mentions my wife not being well, the idea that my wife’s illness would make me want to sleep with her, her stun gun bluntness—it’s all too much.
“What do you think? Am I repulsive? Thoroughly disgusting? Is it the craziest thing you ever heard?”
“I’m very busy,” I say, not knowing what to say, not wanting to be offensive, or seem to have taken offense. “I’m just very busy.”
My wife comes home from work. “Someone came in today—he reminded me of you.”
“What was his problem?”
“He jumped out the window.”
“Dead?”
“Yes,” she says, washing her hands in the kitchen sink.
“Was he dead when he got to you?” There’s something in her tone that makes me wonder, did she kill him?
“Pretty much.”
“What part reminded you of me?”
“He was having an argument with his wife,” she says. “Imagine her standing in the living room, in the middle of a sentence, and out the window he goes. Imagine her not having a chance to finish her thought?”
“Yes, imagine, not being able to have the last word. Did she try to stop him?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” my wife says. “I didn’t get to read the police report. I just thought you’d find it interesting.”
“What do you want for dinner?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat something.”
“Why? I have cancer. I can do whatever I want.”
Something has to happen.
I buy tickets to Paris. “We have to go.” I invoke the magic word, “It’s an emergency.”
“It’s not like I get a day off. It’s not like I come home at the end of the day and I don’t have cancer. It goes everywhere with me. It doesn’t matter where I am, it’s still me—it’s me with cancer. In Paris I’ll have cancer.”
I dig out the maps, the guide books, everything we did on our last trip is marked with fluorescent highlighter. I am acting as though I believe that if we retrace our steps, if we return to a place where things were good, there will be an automatic correction, a psychic chiropractic event, which will put everything into alignment.
I gather provisions for the plane, fresh fruit, water, magazines, the smoke hoods. It’s a little-known fact, smoke inhalation is a major cause of death on airplanes.