“The one shaped like the bottom of a horse?”
“Yes, that’s it. I understand from my decorator that I paid a lot for it, but I really don’t care for it much.”
“What about the sports paraphernalia in the media room?”
“What about it?”
“Do you like it?”
“Sure.” He sounds mystified. “I like it fine.”
“But did your decorator buy it,” I persist. “Or you?”
“Oh, that junk?” He sounds a little embarrassed. I like him for it. “I picked it up myself. Here and there, you know? I’m a bit of a sports nut. And I go to a lot of games.”
We chat a bit more. To me, we sound like normal people and that wrenches at my heart. I had not thought I’d sound or feel like that—normal people—ever again.
And yet, of course, we aren’t like normal people at all. The reality of that washes over me again like a dishwasher rinse cycle. It is inevitable. And required.
“You ever think about running away to a desert island?” The thought comes to me from nowhere.
“Let’s do it. I’ll peel grapes for you and fan you with coconut leaves.”
“What sort of desert island has grapes?” I ask.
And so on. Because it is right there and because we can.
We agree: I’ll meet him at the restaurant at six and then we’ll come “home” together. The way that feels conflicts me so deeply I can’t look at it. Not straight on. I have to look away.
Maybe in part to divert myself from the inevitable, I spend the rest of the morning snooping.
That’s too gentle. What I do is more like a methodical search of the premises. Looking at me doing it, you’d think I was a cop. Naked beneath a man’s bathrobe, so clearly out of uniform. But never mind.
As I search, I don’t know what I am looking for, but I need to do something to dispel the restless energy. Plus, I have questions. And I feel some of the answers might be hidden here.
So I toss the place. Not truly toss, but I search deeply and carefully without leaving a discernible trace. I don’t know what I am looking for. And when I find it—deep in a bathroom cabinet—I almost don’t know what to do with what I learn. But I know this: there is nothing in my discovery that I want to know.
What I find is a stash of drugs. Prescription medications. And the stash is so deep and deadly-looking, I know it is something to see.
Zytiga. Rasburicase. CAPOX. Lenalidomide. Dexamethasone. Elotuzumab. Neupogen. And more still. The names are meaningless to me. Names from a spaceship. From a science fiction convention. From a gaggle of botanists. I have no idea what I’m looking at. And the dates aren’t all current, but all of the prescriptions have been filled within the last twelve months. And they are all in his name.
I use my phone to photograph the bottles, then replace them as I found them before heading to find my laptop to hunker down and do a bit of googling. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out that all of them are drugs used in the treatment of cancer and, coordinating the dates and the drugs, it doesn’t take a PhD. to guess that the prognosis is not good.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I DON’T REMEMBER the rest of the day. There was waking up in his arms. And there was my discovery. Then there was his potential explanation. And there was nothing I could put between that would have the balance of the day make sense for me.
I leave to meet him a good forty minutes before I need to, but by then I am ready to get outside and into the air. I’d begun to think about birds. And gilded cages. And the way the air feels when it flows through your wings.
The restaurant proves to be the kind Vancouver does very well. Elegance so understated it looks casual, until you glance at the prices and see a different story. And everything seems like traditional comfort foods, but with some exotic twist. And so hamburgers, but instead of bacon, the menu says you can add a “Soupçon of lardon” at an additional price. And the coleslaw isn’t just chopped and dressed cabbage, but “a creamy ginger slaw with jicama and locally grown organic heritage carrots.” It all seems a bit much.
“Isn’t this place fun?” he says when he joins me.
I smile. He appears happy to be pleasing me, so I leave it be. What’s a lardon or a slash of jicama between new friends?
I find myself watching him closely, a new layer now to how we interact. Are his hands stable or was that the ghost of a tremor? Does he look at all wan? How do his clothes fit his frame? But as I only know this version of him, I have nothing to compare. No before to hold against the after in front of me. And, as it has these last few days, the after looks just fine to me. More than fine.
I can’t focus enough on the menu to decide what I want and I ask him to order for me. He lifts an eyebrow in my direction, but doesn’t say anything, ordering vegetables that have been variously roasted and then put together with strong flavors—beets with harrisa, maybe. Cauliflower with chimichurri, and so on—and a chicken that has apparently been flame-broiled under a brick, which seems a horrid finish for a perfectly nice organic chicken, plus I can’t imagine the possible advantage of the business with the brick, but I hold my tongue as I sip the cocktail he orders for us in advance of the meal.
“You’re quiet tonight,” he says before very long.
“Am I?”
“Yes. Even a little pensive. Is everything okay?”
“Not really,” I say. “There’s something I want to talk to you about, but I don’t know where to begin.”
“Sounds ominous.” Another sip. But he doesn’t look afraid. Not much scares him, that’s what I’ve noticed. Not
