Epitaph

'Don't worry,' he told the doctor, leaning on a two- pronged cane that he'd been given, or actually been made to purchase, 'I have no intention of walking anywhere.'

'Good boy,' said the doctor.

William didn't know if he was supposed to say thank you or just wag his tail.

A car service was waiting for him in the circular driveway-courtesy of Medicare. The driver peered out at him with unmistakable distaste; one old man and one new cane meant he'd actually have to get out and help once they'd arrived wherever it is they were going. He didn't look quite as homicidal as the driver from the other night, that night, but he looked like he wouldn't mind tripping William on the way in. William sympathized- after all, it was hot.

When they arrived at their destination, Mr. Brickman was waiting, Mr. Brickman and Mr. Leonati too, so the driver was able to stay where he was, his only manual labor the handing back of change. This brightened his mood considerably, leading him to actually say something solicitous.

William thought it must be something solicitous, because of the tone-the words were in Russian or Greek or Lithuanian or maybe pig Latin. Not speaking English seemed to be the taxi driver's rule of thumb these days.

Mr. Brickman and Mr. Leonati did speak English though.

'You don't look too good,' Mr. Leonati said as he helped him out of the car. 'What do you think?' he asked Mr. Brickman, who'd flanked him on his other side and was already grunting from the exertion. 'You think he looks good?'

'Better than when I saw him before. You should have seen him then. He looked awful.'

William felt as if he was caught in the middle of a stage routine-Leonati and Brickman, Brickman and Leonati-and him, the stooge, the butt of their hilarity. What next, he wondered-a pie in the face?

They helped him upstairs, one stair at a time, as if he were an infant learning to walk. Mr. Brickman appointed himself cheerleader and surrogate dad.

'Whoa… that was a nice big step. A very nice step. Now let's go for another. Whoa, what a step that was. A beauty of a step. Think you can do another.'

Finally they got him to the top of the stairs and then to his room. They'd added pillows to his bed to make it more comfortable, and Mr. Brickman even had a card for him.

Roses are red, violets are blue, I here your sick, get well soon. Signed Laurie.

'So,' Mr. Brickman shrugged, 'she's not too good with rhymes. But it's the thought that counts.'

'Yes, it's a nice thought. Thank her for me.'

'I already did.'

Mr. Leonati said, 'Look, if you want food or anything, anything at all, I'll go out for you. Till you get back on your feet.'

'I appreciate that, Mr. Leonati.' And he did. He appreciated everything: them helping him up the stairs, the extra pillows, even the card-he appreciated that too. Being alive-he had a little appreciation left over for that too. In fact, he'd like to give being alive his sincere appreciation. This was okay, all of it, okay. They were playing house here, him, Mr. Brickman, and Mr. Leonati, and they were all doing a bang-up job. It suddenly occurred to him that if you acted like a family, you became one, enough of one anyway, to take the chill off. And it was cold out there, colder even than he'd remembered.

But now he was back inside. And just as before, when he'd left a hospital to go back to his room, left it with a bullet lodged in his shoulder and a certain hard-won understanding of his place in the scheme of things, he felt as if an elephantine weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Atlas hadn't had such a weight. Okay-so there was a certain dignity in bearing a thing like that, even, occasionally, a thrill or two, but by and large it was just plain wearisome. When you let it go, you realized that.

But now he was back in the bosom of his little family, safely ensconced in his bed, surrounded by pillows and well-wishers. A veritable oasis of peace. The only thing, in fact, that marred this oasis of peace, marred it at all, was the box still sitting by the doorway, that box, and occasional names that came flitting into his head like a list of items he'd forgotten to pick up at the store. Mr. Waldron, Mrs. Ross, Mr. Shankin. Okay-a pretty long list maybe, but every one of them a luxury item, not part of the four basic food groups at all. You'd have to pay for those little items, they'd cost an arm and a leg-at least two ribs and a navicular bone. And he was a little strapped now, now and for the completely foreseeable future. The box would have to be thrown out. And the names? He'd forget them, the way old people always forget names-after all, names are the first to go.

He didn't, of course-though not through lack of trying. If he was graded on trying, it'd be strictly A plus. He watched a lot of television-became quite fond of television-the game shows, those talk shows, even the commercials, all of them like gabby friends absolutely intent on keeping his mind from wandering into dangerous waters. They did keep his mind from wandering into dangerous waters. Well, maybe he waded in a little here and there, strictly up-to-the-knees stuff. But then his attention would be grabbed, absolutely yanked, by Housewife Hookers or Stripper Postmen or that ever spinning Wheel of Fortune or the latest Shaq-A-Tack.

And the time television couldn't fill was taken up by Mr. Brickman, who showed up with alarming regularity as if he were pulling guard duty. In his mind, he probably was on a guard duty of sorts, for Mr. Wilson's death had turned him into a sentinel of vigilance. Not to mention a general purveyor of doom. The actual doomed here were the elderly-whom he'd elected himself guardian of in the general, and of William in the specific. In his mind, they were an endangered species, threatened on all sides by a host of evils. And William, newly back in the fold as he was, found Mr. Brickman's attitude almost pleasing, comforting even, an affirmation of his own new credo.

Mr. Brickman kept a running score of the ongoing holocaust, replete with some of the more lurid stories concerning their fellow brethren.

'An eighty-eight-year-old woman,' he read to William one day, 'found gagged and beaten in the closet of her Brownsville apartment. And raped.'

Another day's lead story: 'An elderly married couple in Washington Heights threw themselves out the window in a suicide pact. Couldn't take the constant muggings.'

There were a lot of stories like those, and Mr. Brick- man found all of them. Senior citizen set on by guard dogs, elderly couple dead of dehydration, ninety-year-old poisoned by pet food, elderly people beaten, robbed, stabbed, garroted, evicted, raped, sodomized, run over, and euthanized. See, Mr. Brickman was saying, one by one the herd is being decimated.

And William listened, listened and nodded in soulful agreement. An old man's place is in bed, in bed with the television on. He understood that again; he'd be sure to remember it.

And yet he couldn't forget everything. He could forget a lot, but not everything. So there he'd be, glued to Men Who Date Canines, or listening peacefully to Mr. Brick- man recount the latest atrocity against some elderly woman, when he'd remember some other elderly woman-Mrs. Ross maybe. Tiptoeing into the room and tapping him on the shoulder like a little sister he'd been ignoring, the one whom he'd been told to look after. And even though he'd say go away, sometimes she didn't listen to him, and she'd stay there, right by his shoulder, breathing down his neck. Of course, then, more often than not, he'd remember something else-that house on Cherry Avenue for instance. He'd remember that voice telling him to come right in, and how it felt to fall into absolute nothingness. He'd listen to his old bones going ouch, and then, before you could say codeine, she'd be gone, poof, vanished. Memory, then, could be your friend. It could sometimes kick the crap out of other memories you didn't want to deal with.

One day he asked Mr. Leonati to get rid of the box, for he thought that it was deliberately staring at him. Anyway, every time he opened his eyes, it was there. Sitting there like some icon of a religion he'd lost his faith in. He wanted it thrown out. But just as Mr. Leonati was lifting it, he said no, never mind, maybe he should look through it once more and Mr. Leonati said fine, whatever, and put it back down.

But William didn't look through it. He turned on Nuns Who Strip instead. He played checkers with Mr. Brick- man. He puttered around with his two-pronged cane. He taught himself old again, not that he'd actually forgotten how. It was like falling off a bicycle-that easy.

But in the corner of the room was that box, and that box kept bothering him. There was no place in the oasis for that box. So one day he decided, really decided, to throw it out.

This time he asked Mr. Brickman to do it, and though Mr. Brickman wasn't happy about it, he agreed. He tried lifting it from several angles, like a golfer lining up a particularly difficult putt. When he finally decided on his approach, he dug in with both hands, grimaced for his audience of one, and lifted it slowly up off the carpet. And dropped it.