of holes. I remembered wanting only those things/people/goals that I attained, eventually. I did not remember the things/people/goals I must have given up on. Surely that meant I had some sort of brain damage.
What did I want to leave behind? Nothing? That was a hell of a thing.
I excused myself and hustled over to the nearest trash receptacle, where I regurgitated. Though not quite an accepted custom in New Orleans, public vomiting isn’t rare either. Open disgust at such behavior is perhaps less appropriate than the act itself, although I have known spectators to respond with a round of golf applause.
Val and Pebbles politely turned their attention to the slow moving streetcar emerging like a villain or a hero out of the heat waves. I recovered before the trolley came, wiping my fingers around my mouth and pulling my skin clean. I was angry with my own face. The trolley gasped to a stop, vibrating at rest, impatient. I collected myself, climbed into the vehicle, and thumbed my coins into the box. I tasted tears and bile. Val wouldn’t look at me. Pebbles couldn’t keep her frightened eyes off of me. Neither suggested the hospital.
I sat by myself, feeling fat, useless, and rancid. “If” was just about gone. That was Rollie’s real message. “If” was a luxury, attached to what would never happen. But now things did happen, and “if” was a loaded gun, a sacrilege, a reckless waste of heart and thought. If I die. And certainly I would. But I didn’t have a wish yet.
I needed a wish now, and damned quick it seemed. No fooling around any more.
Back home, I called Brenda, my ex wife. She sounded bored by my question, as if its simplicity insulted her intelligence. “Of course I have a wish, Victor.” Her tone made me feel like a slob.
“Well what is it?”
She answered with a prim little cough. One of her professor tricks that had devolved into a tic. “I wish that Val receive the entirety of my estate upon my death to dispose of as he pleases. And I documented this wish into a will. Isn’t that ingenious?”
“Don’t be a bitch, Bren.”
“I thought about setting aside a portion for you as well, but Rick would find that irritating, and besides, the likelihood of your succeeding me in death—”
“Oh do stop.” Rick was her new husband, the Dean who had secured her academic position. “Why can’t you ever take me seriously?”
Brenda said, “I might if it didn’t seem like you were descending into childish magical thinking. You know, Val can handle all that southern gothic crap, but you? You’re getting soft in the head. Picking up some bizarre lisp and going around in capes?”
“I do not lisp.”
She ignored me. “No wonder you’re buying into all this mythology.”
“I really appreciate you taking the time to inventory my decline.”
She went quiet. After a moment she said, “Sorry.”
“Brenda.” And for some reason I catapulted back to a sex memory: Brenda on the butcher block table. Me thin. Val safely away somewhere—camp? My face went hot, a blush from embarrassment, not arousal. Irrationally, I imagined that she could see into my mind. I said into the phone, “Help me think about this.”
Another sound from her throat, this time more human than pedagogic. “I don’t know where to begin, Vic. This isn’t like you.”
“I’m aware of that. But I seem to be changing. Recent circumstances and all that. Why don’t you have a wish?”
“You mean aside from the existential crisis, the consuming narcissism, and the outright dizzying lunacy that attends wish design? I’m an atheist for Christ’s sake—”
“Yes, yes. Cut to it, love.”
Brenda sighed. “Victor. I have new wishes every God-damned day. Dozens of them. I lay awake at night trying to imagine the repercussions of even the most fractional change.”
I imagined her in that sleepless state, lying next to man who was dead to the world and oblivious to or perhaps even tired of Brenda’s neuroses. She needed to be held more. “Oh dear,” I said.
“Exactly. I’m a wreck.”
“And Rick? Is he as conflicted as you?”
“Oh no,” she said. “He’s had his wish for fucking ever. Something about honeybees. Very responsible. Very targeted. Very linguistically simple, so he can say it even under the most challenging circumstances, like in a car crash.”
I liked the idea of Rick in a car crash. I also imagined a number of other challenging, drawn out scenarios featuring Rick gasping, groaning, coughing out his bee wish. “Well now see, you are being helpful. I might not have thought about the compromised speech aspect.”
“So you’re having trouble picking a wish?”
“I’m having trouble picking any wish. Email me your castoffs, maybe I can use one of those.”
“You’re disgusting,” she said.
“Perhaps I should wish for a stinkier cheese.”
“You should wish for men to have babies.”
“Or women to be less brittle.” I regretted it as soon as the words left my mouth, but it was too late. She hung up. I don’t know if she was furious, bored, hurt, worried, or driving out of cell service. That’s new technology for you. No longer do we have the option of giving notice of our displeasure by slamming the phone into the cradle. A hang up doesn’t even come with a click anymore. Your person is there and then suddenly she’s not. I have found myself on multiple occasions continuing a line of heated argument long after Brenda had ended the call. It’s a problem because she’s missed my best, most elegant rebuttals that way. And that in itself is a curiosity—why are my finest insights always preceded by the idiot behavior that made her hang up on me in the first place?
A cruelty crossed my mind. A Grinchy thought. I could wish for her to fall in love with me again.
That night Val and I ate separately but together. That’s how it goes, me working as slowly as possible through an orange chicken Lean Cuisine, and Val plowing through a carton of takeout pasta from Fiorelli’s. It smelled insanely good, but Val had flipped up the lid making it difficult for me to get a real eyeful. He had a music magazine open beside his dinner. He pretended he was reading it. Dinner was awfully quiet.
Except for when I said, “You’re growing fonder of the girl.”
“Not really.” He didn’t look up.
“Why mess with this Wish Local stuff at all, then. Why take her seriously?”
“I don’t.” He closed the magazine and slurped a forkful of Bolognese. “I wanted to just lay low till all this blew over. Like you,” and here he pointed his glistening fork at me. “But now it’s all gone too far. It’s beginning to feel like . . . Well, it’s stupid of me not to pay attention anymore. Even if I’m not a wisher, and I’m pretty damned sure none of us are, I need to prepare.”
He leaned forward, buffeting me with his garlic breath. No, garlic and parmesan. “I am not so arrogant that I think I can change the world. But I do know there’s folks out there that are going to change the world for me.”
His words alarmed me, but I misunderstood. “But Val, we can’t live in fear. That’s not what we came down here for.”
Val leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “Not fear, Dad. I’m not afraid of this bullshit.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He closed the lid to the carton and tossed it into the trash. I could tell by the way it tilted in the air that there were still a few precious morsels inside. He hadn’t eaten the bread that they usually packed in with the entrees. He was sparing me the sight.
Val then wiped