Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

“To where?”

“To life. La vie.”

“Right. To life. To the ol’ bang and whimper show. You, as well, Domino! You’re okay! Bless your heart! The bastard didn’t . . . What happened? Bonjour, Pippi. I should say, Sister Pippi.” He indicated her garb. “Man, that was fast. How long was I out?”

“This is the tenth day.”

He sprang halfway up in bed, nearly severing the IV tube. “Ten days?!!” He was flabbergasted.

Gently Domino eased him back down onto the pillow. “Day before yesterday, you started mumbling in your sleep. The day before that, you fluttered your eyelids and wiggled your toes. The doctors were pretty sure you were going to come out of it. We’ve offered many, many prayers.”

“But what. . . ?” He ran his hand over his bandaged head. “I wasn’t shot, was I? It was the taboo.”

Domino smiled sympathetically. “You fainted,” she said.

By Domino’s account, it happened like this:

When the empty throne caused her to pause at the gazebo entrance, she had been informed that the Holy Father’s lunch had been unkind to him, and due to heartburn (“surely the breath of Satan”), he would be unable to keep his appointment. The pontiff sent blessings and regrets, and requested that she entrust “the paper of interest” to his aides.

Suspecting subterfuge, Domino refused. She asked for a postponement. She’d come back later with her abbess, she said. A small argument ensued. Eventually Scanlani took out his flip phone and punched in a number. He said that she could enjoy the rare privilege of speaking to the pope on the telephone. He said the pope would personally verify that he wished the envelope turned over to an aide. “How will I know it’s really him?” she had asked. Scanlani fired a short burst of Italian into the mouthpiece. The lawyer listened, he nodded. “He’ll wave to you,” he said. “The Holy Father will wave to you from his bathroom window. You will be able to see him up there, on the phone, talking to you. What an honor.”

As Domino, confused, was considering this, Scanlani held out the cell phone. “Go ahead. Speak to the Holy Father,” he said, holding the phone to her head. It was then that Switters had gone berserk.

“You broke a man’s arm. You yelled something obscene. You bounded out of your chair. But as soon as your feet touched the earth, you fainted.”

“It was Today Is Tomorrow. His curse. Wham! Hit me like a poison hammer. All the way from the Amazon.”

“I’m sorry,” she said soothingly. “You fainted.”

To keep himself from shouting, “Did not! Did not!”, he gazed out the window at the Marlboro Man. There was a fucking cowboy for you. Corporate puppet, believing he was free; brain full of testosterone, heart full of loneliness, jeans full of hemorrhoids, lungs full of tar.

“When you fell,” she said, “you hit your head on the edge of one of those old broken columns. Ooh-la-la! It was terrible. It sounded like a coconut cracking.” She turned to the freckled nun. “Darling, we’ve been remiss. Would you please go alert the medical staff that Mr. Switters has awakened.”

After Pippi left the room, Domino said, “We’re here in Salvator Mundi because the Vatican hospital refused to admit you. In fact, the Swiss Guard has a warrant for your arrest. Now, be calm. That American, that Mr. Seward, promised he wouldn’t let them touch you. And if he doesn’t stop them, I shall.”

The conviction with which she said this made him grin. And when he grinned, his head hurt. “So, I tanked and split my skull.”

“Yes, you did.” After a beat, she added, “You also chipped another tooth. I must tell you, I will not stand at the altar with you until you’ve spent some quality time with your dentist.”

He was startled. “At the altar, Domino? The altar? Does this mean you’ve decided that I’m not too . . . after all?”

“By no means,” she said. “You definitely are too. . . .” She lowered her lashes. She stared at the floor. When she smiled, it was as though a hurdy-gurdy ice cream truck, laden with thirty-one flavors, had followed that doughnut wagon into the scorched neighborhood. “But I think I might want to marry you anyway.”

Switters looked out of the window. To the Marlboro Man, he said, winking, “Hear that? Rimbaud wasn’t kidding, pal. Of course, it takes more than calluses and a cough to qualify as a fierce invalid.”

A doctor arrived and shooed the women out. Brandishing a penlight, he spent an inordinately long time staring into what some have called Switters’s fierce, hypnotic green eyes. He warned his patient that Italian immigration authorities were itching to get their hands on him, but, for the time being, the hospital would not permit it. He inquired if he was hungry, and Switters, licking his chops, commenced to recite the entire menu of Da Fortunato al Pantheon. Later, an orderly brought a covered bowl. Unlidded, it proved to contain a clear broth—but this being Italy, several meaty tortellinis bobbed in it like fat boys at the beach.

Early the next morning, the testing began, culminating in a 360-degree CAT scan. Considering what he’d experienced during his coma, maybe it ought to have been a parrot scan. A poet scan. An interlocutor scan. A guide-to-the-underworld scan. (Pronounce the Aztec word and win a free week at the Gene Simmons Tongue Clinic.)

Throughout the day, as he was being poked, probed, punctured, pricked, and positioned; even as he lay sweating in the claustrophobic culvert of the CAT scanner, Switters had one primary question on his mind. It wasn’t, What’s going to happen to me next? It wasn’t, Will I marry my nun and live happily ever after? But, rather, How did I survive the curse?

Perhaps it was psychosomatic, a self-fulfilling prophecy, but he had felt a massive jolt when his foot touched the ground. It was like being struck by lightning. Yet, it hadn’t killed him. Today Is Tomorrow wasn’t the type to do things in a half-assed way, and there was evidence that he didn’t make idle threats: consider poor Potney Smithe. Was this the shaman’s first attempt at a joke? No, as Potney might have put it, not bloody likely. Nevertheless, Switters had broken the taboo and escaped retribution. Why? Why hadn’t he died?

That evening, he got an answer.

Domino was allowed to visit him after dinner (risotto con funghi and tiramisu). She gave him a big kiss. Then she gave him a big envelope.

“What’s this? The prophecy?”

“No, no. The Vatican has the prophecy. I ended up giving it to them, even though I never got to see the pope at his bathroom window. What they will do with Fatima’s words, who can guess? I advised Scanlani that we have an interesting interpretation. He said he’d get back to me.” She smiled skeptically. “But they did reinstate us. Issued us new habits.”

Switters started to say, “There could be a slow-acting, skin-absorbed poison in the fabric”—but he caught himself. Hadn’t he subjected her to quite enough paranoia? Besides, she was still wearing a chador.

“The envelope is from your friend, Bobby Case. Oh, I forgot to tell you that Masked Beauty is in Rome. She came a week late. While she was attending to the visa problem in Damascus, she picked up our mail at Toufic’s office. This was in our box. Yes, and Captain Case has telephoned twice, as well. He’s very nice. Tres sympathique.”

“Yeah,” Switters growled. “Case can nice the damn birds out of the damn trees.” Was that a twinge of jealousy he felt? He flipped over the envelope and recognized Bobby’s surprisingly fine handwriting. “You say he called?”

“Perhaps it was forward of me, but I took the liberty of phoning your grandmother the night of the . . . the accident. She must have informed Captain Case because he called two days later. He called again yesterday shortly before you came out of the coma. I had brought your cell phone over from the hotel.”

Switters examined the postage stamps. They were not Okinawan stamps. They were Peruvian stamps. They were stamps from South-too-goddamn-vivid-America.

He delayed opening the envelope until Domino had gone. An hour later, when the night nurse came in to take his temperature and update his chart, he was still staring at its contents.

It contained a single photograph, eight and a half by eleven. In the background of the picture, against a tangled wall of tropical forest, stood a group of twenty or so Indians, nearly naked, strangely painted. In the foreground was an object that he recognized almost immediately as Sailor Boy’s old cage, made of wicker, shaped