Chapter 50
Charlie had already taken Osano to St. Vincent ’s Hospital, so we agreed to meet there. When I got there, Osano was in a private room and Charlie was with him, sitting on the bed where Osano could put his hand in her lap. Charlie let her hand rest on Osano’s stomach, which was bare of covers or top shirt. In fact, Osano’s hospital nightgown lay in shreds on the floor. That act must have put him in good humor because he was sitting up cheerfully in bed. And to me he really didn’t look that bad. In fact, he seemed to have lost some weight.
I checked the hospital room quickly with my eyes. There were no intravenous settings, no special nurses on duty, and I had seen walking down the corridor that it was not in any way an intensive care unit. I was surprised at the amount of relief I felt, that Charlie must have made a mistake and that Osano wasn’t dying after all.
Osano said coolly, “Hi, Merlyn. You must be a real magician. How did you find out I was here? It’s supposed to be a secret.”
I didn’t want any fooling around or any kind of bullshit, so I said straight out, “Charlie Brown told me.” Maybe she wasn’t supposed to tell me, but I didn’t feel like lying.
Charlie just smiled at Osano’s frown.
Osano said to her, “I told you it was just me and you, or just me. However you like it. Nobody else.”
Charlie said almost absently, “I know you wanted Merlyn.”
Osano sighed. “OK,” he said. “You’ve been here all day, Charlie. Why don’t you go to the movies or get laid or have a chocolate ice-cream soda or ten Chinese dishes? Anyway, take the night off and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“All right,” Charlie said. She got up from the bed. She stood very close to Osano and he, with a movement not really lecherous, but as if he were reminding himself of what it felt like, put his hand under her dress and caressed her inner thighs and then she leaned her head over the bed to kiss him.
And on Osano’s face as his hand caressed that warm flesh beneath the dress came a look of peace and contentment as if reassured in some holy belief.
When Charlie left the room, Osano sighed and said, “Merlyn, believe me. I wrote a lot of bullshit in my books, my articles and my lectures. I’ll tell you the only real truth. Cunt is where it all begins and where it all ends. Cunt is the only thing worth living for. Everything else is a fake, a fraud and just shit.”
I sat down next to the bed. “What about power?” I said. “You always liked power and money pretty good.”
“You forgot art,” Osano said.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s put art in there. How about money, power and art?”
“They’re OK,” Osano said. “I won’t knock them. They’ll do. But they’re not really necessary. They’re just frosting on the cake.”
And then I was right back to my first meeting with Osano and I thought I knew the truth about him then, when he didn’t know it. And now he’s telling it to me and I wonder if it’s true because Osano had loved them all. And what he was really saying was that art and money and fame and power were not what he regretted leaving.
“You’re looking better than when I saw you last,” I told Osano. “How come you’re in the hospital? Charlie Brown says it’s really trouble this time. But you don’t look it.”
“No shit?” Osano said. He was pleased. “That’s great. But you know I got the bad news down the fat farm when they took all those tests. I’ll give it to you short and sweet. I fucked up when I took those dosages of penicillin pills every time I got laid, so I got syphilis and the pills masked it, but the dosage wasn’t strong enough to wipe it out. Or maybe those fucking spirochetes figured out a way to bypass the medicine. It must have happened about fifteen years ago. Meantime, those old spirochetes ate away at my brain, my bones and my heart. Now they tell me I got six months or a year before going cuckoo with paresis, unless my heart goes out first.”
I was stunned. I really couldn’t believe it. Osano looked so cheerful. His sneaky green eyes were so brilliant. “There’s nothing that can be done?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Osano said. “But it’s not so terrible. I’ll rest up here for a couple of weeks and they’ll shoot me up a lot and then I’ll have at least a couple of months on the town and that’s where you come in.”
I didn’t know what to say. I really didn’t know whether to believe him. He looked better than I had seen him look in a long time. “OK,” I said.
“Here’s my idea,” Osano said. “You visit me in the hospital once in a while and help take me home. I don’t want to take the chance of becoming senile, so when I think the time is right, I check out. The day I decide to do that I want you to come down to my apartment and keep me company. You and Charlie Brown. And then you can take care of all the fuss afterward.”
Osano was staring at me intently. “You don’t have to do it,” Osano said.
I believed him now. “Sure, I’ll do it,” I said. “I owe you a favor. Will you have the stuff you need?”
“I’ll get it,” Osano said. “Don’t worry about that.”
I had some conferences with Osano’s doctors, and they told me he wouldn’t leave the hospital for a long time. Maybe never. I felt a sense of relief.
I didn’t tell Valerie about anything that had happened or even that Osano was dying. Two days later I went to visit Osano at the hospital. He’d ask me if I would bring him in a Chinese dinner the next time I came. So I had brown paper bags full of food when I went down the corridor and heard yelling and screaming coming from Osano’s room. I wasn’t surprised. I put the cartons down on the floor outside another patient’s private bedroom and ran down the corridor.
In the room was a doctor, two nurses and a nursing supervisor. They were all screaming at Osano. Charlie stood watching in a corner of the room. Her beautiful face freckles startling against the pallor of her skin, tears in her eyes. Osano was sitting on the side of the bed, completely naked and yelling back at the doctor, “Get me my clothes! I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
And the doctor was almost yelling at him, “I won’t be responsible if you leave this hospital. I will not be responsible.”
Osano said to him, laughing, “You dumb shit, you were never responsible. Just get me my clothes.”
The nursing supervisor, a formidable-looking woman, said angrily, “I don’t give a damn how famous you are, you don’t use our hospital as a whorehouse!”
Osano stared at her, “Fuck you,” he said. “Get the fuck out of this room.” And stark naked, he got up off the bed, and then I could see how really sick he was. He took a lurching step and his body fell sideways. The nurse immediately went to help him, quiet now, moved to pity, but Osano struggled erect. Finally he saw me standing at the doorway and he said very quietly, “Merlyn, get me out of here.” I was struck by their indignation. Surely they had caught patients fucking before. Then I studied Charlie Brown. She had on a short tight skirt with obviously nothing underneath. She looked like a child harlot. And Osano’s gross rotting body. Their outrage unconsciously was aesthetic, not moral.
The others now noticed me too. And I said to the doctor, “I’ll check him out and I’ll take the responsibility.”
The doctor started to protest, almost pleading, then turned to the supervisor and said, “Get him his clothes.” He gave Osano a needle and said, “That will make you more comfortable for the trip.”
And it was that simple. I paid the bill and checked Osano out. I called up a limousine service and we got Osano home. Charlie and I put him to bed and he slept for a while and then he called me into the bedroom and told me what had happened in the hospital. That he had made Charlie undress and get into bed with him because he felt so bad that he thought he was dying.
Osano turned his head away a bit. “You know,” he said, “the most terrible thing in modern life is that we all die alone in bed. In the hospital with all our family around us, nobody offers to get in bed with somebody dying. If you’re at home, your wife won’t offer to get in bed when you’re dying.”
Osano turned his head back to me and gave me that sweet smile he sometimes had. “So that’s my dream. I want Charlie in bed with me when I die, at the very moment, and then I’ll feel that I’ve gotten an edge, that it wasn’t a bad life and certainly not a bad end. And symbolic as hell, right? Proper for a novelist and his critics.”
“When can you know that final moment?” I said.
“I think it’s about time,” Osano said. “I really don’t think I should wait anymore.”
