and further behind in rest, never to again reach complete wakefulness. I had specifically asked my dad not to tell her what I had done, because I knew she’d make me feel bad about it. I had already suffered through four hours at Penn Station and a train ride so tightly packed you couldn’t have slipped a dime between the bodies. But then, seeing her, I figured I may as well get all the pain out of the way immediately. She drove us back to her house and poured us both a drink.
I confessed almost immediately. “I got the cure.”
She snapped awake (she can only be alert in short bursts). “What? When?”
“Three weeks ago. That’s not all of it. My roommate and the doctor who gave it to me were killed in the July 3 attacks.”
“Oh my Jesus. Katy? Was that her name? Are you joking?”
“No. I referred her to my cure doctor, and when she went to get her blood drawn, the office was bombed.”
“Oh my God. Are you okay?”
“Not particularly. I… I was so excited for her to get it. I didn’t think this could happen and I still don’t know how it did. Now she’s dead, and I feel like I deserve the same fate.”
“Why did you get the cure? How could you be so dumb? You have to swear right now that you won’t tell Mark that you did it. He’s been talking about it and talking about it. The last thing I want is for you to egg him on.”
“Please don’t castigate me for this.”
“But didn’t you realize the danger you put your roommate in? The danger you put yourself in? These crazy people didn’t just start killing doctors a couple days ago, John. And you don’t even know if the thing works. I just can’t believe you’d go to some back-alley Guatemalan Dr. Nick to get your life fixed.”
“He wasn’t some quack,” I said defensively. “He was a legitimate doctor with a well-known practice.”
“Yet he chose to engage in some shady side business. Why is that?”
“It was just some ego thing.”
“And that doesn’t bother you, even now? I saw the doctor Mark wanted to visit to get it done. His name was Frankie, and he looked like he stole furniture out of trucks. I’ve heard some of the people offering to do it aren’t even real doctors. They’re like chiropractors times ten. I’m not judging you for getting it. I’m just worried about you. That’s all.”
“I’m grateful for that, P. I really am. But I’m fine. Mentally, I’m a disaster. But physically, I feel fine. Great, as odd as that sounds.”
She grew a touch curious. “So, you think it really works then.”
“We won’t know for a while. I’ve been taking a photo of my face every day just to see if there are any changes over time I don’t readily notice.”
“And you’re not worried about, you know, hogging all the food and stuff?”
“I promise I won’t eat all the Nilla Wafers in the house, like last time.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. There’s a reason people are fighting so fiercely to keep this cure out of people’s hands. You don’t have kids. I do. I think about this stuff. I think about what’ll be left for them.”
“So you’re never going to get it? And you’ll never let Mark get it?”
She let out a low groan. “I have no idea. I really don’t. I’m guessing there will be a point where it’s legal and everyone has it and I feel obligated to get it too. I was like that with cell phones. I was easily the last of my friends to get one. Everyone else had one. And there I was, outside school at some disgusting pay phone that didn’t even work. Now, of course, I have one and I’ll never go back. That’s how I am. I usually have to be dragged into things. I know it’s probably inevitable that I’ll get the cure and that we’ll all get it. It’s just gonna be something you do. But it opens up all sorts of odd questions that I don’t want to deal with right now. I mean, what happens to Mark and me?”
“Are you guys having problems?”
“No! Not at all. But it’s a whole weird thing, to think you’ll be with someone for that long. I love him, and I’m willing to do it. It’s just… daunting. And the kids… Jesus. You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly that they’ll be okay. And the idea that I’ll be worried forever about them and what they do… I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I’m worried, and I’m worried about having to worry so goddamn much.”
I told her about all the bankers getting divorced.
“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Sorry.”
“See, that completely freaks me out. One day we’ll get it, and Mark’s friends will all say, ‘Hey, what are you still doing with that old bag?’”
“But you won’t be old.”
“But I’m old already. I have two kids. That makes you old. So then I have that to worry about. Do I have the ability to keep my husband happy for centuries upon centuries? Do I need to get lipo so that I can look like some perky goddamn cheerleader? I have no earthly idea, and I don’t like the idea of having to confront all those issues somewhere down the road. Right now my whole life is plagued with decisions that have to be made: what to get for dinner, which school the kids should go to, which kid’s birthday party we should go to this weekend. It’s just decision after decision after decision, from trivial crap to really important things. By the end of the day, I’m mush. I don’t even eat dinner because I don’t want to choose what to have. I have cereal and call it a day. And now there’s this. Big, huge decision alert. Every question I ask myself about it begets a dozen more. It’s giving me a migraine right now, and I haven’t even done anything.”
“It has to be better than the alternative, though.”
“Does it? I don’t know.”
“Well, you already say you’re old. How does growing old feel so far?”
She sighed. “It sucks.”
“Well, now I feel somewhat better about my decision.”
We changed the subject. Polly handed me a plate of cold roast beef and corn on the cob. We talked, and I ate and, for the first time, Katy’s death moved to the back of my consciousness, if only for a moment. This is bereavement: the slow, eventual reassertion of your own meaningless preoccupations. As I ate, the look in Polly’s eyes made it clear she was still thinking about the cure. She had tried for so long to stem the tide, to avoid being overwhelmed by it all. But now here I was: the tsunami at her doorstep.
Date Modified: 7/17/2019, 5:09PM
DC Apparently Stands For
“Don’t Come”
I have a friend in DC who emailed me this in response to reports about the expanded security perimeters to accommodate protesters in Midtown:
Dude, the security bullshit you have to deal with up there is nothing compared to what’s going on down here. The entirety of Northwest DC below M Street has been cordoned off since that girl was beaten to death for her DieStrong bracelet and the riots in Germany started. You can’t drive anywhere downtown. I’m talking about miles the hell away from the White House. And when you come up out of Metro, there are National Guard members with loaded rifles, their fingers ready on the trigger, ready to pull you aside if you look like a threat. They increased the restricted airspace above the town by nearly twentyfold. If you come down on a shuttle from Boston to National, you practically have to go through Ohio. It’s insane.
Downtown DC around the Wizards’ arena is essentially a pedestrian thoroughfare now. I have no issue with this, since people in DC can’t drive for shit, except that Metro stops can be goddamn light years away from each other. That scene