Authors: Faye Kellerman
"Ah!" Poe smiled. "I see."
But Honey was still pissed. "Perhaps Parker just didn't want to get involved in your sleazy little affairs, Rom."
"
My
sleazy little affairs?" Poe was incredulous. "You mean murder?"
Honey stiffened. "All the more reason for Parker to keep his mouth shut. He didn't get where he is today by making mistakes."
"Mistakes like wielding a knife."
"My, you're feisty today. I think you're going through Honey withdrawal."
Back off, Poe
. "Probably."
She drank her coffee, then softened her tone. "If you want my opinion, I'd say that the little tart didn't seem like his type. He prefers women who are not only beautiful but sophisticated and clever. He enjoys talking. When we were together, I do believe I dispensed more advice to him than he did to me."
Don't flatter yourself, babe. You're nothing but a whore. And
you, Poe, are nothing but a jerk!
He stood up. "Thanks, Honey. Thanks for everything."
She beamed. "Can I kiss you good-bye?"
"I'd be insulted if you didn't."
She gave him a long, passionate kiss. It tasted like poison.
It was only a forty-five-minute diversion, but it felt like hours. He dragged his body into his house, where the lights were as dim as his spirits. A bespectacled Rukmani, garbed in a flowing purple dress, was seated in a chair, reading papers by his batteryoperated lantern. A sweaty sheen covered her nutmeg skin. His house had no air-conditioning, only a moribund battery fan which kicked up a hot wind and blew it from one side to the other.
She looked up from the sheaves, wiped her face with a tissue. "She's sleeping. I opened the couch. I figured that was okay."
Poe stood at the doorway, perspiration dripping from his forehead, his eyes feeling like fire. He swabbed his face with his sleeve. "I went to Honey's."
"I figured as much. Come in, but leave the door open. The circulation feels good."
He walked inside and pulled up a stool next to Rukmani, pausing before he sat down. "I don't even know why I did it."
Rukmani shrugged. "Asserting your independence against me. Evading the crushing responsibility of caring for a sick parent. You're a horny guy. Take your pick."
He was silent.
Rukmani said, "Just don't lie to me, Romulus. You never lied before. Don't start now."
Poe looked at his lap. "I'm sorry."
"Life is short. People aren't perfect. Forget it."
He noticed the papers she was reading. "I see my mother must have told you about her condition."
"She knew you had told me something. So she filled in some details. The rest…" She held up a thick pile of records. "Working my way through the medical muck."
"Remus doesn't know. She doesn't want me to call him." Again, he wiped sweat from his face. "I have to, Ruki. I owe him that."
"I agree."
"I'm tired now. I figured I'd do it in the morning."
"Sounds logical."
He started to speak and realized there was a lump in his throat. He coughed in his fist, then said, "I don't want her to die."
Rukmani took off her glasses. "Let me tell you the situation from a medical standpoint. Because before I started certifying deaths, I did a lot of plain old microscopic pathology. So I know what I'm talking about."
"You always know what you're talking about. Go on."
"First off, I've been going over these diagnoses. She does have some form of lymphoma slash leukemia, but an unusual presentation. Not cut-and-dried, but what in life is? Anyway, without being able to examine the biopsies and peer at the cells, I'm forced to extrapolate. So none of this is carved in stone."
"I understand."
"The most accurate description seems to be chronic lymphocytic leukemia with a systemic profusion of moderately well differentiated cells. Which is actually very good."
"Really?"
"Really. The more differentiated the cells, the better. Rom, she's not saddled with a death sentence. We've got bona fide protocol and treatment which has proven highly successful."
She held up two fingers.
"Two things. First, I've got to run some extensive tests to figure out if she has more of a lymphoma or more of a leukemia. Treatment is a little different depending on which disease is the more pronounced. There seems to be lots of blurring. She has disseminated cancer cells indicative of leukemia as well as localized neoplasms in the organs of the immune system—which points to lymphoma."
"So that's weird?"
"It's not unheard-of for lymphomas to convert to leukemias and vice versa. The fine tuning can be taken care of by meticulous lab work and a personally designed protocol. The trick is…"
She sighed.
"The trick is to get her into a hospital. She doesn't want modern medicine. She wants an Indian faith healer."
"I know."
"She's been over this with you?"
"Yes. Truthfully, I was too stunned to argue. Not that it would have done any good."
"I'm all for holistic medicine. We Hindus believe in some wayout stuff. And I've seen mystics work miracles with my own eyes. But on a day-to-day basis, I'm real big on Western medicine—things like vaccinations and antibiotics. They've saved lots of lives, and I'm not one to argue with empiricism."
"You don't have to convince me." He licked his dry lips. His armpits were drenched in sweat. "Could you talk to her?"
"I'd be happy to, except I think I'd be viewed as the establishment. Should come from someone else. Does she have any relative that she looks up to?"
Poe thought for a moment. "There's Y."
Rukmani gave him a thumbs-up sign. "Brilliant. Do you think he'll be cooperative?"
"I think he'd help." He looked at his watch. Ten to eleven. It felt like midnight in hell. "It's not that late. I bet I can find him."
"Why don't you call it a night, guy? You look so tired."
"I'll be fine." He kissed her hand. "Again, I'm sorry."
She let out a small laugh. "I didn't realize you had such a capacity for guilt. If I were the type, I could really milk this." She kissed his hand back. "I do care, actually. Just not all that much. You're going to do it again. So will I. Fidelity will take time for both of us. Take me home now? I'd invite you for the night, but I fear you're already spent."
She was right about that. "I have to look for Y."
"How convenient." She stood up, stowing Emma Poe's medical records in a plastic bag. "I'll take these home if you don't mind."
"Thanks for everything."
"How's Alison, by the way?"
"As crazy as ever."
Rukmani waited a beat. "I know she's gorgeous, Romulus. But she's also manipulative and very disturbed. It can't be all physical. What do you
see
in her?"
Dashed hopes
. "She's as close as I have to family here."
"She's dysfunctional, Poe."
"My entire family is dysfunctional." He looked at her. "And you're so normal all of a sudden?"
"Sure, I have problems. Who doesn't? But I am able to operate in a social context. And I do perform a useful service for society." She grinned. "And let me tell you something. I must do a bangup job. Because my patients never complain."
TWENTY-THREE
T
HE NIGHT
had retained most of the desert heat, so Poe found it pleasurable to be anywhere air-conditioned. Each year he swore he'd buy a generator. But when push came to shove, he was either too busy or too tired to make the effort. He plodded through the Mojave's inferno summers, rationalizing that sweat was a good thing. It cleansed the body. Certainly he could use a good scrubbing now.
By the time he located Y, it was close to one in the morning. Wearing jeans and a red buckskin tank top, the old man was manning a poker machine at the Flamingo Hilton, his flabby arms feeding the insatiable money chute. His head was encircled with a beaded band. Poe had come prepared, presenting him with four rolls of quarters. Y glanced at the cylinders, pocketing them in one fluid motion.
Poe said, "How's your luck been holding?"
"Steady enough."
"Good for you."
"What do you want?"
"A favor."
Y waited a beat, then continued playing. The pause was Poe's indication that Y had heard him.
"It concerns my mother." He waited for Y to get his electronic poker cards. "She's sick, Y. She needs some tests, but doesn't want to go into a hospital. Actually, she doesn't want any Western medicine. She wants an Indian shaman."
"Shamans are Western medicine. We were in the West long before the
marukats
came and stole our land."
Poe kept his patience. "I realize that. Nobody's claiming righteousness for what was done hundreds of years ago. I'm talking about a very sick woman who can be helped by modernday drugs."
No one spoke for a minute. Then Y said, "How sick?"
Poe wiped his face with a tissue. "Sick enough to need real help. Not that I'm putting anyone down. Give her the shaman, too. But Rukmani thinks that Mom has a good shot with Western treatment. Being as I'm a bettin' guy, I go with the proven odds."
Y pulled in a straight against the machine's two pair. The contraption started dinging up a storm. "What does she have? Cancer?"
"Yes." Lucky guess? "She couldn't have told you."
"No, she didn't tell me. I haven't even spoken to your mother. What you described…it sounded like cancer."
Poe felt droplets pouring down his neck even though it was cool inside the casino. "She has some weird kind of leukemia. But Rukmani's optimistic."
Y sipped vodka and said nothing.
Poe said, "She needs chemotherapy. Without it, she'll die. And please don't feed me shit that we all have to die eventually. I'm not in an existential mood."
Y took out one of Poe's rolls of quarters. He could hear the desperation in the kid's voice. "I'll talk to her. No promises."
A millstone was suddenly lifted from Poe's neck. He felt his eyes water. "Thank you."
Y looked at the boy, handed him his vodka. Poe shook his head. "I've already had too much. I feel like my head's being attacked by a woodpecker."
After dropping a quarter into the slot, Y dug into his pockets and pulled out a cellophane packet. "Take this. It'll make you feel better."
"What is it?"
"A home remedy. You could get a vision, but don't pay it any mind."
Poe looked at the powder, put the envelope in his shirt pocket. "Is this some kind of peyote?"
"A little peyote, a little mushroom, a few other desert plants, and cayenne pepper. Mix it with tomato juice and vodka for one hell of a Bloody Mary." Y pulled in an ace-high against the machine's pair. He put another coin in the bottomless pit. "This is what you do. You take this shit, strip naked—it's warm enough—then go out into the desert and howl at the moon."
"There's no moon tonight."
"Then howl at the stars, howl at something. Beat your breast and be at one with the desert. I'm telling you, it works. Oh, you'd better wear boots. Lots of snakes out."
"Could you come by tomorrow to talk to Mom?"
Y managed a half-smile. "Tell Emma I'll come by."
"What time?"
"Daytime."
"Could you be a
little
more specific?"
"No. I'll come after dawn but before dusk."
Poe gave up. "Thanks."
"No promises." Another quarter into the machine. "I don't make promises, no one gets hurt."
From the moment his mother was admitted into the hospital, Poe ran in fast-forward. His life was a blur of death and disease, of decisions with consequences for which he was ill-prepared. At least, his brother and he became a united team, bombarding the doctors with questions, pressuring them until they got answers. They adopted a pugnacious us-against-them mentality, making them unpopular with the staff, causing Rukmani some heat. But neither cared, because too much was at stake. The animosity thrust against them reminded Poe of his painful youth. But along with the pain came the warmth of a revived fraternal relationship.
Remus lived a hellish commuter's existence, grabbing the last outbound plane from Reno, then flying back for work in the early morning. His energy seemed boundless, in stark contrast to Poe, who woke up every morning feeling exhausted and drained.
Pleasure became only a word in the dictionary. He spent all his conscious hours either at work or at the hospital—nursing, comforting, waiting to see what might happen next. Holding an old woman's hand as she slept fitfully, conked out on methotrexate. His mother's breathing was raspy, her breath stale and often fetid. Her hair turned brittle and cracked at the roots. Her skin was as parched as the desert floor. Rukmani was still puzzled by Emma's cellular presentation: the histology didn't quite conform to anything in the books. But the chemotherapy was working, and that was all that mattered.
For all his size and girth, Remus was able to adjust to sleep in a hospital room. Poe became an insomniac—restless and testy. After two weeks of frenetic hours, Weinberg ordered him home one sizzling afternoon. Three hours of blissful sleep in his own house, in his own bed. Alone with the world. It gave heaven a whole new meaning.
When he awoke, it was three o'clock and a scorcher. He was drenched, as wet and itchy as a Southern swamp. He ran cold water over his head, dressed in clean clothing, then stripped the soaked sheets, piling his linens and heading for the Laundromat. Pulling into a spot, he could see the heat rays emanating from the asphalt parking lot, feel the fire run through his shoes.
He stuffed his clothes in a washing machine, intending a quick trip to the hospital. But the thought of stepping through those doors, hearing the hushed tones in a room redolent with antiseptic smells. Life amid a sea of panicked, confused faces as white-uniformed staff scurried about like speed-driven specters. He couldn't muster the strength.
Instead, he made a detour for Records.
Bun-headed Madison was still manning the desk. She still wore the same distasteful expression. "You're back."