A Life in Men: A Novel (24 page)

W
ITHIN AN HOUR
in Mexico City, Mary has blown three hundred bucks. She’s heard of CF patients who died right in the middle of flights because of the low oxygen, and though flying’s never bothered her before, and she’s needed oxygen only when she had her infection in Osaka, she’s scared to board her next plane. The rickety flight from Querétaro to Mexico City was only an hour long, which somehow hadn’t frightened her (irrational—as if she could hold her breath for an hour and emerge unscathed), but after spending that time hacking and breathless, pulling in air that never seemed to reach bottom, never seemed to hit its destination, and left her as short of breath after each inhalation as each exhalation, reality has set in. Panic gripping her insides like a magnet, twisting everything into knots, she heads straight to the AeroMexico counter and demands to speak to medical services, in hopes of scoring an Ecylinder that will last long enough for her to get home.

An hour later and I’ve missed my connecting flight, money down the drain while I’m stuck waiting in this sterile office watching airline personnel jabber on the phones in Spanish. Even in their hideous airline uniforms, these women all look hyperbolically sensual, in that beak-nosed, shiny-skinned, just-been-fucked way of heroines from an Almodóvar film or something. Me, I’m dry skinned and phlegmy, dizzy with airlessness—I am the opposite of sex. I am Cincinnati, I am Hospital. Idiotically, I didn’t even bring the phone number of 18 Hidalgo with me when I tore out of there this morning, feverishly wheeling my suitcase over uneven cobblestones until I got to the taxi stand, a
woman on the run, as fucking usual. Now I have no way of reaching my dad or Eli for help. I should have waited for Dad at least, should have let him change his return ticket to fly back with me, a human shield from other passengers gawking at my decrepit state. With his engineer proficiency, he’d have figured out how to work the Ecylinder. Now watch me do something to goof it up and start asphyxiating midflight like a fish on land, more entertaining than the lame in-flight movie. But no, I ran out of there too fast, trying to prove some kind of point, and now I’m fucked.

Except she’s even more fucked than she realized. Because there will
be
no oxygen. She would need a doctor’s note, they finally tell her, which she does not have. She would need to have called forty-eight hours in advance, which she did not do. In desperation, she spreads everything she has out on the counter for them as proof of illness: albuterol and Cipro and her Flutter device. But all they care about is her “fitness to fly” letter from Dr. Narayan, translated into Spanish by one of his nurses.
This
someone makes a copy of, no doubt planning to use it later to avoid an American lawsuit should she expire on the plane. She’s coughing, flushed with fever, and feels everyone in the office studying the letter, debating whether they should let her board. Perhaps they wonder if she is contagious. (Typhoid Mary, Nix used to call her.
Oh, Nix, oh, Nix, can we really
both
die on a plane, could that really happen?
) Mary swallows her cough as best she can, pops two more Tylenol for her fever, clutches her bag with wild purpose, and sets about changing her ticket so that she can get on the next flight, which is not for four hours. Ticket in hand, she drags her bag to her gate, sucks in more albuterol, and reclines on the floor, feeling her jittery heart pounding into the carpet under her ribs, coughs mucus into napkins while Mexicans gape at her as though she has the plague, and finally passes out with her sweater over her face.

G
EOFF IS THE
low man on the totem pole, so he’s working New Year’s Day. Not that he’s hungover or anything. He’s been in Cincinnati for less than a month and has yet to form anything that passes for a friendship. The holiday season is a shitty time to relocate. Everyone is too busy with their own nuclear family to bother with newcomers. Geoff took the residency at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center mainly to be closer to his father, a diabetic, half-blind, fanatically independent man whose farm is two hours away. But in his month in Ohio, with his breakneck schedule, he has seen his father exactly once: on Christmas, when he did not have to work, since some Jewish residents put themselves on the roster. He’d have seen his father at Christmas anyway, even if he were still in Boston—even if he had moved to Chicago and let his stepfather, the hotshot cardiologist, pull some strings at a big deal cystic fibrosis center there. On Christmas, his father repeatedly called him “Harvard Boy,” as always, and did not buy him a present. His father does not buy gifts; that was always Geoff’s mother’s terrain, though his parents have been divorced for more than twenty years. Geoff’s mother and sister warned him that it was stupid to take the job in Cincinnati, a city he never liked, in order to be close to a man they glibly reassured him “doesn’t want you around.” These past few days, Geoff has taken perverse comfort in the fact that this may be true, since as it turns out he has only enough free time to collapse in his condo (which he has taken to calling “the barracks,” since all he does there is sleep) and no time whatsoever to save a dying farm, dispense insulin, and prepare diabetic-friendly meals. The truth is, Cincinnati is beside the point; he could be anywhere. The sounds of rubber heels and snapping clipboards and oxygen machines have become his home.

The hospital is a frontier, his patients pioneers. Adult CF clinics were barely
necessary
a decade ago. These patients are the survivors. They are less heartbreaking than the kids, and—this is the part that makes Geoff tick—these clinics are where the most cutting-edge miracles happen. The crazy-ass, defying-all-expectation triumphs: Those tenacious CFers who keep running 5Ks into their forties. Heart-lung transplants handed the possibility of a middle age more healthy than their youth. Women who give birth and live to become soccer moms. They are an entirely new human population: adults with cystic fibrosis. They go where none have gone before.

Of course, those are the exceptions. Most of his cases, because of their very adulthood, are in the end stages of their disease. He doesn’t get to live a lifetime with them but meets them only on their way out the door. It’s a manic-depressive kind of existence, the kind that leads to feeling hungover even in the absence of a New Year’s celebration. Geoff’s daily life in this brave new world consists of oscillating between the sterility of the hospital and the loneliness of his prefurnished condo five minutes away. His med school debts are mammoth, his longtime girlfriend couldn’t wrap her mind around
Ohio
and broke things off, and in one piddly month two patients at the clinic have already died.

Well. His work is good for nothing if not perspective. At least he can breathe.

He approaches the room of a patient who arrived last night with raging pneumonia contracted in Mexico, a nice little drama for the night shift. Now she’s on a colistin-TOBI combo and oxygen. As always, he reads the chart before opening the door. He’s still scanning as he approaches the bed, not wanting to miss anything crucial, lose the patient’s trust by not realizing something he should have known. He doesn’t remember to look at the name. Of all the things he might forget, a name seems
most
forgivable. He moves forward and—this is especially important in
B. cepacia
cases, but he’s gotten into the habit with everyone—holds out his hand.

It is only then that he sees her.

The girl from Greece.

Her curls, her shoulders, her downcast eyes: all clicking into place in memory.

That yellow sea-foam hair, cascading over her shoulders on the dance floor.

Her knee still damp from the surf, pressed against his in the flatbed of the truck.

Mary—
his
Mary. Behind an oxygen mask, in front of him. Still alive. After all this time. At last.

“Holy shit.” He says it softly, his would-be handshake frozen in the air. She had seemed unresponsive at his approach but now looks up, the familiar dark shock of her eyes against pale skin and hair. Her hand, IV dangling, moves to her mouth as she gasps aloud in recognition.

“Geoff. Oh my God. What are you doing here?”

And he says it as if it is the most natural thing in the world, exactly as he hoped so many times to say it: “Waiting to run into you.”

She doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even look at him suspiciously as though he may be crazy. Instead she begins to cry. This surprises him, but also does not surprise him exactly. He is accustomed to tears by now. It sounds as if she had quite a scare yesterday. She’s probably exhausted and afraid. Pneumonia can be painful, too. Her FEV values look all right, but maybe nobody’s bothered to tell her that. Overnight staff tends to be shitty.

When she opens her mouth, however, what she sobs is, “Geoff! Oh, Geoff. Nix is dead.”

He drops the chart on the floor with an indecorous clang. One of those stupid wheeled tables is perched over her bed, but he knocks it out of his way and climbs in with her, feeling the plastic mattress crackle under his solid weight. He takes her into his arms, a watery mermaid, as she was that night almost seven years ago, only this time attached to tubes that are keeping her alive. By the time he notices he is crying, too, he can already smell the ocean in her hair.

Home.

Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?

(GREECE: ZORG)

T
he Down Under is the fourth bar they have entered in the past thirty minutes. Geoff, his buddy Irv, and the two girls, Mary and Nix, duck and twist through a mass of Aussie tourists to the most remote corner of the bar, knees bent, staying low. Geoff is kicking himself for letting TJ and Bill cut out after they got the girls out of the disco, all walking in a boisterous gaggle reminiscing about fake people from “home” and talking at once, just moving toward the door like one body with twelve legs. Geoff, surging with anger and bravery, had even called over to the creepy assholes who were making trouble for the girls, “Hey, you guys wanna come?” but the kidnapping losers stood there, stiff spined and incredulous, not even deigning to answer the question, watching the girls leave surrounded by male bodies.

Man, fuck those guys!

Geoff wishes now he’d told TJ, Bill, and Irv that they should jump them, kick the shit out of them when they had the chance. Four against two, and that one Greek dude wasn’t that big—probably the girls would have even joined in and thrown a few punches. But no. He’d been cocky, and when it was clear that he and Irv were the ones the girls were talking to at the first bar they ducked into, TJ and Bill went on to greener pastures, hoping to hook up with girls of their own, and so Geoff and Irv and Mary and Nix sat drinking for a while, the girls telling their wild story, Mary doing most of the talking because Nix seemed like the quiet one, seemed more upset by their ordeal, didn’t seem into Irv even though Irv was trying hard to be funny and attentive. Nix didn’t smile much, but she was cute, and who could blame her for being upset? Those guys were some pieces of work. Geoff and his buddies should have jumped them in the bar and taught them a lesson. Geoff hasn’t been in a fight since he was eight years old, but still. He works out. He was on crew. Fuck those guys. He held Nix’s eyes for a moment in the first bar, even though Mary was the one he was into. He just wanted to show her he felt bad for what they’d been through. He put his hand on her arm, but she flinched and he dropped his hand, embarrassed. He shouldn’t have let TJ and Bill leave. What was he thinking?

Because now, here they are, running scared like little bitches. They’d only been in the first bar maybe half an hour when Zorg and Titus (they even
sounded
villainous, like mustachioed bad guys in a Disney cartoon!) showed up with two buddies of their own, looming in the doorway of the bar, scoping it out, looking for Geoff, Irv, and the girls. These bars are so crowded that it’s easy enough to hide if you see your stalker first, so they’d all crouched low, waited until Zorg and Titus came inside, then scuttled along the sides of the bar like rats until they could saunter right out the door, leaving their would-be assailants searching. They did this twice more, even sneaking out a side exit once. But now, here they are in the Down Under, and fucking A, those guys and their goons are probably going to show up here, too, any minute. Poor Nix is getting visibly freaked out, worn down like a runner in a marathon who can’t go the distance. And let’s face it, Irv’s a little guy: Geoff can’t take these four on his own. Mary’s been saying they should go up to some fellow tourists and ask for help, tell someone what’s happening, but Geoff’s not sure.

Because he’s starting to think in the back of his mind, what
is
happening, exactly? They’re being followed, yeah—though they can’t really prove it.
Everyone
goes to these bars: all of Mykonos is crowded into them. Why shouldn’t Zorg and Titus be here, too? No one has touched or even threatened Mary and Nix. When Geoff and his friends left the disco, Zorg and Titus didn’t try to prevent their taking the girls. And though Geoff likes these girls—they don’t seem crazy, and it’s clear Nix is genuinely shaken up—their story sounds a little sketchy, like maybe they imagined the threat. What it amounts to, that he can piece together, is that the Spanish asshole, Zorg, was driving fast to freak them out enough to get them to agree to go to the Greek asshole’s villa (
villa
, for Christ’s sake!). But there, at the villa, then what? The girls had been served drinks, and Mary had taken a nap, and then the alleged kidnappers had taken them out to a disco? It doesn’t exactly sound like the height of danger. Everyone knows what Mediterraneans are like: those guys were probably just trying to get laid and thought manipulation was courtship. But now. Yeah, now what Zorg and Titus and their miniposse are after isn’t to get
laid
but rather to kick Geoff and Irv’s American asses for intruding on their territory. The girls could probably walk away and it would be Geoff and Irv those four would follow. He’s even suggested this to Mary and Nix, but they insisted they aren’t going anywhere; they’re too scared.

Mary goes to the bouncer, an Aussie with a mullet. Geoff hears her describing Zorg and Titus and their friends, asking the bouncer if he’ll detain them when they show up, find some reason not to let them leave the bar. She’s slipping him an American twenty-dollar bill like some con woman in a movie, if con women wore bikini tops at 10 p.m. And then, just like that, they’re off, running hand in hand, the four of them, down the labyrinthine streets of Mykonos, dashing to Taxi Square and jumping into the first cab they see. “Take us to Plati Yialos,” Mary says authoritatively, and Geoff feels even more turned on than he did when she let her hair down in the disco. They zoom off into the night, staring out the back window of the taxi, but no, they are not being followed. They are safe. No one—not even anyone crazy—would think to look for them out of town! Geoff settles back against the torn seat, relaxing into his drunken excitement. Mary’s half-bare leg is pressed against his. Her skin feels cold and he offers her his sweatshirt, which hangs on her like a dress, covering the short skirt, so that she’s even sexier, as though she’s naked underneath, like they’ve just made love and are lying around. He feels a flash of pity for Irv, who clearly isn’t going to get anywhere with shy, jittery Nix. In all truth, Nix may be a little prettier than Mary—more delicate in her features—but Geoff finds (he has never thought this before) that he likes his women tough, a little take-charge and adventurous, not fragile or nervous. This girl Mary, she’s probably not really a slut, as he first imagined. It turns out it’s not really her choice that she’s wearing a bikini top at night in public. He’s a little disappointed because this means it’s not a sure thing she’ll sleep with him later, but he’s kind of glad—senselessly maybe, since he’ll never see her again after tonight—and kind of relieved, too.

Plati Yialos is deserted. Geoff didn’t know what it would be like; it’s only their second day on Mykonos and they haven’t really done anything yet except drink and hit Paradise Beach to see naked girls. Even at night, the beauty of the place is evident. Nobody’s on the beach now, of course, and all the blue-and-white-striped lounge chairs are empty, lined up in hushed rows, waves lapping at the curved beach, distant hills darkening the sky like a jagged horizon. The taxi driver leaves without a question and they walk clumsily in the sand, plunk down on their choice of chairs, laughing and excited but without obvious direction now that they are no longer being pursued. Well, except Nix isn’t doing any laughing. Here on the picturesquely romantic chairs, with the thrill of the chase over, Geoff’s got to admit there’s something shell-shocked about her that makes it a little weird to imagine some parallel make-out session—her continued silence, now that the danger is done, feels ominous. He shoots Irv a look to signal,
No, let’s not make a move
, but Irv isn’t looking his way. “I love your rings,” he’s busy saying to Nix, still in pickup mode. Geoff watches him take her limp hand in his. “This one—tell me the story of this ring.”

But abruptly Nix stands and starts walking toward the surf. Mary, who has been holding Geoff’s hand with more volition, drops it, too, her neck craning after Nix. She gets up and goes after her, her footsteps making small thuds in the sand. It looks playful at first, sexy, two girls running along the moonlit beach, but suddenly Nix’s pace picks up and she seems to be trying to
escape
Mary for real. Geoff watches, stunned, as Nix begins to pull off her clothes, hurling them onto the sand behind her.

Irv elbows Geoff and says, “I know I should be psyched, I mean, look at those tits . . . but man, I don’t know, that chick’s a little freaky.”

And Geoff. Suddenly Geoff
gets
it, a code locking into place, cracking everything wide open. The way once you understand something, there are no other possible computations. He barks too loudly, “Shut up.” Stands, body unsteady in the thick sand.

Mary is running after Nix, but Nix is gone, a flash of legs and ass receding until nothing’s left but a billow of hair floating on the waves, and the small headlights of pale eyes in the dark. Geoff sprints off after Mary; he runs until he catches her on the water’s edge, where she’s calling out with futility, “Nix! Nix!” He catches her up in his arms, and he means to tell her right then—he even begins, “Listen, at the villa . . . ,” but what he thought of saying morphs without his consent into a weak stammer of, “Uh, so, you said you took a nap?” No matter, Mary’s so busy yelling she doesn’t seem to hear him, and to his surprise he can’t make any more words come. Because for Christ’s sake, what’s he supposed to
say
? And who the hell is he to say it?

He watches, tongue-tied, as Mary walks away from his embrace, toward the surf. She pulls the sweatshirt over her head, starts pushing her skirt off her hips fast and jerky as though it’s covered with bugs, muttering to herself, “Crazy, reckless, show-off, can hardly fucking swim,” like she’s talking to Geoff and not talking to him at once. He follows her but doesn’t touch her, doesn’t
catch
her, and before he can figure out if he is supposed to prevent her from going into the water, she has already plunged in, wearing her suit at least, and is swimming with surprising strength out toward her perilously bobbing friend. Irv is still in the far distance on a lounge chair, staring at the luminously bright stars or at the swimming girls, Geoff can’t tell. Yeah, what kind of heroes are they now? Those girls could fucking drown out there. Geoff spent summers on his grandparents’ farm near Yellow Springs, Ohio, nowhere near an ocean or lake; he does not know how to swim more than the width of a pool. If he went into this wild night sea, he would die, as simple as that. So he watches—he watches Mary reach her friend, the two of them out there in the dark, presumably telling women’s secrets, elusive to him.

Perhaps it would not be fair to say that this is the moment he falls in love. If anything, he feels excluded and slightly angry, mostly at himself for his paralysis. If anything, he feels regret—again—that he did not jump Zorg and Titus when he had the numbers on his side, that he didn’t kick them in the nuts until they spit blood, though he knows somewhere behind these fantasies that such an action is beyond him in its violence and impulsivity, and that’s what makes him angriest of all. He watches Mary, and if anything, he feels that this mermaid in the water is something he didn’t know existed until tonight, some strange hybrid of several common flowers that, when combined, yields a sweeter, more intoxicating scent. He watches her and Nix, bobbing in their sea of womanhood, and he feels it might make sense to take off his own clothes and walk into the sea, just on the chance that he might be able to hear their secrets, to touch Mary’s wet arm before the waves engulfed him.

Instead he only stands on the shore, waiting for what he knows will be her eventual return.