Perfect Strangers

16

I try to write,but my muse is in a snit and refuses to show up. So I spend a few hours cleaning the apartment, trying as best I can to keep busy and keep thoughts of James from invading my head.

I’m more successful at one than the other.

After the apartment is spotless, I occupy myself with a trip to the corner store. I come home with enough cheese to last several lifetimes and a poufy baguette so large it could double as a futon. I have to wrestle it through the front door.

Finally, I give up, go into the master bedroom, and flop onto the bed, where I spend hours spacing out and staring at the ceiling, occasionally thinking about my work in progress but mostly about James.

I must doze off, because when the house phone on the nightstand rings sometime later, I jerk upright in a panic. Disoriented, I look around.

The light has changed. The afternoon sun paints glowing golden streaks along the walls. For a moment I don’t recognize where I am, but the insistent ringing of the phone finally tugs me back into reality.

“Hello?”

“Babe, it’s me.”

Yawning, I rub a fist into my eye. I gave Kelly the house number on our last call, because it might be several days until I can get my cell fixed or buy a new one if the old one’s too far gone. “Hey.”

“You sound like you were sleeping.”

The somberness of her tone makes me pause for a beat. “And you sound like you have bad news.”

“I do.”

My stomach tightens. My pulse starts to pound. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and grip the phone tighter. “Oh God. James is in the mob, isn’t he?”

Kelly sighs, and it sounds sad. “No, babe. He’s not in the mob. Nothing like that.”

“He’s married.” If she says, yes, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.

“No.”

When she stays silent too long, I break. “Jesus, Kelly, what the hell is it? I’m dying over here!”

“Let me start with the good stuff. Your boyfriend’s got great credit. He pays his taxes on time. He’s clean as far as the law is concerned: no felonies, criminal history, outstanding warrants, blah, blah, blah.”

I’m breathless with impatience. “Yes? And?”

She clears her throat. “He grew up in San Francisco. Got a scholarship to the Art Institute in Chicago, then continued his education at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.”

So he’s an American, like me. Why are my hands shaking? “What else?”

“Do you want to know how much he’s got in his bank account? Because I was surprised how loaded he is, considering the whole starving artist stereotype—”

“Kelly! No, I don’t want to know how much money he has! I want to know whatever it is you’re stalling to get to!”

After a beat, she answers. “He’s got ALS.”

I frown, searching my memory for any clues about what ALS is, but come up empty. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

I can tell by the tone in her voice that it’s bad, but I don’t know exactly how bad until she adds, “You know, the thing the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking died of.”

I picture the shrunken and twisted figure of a man in a motorized wheelchair. A man completely paralyzed, who cannot speak, move, or do anything independently. A man trapped in a useless body, but with the full capacity of his brilliant brain.

A man entombed in his own flesh.

I gasp in horror, then clap my hand over my mouth.

“I’m sorry, babe. I know that’s a lot. Especially after…after everything you’ve already been through.”

“Are you sure?” I whisper.

“Unfortunately, yes. When Mike didn’t find anything in James’s credit or criminal records, he decided to look into his medical history in case he had herpes or something worse he might be trying to hide from you. He was diagnosed last year. Apparently, he’s been involved in several clinical trials.”

Oh sweet Jesus, that’s why he had to go to Germany. “What’s the prognosis for this disease? Is the progression slow? Is there a cure?”

Kelly’s voice grows quiet, but her words kick me right in the gut. “There’s no cure. It’s always terminal. Most people die within three to four years of being diagnosed.”

It makes sense now. It all makes perfect, awful sense.

James’s elusiveness. His melancholy. How he said he doesn’t have time for small talk, and that sometimes ignorance is the wiser choice. His strange intensity. His portraits of people in pain.

His obsession with death.