pair of track pants and scooped a Halloween sack of pills into their baggy pockets, which rattled out, one by one, as he inchwormed his way down the staircase to the front door just as the paramedics arrived, at which point he passed out again.
Hours later, after the medical help had analyzed his career arc and removed the soup from his lungs, he lay in a cool, quiet room at Cedars-Sinai. Beside the bed there was a TV the size of a pack of Marlboros. He heard the sound of a laugh track, a few commercials, and then he used the sum of his strength to turn his head to watch. It was some piece-of-crap show from the early eighties. A bunch of has-beens.
He was dizzy sick, feverish. He remembered being young in Kentucky with his mother when a freak tornado had hit. He had walked through a street across the town that had been flattened. A cow was lying beside a pickup truck with its hide sucked right off. A horse was stuck up inside the one standing tree, its leaves plucked off in the middle of summer. Thousands of perch flopped inside a swath of Russian thistle as though the earth had sprouted erupting, percolating sores.
He suddenly felt sixteen years old again; his body was clean. He felt springy and he wanted to do somersaults off the high school's trampette. He wanted to ski a glacier. He wanted to climb the glass windows of the First Interstate Bank Tower with suction cups. He felt like flying. And so he flew, up above the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Los Angeles, toward the sun, into the upper atmosphere where he rapped his knuckles on the Mir Space Station, and then he heard a woman's voice and saw her face. It said to him, «No, John. Time to go back.»
«Oh, you have
«I don't kid, John Johnson. It's not a part of my job description.»
John turned and saw Susan's face and voice, so recently stolen from the TV. It was a lovely, TV- proportioned all-American face — the face of a child raised with tetracycline, baton twirling and kung fu lessons. «Like
«John, we're not here to cut a deal for Canadian and Mexican distribution rights. We're here to make you better.»
«Better? I've never
«Look at me, John.»
«I'm looking. I'm
«No you're not. You're looking for a way to get rid of me and fly back into space again.»
«Okay, okay, you're
«Your life is crappy?»
His body stopped where it was, his feet inside the atmosphere, his head out in space, as though he were wading in the planet. «It's not what I would have wanted, no.»
«What
«Like I keep that information at the top of my “To Do” list, or something?»
«What would be wrong with keeping that at the top of your “To Do” list?»
This gave John pause. «Nothing, I guess.» He looked east, toward the seaboard. «Hey, look at New York! You can see the lights! It's night there now.» The view was indeed splendid.
«Sure, John, the world is beautiful. But you were telling me what you would have wanted to do differently in your life.»
«I dunno. Be one of those guys who buy short-sleeve golf shirts with olive checks at the pro shop — the ones who drive their kids to judo lessons and then to the pancake house afterward.»
«Well, it'd be a start. I see these guys on the San Diego Freeway on Saturday afternoons. They're married to soccer moms and they don't have affairs.»
«John, let's be serious. Stop wasting my time.»
«Okay, okay. Take a sip of water, fer Chrissake. Let me think.»
«Oh
«You know what?» John said. «I'd like to simply stop being
«So then go clean your slate. Enter your own private witness relocation program.»
«It's too complex. You can't do it anymore. Too many computers and stuff.»
«It's not complex. It's the opposite of complex. What could be simpler?»
«Who
«
«I
«You're wasting your time.»
«So what happens now?»
«Back to the hospital.»
«Oh.»
«You sound disappointed.»
John went quiet as an empty room. And then he said, «I want to see you again.»
«I don't know, John.»
«Please?» John's body began zooming down to California at telescopic speed.
«I have a call on another line, John.»
He felt as though he'd fallen onto concrete.
Two days later, he was lying on his hospital bed, wide awake, and his confidant-madam, Melody, was sitting across his dark private room watching
«You're awake! Hel
«Melody — shit — what day is it?»
«It's Saturday, you brute. You had the
«You've been here all this time?»
Melody looked guilty. «Well, only about ten minutes, really.»
John flopped his head sideways, caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He closed his eyes. «Jesus.»
Melody was rustling about in her purse and found some mints. «Want a mint?»
John's stomach turned. «No.»
«Spoilsport.»
Melody popped a mint and then stared at John, who closed his eyes and tried to recapture the face and voice he'd just seen. Instead he heard Melody tell him what had happened and how sick he'd been, then bridge into snatches of gossip. The captive nature of the sickbed reminded him of his childhood illnesses. He didn't want to remember that, and he brusquely let Melody know it.
«
«Mel — »
«Oh shit.» Melody felt she'd gone too far. «I'm sorry, John. For what it's worth, your mother's been camping out here for forty-eight hours. I sent her home to sleep.»
