Silent Echo

“Jesus.”

“It happens,” I say. “It’s in the blood. I must have been chafed at the time. Like I said, too much sex.”

“But I thought AIDS was, you know, treatable these days. You know, Magic Johnson and all.”

“Sure,” I say. “Except when it’s not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do the doctors. Not really. It’s called AIDS-related cancer, and the connection is not completely understood, but the link probably depends on a weakened immune system. Had I just had AIDS, I would probably beat it. My AIDS was the prelude to my cancer.”

“And having AIDS…”

“There’s no fighting the cancer,” I say. “Although we tried.”

Months of radiation had proved fruitless. It had only proven to weaken me more.

“I’m sorry,” says Eddie.

“I’m sorry, too.”

We’re both silent. Numi’s silent, too, but he doesn’t count. He’s usually silent, especially when Eddie’s around. Numi, I think, was glad that Eddie disappeared. Showed his true colors, as Numi tells me. I watch a small, fat bird nibble on some fattening crumbs.

“Do you still see her?” Eddie asks me.

“The girl who gave me HIV?”

“Yes.”

I shake my head. “She lives with her family in Montana. Last I heard, she’s living a fairly normal life, just with HIV.”

What I don’t tell Eddie is that she doesn’t talk to me, which I find hard to believe. She’s ruined me, but I’m not worthy of a phone call?

She didn’t ruin you, asshole.

I know this. I have to take ownership of this. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do: taking responsibility for my AIDS. A hundred times a day, I’d wish I’d never met her, I'd wish I’d never pressed for sex, I'd wish I’d never developed a relationship with her, I’d wish the condoms had stayed on, I’d wish I hadn’t been so reckless.

I’d wished for a lot of things. Now I wish for nothing.

That’s the funny thing when you’re given a few months to live. You quit wishing. You quit hoping. You quit dreaming. There’s not enough time for dreams to come true, and if they did, there isn’t enough time to enjoy them.

Dreams are dead for me. Hope is dead. All I want is my morning latte.

The day isn’t half over and I’m already losing my strength. I need to sleep, and badly. A week ago, I could make it until evening. At this rate, I will soon not be able to even get out of bed.

Numi sees this. Numi sees everything. He’s always watching me, studying me, monitoring me. In Numi’s eyes, Eddie is wasting my time and energy, neither of which I have in spades. Although Numi has okayed this meeting for reasons I still do not comprehend, Numi doesn’t like the way things are progressing. I know this, because I know Numi, too. As well as he knows me.

“What do you need, Eddie?” asks Numi.

Eddie looks at him, blinks, and realizes for the first time that when you talk to me, you also talk to Numi. Eddie looks back at me, and seems to size me up again. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking, but it can’t be good.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he says.

“The man is on borrowed time,” says Numi, leaning forward. “Maybe we can waste a little more of it?”

Eddie is a smart guy and gets Numi’s drift: Get to the point or get the hell out of here.

“Right, sorry. Shit. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need your help, Jimmy. Wait, that didn’t come out right. I mean, I should have been here anyway. I’m a shitty friend.”

He is a shitty friend, but I don’t kick a man when he’s down. I look over at Numi, a very un-shitty friend. Numi is sitting back again, eyes half-closed, looking somewhere beyond the table and into eternity, for all I know.

“It’s okay,” I say.

My friend is acting strange. My friend is generally the picture of cool. Or, at least, that’s what he always projected in the past. Now, not so much. His eyes seem unhinged, moving around in his skull like a compass going apeshit. He’s having trouble focusing on any one thing. He runs his fingers through his greasy hair. I’ve never known Eddie to have greasy hair. The Eddie I remember cared a lot about his looks. Too much, perhaps. His knee is bouncing, too. I figure Eddie is either on something or something’s really wrong.

He finally nods to himself, looks down. Then he closes his eyes, which is probably a good idea since he can’t seem to focus on anything longer than a nanosecond. He takes in some air, holds it, and then says, “Olivia’s missing.”

I sit forward. Or try to. My sitting forward consists of a minor tremor that runs through my body, followed by virtually no movement at all. Sitting forward, or other such wasted movements, is a luxury for the healthy.

Even though I have not seen Olivia since my disease reared its ugly head, she had kept in touch with me via text or e-mail or even Facebook. Whether or not Eddie knew we kept in touch, I didn’t know or care. The e-mail exchanges were light and frivolous, rarely touching on anything heavy, other than she missed seeing me and was sorry I was going through what I was going through. Her concern seemed genuine, and I always appreciated hearing from her. I knew she cared about me and she knew I cared about her. That she never stopped by to see me was, I figured, more Eddie’s doing than hers.

“What do you mean by missing?” I finally ask.

Eddie looks from me to Numi and says, “It means I haven’t seen or heard from her in almost forty-eight hours.”

CHAPTER THREE

“What happened between you two in the forty-eight hours just before Olivia disappeared?” I ask. This information is important to any missing person investigation. I squelch down my sense of panic that Olivia is missing and turn on my private-eye persona. I give him my most serious no-bullshit glare.

He looks away. “Remember my friend Jewel?”

I do. I also remember that Eddie had cheated on Olivia with Jewel… on more than one occasion. How and why Olivia stays with him, I still don’t entirely know. But she has.

“I remember Jewel,” I say evenly.

My skin is burning now, actually reddening. Still, I don’t move my arm. The burning makes me feel alive, and, for all I know, this might be my last sunburn.

Numi stares impassively forward, but his attention is still on me, even if he isn’t looking directly at me. He is like a dog who keeps its ears directed towards its owner, ever alert for walks or treats or both. If I should make any movement, Numi’s eyes will snap around to me. So I make no movement. No indication that the sun is burning me. Numi would adjust the umbrella, or insist we sit inside. I enjoy the burning. I enjoy it more than I should.